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Random thoughts, inconsistent posting |
 My meandering thoughts |
| Prompt: What's missing from your car to make it the greatest ride you could ever dream of?/size} I have a brand new Nissan Maxima. It has everything but a dvd player. We don't need one as we have no kids to entertain. It syncs with my phone, ipod and blow cold air up my butt when the seat gets too hot from the sun. (I haven't used it yet) Honestly ththere isn't anything I really need to add. I have siris for a while and then its the ipod. I gues the only thing I'd change is the color. It's Black and I' love the new BLUE or cobalt blue iI've seen. Tina Weaver ** Image ID #1988770 Unavailable ** |
| What type of person are you: a night owl or early bird?/size} I was always the night owl. I tend to stay up long after Hubby goes to bed. In the early years I read books until 12:00 or 1am. Then cam computers and games. They the internet and WORD. I began to write so stayed up writing. That was all good, but I'm married to an early riser who thinks if he is up I should be too. So My body has become used to waking up around 5am. I snnoze a little but I'm not allowed much and must get up and get ready for work, walk the dog and have lunches mad by whatever time he wants to leave. (Since now we work for the same company.) What I'm trying to say is I'm more of the night owl when I'm alone, but at the same time my body has been trained to be up with the birds. |
What is a friend? I can spout some falderal about what is a friend bur you have all heard it before. Most of us want a good friend but aren't willing to be one. Then there are those who are always giving to their friends and they are never on the receiving end. So here is the best advice or vitamin to take. If you want a good friend B1. Charlie ~   mentioned in his blog that his grandmother told him, "A friend really wants to see you succeed, even when they don't." I think that sums it up pretty good. It goes to the core of what a deep friendship consists of.That's all I have to say about that. |
| List five things you will never forget by filling in this sentence: I'll never forget the time . . . No.1 The day I asked Jesus into my life. What a change from me running it to Him in the driver's seat. I have a confidant that never sleeps and loves me more than I could ever imagine. No.2 The day I got married 41 years ago. Life is what it is and we make the best from the worst. Divorce isn't an option so compromise has its place. No.3 & 4 The days both my Daughter and Son were born. Traumatic as they were for me, it was worth every minute of pain. I love them both even though I'm not a grandma and maybe never will be, I still would rather they have a good life then mess it up with bad relationships or kids that are passed around. No.5 I guess it was the day a book club offered to read my MS as their project. The day we met the next month put me on a high. I had no idea 8 women I had never met before loved my story. They were instructed to RED PEN anything they didn't like or had questions about. What I got from them was. "I started to do that but got so caught up in the story I didn't continue. I just kept reading until I was done. Some of them read late into the night to finish it. That was a very high point for me. |
| Prompt: What's tougher: living with someone messy or someone noisy? From my point of view it would be messy. You wonder why I picked that? I am not the perfect housekeeper. I'm creative. Doesn't that sound like a good excuse? I married a perfectionist. I didn't know it at the time but I found out very quickly there was as standard I was supposed to meet. I will not go into the horrors I went through the first 17 -19 years of my marriage. Some people said I should have walked away. Looking back I'm glad I didn't. I'm still not the best housekeeper. I may not dust for weeks, or vacccum as often as I should. ( how often is that supposed to be?) I wish things bothered me. They don't, but when they do I clear things off and they are fine to me. Not so to the perfectionist. I think the hardest question for me was from my uber-perfectionst aunt. She sided with my husband and said, "Why should I have to lower my standards to yours when you can't or won't raise them to mine?" I withered. I had no answer but it hurt more than I could ever have imagined. There is no HAPPY medium. Someone has to give and it usually is the person who is the perfectionist. The other person can NEVER live up to their expectations because they are always higher than what ever it was. If you've ever seen the movie Sleeping with the Enemy, that was my worst nightmare. I cannot watch the beginning of that movie. Just today, when life has been so good, I dusted and used the lemon oil. Perfectionist stood talking to me about something that was on his mind. (his trip he'd just returned from) and out shear habit he ran his finger over the headboard after I'd just dusted it. Now He said nothing as he was already into his story. But me? I had to fight the defense shield that flew up in front of me. I said nothing about the action and it went on forgotten, until now. That defense from all those years cannot be removed. Like a hand the moves near you in an argument and your head reacts by turning away. Its been more years since I had that happen, but in a heated argument if there is a sudden action, I react. I got way off the subject and probably told more than I needed to. For the record I'd rather live with a noisy person than a messy one. I can take my own mess, but not someone elses. My sister is much worse than even I could ever stand. I love her dearly but there are times I can't go into her house because of the smell of dogs or animals or who knows what. |
