100 Word Challenge - Fingerprints

There are so many passages in life that we encounter.
Learning. Friendship. Love. Loss.
The hardest of all to bear is loss.
When you love someone so much that losing them feels like your heart has been ripped out.
That happened with us.
It happened slowly; you said "Some time apart, new and old friends to be with".
We called, we talked but we didn't talk much about the future.
You said I was not losing you, that something or someone else was causing the pain.
But I know it was you - they found your fingerprints on my discarded heart.

100 Word Weekly Challenge - Coffee

I interviewed for a job with a software company yesterday.
I think I did well on my part of the interview.
At least well enough for Joe, my prospective boss, to start selling me on the company.
He explained the well designed benefits package and gave me a tour of the offices,
At the end of the tour I had one question, "Where are the coffee machines? I did not see one during our tour".
Joe took me back to the cubicles and pointed, "See?"
Yup, coffee. Delivered via IV tubing to every cubicle.
I'm going to like it here.

100 Word Weekly Challenge - 'Mirror'

I loved the amazing work Hayley Mills did in "The Parent Trap", especially the scene where she and her 'twin sister' pretended they were posing in front of a mirror. Many weekend afternoons were spent with my sisters trying to emulate that act, matching poses and facial expressions. Although it works better when you are twins of the same gender, it was still fun and a fond memory.

50 years later I have decided to try it again. But I want to do it right. I need someone as my identical twin, a "Hayley".

Unfortunately, Haley Barbour is not available.

100 Word Stories - Week 279 #2 - Shrink

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so we designed our application to use pictures.

Every action requires the user to click on a picture.

Want to open something? Click on the picture of the closed door.

Want to close something? Click on the picture of the open door.

Want to edit something? Click on the picture of grizzled editor from the Times.

It was a great application. It was adopted quickly by users. The test users said it was a very effective paradigm.

Then they said the application was too big, shrink it. So we used thumbnails.

100 Word Story Challenge #279 - Shrink

My weekly therapy sessions had not been going well.

The couch doctor seemed to concentrate on my problems but could not condense her thoughts to something I could understand.

"Listen Doc, we have a contract. I come here to drop off and decrease my problems. I leave feeling deflated, diminished, weakened. You aren't helping!"

She said "I understand. You feel constricted, smaller, wasted away".

"Doc, aren't you listening? I feel that way after I leave; shriveled, dwindled. Reduce your verbiage, narrow your focus. Help me!".

"I'm afraid I need to shorten our time today. See you next week".

Damn shrink.

(see http://thesaurus.com/browse/shrink)

100 Word Stories - Week 277 #1

I've promised to do one story a day this week - expect more

This week's theme is 'Radio'.

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I was listening to the radio this morning and heard an intriguing song.

The lyrics told the story of a man whose wife had turned her focus inward.

He started exploring and fell in love with someone else.

He left his wife.

His wife refocused on him and started stalking him.

This presented a conundrum for him - return to the renewed focus of his wife or stay with the focus of his new lover.

I never heard the outcome.

It was a country song and, in my mind, I kept hearing a tune about roadkill, so I turned it off.


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100 Word Stories - Week 276 #2

We have a new activity here at the nursing home, my new employer.
Joe has been retained to help reduce the recent increase in resident injuries.
His firm, Safety First, is considered the premier injury reduction firm in the area.
The class is called 'Falling, Gracefully', which teaches how to fall without injury, using many techniques taught to those studying judo.
The residents seem to enjoy the class but there does not seem to be a reduction in injuries.
One day they will find the correlation between my hire date, the rise in injuries and my joy in tripping people.