How Not To Write a Blog Post

I’ve been receiving ridiculous comments and emails about how my life is more interesting than the average individual’s. This is utter nonsense. There is nothing exciting or exceptional about losing one’s keys, going for a jog, or walking to the grocery store. The key is making it appear that these mundane things are somehow out of the ordinary and in doing so causing people to believe that they actually want to read about it.

Now, the reason for my writing of this particular blog post is a purely selfish one. You see, I tire of reading boring and mundane xanga and blog posts as I know many of you do. So, I've taken what I've learned and placed it all into this handly little post. Consider this “The Idiot’s Guide To Writing a Boring Blog Post.”

1. The “Run On Sentence” Blog Post

Obviously some people never made it past 2nd grade when we learned what it takes to make a complete sentence- a subject and a predicate. One does not need 12 predicates to make a sentence. Observe Suzy Signpost’s blog entry:

Oh my gosh, so like, today I went to school and I got a B on my math test and I was so excited because I only studied for like, 45 seconds on the way to school while I was driving and like, I almost hit truck at the corner of Fred George and Mission because, like, how long has that light been there, and the teacher said she curved it like, 12 points, so really I would have had a C- but I managed to get a B and that was like, really cool and now my mom is gonna be happy because I’m gonna keep my scholarship for another semester even though Bright Future’s 75% scholarship sucks because it doesn’t pay for books and ever since Bill’s was bought out by that stupid company in Nebraska (who buys books in Nebraska?) the prices have like, doubled and good luck if you ever want a refund. Okay, well, I’m gonna go. Bye.

Alright, Suzy. Listen up. No one cares that you got a B on your math test and no one’s gonna make it past “and I was so excited” anyway. That sentence was too long, Clanky.

2. The “I Use Waaaaay Too Much Internet Lingo” Blog Post

OMG! 2nite when I got hm from skool I was chatting w/ Shiela and OMG we were LOL, no like, FOTFL bc Nick was all like, “ILuvU” at the P-ZA ParT. WTC? Whatta punk. GMABr8k. No, but rly, life is pretty x-i-10 rite now. K, GTG. CUL8R.

So, after trudging though that piece of Pulitzer worthy material, we are left to wonder if that was some advanced type of C++ programming or whether some poor typing student just set their fingers in the wrong place by accident. ITPJTTULATM8KTLCACUFTFTTCSWA. (I think people just try to use long acronyms to make themselves look cool and cover up for the fact that they can’t spell worth anything.)

3. The “I Could Commit Suicide At Any Moment” Blog Post

Today was like, the worst day of my life. First I woke up late because I didn’t hear my alarm and I almost missed the bus. Then at school Blake broke up with me because he says I’m possessive. I mean, what the crap? Just ‘cause I don’t like him to suck on other girl’s faces doesn’t make me possessive. Geez. Maybe I’ll never find anybody. I’ll probably just end up being single my whole life. Nobody would care anyway. I mean, really. Does anybody even care that I’m here? Comment if you value my friendship at all.

Uh-oh. It’s been three days and no comments…has anybody seen Mary Anne at school lately?

Look, if you want people to be your friend, don’t go all Moaning Myrtle on them. We all have bad days. It’s not the end of the world. Tell your mom about it, not cyberspace. You’ll find that 3-D people are much more helpful in solving problems than your computer screen.

The “I Don’t Even Try to Spell Correctly” blog post.

This is perhaps the most common and painful of all types of uninteresting blog posts.

Wow, so I've really learned alot latley about dapending on just god and my friends and its been so good. And sense I haven’t had alot of time to post recently I just wanted to write up a quick won. I’ve had a lot of stuff going on latley and than alot of people have let me down and I’m just so glad that I have a friends that I can count on to be they’re for me whenever others aren’t neccesarily their . I definately appreciate of ya’ll people who hold me accountable and if theirs anything you guys want to talk to me about just leave it here in a comment so that the hole world can read about you’re personal problems. I love you and hope you have a great day to. Okay, God bless!

Spell check, people. It's not just for decoration.

