The Greek Fountain Dance

Several days ago, this post made some of you quite curious as to what the heck I meant by posting that I'd been wearing a toga and spitting water on my colleagues, so I thought I'd give you photos to help you understand.
Last week was our annual teacher talent show.  True, a few of the teachers actually display REAL talent, like those teachers who play the guitar well, for example.  But most kids don't really want to see the teachers do something serious well; they want entertainment.  So most of us do funny skits -- and the kids love it.
One year, I got a male teacher to dress up as Tiny Tim and lip synch "Tip Toe Through The Tulips" while faking the use of my ukelele while a few of us female teachers did a very silly dance with plastic tulips.  Another year, the librarian helped me make a video parody of "Friday" using teachers to act out the horrendous video.
This year, I was going to do a take on Steve Martin's famous "King Tut" skit, but only 4 of us volunteered, and then the drama teacher begged me to drop it so she could have my people for The Fountain Dance.  I agreed.
So, there were six of us, walking slowly out onto the stage to Enya's "Only Time," and wearing very serious expressions.  We were carrying plastic water carafes.
We went through several serious-looking poses, then solemnly held our water up to the gods-- and took a mouthful.  The next series of poses, we all did as "fountains," spitting the water all over each other.

The fourth of this pose-and-spit series was where we all imitated a Rainbird sprinkler system.
The kids received all this even better than expected -- especially in the first assembly, where they shrieked with laughter.
Then we picked up our water and moved solemnly to the audience.  At this point, in first assembly, there were howls, and kids in the front rows got up and ran to the aisles.  The kids of second assembly were more resigned to their damp fates and merely attempted the duck-and-cover method of escape.

Overall, ours was probably the favorite act of the whole assembly--- except among the members of stage crew, who had to do the mopping.

(The photos were taken with my camera by the school's yearbook editor.  I did the cropping, etc.)

UPDATE:  Wait!  There's more!  Now with VIDEO!

Cozy Cliches

I read a LOT of mysteries.  I always tend to think of myself as a fantasy/paranormal type of gal, but every time I tally up how many books I've read per genre per year, mysteries come out on top.
And many of those mysteries are cozies.
A cozy mystery is along the lines of Agatha Christie, not too violent, short, often meant to appeal to women.  But the more cozies I read, the more I'm convinced there's an unwritten list of rules to be followed.
1) Nearly every cozy has a female protagonist, occasionally a senior citizen of the Miss Marple variety, but usually age 30-something.
2) Said female protagonist must have been either divorced or dumped by a man before the first book in the series begins so that she is romantically free.
3) She must not be conventionally pretty or aware of her "natural" beauty, yet nearly every man her age stares at her on the street.  She may not diet; sometimes she is a bit chubby (translation: she wears a size 8 instead of a size 2); she eats.  But men go crazy for her anyway.
4) She must have at least 2 guys who are truly after her, and she must have trouble deciding between them.  Often these guys are the traditional love triangle, with one being a bit of a "bad boy," or at least unexpected: he's younger, he's from a mafia family, he's a rock star, he's a biker dude, he has a questionable reputation.
5) She must be personally acquainted with at least one cop: he's usually one of the boyfriends, but occasionally he's her dad or her neighbor.  If she's a senior citizen, then he's her son or nephew.
6) The protagonist likes to think of herself as strong and independent, but she is constantly needing to be rescued by the two boyfriends and/or the cop.  Also, the men she knows will treat her as something that must be protected and taken care of, and she will find this endearing and/or romantic instead of nauseating.
7) She must have a best friend, usually another single female (her Bess and George, so to speak), but a gay guy works also.  This friend cannot be a romantic distraction to the men who are after the protagonist.  The protagonist depends on this friend for a job and/or to figure everything out.  Again, the protagonist  thinks of herself as independent, but she's always very dependent on the friend.
8) The protagonist must live in a small town where everyone gossips about everyone else.  This is how she gets her information.
9) The protagonist may not be an actual detective or police officer, and she must be warned off/threatened off the case by the official forces of the law at least once or twice during each case.
10) The protagonist must work freelance or in a small business in the small town.  She may never work in a large corporation or office or have a job that demands a certain schedule.
11) The job is usually the theme for the book.  Cozies must have a craft or cooking theme of some kind, and "extras" are often included at the end: recipes, craft instructions, homemaking tips.
12) The climax of the plot will usually involve the protagonist going off to find the villain alone --- making some crucial and stupid mistake, such as leaving her cellphone in the car or walking down a deserted street at 2:00 AM -- and it will require her life to be in danger so she can be rescued by one of the men in love with her and/or by the cops.

