Theme Week 9

It’s the beginning of the semester and an email pops up on my phone telling me that my online class is starting. It tells me to visit a blog and then create my own, and to start posting journals on it. The idea of my bad writing being posted online for the world to see is a bit intimidating, but I start to work thinking of what to write about my slightly boring day to day life. The first couple of days take forever to write, but after a while they come a little more easily.

Now we’re on to doing dialogue and scene-setting pieces, which are even more intimidating than the journals. I’ve never really done either in anything I’ve ever written, so I’m unsure of what to do with these and they take a while to work out. I get them done eventually though

Soon we’re doing all sorts of different stuff from narratives to character, but they’re taking less time to work out each week. I don’t always do fantastic writing, but overall the comments seem to say I’m doing alright, and each week seems a little less scary.

Next we’re doing vignettes. These are probably the hardest so far and I don’t do well with them, but I make it through. After this it’s even more vignettes with a slight twist but these aren’t quite as bad as the first set and they seem to come out okay.

Prompt 41

Me and Mark are sitting in a cramped room on our orientation day, joking about how stupid the training videos are. I had met him once before at a church thing years ago, but we went to different high schools so I didn't know him well. He seemed like a good guy though

We’re sitting in the lobby waiting to go into work watching scrubs on a laptop, both of us stuck at the store early because neither of us are old enough to drive yet.

We work drive thru together all the time, always screwing around a little but we're both pretty good at the job. Mark always burst into song at work, and his bad singing voice makes everyone laugh.

We’re old enough to work in the kitchen now and we both work back there all the time, and both of us are training to become managers. We always have a blast at work, often getting a little carried away and getting yelled at by some the crankier managers to quiet down. We never do though

Mark gets his licence before me, and I could be more jealous when he gets a honda civic on a lease.

I’m working on the line right in the middle of the huge rush, when the manager gets a phone call telling us that Mark was in an accident late last night and that he didn't make it. The store became silently almost instantly, and several people burst into tears, even some of the regular customers that were in the lobby. I was devastated and couldn't even think. I hadn't ever lost anyone close to me before, and I had no idea how awful it can be.

Prompt 39

My first day on the job, also the grand opening of the store. I was fifteen years old and as nervous as can be, and the chaos in the restaurant didn't help much. It went by in a blur

Working after school has become something I look forward too. I get along great with the people I work with, good at the job, and I usually have fun with it.

I've turned sixteen, and now I can learn everything that younger kids in the store aren't allowed to work. I learn how to work in the kitchen and love it, the hectic bustle and focus on moving quick.

I work mainly in the kitchen over the last year and I’m just about the fastest person in the store, better at it than all the managers working there.

I come into work and Brooke asks me to talk to her in the office. “At the meeting yesterday all we all agreed that we wanted you to become a manager. Would you be interested? There’s a training class starting soon that you would be attending for the next three months”

I’m in the last few weeks of the class and my Brooke asks me if I’d want to start another three months of classes as soon as I complete this one. I agree to do it, knowing that each one comes with a pay raise.

I took over the closing shifts when I started college, and I learn a lot doing it. Being the person in charge of the store eventually goes from being stressful and intimidating to being everyday work.

I come in one day and hear that the store manager of Machias was fired. One of our department heads is being sent there, and I’m taking over his position in the store.

Today I hear that one of the high up managers in Bucksport has left. I get a call from the district manager, Tom. “I was wondering if you’d be open to working in Bucksport?”

“Yeah, I would be. What did you have in mind?”

“Why don’t you just meet with me and Doug (The owner of the company) on Monday, We’ll talk about it then.”

Prompt 42

1. I’m originally from Arizona, but I've spent half my life in Maine.

2. My favorite food is sushi

3. I've watched scrubs so much that I know every line from all nine seasons.

4. I spend my spare time solving the rubik's cube.

5. I’m deathly afraid of public speaking. Like, more than anything else in the world.

6. I drink about four cups of coffee a day.

7. I don’t own a single pair of jeans.

8. I've worked at McDonald’s since I was fifteen year old.

9. I have a Calvin and Hobbes tattoo on my leg, and I have an equation for the golden ratio tattoo'd on my arm.

10. I've never been out of the country

11. I don’t drink or smoke

12. One of my biggest pet peeve is being late, I absolutely can’t stand being late.

13. I recently moved. When I packed all my things, my movie collection took up one more box than everything else I owned combined.

14. Although I’m a music fanatic and spend all my time listening to all sorts of it, how musicians manage to actually make the stuff is a completely mystery to me.

