Overheard at Writers’ Brainstorming Weekend

Recently I spent a weekend at a house on a lake with my local writing group. We alternated between writing and helping each other brainstorm story ideas. Here’s some of what was overheard during the weekend:

  • “The Fire Lube and Goo stories.”
  • “Life’s too short to spend it in retail.”
  • “We can’t help because of the prime directive.”
  • “I showed the neighbors my ta-tas.”
  • “Now that we got our juices flowing…”
  • “He doesn’t play our reindeer games” (about our only man who left the room when we started killing off characters with poisoned Viagra)
  • “I was a whiny bitch.” (from our only man)
  • “What’s wrong with his nipples?”

And perhaps my fave…

  • “My hero’s nickname is Meat.” Followed by… “His friend’s name should be Buns.” And then you know where I went… “It can be an m/m. Slap the Meat and Buns together.”

And of course that led us to…

  • “You gotta give him a T-shirt that says Eat the Meat

I love this group of writers! There aren’t words to express how reaffirming and energizing it is to hang with other people who get the drive to spend hours and hours creating characters and stories from nothing but your imagination.

Uh-oh Dad’s Downloading More Books On His Kindle

Non-techie Dad called again for help with his Kindle. If you recall, I’ve mentioned his issues before. This time he hadn’t even started downloading the book yet. Guess he wanted to be on the phone with me IN CASE he had issues. Which he did. Here’s how it went…

He says he’s all ready to download the book…

Me: “When the next box pops up, go ahead and click Save.”

Dad: “Okay, I clicked to download it. Do I click Save?”

Me: “Yes, click Save.”

Dad: “Okay. I think I’ve got it. Let me put it on my Kindle and I’ll call you back.”

Ring.

Dad: “I can’t find the book on my computer.”

Me: “Where did you save it when you clicked Save?”

Dad: “I don’t know.”

Me: “Okay, let’s do a search.” I told him the steps to perform a search for all the kindle files on his laptop (he hasn’t read that many so it shouldn’t be too hard to find the new one). Once he had the search window up, I told him what to type. He had to key in 5 characters.

Dad: “Hold on, I have to use both hands.” I heard him set the phone down and press the five keys with a long pause between each one. He picked up the phone again. “It’s searching.”

Me: “What did it find?”

Dad: “Just the books I’ve already read.” He proceeded to read me everything he could see about the files. The names, the dates saved, even the file sizes. “172 KB, whatever that means.”

Me: “But not the book you want to read?”

Dad: “No.”

Turns out he had selected the Adobe file, not the Kindle option that takes you through Amazon to borrow a book. So he had to do it all over again.

When he was ready to download the correct file…

Me: “When the dialog box comes up, click Save.”

Dad: “Okay.” Long pause. “I clicked to download it. Okay, a box comes up, do I click Save or Find?”

In my head: Save, save, for the love of God, click SAVE.

He cracks me up!!

 

Never Laugh at a Cheesy Catalog until You’ve Seen Every Last Item

Lately I’ve gotten a huge influx of mail-order catalogs. The kind with bizarre items you can’t believe someone thought up, let alone had made into an actual product.

Rosie has this silly and adorable habit of paging through those catalogs and giggling as she finds gem after gem.

Like this…it’s called the Butt Putt.


Image source

Can you believe that name? And to top that off, it farts when you sink the ball in the hole.

So, there’s my sweetie sitting on the couch, turning pages, laughing, and showing me item after item while I was trying to read my email. Good thing I find her laugh infectious and her 12-year-old-boy humor cute.

Then she stopped laughing and said, “Oh, that’s kinda cool.”

I was scared.

Seriously scared.

I didn’t want to end up with some sort of farting alarm clock.

Then she showed me this…


Image source

And she was right, it was kinda cool. Of all the things I’ve looked at to hold my Kindle while I read in bed, I think this one looks like it might be both useful and comfy.

Anyone have anything like this? Or something similar you can recommend? I’m not sure I can bring myself to order from the catalog with the Butt Putt.

Ah, maybe I will.

 

The Case of the Mysterious Bag in my Parents’ Basement

funny pictures - Actions speak  louder than words
(image source: Lolcats and funny pictures)

Yep, my Dad’s at it again. You won’t believe this one.

My entire family was sitting around the dinner table after my mom and dad had returned from a weekend trip (during which I had stopped over to feed their cat).

Me: So, Dad, what was that lumpy plastic bag downstairs by the cat’s food?

Dad: All the poop I saved.

Me: (almost chokes on a mouthful of dinner roll) What?

Dad: That cat puts out more than she takes in, so I did an experiment.

Me: What do you mean, experiment?

Dad: I bought a new bag of cat food and when it was all gone, I weighed all her poop to compare.

Me: Say what?

Dad: I weighed the poop and compared it to the weight of the cat food. 2 lbs of cat food. 3 lbs of poop. Something is wrong with that cat.

Me: Did you weigh just the poop?

Dad: What do you mean? I scooped it out and kept it in the bag.

Me: Did you weigh her urine?

Dad: Well, I guess. But that can’t weigh that much.

My sister: I think it does.

Dad: Nah. Probably not that much.

Me: You use scoopable litter. That clumps around the urine and weighs a lot.

Dad: I don’t think so. And I factored in the weight of the litter on the poop.

Me: How did you do that?

My sis: He counted the kernels on each turd.

All I kept thinking with each bite of my food was I cannot believe we are having this conversation.

He’s going to redo the experiment without the urine and report back.