Footle and Grok – Page 57 – Messing about with empathy

A writing contest for everyone

Posted on March 5, 2020March 5, 2020 by Jennifer Vandenberg

Writing Contest Photos

Well, everyone who is over sixteen and can write in English.

The Lewis Country Writers Guild is sponsoring their first writing contest. All the details can be found here. The Grand Prize winner will win $100, a free ticket to the Southwest Washington Writers Conference, and the option of having their winning story printed in the conference program. Three First Place winners will win $50 and a free conference ticket each. Three Honorable Mention winners will each receive 50% off a conference ticket. Plus, all winners will get to brag that they won a writing contest.

You can find the rules on the LCWG website. To enter, write a short story between 10 and 3,000 words long based on one of three writing photo prompts found on the website (and above.) The genre, plot, characters, and setting are up to you.

Writers are welcome to enter as many times as they like, but there is a fee of $10 for each entry. The contest ends June 28th, so you have ample time to work on the perfect story. Go to the website for all the details, including the Terms and Conditions, the entry form, and the PayPal payment button.

I hope everyone will enter, but whether you do or not, I have a favor to ask. Can you share the contest information with your friends and family, both online and in-person? This contest is open to the world, and the winner might just be someone who learned about it because you passed it on.

On behalf of the Lewis County Writers Guild, I thank you.

Grammar rocks!

Posted on March 4, 2020March 4, 2020 by Jennifer Vandenberg

Said no one ever.

Well, Grammar Girl probably said it some time, but the average person, even most writers, don’t like grammar. For most people, it brings back horrible memories of diagramming sentences in school (hopefully, they don’t teach that any more.)

But grammar is important, and something that we should all learn because good grammar leads to good communication and bad grammar leads to Grandma being eaten.

“Let’s eat, Grandma!” vs. “Let’s eat Grandma!”

Poor grandma her life depends on grammar.

Today is National Grammar Day. Celebrate by listening to the Grammar Girl podcast and promising yourself that you will always use the Oxford comma. It’s also fun to look at memes that have awkward typos.

IMG_3470 (3) - Copy

If you truly want to improve your grammar, which is the point of National Grammar Day, check out Grammarly. This proofreading program has a free and a paid version. It isn’t perfect, and you still need to check your work, but it will point out a lot of errors and give ideas on how to improve your work.

Happy Grammar Day! I made a grammar error in this blog. Let me know if you find it.

Trying new recipes

Posted on March 3, 2020March 3, 2020 by Jennifer Vandenberg

I tried a new recipe last night.

I don’t try recipes often, but occasionally I get a yen and hunt the internet for ideas. The funny thing about recipes is you can’t tell how good they are. Every blog brags about how good their version is, even if it isn’t. I found one that suited the ingredients I had, so I tried it.

Bad idea.

The recipe was for jicama fries. The blog said they were crispy and spicy. Well, they did have a pleasant spicy flavor because I used the same seasonings that I use on my California fries. However, the jicama gave off so much steam that the fries were never going to get crisp, even though I followed the directions and didn’t crowd them.

Raw jicama is crunchy and tangy. It’s excellent in salads and when dunked in ranch dip. Baking them did not improve their texture or flavor, so I won’t do that again. At least I won’t have to wonder if jicama fries are good. They’re not.

Do you use a lot of recipes from the internet? How do you pick a good one? Do you cook with jicama? I’d love a simple recipe that tastes good. For me, simple is essential.

Come on down

Posted on March 2, 2020March 2, 2020 by Jennifer Vandenberg

Do you like game shows?

I watched a neat documentary about the past, present, and future of game shows called Game Changers (hosted by Alex Trebek.) I’ve been watching game shows all my life, and I would still drop everything to watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!.

It was fun learning about all the different game shows throughout the years and to see hosts that I only knew as older people doing shows back in the sixties and seventies.

When I was a kid, my summer days centered around The Price is Right. I watched cartoons and other game shows while eating breakfast, but at 10 a.m., my brother and I watched the Price is Right. We knew every game by heart.

As soon as Bob Barker told us to control the pet population, the TV was turned off, and we had to play outside. That was fine with us because there were only soap operas after 11 a.m.

In the evening, my family watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!. Pat Sajak and Vanna White are almost family members.

Jeopardy! is probably my favorite game show, followed closely by the Price is Right. Do you have a favorite game show? Do you like game shows? If you do, I recommend Game Changers. It was a nice walk down memory lane.

