Repost of My Funniest Posts 5- Not in the Christmas Spirt

I'm not in the Christmas spirit at all.

I look at all my decorations and think, "crap, I'm just going to have to take this down in a month."

I think a part of it stems from there are no Christmas lights up and down my street this year. And why is there none? Because my next door neighbor has not put up his lights.

There is a long standing, friendly feud with my next door neighbor. He LOVES his front yard and works very hard to make it nice. His first Christmas in his house, his whole front yard was lit up. He had at least 10 different types of decorations. It looked awesome.

My house had one string of rope light around the window, and you could see the rope light connect to the extension cord. It looked pitiful.

My Neighbor ended up shining one of those spotlights with the happy holiday's messages on the side of our house to make out house look all lame.

The next year we stepped it up. We bought a light up polar bear.

They bought a light up train.

The year after that we bought a light up seal, and we up it up next to the polar bear.

They bought these beautiful light up thingys I've never seen anywhere else but on his lawn.

Last year we put up the light up wreath (You know what happened to that) the polar bear and the seal. Over the year of storage though, the seal's head broke and didn't light up. So in the day time it looked fine. But at night, it looked like the polar bear decapitated it. Not really the festive mood I was hoping for.

Also last year my neighbor came up to me and said, "I'm going out of town for two weeks, do you mind turning on my lights every day so no one robs my house."
"Sure no problem."

His decorations look amazing, with a snowman, train, and those pretty colorful light up thingys.

Last year we have two wind storms. The snowman's head fell off. One of the light up thingies vanished. As it turns out they were made out of paper, saran wrap and a see through plastic. They were VERY fragile.<-- this becomes important later.

I went out and fix the snow man, (but he looked worst then my seal) I search for the light up thingy. IT was cold, and windy and I was outside for like ten minutes looking for it. The whole time thinking, "He's going to think I destroyed it on purpose."

Once it was back to a sort of normal state, two days later another WIND STORM hit.

The snowman died.

The light up thingy was under the car.

When I went to pick it up, it started to fall apart in my hands. Like someone trying to hid a dead body, I gathered the pieces and rushed to my basement. There it laid.

My neighbor came home early. "I'm sorry, there was these wind storms." The winter wonderland he created looked like an abnormally large radioactive lizard attacked it.

He smiled, "that's OK."
"I've got your light up thingy in my basement. It doesn't look good." I hung my head in shame.

I went down to get it and it split in half. Wire and plastic started to rain off of it as I carried it up the stairs. I couldn't make eye contact with him as I handed it to him.

Today is December 10, neither of us have our decorations up.

I think we're both in mourning this year.

His yard will not longer look like a magically wonderland for his children.
My yard won't look like a nature documentary gone horribly wrong.

Maybe's it for the best. I don't think an apex predator like the polar bear would have gotten along with the reindeer I wanted to buy.


Did you enter my super Awesome CONTEST?

Christmas Gifts for People You Are Indifferent To.  

I will give away three mystery gifts.   

Enter here

Contest ends on FRIDAY at NOON.

Nanowrimo- GOOD LUCK Week 5

You've done it!  You made it through the month.  Most of you  have hit your 50K words.  Congrats.  Even if it's your first book or your tenth, there's nothing like the feeling finishing a book.

Don't let writer's remorse set it right away.  Don't think about revision.  Don't think about query.  For the love of God and everything that is holy don't even THINK about QUERYING.

For your excellent acomplishment please spend a few minutes and watch this.  You'll love it.


So You Want To Write A Novel by dwkazzie




I will be blogging about this vid more this week.

Fun Friday- 15 favorite authors

The Meme: Borrowed from Kate Hart

The Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who have always influenced you and will always stick with you. List the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes, and they don’t have to be listed in order of relevance to you.

