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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Keith, Catsynth, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.
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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.
This month the words/prompts are supplied by lissa on her blog.
This week's prompts are:
1. kerplunk
2. erase
3. meek
4. plead
5. tenacious
Charlotte's colour of the month is Electric Rose.
"I'm not stubborn, I'm TENACIOUS," I heard her say as I walked into the room.
"What's the difference?" he asked and she shot back, "Tenacity is a strong will and stubbornness is a strong won't."
"Well," he was nothing if not quick, "you won't go out with me, so that makes it stubbornness!"
I laughed, being used to my two co-workers. He would PLEAD with her for a date and with a KERPLUNK she would shoot him down every time.
They'd grown up next door to each other and been friends since forever, or at least since they'd played tea party together when they were kids. He was always willing to play back then, he said, as she was always making cakes and cookies in her toy oven that used the light bulb for a heat source. Now they were grown, he claimed her cooking had gotten better but her tea was still the same, rather watery.
There was nothing MEEK and mild about her and she resisted him with amused patience, not willing to give up their friendship but claiming she didn't want to take it any further than that. "He knows too many of my secrets and I can't ERASE that," she'd say when I asked why not go out with him, they obviously had a rapport.
Once in so often he'd start in again, asking her out, and as she looked especially nice today in her Electric Rose blouse, it didn't surprise me to find them having this conversation.
Honestly, I always believed the only reason she wouldn't was because so many people expected it, as when you meet them you'd think they were already a couple. But I'm just a co-worker and it's not my business as long as they are doing their share of the work, and they are.
Unless...
A thought came to me and it's either brilliant or stupid, and only time will tell. There's a conference coming up that is on a cruise ship, of all places. The participants come listen to presentations, including ours, but when they aren't at the presentations and we aren't presenting anything, well, it's a cruise, and it can be romantic and fun and she and I are supposed to be the ones going, but if I have an emergency at home and send him...
Maybe this will be continued.
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Today is:
Ash Wednesday -- Christian (beginning of the Lenten Fast)
Oskudagur -- Iceland (with the special tradition of hanging oskupokar [ash bags] on people, as girls try to hang bags of ash on men's clothing, and boys try to hang bags of stones on women's clothing; begins Langafasta, and during the fast, you may not even mention meat at all)
Celtic Tree Month Nuin (Ash) begins
Clean Out Your Cubby Holes Day -- internet generated, but if you have any cubby holes, give them a look today, make sure nothing is in there you don't want to see
Cold Day in Hell -- snow fell in the Sahara today in 1979
Day of Spenta Armaiti -- Zoroastrian (goddess of earth and fertility, especially celebrated by women; originally on Esfand 5th, which corresponds to 24 February but is now celebrated on the 18th for reasons i can't figure out)
Festival of Women -- Persian (traditional, it has been kept even among those who are no longer Zoroastrian)
Independence Day -- Gambia(1965)
Losar/Loshar/Sonam Lhosar/Tamang New Year (Lunar New Year) -- Bhutan; Nepal; Tibet (this is Tibetan Year 2152, and it's dominant element is fire, and dominant animal is the horse)
National Battery Day -- probably created by the battery manufacturers, but they won't claim it
National Crab Stuffed Flounder Day
Pluto Day/Solar System Day -- the planet/planetoid was discovered on this day in 1930, and then considered to "complete" the solar system
Ramadan begins -- Islam (at sunset, through the evening of March 19)
Rastraya Prajatantra Dibas -- Nepal (Democracy Day)
Rites of Tacita -- Ancient Roman Calendar (goddess of silence, rites to keep people from speaking out in anger)
St. Bernadette of Lourdes' Day (in France; the remainder of the church celebrates her on 16 April)
St. Fra Angelico's Day (Patron of artists)
Tanigumi Odori -- Tanigumi-mura, Gifu Prefecture, Japan (dance festival)
Thumb Appreciation Day -- your first digit does more than just get mashed when you use a hammer and hit the space bar on your keyboard; take time to appreciate the complexity that is your thumb.