15. I’m a big fan of science fiction and fantasy.

16. I like the color blue

17. I have double jointed fingers (If that’s actually the right term for them)

18. I’m not very good at writing.

19. I’m planning on studying to be an electrician.

20. I spend way too much money online shopping.

Theme Week 8

Floating in the middle of the lake, I hear the motor on my parents boat turn over and a few seconds later feel the pull of the rope in my hands. Straightening up the ski strapped to my feet, I pulled the handle on the rope closer and waited for a break in the small waves before yelling to the driver to go ahead. The engines roars as the boat goes into full throttle, and the rope yanks me forward, pulling me under water for a few seconds before the ski lifts me above the surface. The boat picks up to what feels like blisteringly fast but is probably more like 25 miles an hour as my ski glides over the surface of the water and jumps over the wakes caused by the boat.  

Prompt 35

Just as I laid my head down on the pillow, I hear the commotion of teenage girls outside coming in the house. They go on for a bit making a ruckus, and I try to ignore it for a bit. After about twenty minutes of them being louder than normal I decide to go out and check on them and see what they’re up to. I step outside my room and see my sister and her friends at the bottom of the stair, three of them around one girl who is passed out on the floor. I can smell alcohol in the room and instantly know what’s going on. I sternly ask “What are you doing Megan? Have you been drinking?” All I get in response is silence, none of the girls willing to look up at me, nobody saying a word, all of them with the look of teenagers who know they’ve gotten themselves into trouble.

Prompt 34

Walking down the tiny back road I've grown up on surrounded by miles of woods and the calming sound of birds, squirrels, and a running stream, enclosed on all sides by nature, there's a sense of peace that couldn't be had anywhere else. The road goes on for what feels like forever, and it gets to be such rough terrain that I've never made it to the end of it. If you walk far enough you'll make it a series of small ponds, a couple of huge houses that I've never seen anyone drive to, and eventually all out wilderness.

Prompt 36

Driving up high street I see the familiar bustle of traffic that I’ve gotten to know so well, all following the same routine patterns. Driving past the stores, restaurants, and gas stations the traffic flows in the like usual, getting backed up in the same places as people slow down and change lanes to avoid the same potholes and rough patches, or creating traffic jams as groups of cars turn in popular businesses. The busy street that a lot of people see as chaotic and hectic looks to me like a smooth economical system. The constantly filled street that thousands of people commute through every day contrasts to the rest of the tiny boring city, standing as the only real bit of city life for miles.

Theme Week 7

My dad is quite a character if there ever was one. He’s a big, tough, intimidating guy, over six feet tall, and is a northern California sort of redneck. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of him is the stories he tells from when he was a young working as a logger in California. He tells one about being way out in the woods working when he slashed his leg up with a chainsaw. He says he had hike an hour out of the woods before he could take the two hours drive to the nearest hospital, which he says was no problem. After this heroic effort, as the story goes, he gets to the hospital after stopping for a bite to eat, and then faints as soon as the doctors try to stick a needle in, which is one of his biggest fears. To me that story shows how he can be the toughest person I know at the same time as being a gentle giant. He’s probably the only person I know that works more than myself, pushing 80 hours at a night job while still doing tons of work at home, even building our current house while keeping the same amount of hours at work. When he gets home from work he always stays up for at least an extra hour to cook breakfast for my little sister, and always finds time in his already packed schedule to do things like drive out to my grandmothers to mow her lawn, always helping whoever he can no matter how tired he might be.

Prompt 33

Nick is a the type of person that takes an interest in something and gets borderline obsessed with it. He'll throw endless amounts of time and money into whatever his latest thing is. When he was younger he decided he liked programming computers and pretty much made into a full time job just for the fun of it, staying up all night to tinker with codes and computer jargon. After he got a car he went from not being able to tell you what country Toyota was from to happily working on a car all day, spending all his free time watching top gear and reading about combustion engines and rare cars. That obsessive trait has taken him through all sorts of hobbies, from mountain biking to waterskiing to amassing a huge movie collection, almost to the point of making him a bit eccentric.

Prompt 31

Jesse was just about the funniest guy you could imagine. He was always a blast to work with, always making jokes, always in a good mood. He was a skinny dark haired kid, and a redneck through and through. He was big into conspiracy theories and wild stories, although you could never quite tell if he actually believed them or just got a kick out of them with the half sarcastic way he told them. He loved country music, guns, and Chevrolets, and always wore some camo. His quirkiness and upbeat personality made everyone around him a bit happier, even if they were having the worst day ever.

