Three Things

1.  Eldest children really do have it harder.  Please pity me :) Birth-order studies always interest me, because I find they are fairly accurate when it comes to Patrick and me. 

2.  I'm going to enter a writing contest.  Yeah!  I entered about a year and a half ago but I felt the story I submitted was a dud.  (I didn't win, obviously).  I think I will enter two stories this year. I wrote one of them during my creative writing class last semester. My teacher gave it a good review; I don't think it's great, but it's not as bad as the one I submitted last time.  I'm writing another story to enter.  I think it has a good premise, I just have to do a lot of cleaning up.  I've written maybe 25-50% of it.  Writing short fiction is hard!  You have to condense so much into a certain word count, make the plot interesting and engaging, and really make those characters jump off the page.   I just have to make my character believable, since we don't have similar backgrounds and life experiences.  I hope I succeed; there's nothing worse than reading stilted writing.

3. So today someone complimented by driving.  I know, right? I was about ready to start laughing too.  She's a coworker and it turns out she lives in the same apartment complex that I do, so she was following me in the parking lot.  "Wow, I'm really impressed by how you actually use your signals," she said.  "I don't see a lot of people here who do that, good job!"  I'm surprised she was complimentary, because as I was driving, I was so sure that she would be cussing me out.  In parking lots, I drive like an 80-year-old grandmother on Quaaludes (parking lots + parking garages = Jenny's worst enemies).  But hey, I'll take any compliments I get :)