| Prompt: Whats the most dreadful, or wonderful, experience youve ever had as a customer? How could it have been better or worse? Customer Service is a misnomer. It's true you and I are the customers, but some companies have no clue or don't care about the service part. They have a duty and do only what they have to get buy or get a paycheck. I've had too many good and bad experiences with customer service. I'm going to post what happened to my daughter last weekend. Through a lack of thought and too much trust, she left her wallet in her purse while she went to the dining car or where ever to get coffee. While she was gone someone stole her wallet. That is the set up. Let's jump back in time a little to her new job. For the past eight months or so she has been and executive assistant to her company's Customer Service Department. Part of her job is buy give cards and such to reward the CS employees who receive commendations from their clients. She works closely with her US Bank Person, let's call her Beth. When Lani called the bank's lost/stolen dept. The person on the other end was not at all helpful in spite of the fact the CS was outsourced to a different country and the person couldn't understand English let along speak it correctly. After hours of phone calls and frustration some of it was resolved. Lani had to go to her US bank to withdrawn money until she could get her new debit card. She spoke to her "person" Beth about what happened. "If it wasn't for you, and the other people here at this bank, I would have closed my account and went elsewhere." "Really? It was that bad?" "Yes, I wanted to close my account and walk away, but you have been so good to me and helped me with other things I couldn't do that. I deal more with you than those CS people." "You know Lani, I mentioned you at our last CS meeting. I told them you called me "your person" like famous people have." "I do. When I tell people I have a "person" at the bank they just look at me funny. When someone asks me to do something and I tell them I have people who are experts at that they have confidence in me. I then have confidence in "my people." Beth told Lani, "We have another meeting next week. Do you mind if I tell them this story?" "No, go ahead. If it means this branch gets awards for good customer service I'm all for it." I worked for a company for almost ten years. I was in "customer service" because there was no area for what I did. Let's just say it was my job to help Reps and Distributors make money for themselves and their company. I was their file drawer and IT for the company. If they had no idea where to go, call or had a question they couldn't get answered, they called me. I found the answer then we both knew it for the next person that asked. In turn those men and women showed their appreciation with letters, gifts for me and words of praise to the owner of the company. I can still remember most of the product numbers and what they are and its been ten plus years since I worked there. Some of those people are still in contact with me as we made friends outside the workplace. To me that's what Customer Service is. Go beyond what is required to make that customer satisfied. Sometimes the expectation is beyond what you can do. Be sympathetic, when you have exhausted your resources, apologize and say, "Can I have to you talk to my supervisor?" All I want is compassion for the situation whether its my fault or theirs. |
Prompt: What are your plans for the summer? My spring/summer is a rush to fall. I just got back from a road trip to Visalia, CA (and Woodlake, Ca) to attend a So. Gospel Quartet Festival. What fun to meet the groups and buy some great cd's from the new groups I'd never heard before. I certainly plan on attending next year. Our church was gifted the funds to remodel our campgrounds restaurant. It's now The Lodge. The whole logistics of what we used to do is changed. I have been in charge of the Memorial Day Picnic. My job is to arrange the dining and collect all the "potluck" food to feed 500 people. What a challenge it will be this year with everything new and the whole layout changed. At the end of June we start our campmeeting. In the past years we were able to serve 64,000 meals in the 14 days of our campmeeting. Then minus the Saturday and Mondays we only served breakfast and dinner. With the changes it will be interesting to see how this pans out. We'll have some trial runs in June and I'm sure I'll be there to see how it works. During the 14 days I and my husband get up at 5 (our usual time) and are at the The Lodge by 6:00 to start the breakfast. Since this year things will be changed, I'm not sure how it will work. We always make sausage gravy from scratch. (It starts with whole milk and heavy cream and don't forget the roux (butter and flour). After breakfast is over I go to work. I sometimes bring left overs to work so the guys love the hash browns with the gravy poured over them. Pancakes and any bacon or sausage. I work to 5:00 run home change and get to church for Choir quickie practice. When I run out of energy I don't sing. I just go from work to the restaurant and wait for PW to get done serving and then sit at the back of the Tab. In August I hope to be at the Willamette Valley Writers Conference. If my MS isn't taken by either of the two publishers I've submitted to, I will pitch it there. Then at the end of August I'll fly to MN to visit my daughter and the MN State Fair (sing it. Our state fair is the best state fair, its the best state fair in our state. I get to relax for a little while then we start the Christmas on the Campgrounds. Planning and laying out the lights, Millions of them. See the attached pictures. I'm in charge of planning and organizing all you see. I have volunteers, but most is done by me and the main guy who will be working on it full time. (I think). If you click on the link to the panorama view my three big trees are on the right side of the picture. It will be different this year. Lots of synchronized lights that were a no-no a few years ago when we suggested them...Hmmm? now we are going for it. Yea!! There that takes us through fall.   |
