Day in the Life of an Idiot

Mason accused me of being hyper after having eaten all the Reese's Peanut Butter chocolate eggs (which I may have done), but I don't think it's the sugar that got me all jazzed. I had a surprisingly good "First Pages" gig at the Chanhassen Library today. I mean, I actually don't know if I taught anything to the THREE (hey, I was only expecting ONE, so this was an improvement) teens who showed up. But, I had a blast playing with the plot generators that we found on-line.

A couple of my favorites:

For absolute zaniness (including robots poking each other at a funeral), you really need to press "random" and try out one of the generators at http://www.plot-generator.org.uk

The other one that entertained us (though probably me more than them): http://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/plotgens.htm

From the springhole site, I got the prompt for how I got my superpowers: "Bought them from a fairy."

In response, I wrote this:

They told me if I wanted to get superpowers, I had to buy them from the fairy. The problem was you never knew what it’d cost you. Fairies are fickle, you know. Sometimes they just want something mundane in exchange. I heard of a guy who got the power of invulnerability and all it cost him was a slice of Munster cheese. Other times, they wanted too much, stuff no sane person would part with. Sure, you’re immortal, but your body is gone, and you’re just stuffed teddy bear without even the ability to move or speak.

I don't know if I'll do anything with it, but it's kind of a fun start, isn't it?

The 'First Pages' is an interesting concept, and I do mean 'interesting' in the Minnesota sense. There's a kind of a theme to it. This one was generally supposed to be about "Reading to Write" and the description talked about what kinds of things you could potentially learn from reading books. But, the way that the education department bills it to their instructors is that you're supposed to be far more flexible than that. You're supposed to go in ready to teach that OR ANYTHING THE PARTICIPANTS ASK FOR. We talked a little about what books had taught us about writing (the answer is, of course: EVERYTHING,) but, generally, I'm supposed to go in and ask them what they want to learn... and wing it. I happen to be really good at teaching on the fly for the most part, but I always leave wondering if the participants (I hesitate to call them students in a situation like this) got 1) what they came for, and/or 2) leave feeling as though they got something out of it. I mean, the good news is that it's entirely free. I get paid, but they don't have to pay to play. So, I supposed anything I give them is worth the price they paid, if you look at it that way. But, they are giving up 90 minutes of their day, so I do feel like they should leave feeling like it wasn't a waste.

I never know if I achieve that or not.

Being an extrovert who is pushed to improvise, however = wired.

So, I came home, ate a lot of chocolate and was a little too silly while playing a game of Star Munchkin with Mason and Shawn. :-)

Oh, and yesterday, with his day off, Mason wanted to go to the Mall of America with his allowance and buy a big ol' LEGO set he'd been saving up for for forever. He got a LotR's set "The Tower of Orthanc." It's massive.

Plus, I got an unexpected royalty check, so we decided to splurge a bit as a family. We went book shopping at all our favorite used bookstores. Mason came home with LITERALLY a box of books. I got these:



I got Black Widow 1-8 and Full Metal Alchemist volumes 1-8 (missing #6). I also picked up some Shonen Jump issues that had Bleach in them to added to my collection. I like getting those to see what else was running in Jump at the same time, and because there are often little asides that give you names written in Japanese and whatnot.

Now, I'm going to try to harness some of this energy to write! Wish me luck.