The key is not “If you don’t have something interesting to say don’t say anything at all.” The key is “If you don’t have something interesting to say then make it interesting.” Never start blog posts with:

1) This was such a busy day.
2) So, I really don’t have anything interesting to say…
3) I know I haven’t updated this thing in forever, but I’ve been really busy.
4) So today pretty much sucked

You can make the ordinary extraordinary, people. I have faith in you.

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. - Robert Cormier

Lord of the Keys

As we only have one set of keys, the morning ritual is for Lori to walk out the door for work and me to lock it behind her leaving me with the keys so that I can lock the door behind me when I go to school. This morning nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Lori slid on her flip flops in an effort to convince the winds of autumn that it is indeed still summer and walked out the door. I drug myself out of bed and went to the lock it.

Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, observe exhibit A:



This is our lock. You pull the knob to the right while turning the handle below to open the door.

Exhibit B:



This is our key. It’s like a castle key. There’s no real reason for me to show it to you except that I like it. To open our door you put the key in the lock, push it in, turn it 90 degrees, pull it out halfway and then open the door. Locking it is even more complicated.

As I went to lock it, on other side of our metal-plated-bulletproof-no-one-could-get-in-here-if-they-tried door Lori heard a “BOING,” something hitting the floor and my voice letting out a worried “Uh oh…”

Lori: What just happened?

Me: Um, the lock just fell apart. The door won’t open.

I scrambled to try to find the pieces of the lock but all I saw was the orangy-fuzz of our floor. I told her to wait while I went to find my glasses. When I came back I managed to find a spring, a screw and a knob. Now, I was never good at puzzles and even if the lock had come with instructions I likely would not have been able to make heads or tails of it. I tried unsuccessfully to jam the knob back in the lock so I could open it.

Me: Well, I hope there’s not a fire today. I’ll be sure not to cook anything today…Our oven seems particularly flame-inclined…The teapot’s out too…(Our big windows are sealed shut. The little ones on top open, though. I suppose this is to keep burglars out of our first-floor apartment, but I often think it’s just to keep us from enjoying the breeze.)

Lori: Calyn…

Me: Hey, maybe Amberly will come by today and unlock it. I mean, surely I won’t starve before she comes by again. Her winter shoes are here. She’ll come before the first snow…

Lori: Calyn, you freak, drop the keys out the kitchen window and I’ll come around and try to unlock the door. You give up way too easily.

Me: Oh. Yeah. You could do that. Maybe I will get to see the sun again…

I dropped the keys out the window to Lori which made me think about Rent when Mark throws Collins the keys and Collins gets beat up. I hoped that wouldn’t happen to Lori. Thankfully a few seconds later I heard the keys going in our defective lock and eureka! it opened. Unlike me, Lori has a gift for putting pieces back together. She’s had to put me back together so many times she’s had lots of practice. So she got the door opened, the lock back together and left the apartment. All in a day’s work, she’d say. Good job, Lori. Молодец.

Could anything be more yummy than a gummy?

Lori is in the process of moving rooms. As I type right now from the relative safety of our couch in the entryway/living room she is marching back and forth with various “bedroomy” things. There goes a mountain of sweaters. Amberly moved out and so Lori is moving into the room with the coveted windowsill. I move where Lori goes, so my stuff is moving too. I decided to put some things that I knew I wouldn’t use again in my suitcase to get them out of the way since my suitcase was mostly empty anyway. I opened it up to put some T-shirts and a couple books in and there was a bag full of green and yellow gummy worms in there that my mom had hidden for me when I left. I remember seeing them in May but I had decided to save them for a better time. Today was a better time. They certainly brightened up my day. Those of you who know me well know of my love for gummy worms (not the sour kind, but the regular ones) and my adoration for green and yellow gummy worms borders on the obsessive side of the fence. My mom, who can’t remember her 4-digit debit card password of 10 years, somehow managed to remember that I prefer yellow and green gummy over all others and went to the candy store and got me a whole bag full of just green and yellow ones.

How many of you have moms that would do that for you? Yeah, I thought so. :0)

I can’t think of much that would be a better gift for me than green and yellow gummy worms. Lori would probably feel similarly about a couple Dr. Peppers, Roma about some kool-aid packets and my brother Chris about a can of Slim Jims. Most of us all have something that gets us really excited when someone gives it to us. I’m reading through Matthew and while I munched on gummies I drifted over chapter 7. In verses 9-11 Jesus says, “You parents-if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.”