| Prompt: Write about a book that you recently read that stayed with you after you closed the last page. This is a question that had me thinking. What book have I read recently? There have been a few. I found I'm not as interested in reading as I am in writing so reading has fallen to the side. I joined a book club hoping to increase my reading to at least half of what it used to be. That didn't happen. I found the books published are boring to me. They lack a good plot or aren't written well. I've decided to answer this question in a negative manner. I'm sure there will be lots of posts about wonderful books. I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to tell you the impressions that have stayed with me since I've read some not-so-great books. The first is a book, and I can't remember the name, that I bought at Wordstock Festival. Here is a place where you can listen to great authors expound or inflict in some cases, their thoughts about writing and research to other writers or readers. Along the front wall, tables were arranged for authors to sell their books. I perused the selection and came to a mother and I assume daughter collaboration. They wrote a book about searching for the truth in their family. It was along the same genre of book I am writing, so I bought it. I began reading it on the MAX train back to my part of the city and hadn't gone more than a few stops when I began shaking my head and making disgusting noises from my mouth. I found the word "was" written five times in one short paragraph. This writer broke every rule that I have learned about proper writing. If you write in WORD it will throw squiggly lines under sentences that are "passive" and tells you to rewrite them. This book was fill with passive sentences. Besides the passive sentences, I found the words. "Well,..." started almost every conversation in the book. The conversations ended with the common "said," tag. This bugged me because there was very little action mostly telling the story between the mother and daughter. I think I got to the last chapter and never picked it up again. The next book, I forced myself to finish is "Titanic The Lost Child" by Bonnie Dune. In this book the plot could have been written very interesting. It wasn't. The story had too much going on. It might have worked if the plotting had been done a little better. I still didn't get it when I was finished. I had to guess at what happened. It might have been buried in the pages but by that time I had lost interest in everything but getting to the end. Her characters constantly interrupted each other. Not once or twice, but every conversation the characters abruptly ended a sentence with -- or .... They might say two words and the other character interrupted that character. It was distracting and hard to follow what was going on. The other thing she did that slowed the reading momentum, was dialect. My story is written about people in the back woods of the Appalachian Mountains. We know their talk is very pronounced. I didn't write the whole book in their dialect. I threw in a few "yews" and "yore" but only by one or two people. The rest is implied. If you aren't from the USA it didn't matter. This author wrote the entire conversation by the maid in broken French. It was difficult to read let alone understand. When the MC met this Italian man who had been born in the USA, he spoke with an Italian accent. Believe me it was "a verrrry poorly-a written." Difficult to read and understand. I'm glad I didn't do that in my book. I debated to give more local flavor and I could have added more to some of the characters, but I realize what that does to a person trying to read it. As I said, the plot intrigued me and the idea was well thought out. It just wasn't well written. I was interested in the Titanic story more than the present day portion. It might have worked better if she would have written each story in its entirety then merged the two. I guess you can tell these books stayed with me long after I wanted to chuck them. The first is a paperback that is buried at the bottom of my nightstand. The other, thank goodness, was a cheap e-book. It was less than the cost of a Latte, so I don't feel bad that it was a waste of money. Never Marry your manuscript, it will lead to divorce. |
| DAY 64 - MAY 6, 2014: Do you consider your glass half-full or half-empty? Got home yesterday and had to so a lot of catching up. Today back to work and answering emails, calling and then I didn't feel great this afternoon. About 1:30 started feeling low and like I needed a large dose of IRON. Maybe I'm low and need to take some more. Back to the question. This always catches me off guard and I have to think about what its asking. What does half full or half-empty really mean. The glass has only half the amount of water it can hold. So does it mean it was filled to the top and someone drank out of it? Thus now the glass is half empty? Is that the bad part? Someone has used up their life, their joy, their ?? Now they are looking at the rest of their allotted time with sadness? What if you turned on the water to fill your glass and it suddenly ran dry about half way to the top. Is that half full? Does it mean you have a lot of life left to fill? That you can look at making that glass more full by adding to it? Could it be that your joy is as full as it gets at that moment? You can tell I'm a little confused at the whole thing. I think the basic understanding is if you see the glass as half full you are looking at the positive side of life. If you see your glass as half empty you look at the negative side of life. My water cup is here on the desk beside me. I've had a few more sips out of it and just drank the last of it. All I need to do to fill it, is get up and walk to the cooler and fill it with cold water. Is my glass half empty or full? I have no idea. I guess it just means if I want more water I'd better get my butt off the chair and go get it. This last week I went to Visalia, Ca to attend a Gospel quartet convention. What fun I had. There were four of us. Let em give you a little peek at the diversity of this group. First of all is Dixie, and she is in her late 60's and in a relationship that isn't working. She may will be mentally in the 70's but we won't go there. Next is her niece who is a few years younger than my 61(soon to be 62). Laurie is my third cousin. Last in our little group is a woman who grew up in the Midwest when I lived thee. We were 4 hours apart and would visit a few times a year at church functions. Ellen's first child died of leukemia at the age of about 2. It was pretty traumatic for them but for us who were close to them after she married and moved to the Twin Cities, MN, where I lived. here we were laughing, sharing stories, sleeping and singing our way the 15 hours to So. CA. and back. Did I say we had fun? Too much fun and I can't wait to go back. |
| DAY 63 - MAY 5, 2014: Three things you cant go without../size} This is pretty easy so I can get this done in record time. 1) My computer-This means access to Writing.com, my emails and Facebook. 2) Food 3) My phone to call my daughter. (of course hear from my husband.) |
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She is a great woman and so kind to me.