Watch out for the Paper Boy and Other Friday Randomness

Without further ado, I present your Friday Randomness

1. I frequently get collection phone calls for someone with a similar name. I would not want to be the intended receiver of any of these calls. They are frequently more menacing than the paper boy in Better Off Dead. Which is my favorite line of writing this week. I crack myself up. 

2. Sonar X10 started a conversation like this yesterday: “If there’s a fairy in the van…” I think it was a warning about pixies tying my loose shoelaces to the pedals but I was laughing so hard I might have heard him wrong. 

3. I finished reading Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlives by David Eagleton. Review to come, eventually. Another book I’d put in my top five for the year.

4. Driving to the grocery store the other day, I turned a corner and came face-to-face with the largest turkey vulture I have ever seen. It was perched on top of a road sign with it’s enormous wings spread wide, catching the buffeting breeze. A superstitious person might have taken it as an omen. I just wished I’d had the camera.

5. The turkey vulture has inspired me to require the main character in my Mud-Vampire story to swallow a rock. It strikes me as funny. I’m not sure how they’re connected either, except that I scribbled both of these things on a piece of paper in the van. Deciding this is the closest I’ve come to actually editing that story for two weeks. 

6. My NaNoWriMo word count is 42,800. I’m one day behind the goals I’d planned for myself at the beginning of the month, but I’m also feeling enthusiastic. How many words do you think I can churn out today?

7. One of my favorite elements from the commercially under-appreciated series Firefly is the word SHINY. I suppose it means something like cool or awesome, but with a certain folksy subtlety. I think you’d be awfully shiny if you left a comment down there. I say that with a pretty please, and my thumbs in my belt loops, rocking forward onto the toes of my boots, and batting my eyelashes.  So stand up and be shiny. Tell me anything you want. Tell me the weirdest thing you ever saw at the grocery store. Tell me your favorite thing to eat at family gatherings. Tell me if you’ve ever seen a turkey vulture THIS BIG.  I’m waiting.

Comments

[Amy D.]

I think it's fairly shiny that I found your blog (I, too, enjoy Firefly). On a similar note (?), I shall be starting my own blog shortly. It'll be awesome. . . . but I'll likely be the only one who knows that it's awesome. I will cleverly hide the awesomeness so as not to intimidate too many people. Currently, ALL the awesomeness is hidden. . . .

Your awesomeness, however, is on full display and it's very intimidating. Please put some of the awesome away. Seriously, there are CHILDREN present. Jeez. Thank you.

[Somnicide]

Turkey vultures are something but I prefer grackles. Go ahead, say it. It is an awesomely shiny word.

[Eglentyne]

'Grackle' is a shiny word. 'Amy' and 'Patrick' are also shiny words. And shiny people.