More Fun Than We Can Shake a Stick At, a Random, Happy, Word Counting Award Post!

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It's time once again for a random and happy Tuesday, linking up with Stacy's Random Thoughts at Stacy Uncorked and Sandee at Comedy Plus.  

Part of today’s post is also a writing challenge. This is how it works: one of the contributing bloggers picked a number between 12 and 74. The submitted number is a challenge to participating bloggers to write at least one piece using that exact number of words. 

This month, the word count number is: 60

It was submitted by:  Diane at On the Border

At the end of this post you’ll find links to the other blogs featuring this challenge. Check them all out! 

Links to the other Word Counters posts:

Baking In A Tornado                     

On the Border                            

Let's start with my contribution for Word Counters, which because it will be about Carl should also count as Random and at least a little Happy:

Yesterday, i arrived at the house and Carl's vehicle was not there.  Usually that means he has gone out to buy his breakfast, which he does on occasion.  Not this time, the car was in the shop.  He was busy trying to warm up his leftover IHOP pancakes in the toaster oven.  Trust me, that's really not a good idea.

It seems like it should work, though, right?  Well, unlike the frozen pancakes from the store, IHOP pancakes crumble in the toaster oven.  By the time we rescued the pancake, and he sat there eating one bite with syrup, one with strawberry jam, one with blueberry jam, then back to syrup, i was left trying to uncrumb the toaster oven.

Then it was lunch making time.  He decided on a salmon salad sandwich, with canned salmon, mayonnaise, and capers.  He counted the capers, there were seven.  To round out lunch we added a quarter of a red apple left from a previous lunch, a quarter of a green apple, also leftover, seventeen grapes and a bottle of mango iced tea.

Just for fun, i decided to inventory what was in Carl's pockets before doing his laundry.  Three Tums, each bitten in half, two anti-gas pills, one tube of hydrocortisone cream missing the top, one work glove, half an energy bar with a rubber band holding the wrapper closed, but he has learned to put his change in the coin sorter!

Moving on from Carl stories, i am honored to have been nominated for The Inspiration Blogger Award! by Ms. Purrseidon.  

AWARD RULES:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and provide a link back to his/her blog.
2. Answer their questions.
3. Nominate up to 9 other bloggers and ask them 5 new questions.
4. Notify the nominees through their blog by visiting and commenting on their blog.
5. List the rules and display the “Ideal Inspiration Blogger Award” logo.
6. Provide the link of the award creator of Ideal Inspirational Blogger Award as Rising Star from Ideal inspiration  

Thank you so much, Ms. Purrseidon!  Here are her questions and my answers: 

1. Do you have any advice to the new bloggers?

Write about what you love and don't quit.  Read other blogs, make friends, and you will find your group of friends.

2. Do you have any hobbies? 

Just reading -- if i could, i would read all day long.

3. Do you have any tips for a good life?

Love G-d and love people.  It's that easy and that complicated.

4. What two things make you happy? 

Faith and family.

5. What inspires you to write?

Words, phrases, images, things that happen, anything can become a reason to write and tell a story.

Now, whom to nominate?  How about Ms. Karen and Ms. Diane, my Word Counter friends!  (There are others i could nominate, but i think Purrseidon already did.)  Please don't feel obligated, ladies, but you are both inspiring and funny.  If you decide to accept, here are your questions to answer:

Who is your favorite writer, and what is that person's best book in your opinion?

Are you more inspired to write by what you hear in conversation, what you see, or what you read?

When are you at your best, mornings or evenings?

What is your favorite thing about blogging?

What is one cuisine you have never tried but want to?

And now for some of those great things Grandma passes along to me:

Have a blessed and beautiful Tuesday, everyone!

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Today is:

Bad Poetry Day -- Wellcat Holidays suggests you get back at your high school English teacher for making you read all that "good" poetry; get together with friends, write some truly awful stuff, and mail it to him/her!

Long Tan Day a/k/a Vietnam Veterans Day -- Australia

Mail Order Catalog Day -- the first one was published by Montgomery Ward this day in 1872, and was only one page (Do yourself a favor and opt out of the doggone things, save a few trees: www.catalogchoice.org )

National Ice Cream Pie Day

National Science Day -- Thailand

National Soft Ice Cream Day

Serendipity Day -- and it's here serendipitously! begun by writer Madeleine Kay, it's the day to step out of routine, do something you've always wanted to do, and see what happens

St. Agapitus' Day (Patron of Palestrina, Italy; against colic)

St. Helena's Day (Mother of Constantine the Great; Patron of archaeologists, converts, difficult marriages, divorced people, dyers, empresses, nail smiths, needle makers; Birkirkara, Malta; Helena, MT, US; against fire and thunder)

Toge-Pogling Season begins -- Fairy Calendar (Toges are normally pogled in groups of five or six, depending upon the size and strength of the individual Poge)

Birthdays Today:

Andy Samberg, 1978

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, 1970

Christian Slater, 1969

Edward Norton, 1969

Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, 1962

Madeleine Stowe, 1958

Patrick Swayze, 1952

Elayne Boosler, 1952

Martin Mull, 1943

Robert Redford, 1936

Roberto Clemente Walker, 1934

Roman Polanski, 1933

Luc Montagnier, 1932

Rosalynn Carter, 1927

Shelley Winters, 1920

Greta Garbo, 1905

Max Factor, 1904

Meriwether Lewis, 1774

Virginia Dare, 1587 (first English child born in the Americas)

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Private Lives"(Play), 1930

"Iphigénie"(Racine's dramatic tragedy), 1674

Today in History:

Founding of the oldest known Roman temple to Venus, BC293

Rome is occupied and plundered by Visigoths under King Alarik I, 410

Death of Genghis Khan (fell from his horse), 1227

A Portuguese ship drifts ashore in the Japanese province of Higo, 1541

The Boston, Massachusetts Evening Post begins publishing, 1735

Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, 1834

Pierre Janssan discovers helium, 1868

German engineer Karl Jatho allegedly flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright Brothers, 1903.

Mayor of Tokyo Yukio Ozaki presents Washington, D.C. with 2,000 cherry trees, which President Taft decides to plant near the Potomac River, 1909

A Great Fire in Thessaloniki, Greece destroys 32% of the city leaving 70,000 individuals homeless, 1917

19th US Amendment ratified (gives women the vote), 1920

Premier of The Wizard of Oz, 1939

The first commercially produced oral contraceptives are marketed, 1960

James Meredith becomes the first black person to graduate from the University of Mississippi, 1963

Steve Biko is arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967 in King William's Town, South Africa. He would later die of the injuries sustained during this arrest bringing attention to South Africa's apartheid policies, 1977

Massive power blackout hits the Indonesian island of Java, affecting almost 100 million people, 2005

Columbia's Chiribiquete National Park expands to 3 million hectares from 1.2 million hectares, becoming one of the Amazon's largest protected zones, 2013

Civilian researchers led by Paul Allen re-discover the USS Indianapolis 18,000 feet below the Pacific surface, 72 years after it was sunk by Japanese torpedoes, 2017

Food matter found in the 3,200 year old tomb of Ptahmes, an official of Memphis, Egypt, is confirmed to be cheese, the oldest evidence yet of cheesemaking, 2018