1) John Green- everytime I read one of his books I think, "This is what I want to do. This is how a great book is written"
2) Douglas Adams- He gave me the meaning of life and was the first author that made me crack up.  I carried Restuarnt at the End of the Universe with me all through out college.
3) Shel Sliverstein- The Missing Peice meets the Big O is one of the most influenant books of my life.
4) JK Rowling- I remember where I was reading each of the Harry Potter books as much as the events in the books.
5) Scott Westerfeild- Is there anything this guy CAN'T write.
6) Brad Meltzer- a friend and an amazing writer.  I was in one of his books as character.  Yep we tight.
7) Charles Dicksen- because I'm super prentious and he created the soap opera
8) Christopher Pike- My Middle school years was filled with his books.
9) L.J Smith- After reading the Vampire Diaries in Middle School I knew exactly what I want
10) Jerry Spinelli- Star Girl, Manic Magee, Love Star Girl... amazing
11) Louis Sachar- There's a Boy in the Girls Bathroom is the first book I discovered symbolism in, and the first book to make me cry.
12) Eoin Colfer- Artmis Fowl-making faeries cool.
13) Frank Miller- Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, and everything else he's done.  Life Changing
14) Neil Gaiman- The Sandman series changed my life and I no longer fear death, not if Death is a cool goth chick who likes hotdogs and loves life.
15 Brandon Halpin - the first author I e-mailed, who emailed me back and follows me on twitter.  After reading Half Life of Planets I felt like, "Yes, I can write a book like this."
15.5) Tiffanie DeBartolo The first author I e-mailed who wrote back. 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

So while everyone is listing all the things they are thankful for, I'm going to be watching TV.  Yep. Maybe I'll write. 

Most likely I'll be watching TV.  Here's a list of TV Marathons happening TODAY
Thank you TV Squad for the links. http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/11/19/thanksgiving-tv-picks-specials-marathons/

THURSDAY, NOV. 25
'Burn Notice' Marathon – It may not be the first thing you think of when you think of the show, but Michael, Sam, Fiona, Jesse and Maddie have formed their own little family unit of sorts, as you get a chance to remember in this 15-hour marathon (6AM, USA)

'Biography' Marathon – George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Leo DiCaprio and Julia Roberts are among the famous faces profiled in this 20-hour marathon (8AM, Bio Channel)

'I Dream of Jeannie' and 'Bewitched' Marathons – It's a magic-al Thanksgiving with Jeannie and Samantha (8AM, TV Land)

James Bond Movie Marathon – Bond, on Syfy? Ours is not to question why. Ours is to try to convince everyone to stop watching football for a bit so we can watch 'Goldeneye' at 3:30PM, part of this 12-movie 007 fest (8AM, Syfy)

'Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade' – 'Today' trio Matt Lauer, Meredith Viera and Al Roker host the 84th Macy's Turkey Day parade, which includes more than 800 clowns, Jimmy Fallon and The Roots, Kanye West, The Muppets and the cast of the Green Day Broadway musical 'American Idiot' (9AM, NBC)

'Man Vs. Food' Marathon – You may have your own food challenge today, trying to choke down Aunt Gladys' dry turkey, but that's nothing compared to the mammoth-sized foods Adam tackles in this 19-hour run (9AM, Travel)

'MythBusters' Marathon – 11 hours of myth-bustin' fun! (9AM, Discovery)

'Campus PD' Marathon – Every episode of the first and second seasons makes for a lot of moments that will make you realize whatever your fam is up to today, it could be worse. And a lot more drunken (12:30PM, G4)

'Holiday in the Hills: Beverly Hills 90210' Marathon – Six installments of '90210' (the original series!) holiday fun (6PM, SoapNet)

'Family Game Night' Marathon – Fams compete in life-sized versions of Hasbro board games in the name of cash and prizes. You'll so want to be the one playing with the life-sized Operation game! (7PM, The Hub)

'A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving' – Peter Brady had pork chops and applesauce, Snoopy has jelly beans and popcorn (plus buttered toast and pretzel sticks, don't forget) (8PM, ABC)

'Punkin Chunkin 2010' – It's that time-honored tradition, the annual gathering of the engineers who've concocted new ways to launch pumpkins into the air. Why? Why not (8PM, Discovery)

'Taylor Swift: Speak Now' – The country diva performs nine tunes and gives fans a behind-the-scenes peek at the release of her latest CD (8PM, NBC)

'Elf' – Will Ferrell has never been more charming than he is as Buddy in this new holiday classic (9PM, USA)

'Beyonce's World Tour' – Kanye West and her hubby, Jay-Z, pop in during this behind-the-scenes look at her world tour, including, of course, performance, and a peek at her glitzy line-up of costumes (9:30PM, ABC)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING. 

Did you enter my contest yet? 

Road Trip Wednesday- Best Book of November

Road Trip Wednesday Best Book of November

I only read ONE book this month, which I think is forgivable when you look at how many books I've read in the past few months.
My brain has been sort of fried. 
Between work, illness and life I've been slacking a lot. 

But I did read October Sky.

October Sky isn't a book I would read willingly.  I need to teach it, in Decemeber.  So I went to Borders and bought my copy and nearly had a heartaccked.  It was a 425 page book.  WHAT!  I need to teach 425 pages to 8th graders. 
My kids were going to go all Lord of The Flies on me.  Dear God, I was going to be Piggy.
Then I started reading it.