Granted, it is not very difficult to get me excited about something, but if I get that pumped over dyed and sugar-coated, calorie-laden candy (No offense, Mom) imagine the things that God has waiting for me. Imagine the things He wants to give us if we’d only ask. Maybe our problem is that we’re not asking.

Pictures!!!

The Nazarene Church had a lock in and me and Lori went about 2 weeks ago. We just watched movies all night and got way too little sleep. It was so fun. We watched School of Rock and I didn't realize that I liked that movie. I'd seen it once before but I'd forgotten about it. This is Roma, Artur and Sasha.





We were waaaay too tired...




Taco night at our house with Roma! Yay!



Mom sent us this very beautiful box full of taco supplies. :0) Yeeesssss.



These are the flowers I bought the other day and I thought they were pretty. I painted the cookie-jar-gonna-be-used-as-a-vase with violets and Luke 12:27-28. It's fun.



In the living room tonight.



We went on a picnic last weekend with Max, Peter and some of their friends. We played frisbee for like, forever, and it was awesome. EVen Lori played. Yay, Lori. :0)



Lori, Peter and Sveta



Me and Max



Me and Lori



Peter, Me, Max and Yura



Lori winning "Believe it or Not," a game we learned from Yura.



Lori, Peter, Sveta and Max



Oh, frisbee, how I missed you.



Me and Max



Me and Lori

27:42 and counting...

Okay, this whole having a timer on the screen of you computer telling you how long you have makes me nervous. But a dollar an hour for internet isn't that bad so I'll be back here. Yesterday I went jogging and my goal was to find an internet cafe place. So up and down streets I went, eyes peeled for anything that looked like a computer screen. The funny thing about advertising in Ukraine. Most places would want you to know that their business existed, but in Ukraine, this is not the case. Stores are hidden inside apartment buildings and behind construction sites where only the most gifted explorer can find them. Exploration has never been one of my strong points, but maybe this is where running about as fast as a gopher tortoise pays off. There's even a bus that goes from my school right to the front door of this place. Definitely a plus.

As more evidence that "explorer" should not be one of my top career choices, yesterday I went on a hunt for a hair dryer. 3 days was all I could go before sorrow set in and every time I looked in the mirror I thought for sure it would break. (7 years bad luck would have been rather redundant though after having lost our internet, our telephone, and most of Lori's computer all in one week. ) I had seen hairdryers at a couple stores recently, so after school that's where I headed. Two hours later I had nothing to show for my exploring except for an empty coke light bottle and a candy bar wrapper. The elusive hair drying mechanism was nowhere to be found. I tried all the stores on my bus route before giving up. I moped defeatedly to our apartment complex when I remembered there was a little hole-in-the-wall store next to the bread stand so I figured I'd give it one more try. 5 beautiful models of blowdryers awaited me in the store window. There was one for only 12 hryvnas! $2.50. How could I pass that up? I bought the little blowdryer and headed home to take a shower and make my hair look presentable. I had the blow dryer plugged in for about 12 seconds when i saw a flash of light. And then it was over. My hairdryer worked for a total of 12 seconds. That's about a quarter a second. I'm glad the rate at the internet cafe is a little better.

I'm still alive!

Hey guys! Internet is still not working, but me and Lori and Roma bought an internet card so we could check our email. I love you guys!

Pepper Spray and Kneepads. A Thing of the Past or Making a Comeback?

Hmmm, I sat down at the computer to write a blog post because I was struck to be in a writing mood, but I can’t think of anything to write about at the moment. Of course I could bore you with mundane observations about present weather conditions (it’s cold!) or the week old leftovers taking up space in our refrigerator (they’re starting to mutate…), but your time is much too valuable to be reading about that. Give me a minute.