Prompt 32

The last person I’d want to have just a memory of is my girlfriend Briana. She’s a tiny blonde girl and she always has a pretty smile. She’s a fanatic about horses, and is studying to become an equine vet. She’s such a fan of horses that even after she was thrown off one and nearly killed she still loves to ride. She’s has an upbeat happy personality and is a girly girl, spending lots of money on make up and clothes. Sometimes she almost seems like she’s living in the wrong time period with her interests, she loves old classical books, especially Jane Austen type stuff. She likes classical music, and plays the piano. If she could, she’d ride a horse everywhere instead of driving a car. She’s a grade A student, the type of person who’s never missed an assignment in their life, basically the opposite of me in that respect. She speaks french, likes fancy foods, and has been a vegetarian her entire life. All her traits combine into a sort of eclectic personality that you can’t help but like.

Prompt 29

The first winter I ever spent in Maine was when I was ten years old. My family had moved from Arizona to be closer to some of the family members on my moms side, and it was quite the change. I’d been around snow up in Flagstaff, but snow in a half foot of snow in a high elevation area in Arizona is quite a bit different than a full on winter in Maine. The first big snow storm was mind boggling to me. We were living in a small house that my parents were renting while they built their house, and the snow was right up to the bottom of the windows on our house. The drifts were huge, about half the size that I was at the time, and it was magical to me. I couldn't believe that so much snow could fall overnight, and that the entire world outside the house would be coated in house. The difference between the tiny bit of snow in Arizona in the just under freezing weather was night and day compared to the biting cold of Maine and the mountains of snow covering everything as far as the I could see.

Theme Week 6

One of my favorite places to be in the summer down at the lake by my house. I love the walk down to the lake through the narrow, winding path in the woods by our house, along the stone pathway surrounded by low hanging trees and mossy woods. Once you get down to the dock you get a beautiful view of green lake from the ancient wooden docks that look about a thousand years old. The shallow parts of the docks are surrounded by huge boulders sitting in the lake which are always surrounded by fish, and the lake is crystal clear so that even at the deepest part off the dock you can see everything, straight down about fifteen or twenty feet. The air always smells clean, the sound of the waves pushing the docks up and down is relaxing, and on a nice sunny day it’s just about the best place in the world.

Prompt 27

My bedroom is about the safest place in the world to me. Its a small and narrow room with wooden floors and an angled ceiling. There's a bed at one end of the room with a TV stand a few feet from the end of the bed. On the stand sits a black TV, an Xbox, a record that I love and a stack of Calvin and Hobbes books. Adjacent to the bed is a cheap Walmart desk where the laptop I barely use sits, along with a row of CD's. On the opposite wall stands a big wooden bookshelf filled the an embarrassingly big movie collection. There's a small set of weights next to this, and an unused coffee table with a cribbage board drilled into it next to that.

Prompt 26

The other day, I stopped in to my old high school to drop something off for my little sister. I haven't been there in almost three years, and it certainly felt different then I remembered. The wide sloped walkway up to the school was the same as I remembered, as were the double two sets of glass double doors at the entrance of the school. I went to open the doors and found the were locked, which seemed a little strange. I noticed a little black speaker box next to the doors with a button on it. I pressed the button and a voice crackled over the speaker telling me to come on in, and the doors clicked as they came unlocked. I stepped inside the school to see that the old statue in the in the center of the big entrance hall was gone, leaving the place looking much more open and roomy. The shiny linoleum floors looked just the same as they used to, and the rows of flags from all the countries of foreign exchange students still hung from the high ceilings just like they did years ago. The wide stairwell leading up to the second floor didn't look quite as big as it used to, and neither did the big hallway leading towards the auditorium where I used to eat lunch. I went from the entrance of the school to the main office, where I spent a little too much of my high school career. The office has a long wooden desk at your left when you walk in, accompanied by a long row of wooden chairs to your right, all looking just as uncomfortable as I remembered, featuring the minimal amount of padding. Behind the front desk sat two cluttered work areas where the two school secretaries worked, with their desks covered in mountains of paper and an iMac sitting on each. Beyond this cluster laid the formerly intimidating offices of various school faculty members. The atmosphere the room was significantly different from whenever I spent time there in high school, which was usually when I had to check in after arriving late and had to face the glares of the staff. Now it was much friendlier, with everyone in the room smiling, giving the room a friendly feeling.