Anniversaries Today:
Tommy Lee marries Pamela Anderson, 1995
Ohio State University is chartered as the first US land-grant college, 1804
Birthdays Today:
Jillian Michaels, 1974
Molly Ringwald, 1968
Dr. Dre, 1965
Matt Dillon, 1964
Vanna White, 1957
John Travolta, 1954
Juice Newton, 1952
John Hughes, 1950
Cybill Shepherd, 1950
Andrea Dromm, 1941
Aldo Ceccato, 1934
Yoko Ono, 1933
Milos Forman, 1932
Toni Morrison, 1931
Gahan Wilson, 1930
George Kennedy, 1925
Helen Gurley Brown, 1922
Bill Cullen, 1920
Jack Palance, 1920
Hans Asperger, 1906
Enzo Ferrari, 1898
George "The Gipper" Gipp, 1895
Wendell Lewis Willkie, 1892
Boris Pasternak, 1890
Nikos Kazantzakis, 1883
Sholem Aleichem, 1859
Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1848
Ernst Mach, 1838
George Peabody, 1795
Count Alessandro Volta, 1745
Uesugi Kenshin, 1530 (Japanese samurai and warlord)
Mary I Tudor, 1516
Saint Jadwiga of Poland, 1374
Debuting/Premiering Today:
"Roots: Next Generations"(TV Miniseries), 1979
"Any Wednesday"(Play), 1964
"The Telephone, or L'Amour à trois"(Comic Opera), 1947
"Trouw"(Publication, Dutch Resistance newspaper), 1943
"Simple Simon"(Musical), 1930
"Cities Service Concerts"(Radio), 1925
"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"(Publication date), 1885
"The Pilgrim's Progress"(Publication date), 1678
Today in History:
Origin of the Kali Yuga Epoch ("age of vice" or Dark Age) of the Hindu/Buddhist calendars, BC3102
Jerusalem is taken by Emperor Frederik II, 1229
Amda Seyon I, Emperor of Ethiopia, begins his campaigns in the southern Muslim regions, 1332
Henry Tudor (Henry VIII) created Prince of Wales, 1503
Zeeland falls to Dutch rebels, 1574
John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" is published, 1678
Fort Saint Lewis, Texas, is founded by Frenchmen under LaSalle at Matagorda Bay, the basis for France's claim to Texas, 1685
Quakers conduct their first formal protest of slavery in Germantown, Pennsylvania, 1688
The premiere of George Frideric Handel's oratorio, "Samson" takes place in London, 1743
Trinidad is surrendered to a British fleet under the command of Sir Ralph Abercrombie, 1797
The Detroit Boat Club (still in existence) forms, 1839
The first continuous filibuster in the US Senate begins, lasts until March 11, 1841
The first regular steamboat service to California begins, 1849
A direct telegraph link between Britain and New Zealand is established, 1876
Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is published, 1885
The Cave of Winds at Niagara Falls goes almost dry for the first time in 50 years, 1896
Winston Churchill makes his first speech in the British House of Commons, 1901
H. Cecil Booth patents a dust removing suction cleaner, 1901
The first official flight with air mail takes place in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet delivers 6,500 letters to Naini (a distance of about 10K), 1911
The US and Canada begin formal diplomatic relations, with the appointment of Vincent Massey as the first Canadian ambassador to the US, 1927
The first Academy Awards are announced, 1929
While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto, 1930
The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles, California, 1954
The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle is carried on its maiden "flight" on top of a Boeing 747, 1977
Snow falls in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only time in recorded history, 1979
Dan Jansen skates world record 1000m (1:12.43), 1994
Pope Benedict XVI announces seven new saints - including American saint Kateri Tekakwitha - and appoints 22 new cardinals, 2012
The Ukrainian Revolution begins, 2014
A twenty-five-year-old cold case murder is solved when police in Minnesota run DNA though a genealogy site and find the suspect, 2019
The swarms of desert locusts affecting east Africa reach South Sudan, threatening a food crisis, 2020
NASA's Perseverance rover successfully lands at Jezero Crater, Mars, on mission to find microfossils, 2021
Singaporean chess prodigy Ashwath Kaushik becomes the youngest player, at eight years old, to defeat a grandmaster in a classic tournament game, 2024
The royal tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose II (reigning from about 1493 to 1479 BC) is discovered west of the Valley of the Kings, the first tomb of a pharaoh found since Tutankhamun in 1922, 2025