It was good.

That's weird.  Books I teach are almost never good.  They're normally way to hard or way to easy or the characters leave you sort of feeling meh. 

But this was really good.

I found myself changing from Teacher Reading Mode, underlining vocab and confusing terms to Enjoying Reading Mode.

The story is about a boy named Sonny (or Homer depending on who's talking to him) living in a WV coal town during the Space Race.  His father runs the coal mine and his mother is convinced the mine and resulting town is dying.  Sonny builds a rocket after being inspired by sputnik.  His mother encourages Sonny's interest in rockets and often runs interference between Sonny and his dad. 

The book is about Sonny's friends, life in high school, fitting in, crushes on girls and making rockets.

It was AWESOME.  I cried at the end.  

It's going to fun to teach and interesting to see the kids reactions. 

Go out and read this book, you'll enjoy page, all 425 pages of them. 

Wanna win a MYSTERY PRIZE?  Enter my contest, please. 

Repost of My Funniest Posts 4

Posted December 2009

My Neighbors


I’m pretty certain my neighbors stole the batteries out of our LED light up wreath last year.

Background knowledge:
I think wreaths are stupid. Well, no, I really like them, in the daytime. But at night the look stupid, because everything else is all lit up and the door is not.

I know what you’re thinking, use a spot light:
I live in a townhouse, I use my front door to get out of my house, and I don’t want to put a spot light on my front door. Mostly because I don’t want to get blinded every time I walk my dog.

Anyway, I discovered in Target all my Christmas problems could be solved with this wreath.

It was battery operated = no extension cords.
It had a 12-hour timer= I never had to turn it on
It was pretty= good in the day and at night.
It was awesome= I loved it.

Then something occurred.

My neighbor across the street had the same wreath.
I will be completely honest; I don’t know who got it first. It might have been him, maybe not.

Things that make you go HMMMM

Days leading up to Christmas

My Neighbor’s wreath is looking a little dim.

One night my dog goes bunkers barking and scratching at the door. I heard rattling and scratching outside the door but thought it was animal. Not out of the norm in my neighborhood where apparently the leash law is optional.

A few days later
My wreath is on at 3 pm when I’m coming home from work. The timer was set for 7pm-7am.

Two days before Christmas I find two tiny screws on my step outside my door. I don’t know what they could possibly be used for.
I notice the neighbor’s wreath is looking good.

Christmas morning
Zoey gets a gift that requires C batteries. Hubby says, “I just put C batteries in wreath, I’ll go get them.”

He gets his tiny screwdriver and opens the door. “WHAT THE HELL?” The cover of the battery pack slides off and he said, “These aren’t the batteries I put in.”

He took the batteries out and placed then in Zoë’s toy. The toy last 30 seconds before it dies completely.

Conclusion.
My neighbors stole my batteries.

I ask you, what sort of person does that? Why would they do that? What possible thrill or benefit could they get from that?

How much do C batteries go for on the black market?

Under what scenario did they think it was OKAY to enter on my property, with a tiny screwdriver and STEAL the batteries out of my wreath?

I think my act of niceness will be to place two C batteries on their step and say, “This is for you, and your wreath, next time, just ask, you ass hats.”


Don't forget to enter

Christmas Gifts for People You Are Indifferent To.  

I will give away three mystery gifts.   

You can click here

Nanowrimo- GOOD LUCK Week 4

You're heading towards the home stretch.  What's your word count 35K-40K?  Have you moved into that "Good part" of your plot.  Your characters are intersting and cool stuff is about to happen.  You just KNOW IT.

You got past that page 150 hump. 

From here is just gets easier.  Promise.


You might be planning to write on Turkey Day ... I'm here to tell you- it's not going to happen.   There's family, food and a marathon of Man Verses Food on.  Then the turkey chemicals kick in and the next thing you know you're in a coma.

Oh yeah and there's football.

I hear some people are into that.

It's not my thing, but I get why other people love it.

Any cratch Thursday as a day where you're going to get any work done.

Friday you might be able to get something done while everyone else is shopping.  That's cool though, you do all you shopping on line anyway.

This weekend might be productive.

Good luck you're almost there!!!

Don't forget to enter my contest:

Christmas Gifts for People You Are Indifferent To.  

I will give away three mystery gifts.   

I don't know if you remember but my mystery gifts are pretty awesome.

you can enter here.