Tuesday, February 27, 2007

New Book


Ok, I'm going to do something very strange. I am working on writing a new book and am in the preliminary stages. This will be more of a kid's book and I have the main character. You can see the photograph of him here. He is a rare squirrel, but what I really want is some input. Would the story be more interesting from a normal animal scenario or if the animals do more kinds of people things like clothes, tools or magic. I'm torn between the two and can see a story develop both ways. This is your chance to have some input in a book. I would also like to develop a drawing of the character not as realistic looking as the photograph.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Flu Blues

Monday about 3pm my stomach started hurting. That's nothing new in our family. I think we may have cornered the market on ulcers. Maybe we should invest in pharmaceutical company stock. This time it wasn't ulcer, it was stomach virus. It hit pretty hard. I haven't been that sick since the last time I got the flu. I slept maybe 3 hours that first night. Colonoscopy prep wasn't as bad as this was. No food sounded good, so I didn't eat for nearly two days. I worried about dehydration so I forced myself to drink juice and water. By Tuesday night the diarrhea quit, but every time I got out of bed, I got chills and started shaking so bad it made me physically tired. That's all gone now, but I'm so wiped out I don't have the energy to stand up for very long without getting winded and exhausted. The good news is I know it's gone now.

While all this has been going on with me, my wife has been to several doctors for a battery of tests to determine if she has appendicitis or something else. She goes back to the specialist tomorrow to get the results of her xrays. Neither of us have time, money or inclination to go anywhere for Valentine's Day, so we're going to go out Saturday. Ok, so it's the retirement party for my boss, but we'll pretend no one else is there.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Some Romantic Evening


Have you ever tried to plan the perfect romantic evening? Here was one I planned a few years ago. Let me know what you think about it.

About two weeks before Valentine's Day, I left me wife a cryptic message inviting her to a romantic evening. I put this in the appropriate old style font on parchment paper then sealed it with a rose embossed wax seal.

The next step was to write "I love you" on the bathroom mirror with RainX, it magically shows up after steamy shower. (This will actually stay on the mirror forever unless you clean the whole mirror with RainX cleaner and treat it with RainX, but you don't get a fogged up mirror anymore.)

For the second note, again on parchment about a week later, the details become clearer about a dinner on Valentine's Day, but again very cryptic. Buy a locked diary ahead of time and put the key into a wax seal on this message that says something like "You already have the key to my heart, but keep this key, it will open a rare treasure."

On Valentine's Day, write on the car and/or sidewalk "I love you" or "L loves H" etc.

Flowers need to appear sometime during the day at her work or on the table, dresser etc.

I planned for a bicycle built for two ride, but didn't plan well enough in advance, the friends with the bike had sent it to Arizona with their kids.

A treasure hunt with clues leads to the diary in which are about 2 dozen romantic, even erotic, scriptures. Yes I did say scriptures. Then there are several original poems about the two of us. Finally in the diary, this is why there is a lock on it, there is an original, personalized romance novel chapter with the two of us as the characters. Ours was a fantasy setting and just a little steamy. This provides enteraining reading for my spouse while we drive around giving my cohorts time to prepare the next stage.

My oldest daughter was in on the next part which also needed a little more advanced planning. Unfortunately it didn't work out well. She went to KFC and bought two meals for us and was taking them with tablecloth and flowers to the gazebo at the park. The sad part was that someone was using it for a birthday party so we wound up back at our own house with the same scenario.

As we wind up the evening after dinner at home, the kids are conveniently at overnights, we sit down to watch a movie, preferably Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail or whatever is your favorite romantic movie. Our movie snack was red and green MM's kept back from Christmas. My wife got the green MM's. (You know about the green ones.) I got the red ones. At least we got what was left after our old mutt of a dog ate about a pound of the MM's before my daughter discovered her.

I must say this to give you insights into my wife. After she read my hard thought out romance chapter, her only comment was, "I guess I know what was on your mind..."

After all that hard work was unappreciated, well almost unappreciated, I have not attempted such an endeavor again. If you decide to try it, I'd be happy to forward the scriptures, chapter and poems which you can alter however YOU like.

Happy Valentine's Day.