That's about it.
They're not great literature, but I'm rather addicted to them.  Unfortunately, many of them are really poorly written, with dangling modifiers, characters that are built up as important then never seen again, and gaping plot holes.  But I usually read them anyway.  They're sort of like comic books for middle-aged women.
If I can ever get myself through my 4 current writing projects, I think I ought to try a cozy.  Just to be a rebel, I think I'll make the protagonist a teenager.  Or maybe I'll make her a school teacher and give lesson plans as the extras!  Funny!
Either way, you can bet your booty that no protagonist of mine is going to wait around to be rescued.

Yet Another Reason Why You Should Fact Check

So, according to this

I should ignore the 600 years of documented family history that I have on file.
You see, I can trace my Germanic roots back 600 years and my Celtic roots back 400 years, and it's very likely that I could have some Roman ancestry mixed in there somewhere that I just haven't gone back far enough to find yet.  However, based on the shape of my foot and this chart, I'm a mix of Egyptian and Greek.
Of course, also based on this chart, Asia and 90% of Africa don't exist.  And, if we assume that Polynesians and South Americans with native heritage are genetically Asian, that rules out a LOT of people.  Like, two full continents of people.
The chart also assumes that Slavs = Germanic, which is true linguistically, but I'm not sure about genetics.

Also, based on this chart, only people of Roman descent make good ballet dancers.

The Mystery Of The Loaf

Yesterday, someone placed a large loaf of bread, commercially baked and wrapped, in between my front door and my storm door, squishing it a bit to get the door closed.  There was no note or flyer of any kind, and the bread is not a brand I recognize.
I called the 2 or 3 people I know who might possibly have dropped off an extra loaf of bread for no apparent reason, but everyone was just as mystified as I.
I have no clue.
And because I have no clue, I don't dare use the bread, as there are too many weirdos in this world -- and too many nasty 8th graders who wouldn't be above putting something awful in a loaf of bread.
Nor do I dare give it away, for fear of the same.
So, if someone really did leave bread as a "nice" thing to do, I hope they contact me today.  Otherwise, the bread is going to be dumped into the yard waste recycling bin and will be wasted.
(Seriously, other than someone who is desperately hungry, would anyone today eat food left by an unknown source?  Just too risky.)

Quote of the Day: Robert Kirby On Mormon Music

Robert Kirby, a humorist for the Salt Lake Tribune, is one of my favorite writers.
This quote is from his recent column about the relative "weirdness" of church worship.  He was comparing the music at a non-LDS service he attended to what Mormons consider "normal."

The quote:
"As a Mormon, I was more accustomed to hymns of a low moaning sort, like badly wounded zombies set to music."

Things I Have Learned From My First Set Of Beta Readers For Nerissa MacKay

One of my WsIP, The (Dis)Appearance of Nerissa MacKay, is at the beta reading stage.  Thus, I got 4 copies from createspace, and fixed up 3 of them with special pens and a few instructions for my junior high school readers.  Then I let them at it, with up to 4 kids reading each copy of the book at different times during the day and color-coding their responses.
I expected to learn their thoughts on how real some of the minor characters sounded and for them to help me make improvements.  I expected them to tell me which parts seemed skimpy or vague.  I'm getting none of this.
Instead, what I have learned so far is this:

1) This book is not geared toward 7th graders, as I had thought.  Even though the protagonist is 14, which, following the YA rule, means the intended audience should be 12-ish, and even though the book is written in the same style as the Half-Vampire books, the 7th graders aren't getting it.  They don't get that the narrator is imperfect and slightly neurotic.  They don't get why there's a playlist for every chapter.  They don't get the connection between her clothes, her music, her sense of self, and her teen angst.
2) The 9th graders, however, DO get what's going on.  And they think it's funny.
3) Text speak is no longer used.  Kids can't even read the text speak I used, which was based on what kids used 2 years ago when I started the book.  Okay.  Easy fix there.
4) No one is paying any attention to the secondary characters.  And they are sympathizing with the antagonists far too much.  I must make the antagonists more hatable.


Apparently, I'm going to have to get some adult beta readers to go over this for help on those dang minor characters.

Only In A Junior High School.....

So, part of my day involved running around in a toga and spitting water on my colleagues.
Betcha your job is nowhere near as interesting as mine is..... :D

UPDATE:  You asked for it; you got it.
Photo post.
Video!