Raven's Challenge 69

Today's Link
Vent

Today's Saying
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today's Picture
Three Grandsons: Elijah, Caleb, & Alex

It is Saturday and time to play with words supplied by Raven's Wordzzle
This Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: Chorus line, clam chowder, apples, jack-in-the-box, Iran, quarry, housekeeping, speed, letter, puddles,
For the mini challenge: motorcycle, grandiose, summer, flying off the handle, blue jays ,

The Mega Challenge as
The Ongoing Adventures of Agent 012

Poor Agent 012 stood on the bank of the creek and pondered his next move. His quarry Mellifluous Vandersnot and her friend Tara Tara had eluded him. His feet were soaking wet from falling into the creek and he smelled like someone who lived in the sewer. He should go home and get changed but he felt that speed was essential if he was going to find Blue Velvet , that’s what she was now calling herself, alive.
That’s when he noticed the path going into the woods. He decided to follow it since it seemed likely that our young people had gone that way. About a half an hour later he began to wish he had the Agency’s new 2009 Honda XL700V Translap motorcycle as his feet were hurting. It was bad enough that they were already wet but the big puddles from the recent summer rain had added to his misery. He plodded along wishing he was home with a big bowl of his wife’s homemade clam chowder on the table before him. He wasn’t only wet he was also hungry.
After an hour he began to wonder if he had made a mistake following the path and perhaps he should have gone into Rummsy and looked for clues. As he moved along he began to think he might be hallucinating as here he was in the middle of the woods and he swore he could hear music from the musical Chorus Line. He knew that music almost well enough to sing along because one grandiose fall he had seen it fifteen times since Mute was using it to pass messages from operative to operative. As he moved along the music seemed to get louder and louder. Then he found himself on the edge of a huge field and he saw the source of the music. There were huge loudspeakers at all four corners of the field blaring out the songs . Over the field on the far edge was a sign that said “ World’s Largest Garage Sale” and in the field were hundreds of tables and a huge number of people. There was a table selling saffron from Iran, one selling housekeeping supplies, one selling genuine Blue Jays uniforms, and one with children’s toys including the cutest jack-in-the-box Agent 012 had ever seen. Agent 012 stopped and bought an apple from the table with such a wonderful assortment of apples. But before he got to eat it he saw them.
He knew from the blue hair it had to be her. She and the kid with her had their arms filled with junk all obviously purchased at this garage sale.
They looked to be in perfect shape and certainly didn’t seem to be kidnapped. Now, Agent 012 was not in the habit of flying off the handle, but the somehow the sight of them enraged him. To find them he had been hit by a card door, dumped in a creek, smelled like sewer, and his feet really hurt. All because she left home without even leaving a letter to explain where she was going.
So he confronted them . He called her ungrateful and stupid. She said she had been gone for longer periods and nobody even noticed. When they had this chance to get items for the big scavenger hunt they jumped at it. She was going home tomorrow or the next day.
Agent 012 borrowed TaraTara’s cell phone as his shoe phone for obvious reasons was not working. He called the Agency and told the Agency he had found them and would bring her home today. Then before they started back down the path he stopped and bought that cute little jack-in-the box.
It hadn’t been such a bad day after all.

The ten word challenge-A Bad Day

Poor Sally was having a bad day. It started with the TV report on the government crack down on protestors in Iran which made her feel both sad and helpless. Then she looked out and saw the birds ruining the apples on the big apple tree. She had targeted those apples for a pie. That’s when the three year old broke his favorite toy , a jack-in-the box, and was screaming because it wouldn’t work. When she got to the kitchen she found puddles made by the dog since nobody had gotten around to letting it out. The puddles were on top of the dirt her husband had tracked in from the quarry where he worked, housekeeping had never been her strong point. Before starting the cleanup she put her favorite CD from the musical Chorus Line into the CD –player only to have the mechanism fail and shoot the CD across the kitchen. It hit the can of clam chowder that she had just opened and knocked it over adding to the mess. She knew that she should act with speed to clean it all up but first she had to sit down and write her mother a letter. “ Dear Mother”, it began “ I am having a Calgon day.”. Her mother would understand.

The mini challenge-Reality

It was summer which always gave Helmer Hutchkins grandiose dreams of riding his 1990 Harley Davidson motorcycle from New York to California. Since he lived in Michigan and was broke most of the time it was a very unrealistic dream. Instead his summer consisted of watching his Blue Jays play ball . It was the only reason he had Sports Cable. He couldn’t see them on the over the air stations since they carried only those stupid Tigers. His friends always checked to see how the Blue Jays game went before they visited because Helmer had a bad habit of flying off the handle when the Blue Jays lost. On a good day, however, he would join them on his motorcycle and he could pretend he was living his dream.

All fifteen words in one sentence -A Dream

It was summer and Iran Quarry dreamed that a can of clam chowder came flying off the handle of his grandiose motorcycle turning into a chorus line of jack-in-the-boxes, each with a letter, being attacked by giant blue jays dropping apples with such speed that the little old lady from housekeeping and her dog Puddles couldn’t keep up.

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
This morning Eino turned off the terrible news from Iran and checked over the videos for the last couple of nights. As he ate some warmed over clam chowder he watched some giant blue jays fly out of the trench . They were followed by some grandiose creatures that looked like living jack-in-the-boxes as their heads kept popping up and down out of their neck. Before he could view all the videos housekeeping called from the clinic to tell him that something had flown through the clinic window and there were big puddles of water on the floor. As head of the Clinic Board Eino told them to call Slovinsky and get the window repaired. He assumed they would mop up the water.
He no sooner got off the phone than he received another call. It seems that a couple of the men he sent out to track the big , hairy, elephant like creatures had cornered one at the quarry. It charged them at full speed and they shot it with an elephant gun. Then it just vanished and all that was left was a big puddle of water. That call was followed by a call from Percv Olmstep whose apples were being destroyed by giant birds. He told Percy to call Mrs. Temple. Next came a call from Burt asking if the insurance he bought with his new motorcycle covered the damage that came from being stepped on by a giant hairy elephant. Eino had to tell him he didn’t know because nobody had ever asked that question.
At this point Eino came very close to flying off the handle and screaming “ No more calls”. But instead being the rational being that he was he turned off his cell phone, took his house phone off the hook, and put on a DVD of the Chorus Line at Rockefeller Center . While that was playing he opened the letter from his son who was working for the summer at Six Flags over Greater America.

Wrap UP

A good day today. it wasn't nearly as hot. My oxygen was up. Wonderful. I visited everybody that wrote stories with Raven's words. I visited all my links. I researched pasty recipes. Betty and I made pasties I cut and ground the meat. We tried three different meats this time to see how each would taste. These are less expensive cuts than last time. I also ground up the potatoes and the onions. I am going to go out and test one. Then I need a breathing treatment.
GBYA

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