Raven's Challenge 66

Today's Link
Shabby Old Potting Shed

Today's Saying
God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me. ~Author unknown, variation of an excerpt from "The Serenity Prayer" by Reinhold Neibuhr

Today's Picture
Maggie-Looking Out

It is Saturday and time to play with words supplied by Raven's Wordzzle

ThisWeek's Ten Word Challenge will be: swashbuckler, heads-up, dry martini, recovery, jungle gym, whiskers, bathing suit, spade, circular reasoning, abrasive
The Mini Challenge: butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, stagnation, chart, star crossed lovers, apricot brandy

The Mega Challenge as
The Ongoing Adventures of Agent 012

Agent 012 was in the House of Doom standing next to the Curtain of death in the amusement park. He was waiting for a meeting between the Parasite and the Albino which according to their best intelligence should take place today. Of course this intelligence had come from the same group whose circular reasoning had sent him up to a temple in the mountains just two weeks ago. Whatever happened to good old detective work done by guys like Sam Spade? They couldn’t even tell him what the two looked like except that the Albino wasn’t an albino and the Parasite had whiskers. What a great description. He decided the guy dressed like a swashbuckler was an actor from the park so it wouldn’t be him and the guy in the bathing suit was just crazy. At this point he was beginning to feel thirsty and had visions of just sitting down with a dry martini. In all the time he watched the only meeting was of two star crossed lovers and that was embarrassing to watch.
So he called the Agency to get the latest heads-up . The secretary who always sounded as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, told him that the recovery of further data had caused them to decide the meeting would be by the jungle gym instead of the Curtain. This inability of their intelligence department to get things right the first time was abrasive of the mission. He wondered what was leading to such stagnation in an important part of the Agency. He knew Jack, Agent 107 , drank too much apricot brandy but the rest seemed sober enough. Somebody needs to chart the success and failure of each person in the department.
In any case now that he was at the jungle gym it was highly possible the meeting had already taken place and this was not going to be his day.

The Ten word challenge-Charles again
The story continues -You can see the first part HERE.

Chief Ican pulling on his whiskers considered for a moment the possibility that he was guilty of circular reasoning since he was back to Charles as a key suspect byt decided he wasn’t since he simply followed the clues as he uncovered them. Charles he knew was no swashbuckler and not the kind that usually committed murder being instead the type that hid until everything was over. But since he was at the Mayor’s house and had the opportunity to put the gun in the safe where there would be no question of who was blamed at it’s recovery. He needed to talk to him again. He found him at the house of a rich friend sitting next to the pool across from the kid’s jungle gym. He was in his bathing suit and sipping a dry martini as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Here Chief Ican felt the heads-up thing to do was to ask non abrasive questions , after all he was no Sam Spade.
So he sat down in the chair next to Charles and said, “ I really hate to bother you but I have just a few more questions to help clear up some things about the murder. The housekeeper says that you stopped at the Mayor’s home the other day. Is that true?”
Charles becoming somewhat agitated answered “ Yes! You people took my theater tickets and I felt the city owed me for them.”
Ican , “ Why did you leave so quickly. Why didn’t you wait for the Mayor?”
Answer “ What do you mean. The Mayor came in just as the Housekeeper went to the kitchen. He seemed really surprised to see me , demanded to know what I was doing there, gave me the money for the tickets and told me to get out. I took my groceries and left.”
Chief-” The Mayor came in . It’s strange he didn’t mention it. Why do you think that is?”
Answer “ I haven’t the slightest idea but as I was going down the street I saw him come right back out and start back to his office.”
Chief Ican thanked Charles and then headed back to the police station. The case had turned again. It was like riding a Merry Go Round.

The mini challenge-Answers?

Back at the station Chief Ican sat with a glass of apricot brandy and tried to chart the case. The one thing it didn’t suffer from was stagnation since something new was constantly being churned up. His deputy had just brought in the DA’s love letters to the Director. Between the two sets of letters a picture of star crossed lovers was emerging. He thought if the DA talked to the victim the way she wrote to him butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But none of this was helping solve the case. Over and over why hadn’t the Mayor told him about the visit of Charles to the house. There were only two possible explanations .
1. He didn’t know and Charles was lying to protect himself.
2. He didn’t want anyone to know that he had been there unseen by the housekeeper.
Chief Ican felt that Charles was telling the truth so the second reason had to be it.
So back he went to the Mayor.
To be continued -for the last time I hope – Thursday.

All fifteen words in one sentence -True Love

The heads-up swashbucler Spade Chart and the butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth secretary, Rebecca Stagnation, were star crossed lovers despite his abrasive whiskers, love of apricot brandy instead of dry martinis ,minuscule bathing suit and his use of circular reasoning since his recovery from the fall off the jungle gym.

Of course the dragons were busy today you can see them HERE.

News from Pigeon Falls

The little town in my basement where the trains still run, dragons fly, and life is back to normal
It’s Saturday and time to look back at the week in Pigeon Falls

Monday-Raymond Poggi who looked on himself as something of a swashbuckler when it came to the ladies bought one of those mini bathing suits and wore it out to the Lake of the Loons. People looked at him and broke out laughing which was not the outcome he had expected. He did not consider himself risible . He decided it must be the whiskers aren’t trimmed right because it certainly couldn’t be his wonderful body. He went home and settled his nerves with a glass of apricot brandy.
Tuesday– Tammy talking in a way that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth asked her father if their wasn’t something he could do about the stagnation of the pond next to the barn. You can see stagnicolous things in the water and they smell. Her father said a full recovery of the pond would be expensive but he would see what he could do.

Wednesday-Fred Slovensky put down his spade and quit working in the garden so that he could take some abrasive material and rub the rust off the old jungle gym before his grandchildren came to play. He knew his wife would have waiting for him one very dry martini when he finished.

Thursday-Never ones to be accused of circular reasoning Tommy UK and Tammy, Pigeon Falls’ star crossed lovers decided not to use reasoning but luck to chart their weekend. They would toss a coin and heads-up they would go looking through the woods for a massive spider but tails-up they would go back to the trench and try to get some more clues as to what was happening there. It was heads-up. Tammy said she will pack a lunch and they can make a picnic out of it.

Wrap UP

Another full day. I started by visiting all those peole on Raven's linksy and reading their stories. After that I continued to work on the opening to the blog.Then we went out to the lonely Wolf for Lunch. I was not happy but Betty and Pennie thought it was great. From there we went to Stein's which is a flower place and then to Office Max where I bought a tripod for the new camera. When we came home. My sister Dawn called and we talked about currant cookies since we baked a batch yesterday. Then I visited everyone who left a comment yesterday. Now I need a breathing treatment.
GBYA

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