This post sat in my Drafts folder for more than a year ‘cuz I’m a chicken who generally prefers to avoid spending time in internet debates on contentious topics. But now I’m trying to clean up my Drafts folders, so here it is.
A couple days before Martin Luther King Jr. day, a skeptic friend of mine posted this on Facebook:
Debbie Goddard
English
It was really hard for me to learn how to swim. Some people are born swimmers. I wasn’t. I sank like a rock.
Once I slipped and fell and hit my head. It was very tireing. The next day I couldn’t sink!
Continue reading “Fourth Grade English Writing Assignment: Swimming”
I found copies of the story below when I was cleaning out my dad’s house last year. (Describing him as a “hoarder” is understatement.) I think I wrote it in sixth grade or so.
My family was relatively poor when I was a kid—welfare, food stamps, hand-me-down clothing, and chewed-up or broken toys from the Salvation Army were the norm. That wasn’t unusual in my neighborhood. But I was painfully aware from the commercials on TV and the stories from classmates that this was not how some kids lived, and I was envious. So, so envious. I dreamt of unwrapping the most incredible gifts on Christmas morning: remote-controlled cars, Rubik’s Cubes, Easy Bake Ovens, cameras, Lego space sets, Power Wheels…Omg, Power Wheels! I’d be the most stuntin’ Power Wheels driver EVER. I’d win Power Wheels competitions! Everyone would admire my amazing Power Wheels skills. If only I had a Power Wheels truck, I knew my life would be THE BEST. Such were my covetous Walter Mitty dreams. Continue reading “Grade School Story: “The Boy that Santa Forgot””
Today I sat down at the computer to see a new IM from a potential new friend. I didn’t recognize the screenname, but that’s not unusual. I considered briefly that it may have been from a spambot, but “mattp204” didn’t seem like a sexbot’s screenname, so I responded. After a couple of lines, however, the text coming in turned pink and the conversation turned familiar. I gotta say—some of the responses really surprised me.
mattp204: I got you now !lol was up
CFI Debbie: ?
mattp204: 🙂 hi cutie what’s up?
CFI Debbie: Just working. Do I know you? Continue reading “Conversations with Spambots, Part 2”
I always read the little slips of paper that come in fortune cookies, and if I get a good one, I save it in my wallet for a while. My favorites are the actual fortunes, like this one from last week: “Tomorrow will be a productive day. Don’t oversleep.” Thanks, Fate! That’s a great fortune, and it’s advice I thought I’d try to follow (…I said to myself, as I worked at the computer until 2:00 am. But I shifted the goalposts and set my alarm for noon, so when I woke up at 11:00 am—mission accomplished! That still counts, right, Fate?).
I opened up this gem last week:
Continue reading “Fortune Cookie Consideration: Letting Things Be “Good Enough””
Last weekend I set a goal of finishing a blog post for Skepchick and writing a new post for this here personal blog thing. On Saturday night, I sat down in my office and started poking at the things on my computer screen. But my roommate was hosting a birthday party in the living room, and at some point the cake and the merriment were just too enticing to ignore. There went Saturday.
On Sunday evening I gave it another shot. It seemed like a good night for writing—my boyfriend was also in his office writing; the temperature was perfect; there was a kegger next door a few feet from my office window, but the fan in my office did a pretty good job of drowning out the party sounds; and I didn’t have anything urgent happening to draw my attention from the task at hand.
I finished neither post. I wasn’t feeling inspired, and I didn’t want to create sub par writing. Continue reading “On Writing Things for Stuff (or, How I Didn’t Do That Last Weekend but Am Doing So Right Now)”
I had something I thought would be fun to share with people a few days ago, but I had no suitable venue to post the text into. Tumblr had been recommended to me, so I took the time to dust off my as-yet-unused Tumblr account, format the text, and stick up a post. It was only after sharing the post on Facebook and Google+ that I learned that Tumblr doesn’t have a comment function. In fact, after poking around a bit more, I’m not sure what exactly Tumblr is supposed to be used for…maybe announcements or something.
I then was consumed by the idea of starting a website on my own. I bought a dozen domain names a few years ago; they were sitting around, not doing anything, because I didn’t know how to go about making a website. Now seemed to be a good time to learn. Continue reading “I Made a Website Yesterday”
