Games

The One In Which I Talk To Myself While Buying Beer & Am Overheard

/ Ally Bean / 142 Comments

This post has been published in black and white so that I won’t be accused of trying to influence your answer to the poll question below by using particular colors in this post. Nope, not doing that here.

• 🏈 • 🏈 • 🏈 •

I know that Super Bowl Sunday is a big day for gambling, but I know from experience that Super Bowl Sunday is a busy shopping day in grocery stores.

Keeping that in mind while I was at the grocery store yesterday, I decided to go ahead and buy food & drink for what will be our Super Bowl Sunday junk food feast.  It’ll be just the two of us so our snacking will lean toward healthy, but we gotta have something special.

It’s a law.

While in the store I decided to buy a six-pack of fancy beers, one of those create your own dealios, you know?  That’s when the store has a refrigerated section that offers a wide assortment [maybe 75?] of individual bottles of beer/ale/cider.  You pick the 6 you want, placing them in a generic cardboard carrier that when taken to the register rings a set price.

$9.99 to be exact.

Welp, I got totally swept away with the variety in front of me and found myself contemplating each bottle as if I’d never seen beer before.  I was smitten with the idea of having choices, and went with two local ales, two regional beers, and one national-brand ginger beer.  But I couldn’t decide about the last one bottle so I carefully reviewed all my choices, finally adding a bottle of international beer to the cardboard carrier.

As I did so, with a real sense of personal accomplishment, I said out loud: “And it’s Heineken for the win.”

At which point I heard a man, who I didn’t realize was standing behind me waiting for me to choose my bottles, say: “Yes it is, always.”

Of course I jumped about a foot in the air and started laughing, apologizing for taking so long– because really I’d been dawdling more than deciding— but this kind man just grinned and said: “No problem.”

Which in this situation was an appropriate response, so all’s well that end’s well.  Including, I do hope, football season this Sunday evening.

No Stories Here, Only The Remains Of My Inspiration File

/ Ally Bean / 68 Comments

It’s spring and you are on a tear to clean out your inspiration file. You have a vague idea about writing something about four cute images but you can’t get your head together to write anything.   

WHAT’S A BLOGGER TO DO?

Well, kids, may I suggest that you put together a post about the stories that you couldn’t figure out how to write, add the cute images– and call it a Tuesday. 

~ • ~

One

I took this quiz and got 11 out of 12.  

NO STORY HERE… just something fun that you, too, might want to do if you’re curious about how much you remember about baseball in the TV shows you watched as a kid.

~ • ~

Two

This is the color that Zen-Den painted our home office walls– and ceiling.

NO STORY HERE… other than to say that this a lovely warm gray color that when natural light reflects off the golden oak floor the walls look gray with a slight aqua cast to them.  Me likey.

~ • ~

Three

I did a screen save of the emojis that I use the most.

NO STORY HERE… except that it seems like there should be a story here in which my inner-most self is revealed through my use of emojis.  But, alas and alack, my inner-most self remains a mystery.

~ • ~

Four

This is a tweet in which I shared how to kill a scorpion.

NO STORY HERE… because I’ve only seen a scorpion in the zoo– and even though the zoo sells alcoholic beverages, those zoo people are fussy about visitors not murdering the zoo residents.  Go figure.

In Which I Explain That I’m Not A Cornflake

/ Ally Bean / 59 Comments

I like Janet. She knows things. She is encouraging. She is her own style muse. And her name? So easy to remember. { image source }

~ ~ • ~ ~

Having reached Level 1000 in Candy Crush Soda Saga, I decided to give it up and download a new game onto my smart phone.  To play the new game I had to create a user name, a nickname as the game called it.

Anyone who knows me knows that wordsmith-ery and problem-solving are my strengths in life.  Thus, you’d think that I’d be a wiz at creating nicknames, wouldn’t you?

But in this case I became frustrated, almost flaked out, because I couldn’t find one that was not already in use.  I mean I tried basic ones, then I tried what I thought were unique names for moi and to a one, these names were all were taken.

Teal Flower? GONE.

BeeBeeBee? GONE.

One Fine Gamegirl? GONE.

So eventually, being a woman with a large vocabulary who prides herself on perseverance & perspicacity, I decided to turn this problem on its head and do the opposite of what I thought made sense. Hence, instead of describing myself as I am, I chose to describe myself as I am not.

And guess what?  Using this shrewd reverse-thinking approach I found a nickname that wasn’t taken.

Yes, my gentle readers, please share in my amazement that NOT A CORNFLAKE was an available nickname, that is now mine.

So on that rather absurd note, with joy in my heart about life’s funny moments, I’m back to blogging.

~ ~ • ~ ~

How ‘ya been? What’s new with you? Got a nickname that you care to share? 

Just say something in the comments below. Talk to me.

I missed all of you. 

~ ~ • ~ ~

Share Your World | Going To The Turtles

/ Ally Bean / 75 Comments

Once a week Cee asks the questions on her blog, and I answer them here on my blog.  It’s a good thing, ‘ya know?

~ • ~

• What is something that people are obsessed with but you just don’t get the point of?

Basketball.

*yawn*

Here’s my take on it: a bunch of people, who call themselves a team and wear matching culottes, make a big deal about bouncing a ball while running to one end of a wooden court where they make squeaky noises with their shoes as they toss the ball among the team members.  Eventually, someone attempts to throw the ball into an overhead small circular net.

Why?  No one knows.

Then, the whole nonsensical show repeats at the other end of the court allowing the other team to do the same thing.  And then it happens again.

Ad infinitum. 👎

• What quirky things do people do where you are from?

No one does this where I live now but…

I grew up in a small town where the word “mango” meant green pepper.  Yep, no one called green peppers what they were, except my mother who knew that a mango was a tropical fruit, not a vegetable.

She never tried to correct anyone in town on this point, but she did make it clear to me that what everyone in this small town believed to be true, was in fact objectively false in the rest of the world.

It was a life lesson, I suppose, on the dangers of groupthink.  And of putting the wrong ingredients into your recipes.

 • What are some things you wish you could unlearn?

What it is like to be inside a MRI.  All of them, any style.  It’s a feeling too horrible for words.

• Who is someone that you miss having in your life? 

I used to go to yoga classes at the wellness center in a local hospital. Carol, a RN, taught the classes.

These classes were the most safe and satisfying yoga experiences I ever had.  However, Carol retired, the hospital closed the wellness center, and I’ve been left ever since trying to find [unsuccessfully] anyone as fun and centered as Carol was.

I miss Carol.

• Optional Bonus Question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up? 

Last week’s gratitude award goes to Fredrik Backman for writing the darkly humorous novel, A Man Called Ove.  This book kept me entertained/distracted for hours so that the remodeling noise and the various people traipsing around inside our house did not bother me.  No better review, eh?

This week’s looking forward to something goes to meeting some friends to go see a professional baseball game.  We do this once a year and it’s always a good time, regardless of who wins the game.

~ • ~

This post is part of Cee’s Share Your World Weekly Writing Challenge.

~ • ~