Choice Morsels

T he Mama Kat writing challenge today is a "College Memory." After 4 years in the Air Force, I decided I was ready for college, so I was older then most of my fellow students, who were right out of high school. My first semester of college was in the fall 1980. The year John Lennon died. That alone sent a memorable wave of grief over the school population. I was enrolled in a 2-year Commercial Art program. It was a small country college. The class wasn't big. Maybe 20 students in my graphic art classes. I remember this one guy was obsessed with the band "KISS" and, anytime he could, he made them the center of his art. He was apparently great at drawing KISS; less great at anything else. My instructors were both commercial artists who'd worked in the field before becoming college teachers. Brad Rock was one of them. He was new that year. A blond, forty-ish guy taking on a room full of greenhorn artist wannabe's. One day that first semester,...

The Mama Kat blog writing link-up prompt for today is, "What is an unpleasant experience you had eating?" I can immediately think of two horribly unhappy eating-out experiences! The first happened early-on in our marriage while we were still living in the Washington D.C. area in the early 1980's. We had decided to try a Chinese restaurant in College Park. It wasn't a buffet. Chinese all-you-can-eat buffets hadn't come into vogue yet. This was a traditional sit-down, order-from-a-menu, moderately expensive Chinese Restaurant.  One of their specials that evening was "Chinese Style Crab." Now I had no idea what this was, but it sounded interesting, so I ordered it. What I got was a platter of small, nearly unrecognizable crab parts in a dark barbecue-like sauce. I picked through it, hardly able to find anything edible in it. When we left, I told Hubby I was still really hungry and could we stop at a McDonald's? I'm pretty sure I gobbled do...

The topic for the Mama Kat blog writing prompt this weeks is, "Share something you learned in March." I've learned that affiliate programs are kind  of like the wolf in Red Riding Hood disguised in Grandma's jammies; they talk a bunch of sweet stuff, but they can bite. I've been buying my seed from Park Seed online for years and decided I'd try signing up for their affiliate program. Since I do a Wednesday Garden blog, I though having an ad from the company I use might be nice for my readers, who might be interested in ordering.  Of course, they use a neutral party ad manager system I had to sign up through and I did describe in great detail that mine is a lifestyle blog covering different topics different days, with gardening being just one topic on Wednesdays. Then I waited with baited breath, afraid my blog wouldn't be judged as suitable. I mean, it's not exclusively gardening. To my great surprise, around the first part of March ...