It seems as though the people next door are cooking up something good for dinner. You see, our apartment is one of two apartments connected by a hallway. One unlocks the first door and finds himself in a hallway with two doors, apartments 5 and 6. Ironically, apartment 6 is the first door and the further one is ours, apartment 5. Almost every time Lori and I leave our apartment we are bombarded with smells that can only come from master chefs. (Of course, it could just be that our own food is so appalling that anything would smell like it came straight from a gourmet restaurant.) It is a quirk of fate however that the vent that connects our apartment with theirs (the people we lovingly refer to as “the Giants” for a reason I will tell you of shortly) brings no smell of their first-rate cooking but only carries the stench of their cigarette smoke. The Giants do not seem to smoke regularly, or at least they do not seem to smoke regularly in the room containing our connecting vents, but as soon as we smell something burning we know they must have had a nicotine craving (unless we are cooking, in which case we disregard it entirely).

The Giants, if standing on each other’s shoulders, would probably reach about 12 and a half feet, and if they put their dog on their shoulders as well, could probably add another 5. I have not seen too many very tall people in Kyiv, the NBA would have a hard time scouting, but I have certainly never seen such a tall couple. Add in their colossal dog and they truly are a rare find.

I’ve taken up a new dislike for dogs. I assume it won’t last, but all the same I want nothing to do with them at present. A few days ago I went jogging and I knew from the start it wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience. (A few of you are nodding and saying, “You’re quite right. Jogging is never a pleasant experience,” and I would agree with you mostly, but it’s the feeling that comes after the jogging that makes it worth it.) Anyhow, being the graceful person I am, I completely missed the tree root that jumped right out in front of me and I tripped over it, landing in the dirt and cutting up both my knees and slicing my hand with something I’m saying was probably just a rock to keep my mother from worrying. (I actually don’t know what it was, I thought it would be best not to look and sleep peacefully knowing I was up to date on my tetanus vaccinations.) Had I been able to foresee the rest of my jog I would have headed straight home but the blood trickling from my hand seemed have slowed and the hardest part for me of jogging is getting myself out the door. That accomplished I thought it would be a waste to go back in now. So I continued, abstaining from the urge to watch passing cars and people to focus my attention on the sidewalk in front of me watching out for more sneaky tree roots.

There are sketchy construction sites all along the sidewalk that leads from our apartment and they usually possess a stern looking guard who looks as though nothing would make him happier than for you to attempt to trespass on his construction area. Some of the shadier construction areas even have one, two, or a pack of large, savage dogs of an unusually large size. This was the case with the construction area I chose to jog past. (As most of you know, luck is not generally found to be in my favor.) Gates are generally kept closed when there are guard dogs. (After all, the aim is to keep people out of the construction area, not to kill them for passing it.) But that day the guard must have forgotten to shut the gate, so when I passed, the wolves saw their chance to swipe some dinner from the slow-moving roast beef who unluckily decided to pass by at that moment. Now, I’m not a person who you would say is scared of death, per se, but I had always seen myself going out doing something very exciting, like skydiving, or passing out Bibles in Tajikistan, or yak hunting or something. Getting torn apart by dogs was not an acceptable way to go. So, I stopped and turned around and started screaming at the snarling dogs. It seems as though they didn’t speak English; they paused for a second with a stupefied look and that gave the guard who had heard me yelling enough time to come and call them off and promptly hit one. (I’m not one for animal cruelty, I’ve spent my fair share of volunteer hours at the animal shelter, but I almost smirked when I saw that. So sue me. I felt bad later, alright.) Anyway, at that point I really did want to go home, but going home would take me right past the construction area again and my nerves couldn’t take that just quite yet. I still had two legs attached, after all, which was more than I could have hoped for 5 minutes earlier, so I continued down the sidewalk and turned around when I got to the bank. It looked as though except for a bloody hand and a couple bruised knees I was going to make it alright, but to put some icing on the cake a random dude jumped out from in front of a van and yelled at me just to scare me. I was already on tenterhooks from my two previous skirmishes, and considered having a heart attack right then and there, but decided against it once a memory of my last visit to a Ukrainian hospital entered my mind. Bursting into tears also came to mind, but that always messes up my contacts.

I finally made it home. I opened the door with a bit more force than normal…I hope that cabinet wasn’t expensive…and Lori had a slightly puzzled look on her face, but I am here and I am alive. However, today instead of reaching for my tennis shoes I opted for grabbing a taebo DVD instead.