Day: January 22, 2019

The Gift of Sunshine

Fandango6 Comments

2496c72b-6f26-4adf-b5ba-9edd86238d1fRory, aka, A Guy Called Bloke, received his 11th, 12th, and 13th Sunshine Blogger Award nominations. Of course he did, because the Sunshine Blogger Award is “an award for creative, positive, and inspiring bloggers who spread ‘sunshine’ to the blogging world!” And Rory certainly does that.

Rory was kind enough to gift me, among others, with that very same award. So thank you, Rory, for that generous gift. And in recognition of his generosity, I am going to answer his five questions. Here we go.

You know in the movies when the victims are being chased by the terrible nasty and they hit them, and think they are dead, but look back and discover the body gone?? If this was YOU how would you ensure the thing stays dead?

I’d pull a Queen of Hearts from “Alice in Wonderland” and shout “Off with its head!” That should do it, right?299e404e-f811-4f1d-b712-437b94ce7641

Have you ever tried sneezing with your eyes open? Why not?

I tried sneezing with my eyes open one time and my eyeballs flew out of their sockets. So never again.a4acf2ad-b985-4aa8-98f2-1ad1e2b45373

Do you have any unusual party tricks?

Yes, leaving unnoticed as early as I can.

Name 5 things you can do with hot wax?

  1. Seal an envelope or a folded letter.
  2. Remove unwanted hair from your body.
  3. Make your own personalize candles.
  4. Pour it over your worst enemy’s head.
  5. Re-secure eyeballs into their sockets after attempting to sneeze with your eyes open.

Name 5 things you should never do when drunk and disorderly and if you have never been in that state then name 5 things you would do if you were?

  1. Drive a car, unless it’s someone else’s car.
  2. Throw a punch at the police officer who pulled you over for driving erratically.
  3. Throw up all over your spouse, significant other, date, and/or your friends.
  4. Tell your boss what you really think of him/her at the office Christmas party.
  5. Attempt to sneeze with your eyes open.

JusJoJan — How On Earth?

Fandango16 Comments

8847d76d-b40b-4e3c-aca2-15736fb16d78

For today’s Just Jot It January prompt, Linda G. Hill got her suggestion from Pamela over at Butterfly Sand. Pamela gave us the word “curiosity.

Speaking of curiosity, in a post the day before yesterday I wrote, “I blog exclusively from my iPhone.” That statement apparently piqued the curiosity of a few people who read it.

One blogger asked,

“How on earth do you manage to do all your blogging on an iPhone? I think I’d throw it out of the window after about 20 minutes!”

Another blogger wanted to know,

“How on earth do you blog on an iPhone, you must be young and type with your thumbs. I’m somewhat set in my ways and cannot conceive of trying to do it that way, I need a full size keyboard and a decent screen so my two finger typing can progress.”

So how on earth do I blog from my iPhone? Well, I’ll tell you. Before I retired at the end of 2016, I was somewhat of a road warrior. I traveled much of the time. Back in 1997, 22 years ago, my boss at the time handed me a BlackBerry device.

He said, “Fandango, you need to never be out of touch when you’re on the road. This BlackBerry will enable you to receive, respond to, and send emails immediately from wherever you’re traveling.”

And so began being connected to my job 24×7. I became quite adept at thumb typing on the tiny physical keyboard on my BlackBerry device. I could type out an email on it almost as fast as I could on my laptop.

In 2010 I migrated from the BlackBerry to an iPhone. I admit, it took me a while to adjust from the BlackBerry’s tiny physical keyboard to the iPhone’s tiny virtual keypad. But after a while I became pretty good at that, too. So using my iPhone to blog is not a big leap.

It also makes me more nimble. I don’t have to be sitting at a desk in order to read and write posts. I also don’t have to be lugging around a three-pound device that is way too big to fit into my pocket in order to blog. I wrote a post on the bus yesterday while on my way to the dentist. I’m writing this while sitting on the toilet. Actually that’s a lie. Or is it? You’ll never know.

I average, according to my iPhone’s screen time log, about 10 hours a day on my iPhone, about two-thirds of which is on WordPress. I probably spend fewer than 10 hours a month on my laptop.

I admit that touch typing on a full size keyboard on my laptop is probably faster and with fewer typos than using my iPhone’s virtual keypad. But the flexibility of using my always with me, wherever I am iPhone outweighs that. So, it’s just a matter of getting used to thumb typing. And I love being untethered.

Now if WordPress could just stop being so wonky and if Trump would be impeached, everything would be good with the world. My world, anyway.

I’m Getting Paranoid

Fandango23 Comments

8aa61d13-0ded-4a26-89e0-1dd06739d33cI went to my stats page first thing this morning, as I am wont to do, and saw that my “Contact Me” page had been viewed five times, which is unusual. So I logged on to the email account I have exclusively for my blog and I saw that I’d received two emails from bloggers who follow my blog and who are regular contributors to my daily FOWC With Fandango one-word challenge.

Both bloggers said that they were unable to create links or pingbacks to today’s challenge with the word “noble”. Yet pingbacks from several other bloggers worked fine.

I checked my spam file to see if those links from the two bloggers whose pingback didn’t work got marked as spam. But no, they weren’t in spam. Nor were they in the pending approval folder.

So to anyone who responded to my daily prompt today, but who was unable link back via a pingback, please go to my Contact Me page and let me know.

And to WordPress, WTF?

Share Your World — Magic, Messy, Truthful Art

Fandango7 Comments

I’m late with this post. I intended to post it yesterday because yesterday was Monday and you know what Monday means, right? It’s time for Melanie’s Share Your World prompt. So, since I’m a day late, without further ado….

What’s the closest thing you’ve experienced to real magic?

At the risk of sounding schmaltzy, I can name four times I felt “the magic.” The night I met my future wife, the day we got married, the day my daughter was born, and the day my son was born.

Who is the messiest person you know? And why? 

Me. Some people think I’m meticulous, but the truth is, when it comes to keeping things like my desk and my office neat, I’m lazy. Hence, despite my attention to detail, my work area is always a mess.

If you could know the absolute and total truth to one question, what question would you ask?

What’s it all about?

What benefits does art provide society? Does art hurt society in any way?

Art is an artistic expression of creativity and the world would be a dull and boring place we’re it not for various forms of artistic endeavors. Does art hurt society? No. What hurts society is when people attempt to censor or ban artistic expression.

What’s something positive you’d like to share? Can be a smile, a joke, or music…anything that gave you a lift this week!

The New England Patriots won the AFC championship game Sunday night in an exciting overtime victory and will be playing in the Super Bowl for the third consecutive year! Go Pats!E6A88387-60B8-4150-B039-6058135B1840.jpeg

Twittering Tales — Lost In Thought

Fandango19 Comments

7bf7907f-3fbd-4858-b7f5-ccb482ca87c6She was sitting inside, staring off into space, lost in thought.

I stood outside looking in at her. She seemed not to notice me.

I used my phone to take a picture of her.

I knocked on the glass, held up my phone, and showed her the screen.

She smiled and waved at me to come inside.

(280 characters)

Written for the Twittering Tales prompt from Kat Myrman. Photo credit: Juan Pablo at Pexels.com.