In like a lion

Posted on February 29, 2020 by Jennifer Vandenberg

Early March doesn’t know what it wants to be.

I went for a run this morning. During four miles, I experienced sun, rain, warmth, cold, wind, and stillness. I took off and put on my jacket more times than I could count. It was a typical March run.

I found a wonderful website full of poems and quotes about March and spring. This short poem summed up my run perfectly. March is a lion right now; we’ll have to see if the lamb arrives.

“The sun is brilliant in the sky but its warmth does not reach my face.
The breeze stirs the trees but leaves my hair unmoved.
The cooling rain will feed the grass but will not slake my thirst.
It is all inches away but further from me than my dreams.”
– M. Romeo LaFlamme, The First of March

Changes in time

Posted on February 29, 2020February 29, 2020 by Jennifer Vandenberg

Ever wish you had more hours in the day?

Compared to your ancestors, you do. Earth’s rotation is slowing down, so a modern day is about 1.7 milliseconds longer than a day a century ago.

I know that doesn’t sound like much, but when dinosaurs lived, a year was about 370 days long. Give it another hundred million years, and an Earth year may only be 360 days long.

I’m bringing this up because today is leap day. It might seem like we have a handle on counting time. As long as we add an extra day every four years (but not on century years that aren’t divisible by 400), we’ll never be late.

The truth is, our calendar has to be tweaked often to match the seasons and our trip around the sun. There will never be a time when the calendar is set in stone.

Lucky for humans, this constant change happens so slowly that we can’t tell. But for those who work with super-accurate clocks, leap minutes and leap seconds are as important as leap days.

60 books in 63 days

Posted on February 27, 2020 by Jennifer Vandenberg

I finished my reading challenge.

Just before the new year, a wonderful member of the Potterhead Running Club (PHRC) designed a fun reading challenge. Sixty badges could be earned by reading sixty books in sixty different categories. I finished my sixtieth book today (thus earning my sixtieth badge.)

I didn’t intend to do this challenge in 63 days, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. Every book I read fit a category, so I started knocking them off fast.

I read cookbooks, graphic novels, epic fantasies, mysteries, romances, non-fiction, YA novels, middle-grade novels, picture books, classics, and audiobooks. It was a lot of fun, but I’m ready to get back to my life and read books that I want to read instead of books I have to read (even though I enjoyed most of the books I read.)

What is super obvious is that if you give me a badge, I will do about anything. I’m running every day for a year to earn virtual badges. I’m running three marathons in three weekends to earn a virtual badge (not to mention all the real medals.)

If I could just find programs that gave out virtual badges for weight loss and publishing books, I’d have met all my goals. (I have tried a few of the weight loss programs, but they were sooooo stingy with their badges, I never stuck with it. Come on, it’s not like they cost anything.)

Do you have any crazy goals you are working on? Do virtual badges entice you? How do you reward yourself? Someone once told me I was like Jeremy the crow from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH because I am obsessed with shiny objects. Guilty as charged.

How to do the impossible

Posted on February 25, 2020February 25, 2020 by Jennifer Vandenberg

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” – Francis of Assisi*

Start today.

*Go to the Footle and Grok website to see the meme for this quote (not mine.)

More than Metamorphasis

Posted on February 24, 2020 by Jennifer Vandenberg

I just read my second Kafka story.

I’m doing a reading challenge through the Potterhead Running Club (PHRC.) There are fifteen books to read per house, and each book has to match a category based on a character, creature, place, symbol, or object. For each book read, I receive a virtual badge. There are sixty unique badges, and of course, I’m earning them all.

One of the places on the Slytherin list was Durstang, Viktor Krum’s school from The Goblet of Fire. To earn this badge, I had to read a book by an eastern European author. My Google search found a lot of really long books, which I have no time for. I had read Metamorphasis by Franz Kafka and loved it, so I hunted for another story by him that wouldn’t take me ten years to finish.

The short story, In the Penal Colony, was ideal. I would have slogged through it to earn the badge, but I was hooked on page one. It’s slightly gruesome and inhumane, but the ending was unexpected. It reminded me of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.

Most of us don’t have to read eastern European authors too often, but if you want to broaden your horizons, I recommend Franz Kafka’s books. His stories are not happy, but he knows how to grab the reader, which is refreshing.