Happy Anniversary Wordzzle

This marks the 52nd week Raven has hosted the writing challenge that is Wordzzle. Congratulations and thank you for sticking to it for a whole year. That's quite a nice accomplishment.

It's been several weeks since I've personally participated, but I couldn't very well miss this week, now could I?

The words and phrases for this week's challenge are as follows:

Ten Word- Netflix, mortgage, skunk, flagrant, The New York Times, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, perpendicular, geometry, crabby, shoveling snow

The Mini- pragmatic, crystal ball, laundry, safflower oil, Gregorian chants

The Mini
"Stain Removal"

Louise May Finklestein was never known for her pragmatic approach to things. I mean, gazing into a crystal ball and bellowing out Gregorian chants in an attempt to will the safflower oil out of her laundry was just plain silly.

The Ten Word
"Long Winter"

I don't know what made me more crabby this winter; Shoveling snow in perpendicular lines up and down the driveway once a day, or writing out a check each month to those skunks at the bank who hold my mortgage. Then again, perhaps it was that geometry teacher turned critic who now works for The New York Times. His flagrant misuse of the phrase "Two thumbs up!" was never more evident than when he suggested anybody with a Netflix membership have them rush a copy of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to their mailbox. In my humble opinion, that's one guy who should have stayed in school!

The Mega
"Medium"

Walking through the door I knew something was desperately wrong. "Excuse me," I cautiously asked, "I thought this was Wong's Laundry?" A woman looking a lot like a character I'd seen from the movie Netflix sent me, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, looked up from her crystal ball and said with a crabby tone, "It used to be, but they couldn't afford the mortgage any more, so now I'm the new tenant. Now if you please, set down that safflower oil stained shirt and be quiet. I'm trying to reach the other side."

As she began wailing away at what sounded like a Gregorian chant gone horribly wrong, I couldn't help myself. Maybe it was my pragmatic nature, or maybe it was just my twisted wit, but I had to ask, "The other side of what?"

She looked up again at me with her nose completely wrinkled as if she just smelled a skunk and said, "Young man, your flagrant misunderstanding of the things not of this world is appalling! Now if you will, get you and your New York Times attitude perpendicular and get the hell out of my shop!"

I had no idea what that last reference to newspapers and geometry meant, but as I stood in my driveway shoveling snow later that afternoon, I couldn't help but wonder, "How did she know my shirt was stained with safflower oil?"

~~~

If you enjoyed reading these, please consider going by and say hi to Raven. If you didn't like them, go by anyway. I mean, who doesn't like to hear happy anniversary?