Day: September 27, 2019

FFfPP — The Sidewalk Cafe

Fandango8 Comments

sidewalk cafeEvery day Harold would board the bus two blocks from his apartment and take it to his favorite sidewalk cafe in the center of town. To say that it was a habit would be an understatement. It was more of a lifestyle.

When Harold arrived at the cafe, he took his usual table and waited for Denise, his regular waitress, to come out and take his order. However, a look of confusion graced Harold’s face when the cafe’s owner came out instead. “Where’s Denise?” Harold asked Mack.

“Harold, I’m sorry,” Mack said. “I had to let Denise go.”

“Why would you do that? Denise has been waiting tables here for years.”

“Ever since the mill closed two months ago,” Mack said, “business is down. I don’t get enough patrons to afford to keep this place open. So I’m shuttering the place tonight right after closing hours.”

“Whatever will I do if you close this place down?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Harold,” Mack said. “It is what it is.”

“Wait, Mack,” Harold said, “I need to concentrate.”

“I know this is hard….”

Before Mack could finish what he was saying, Harold blurted out, “I want to buy this cafe. You can stay on as the chef and I’ll bring Denise back to be the head waitress.”

“That’s very magnanimous of you, Harold,” Mack said, “but how can you afford to buy this place? I told you it doesn’t get enough customers to cover the costs.”

“This may surprise you, Mack, but I’m actually a very wealthy man,” Harold said. “Money is not a concern for me.”

Written for Roger Shipp’s Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner. Photo credit: GaborfromHungary at Morguefile.com. And yes, I know I exceeded the suggested 200 word limit by about 100 words. Oh well.

Also for these daily prompts: Daily Addictions (bus), Word of the Day Challenge (habit), Ragtag Daily Prompt (confusion), Your Daily Word Prompt (tonight), The Daily Spur (concentrate), and Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (magnanimous).

Don’t Do It

Fandango46 Comments

B2D0FA83-CB80-4D4B-B361-8206EDA5FA17Don’t update. Yesterday I did two things I regret and I’m not sure if there is anything I can do to undo them. And I don’t know who to blame.

First, I installed the latest upgrade to iOS, the Apple operating system, on my iPhone. iOS 13.1, to be precise. Once that install was completed, I installed the latest WordPress app for iOS, the one that was “optimized” for iOS 13.

Big mistakes.

As many of you know, I use my iPhone for my blog. I use the WordPress app on my iPhone to check my stats, to read the posts that appear in my reader, and to make and/or reply to comments. But I don’t use the WordPress app to compose my posts because, well, it sucks. So I use one of the browsers in my iPhone — either Safari or Chrome — to draft and edit my posts.

But yesterday, after installing iOS 13.1 on my iPhone and updating to the latest WordPress app for iOS, everything went to hell in a hand basket.

When I go to compose a new post using my browser, something really weird is happening. My editing screen, while the same size, can only display a few lines at a time. It shows up like this:

What the hell? I can only enter two or three lines and then I have to scroll down to add or even read more than those few lines of text. Why doesn’t it offer me the entire screen for editing purposes like it did before I installed these so-called “updates”?

I wish these techno-gurus who are always trying to come up with new and “improved” way of doing things would sometimes just leave well enough alone. You know, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

But no! They can’t leave well enough alone, can they? And so they release the new and improved versions of their apps, which don’t fucking work right anymore. Should I blame Apple and/or WordPress for this mess? No, I blame myself for installing these damn “updates.”

Okay. Thank you for listening to my rant. I feel a little better now. Not really, but at least I’m sharing the misery.

And by the way, WordPress, I still can’t get the damn reblog button to work. I was hoping you would have at least fixed that with this last update.

Friday Fictioneers — Queuing Up To Vote

Fandango12 Comments

F373B8DF-2209-47D8-A326-E816F916CEBA“I can’t believe that it’s raining today, of all days,” Lucy said.

“Tell me about it,” Shirley said. “And it’s not just a rainy day, it’s a cold rainy day.”

“And look how long this damn line is,” Cindy lamented. “I’m definitely going to sign up to vote by mail for the next election. This is bullshit.”

”Zip it, Cindy,” Lucy said. “You only do this once every few years and it’s your civic duty. You ain’t the Wicked Witch of the West. You ain’t gonna melt.”

“She actually does resemble the Wicked Witch of the West,” Shirley quipped.

(100 words)

Written for this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt from Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Photo prompt: Na’ama Yehuda.

Fandango’s Friday Flashback — September 27

Fandango16 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of you earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember?

Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 27th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on September 27, 2017 in response to a Daily Prompt word from WordPress. Remember them?

Coincidence?

Image result for coincidenceI generally don’t believe in coincidences. But then I saw a comment on one of my recent posts by my blogger friend, Jim Adams. He wrote, “I just Googled ‘money is almost always a restriction’ and the first thing that came up was your post. That is so awesome.”

So I tried it and, sure enough, there was my post at the very top of the list of responses!

28AEBF20-18FD-4024-A505-E46D163EE791So, was it just a coincidence that Jim looked up that line from my post in Google and saw that it topped the list? Or was it preordained that someday some post that I wrote would be in the top spot on a Google search (albeit, a very specific search)?

Something like this could make one reevaluate his whole system of beliefs!

FOWC with Fandango — Magnanimous

Fandango36 Comments

FOWCWelcome to September 27, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “magnanimous.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.