30 Characters Challenge

Starting tomorrow I’ll be participating in The 30 Characters Challenge which is held annually by the folks at ComixTribe.com. Comix Tribe is an online community for comic book writers and artists that are serious about improving their craft.

The challenge involves creating 30 characters in 30 days during the month of November. A friend did it last year so I thought this time I’d give it a try. I’m hoping the challenge will help me populate the Alternative City universe as well as give the old brain a workout.

So for the next month look for a lot of posts (hopefully every day) featuring new characters.

Spiritual fun making Kiva Loans

Hi guys!  I have blogged before about various times I’ve made loans on the website kiva.org.  Basically you make a small loan of $25 and people all over the world do the same and then the person who asked for the loan gets it, gets to invest in their small business, then pays it back over time.  You get to see the photo, name, and story of the people asking for loans, and you can search by gender and other factors.  I search for women asking for the loan on their own rather than in a group, and pick people I feel will pay it back, and who seem to have a positive effect on others.  But that’s not all.  There’s an extra idea I have in mind….

I loaned money to Hedaya in Palestine through Kiva.org

I also pick people I’d like to have tea with once or twice, or people with whom I feel I’d like to have a brief conversation.  People I respect and admire and would like to encourage.  I do this because I want to reward positive people, and also I believe that the spirit of those I pick actually know about me and the other lenders on a subconscious level.  I believe that we actually can meet briefly, in our dreams (on the “astral”), with our angels, and actually have tea.  So today I picked Hedaya a Palestinian woman who is 38, married, with two children in school.  She is making improvements to her women’s clothing shop.

Batbold has a wife and 3 kids in Mongolia. His daughter is a university student!

I also picked Batbold who is 53, married with three kids in Mongolia.  Both he and his wife are chefs and he is opening a cafe.  I had a positive sense of him right away, but when I read that his daughter is going to a university that reinforced my sense that he has a good heart.  So here’s to having tea with kind, sincere people, both while awake and in the body, and in our dreams with our angels!

The Juicy Tell-All of Harry Potter the Adoptable Cat – Part 1

adoptable cat Harry Potter
But mom, it wasn’t me!

OK here is the biggest deep dark secret of Harry Potter, our foster cat.  The kind of secret that you would only ever learn from a cat that’s being fostered in someone’s home, with an honest foster mom.  Harry Potter will eat bread, still in the bag, like he’s starving and he hasn’t eaten in years.  Seriously.

He will scarf down big pieces of many slices so that by the time you find him having his pig out binge-fest you need to throw away a few slices.  He’s had a bread binge fest twice in the month or so we’ve had him.  The first time we were so shocked because we’ve never seen a cat do that.  The second time we just forgot to put the bread away, so then we decided to keep the loaf we’re using in a tupperware and that’s been a good solution.

So there you go.  Now you know the worst.  Stay tuned for more juicy tell all about this amazing, loving, mellow, get-along cat who needs to find his forever home.  Oh and here’s Harry Potter’s writeup and video on petfinder.com.

Random Thoughts

This may sound cruel to some, but I believe that in this world of over seven billion people give or take a few, half of them are idiots. Fifty percent. I’m not the only one that feels this way. The corporate news media and most advertisers must agree because they sure talk to us like we’re all idiots. A good chunk of that fifty percent believe Mitt Romney won the first debate with “style points”. WTF? Are we picking America’s Next Top Model or the leader of the free world?

This kind of sign will get you in all kinds of trouble. You know somebody’s gonna come in and ask something like,”should I ask my girlfriend to marry me?”.

At the Xsport where I’m a member there is a regular hot tub and a resistance pool. The resistance pool is basically a treadmill for swimmers. A sign above the pool states: MAXIMUM BATHERS IN RESISTANCE POOL 1. There are often five or more bathers in the pool using it as a not-so-hot tub taking turns with their backs against the only two jets in the tepid 6’x9′ pool. Fifty percent.

I know I posted this a few days ago but it’s worth an encore.

Holler back!