Happy Birthday TheWifest!

It has been one year since I posted my first post. That sure went fast!

To celebrate, here is the long awaited next section of our Adventure Under the Big Top. If you need to refresh your memory about the other steps of this Choose Your Own Adventure story, here are the first three parts of our adventure.

part one
part two
part three


Run For Your Life, Adventure Under the Big Top Part IV

“No!” You scream out and step back. The spell is broken. Your head feels clearer as you turn on your heels and burst through the tent flaps into the open air. You make a run for it while the men in the tent recover from their shock. The sound of muffled yelling and chairs falling are the last thing you hear before you make a quick right turn past a row of tents. Then you make a left turn and another right in quick secession. You don’t know if you are being followed but you don’t want to stop and find out.

It would be smart to notice which direction you were going. It would be comforting if you had the presence of mind to think about where you had come in to this strange place and run that direction. But you don’t do either of these things until you are hopelessly lost in a maze of tents and equipment. There don’t seem to be any exits into the real world.

You are completely out of breath. You stop and double over holding the stitch in your side.

“Where am I?” You think. “How am I going to get out of here? Everything looks exactly the same.”

“How could you be this stupid?” You scold yourself out loud.

“I beg your pardon?” A women’s voice calls out indignantly from behind you.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” You say as you whirl around to face a gypsy woman in long flowing clothes and a shawl draped over her head exiting her tent. “I wasn’t talking to you, ma’am.”

“If you wasn’t talking to me, then who was you talking to?” She looked around at the open air under eyelids as heavy as her accent as if expecting to see something.

“I was just talking to myself. I didn’t think anyone was around to hear me.”

“Are you sure there is no one else out here?” She took a step out of her tent and dreamily looked to the right and to the left. “Not everyone can you see, you know.”

“No. It’s really just me. I was just talking to myself.”

“This woman is a piece of work,” You think to yourself.

“I don’t suppose you know how to get back out into the fairway, do you?” You have very little hope the she knows much of anything, but no one else is around and she isn’t carrying a knife that you can tell.

“Come closer, you. To tell you the path to take, I’ll need a closer look at you.” She holds out her hand to request your palm.

“I don’t need my palm read. I just need to know how to get back to my friends, back to the fairway.” You tell her.

“Come, come,” She says to you and takes a few steps toward you – her arm outstretched. “You will never see the direction to travel while you running. You must stop to see where you is and where you is to go.”

“What can it hurt? Here.” You hold out your hand.

The gypsy lays your hand in the palm of her left hand. Her right hand closes around your wrist.

“Ouch! That hurts.” She has a steel grip on your wrist and it hurts. You try to wiggle your way free, but she only tightens her hold. She begins to smile and then to laugh – a wild laugh.

Suddenly you feel a strong arm around your neck choking you. You gab at the arm with your free hand, but you are no match for its strength. The gypsy woman reaches out to grad that hand too and catches it in an unbreakable clasp.

You see a white cloth coming toward your face. You feel the cloth press against your mouth and nose. You smell an unfamiliar odor. You struggle against the strong arm to shake your head free of the cloth. You pull on your trapped hands to no avail. Things grow foggy until your eyes close. You are unconscious.


Stay tuned for the next installment. Tell me what you think should happen in the comment section. It's not a vote though. There is not a choice between two things; you've been overpowered so you'll have to take what comes. If this were actually a Choose Your Own Adventure book, this would be a page that ended not with a choice but instructions to turn to a certain page.

Katie Shrugged: Initial thoughts on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

I hate every character in this book. It seems impossible to me that not a single person in Rand's created universe would have a sense of humor or any hint of joie de vivre. Certainly Rand herself knew one happy person — one person on whom she could base a character who was warm or generous in spirit. The world of Atlas Shrugged has no such character. So far everyone falls into two categories: stupid and despicable or smart and loathsome. And that is as far as it goes.

This is not to say that I hate the book. I do not — not so far. Likewise, I do not love the book — not so far. I do not find the story particularly compelling, but it is not usually a chore to read or listen to. (I have it on my iPod and have been listening to it as I walk to and from work and while I do the dishes and once while I played a video game.) I think mostly it is predictable — both the characters and the plot devices. I am looking forward to seeing if my predictions about John Galt are correct though.

I am not finished with the book. I am only about halfway through. Things could change, but somehow, I doubt it. I am reading this book because it is one of my father-in-law's favorites, and I am mentioning my first impressions here at his request.

Again, I have not finished the book. Please no one give anything away. This book is a million pages long; I won't have anyone ruining the ending for me when I've put in so much work. So no spoilers in the comment section PLEASE.

Early to Bed

For the past few mornings, Husband and I have been playing a rhyme game before we get out of bed. We've been changing the last line of the old Ben Franklyn maxim "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

Here are a few that we came up with. Can you think of any more?

Early to bed and early to rise,
Sounds kind of nice
I might give it a try.

Early to bed and early to rise,
doesn't give you the right
to pinch my thighs.

Early to bed and early to rise,
makes
me want
to eat
French fries.

Early to bed and early to rise,
under the sheets
you will find
a surprise.

Early to bed and early to rise,
whatever you say
as long as I'm with (pointing to bedfellows)
youse guys

I can golf... sort of

This is a picture of me playing my first-ever golf game in October 2005, on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where Husband and I spent our third-anniversary vacation. There were golf courses all over PEI's scenic coast, and we picked one sort of randomly. Instead of paying a hundred dollars each to play on the 18-hole course (which we didn't have the clothes for, anyway), we went to the golf academy and played nine holes for 30 dollars for both of us.

I finished 50 over par. Not bad, eh?

While we were on the sixth hole a father and son started out behind us, on the first hole. They were the only people we saw the whole time we were out there. By the eighth hole they had caught up to us and we let them play through. They were a lot faster than me.

I had a lot of fun. I insisted on playing my ball no matter where it was. I made Husband do the same, which is why we have pictures of him hitting his ball from an out-of-bounds area full of knee-high weeds.



The most devastating part of looking over these pictures and remembering this golf game is not my abysmal score or that I have not played golf since. It is instead that the pants that I am wearing in this picture have been lost forever. I left them and a red pair just like them at the laundromat back in July. They were my favorite pants of all time and I lost them. If they were to turn up somehow, it would be even more exciting than finding my monkey-sock book.