ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

Rather then reposting the revision of what I wrote previously, I have decided to make this article sticky for a few days. I made the revision in April but didn't get the time to post it. ** Please see highlighted for the revision made on 4/18/2011.

I have also written the fourth chapter on 4/18/2011 but didn't post it because I was not pleased with what I wrote. However, I didn't have time to tweak it, so I might post what I wrote so far when I have time.

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拍馬屁

Suck up <verb>

Kiss ass <verb>

When I grew up, the only pets I had were fish.  Back then, I had a 25 to 30 gallon fish tank.  I like the different variety of fish and suggested to my husband to get a aquarium for the kids.  We couldn’t find a suitable place for a fish tank in our house, so we decided to get a small tank instead.  It is much easier to keep a fish as a pet.  Fish are cheaper and easier to take care of.  In addition, they won’t stink up the house or ruin the furniture.  We got some pet fish for our kids but the mistake we made was keeping too many fish in a small tank.  They didn’t survive long.  After two years, we decided to give it a try again.  This time, we only bought one fish, a red tuxedo guppy for our 2.5 gallon fish tank.  However, I can’t stand having only one fish in the tank.  I am afraid that the red tuxedo guppy would feel lonely all by itself.  I thought that if we buy a bottom feeder.  Maybe it will help maintain the health of the aquarium.  We decided to get one more fish, and that was when things went wrong. 

When we got to the pet supply store, we didn’t anticipate that the humane society would show up at the store.  There were four adolescent dogs and five puppies.  The puppies were about eight weeks old.  Their mom is a border collie.  Their dad is unknown.  The puppies were extremely cute and that was why things went wrong.  My daughter likes dogs and puppies.  She has about two to three dozens of dog plush stuffed animals.  She even has a pillow pet dog.  Her bed is filled with dog plush stuffed animals.  Each day, she brings a different dog plush stuff animal to daycare.  Her love for dogs is indescribable.  She has been asking for a puppy since she was able to ask for something.  Anyway, upon seeing the cute little puppies, she decided to forgo the pet fish and bring back the puppy instead.  In the past, we were able to tell her that we couldn’t buy a puppy because there was not a pet store selling puppies in Minnesota.  While we were at a pet store in Orange County, we were able to tell her that we couldn’t buy the puppy because it didn’t have a ticket to fly back with us.  This time, we were having hard time trying to think of an excuse not to bring back the puppy.  We told her that it was extremely expensive to get a puppy even from the humane society.  We couldn’t bring the puppy with us when we travel and the puppy would feel very lonely.  The puppy would pee everywhere and chew the furniture.  The dog food is expensive.  I was almost going to give in but my husband stood firm.  Finally, I told her that we didn’t know who the daddy was and we had to find the daddy first, so we could know what kind of puppies they were.  Mixed breeds are sometimes dangerous.  She was extremely sad with tears all over her face and didn’t want to leave the store.  That was last Saturday.  She still thinks that we will get the puppy once we find the daddy.  My husband thought that maybe we should get one after we come back from Taiwan.  I have mixed feelings about that.  I didn’t grow up with a pet dog and I didn’t know if I want to get into the trouble of getting a pet dog.  Having two kids is already a challenge in life.  Adding a puppy on top of it would be too much work for me.   

About my fictional story

I want to talk about why I picked the sensitive and controversial topics for my recent fictional story.  I have worked at my current company for almost fifteen years.    Our company is a fortune 300 company with employees of more than 5,000 people in Minneapolis alone, excluding advisors.  All these years that I worked there, half of the colleagues whom I currently work with or have worked with in the past are either gays or lesbians.  What I felt working with them is that they are pretty sensitive and sometimes more considerate of others.  I actually have become good friends with some of them.  I especially like the gay boss whom I used to work for.  He is always so gentle and considerate of his subordinates.  I was sad when he moved on to another department.  I like to choose whom I work for.  Since he left the department, I decided to leave too.  Later, I accepted a position at another department but the manager who hired me got a promotion, so I had a new boss again.  The reason that I like to choose whom I work for is to avoid working for a bad boss.  This unexpected change turned out to be the worst experience that I had.  I had the worst boss I ever had, someone who lacks empathy and integrity.  I was fortunate enough to get out of the situation in two weeks by stating that the nature of my job has changed significantly from what I originally signed up for, so I should not be bound to the time restriction of posting for another position.          

This is to continue where I left off.  Since I didn’t revise what I wrote previously, I decided to just post the new plots.  This way, you won’t feel bogged down by my tedious article.  In case you couldn’t recall what I wrote earlier or if you haven’t read it before, this is the link to it.  http://elisaenglish.pixnet.net/blog/post/26929750

Beware!  Some of the contents in this article contain sensitive and controversial topics which some readers might find objectionable.  This is just a fictional story which might portray some reality in life but not in its entirety.     

Life is so Good

What my daughter does every day is play and begs for candy.  She is almost five years old.  My son is eight years old.  He is in 2nd grade and what he does every day is mostly play too; not that he doesn’t study at all, but that the amount of time he puts into studying is very limited.  He likes math - not the extremely challenged math - but hates language and art.  The daily fifteen-minute reading assignment is a torture to him.  It is a class assignment, so he has no choice but to do it; however, he still dreads doing it every day.  The consequence for not completing his assignment would be to make it up the next day, which cuts down his time to play computer games or to watch TV the next day.  The perk for finishing his assignment is a coupon from the teacher for a free pizza when he finishes reading 3.5 hours in a week.  Aside from that, he is rewarded by his parents with four times the computer time.  He is not the brightest in his class.  Do I care?  No, I am happy as long as he is at or above average.    

The installation this weekend went pretty smoothly, so I didn’t have much down time to pass nor think about the plots let alone the conclusion.  I am sorry to have to disappoint you.  I still don’t know where I am heading and how to end the story.  By the way, since this is work in progress, I constantly reread what I wrote and revise it.  So if you have read what I wrote previously, you might want to reread it again.  I have reposted what I wrote earlier with additional plot.  If you are tired of reading what you have already read, you can start with the part highlighted which contains the new plot.  Please bear with me while I try to put an end to this story.  By the way, I have come up with a title for the story but might rename it later, depending on where the plots lead.        

Written by Elisa English, all rights reserved

I have survived another weekend installation. This is what I wrote to pass my down time while stranded at home with work.  I tweaked a little bit of what I wrote previously the weekend before, so you might find it familiar if you have already read what I wrote earlier. 

The tone of my story is somewhat gloomy. My husband said that I should write something more cheerful. Like I said before, I lack creativity and don't know how to write fiction. It is all just to pass my down time for the weekends since I was and will be again stranded at home with work. I don’t know where the story is heading. It might not even have an ending. Anyway, I still have another weekend to write and think about the conclusion.     

You’ve probably heard me complaining of spending my weekends working on project implementation.  Starting this weekend, I have to go through three weekends’ of project implementation and that does not sound fun at all.  I am basically stranded at home, having conferences after conferences to ensure that installation is carried out successfully without any issue.  I have just ended all of the conferences today.  Luckily, I don’t have any more conference tomorrow.  Everything went pretty smoothly.  Between the conferences, there really wasn’t that much downtime to pass, other than writing a fictional story.  All my family members were out having fun.  My son went skiing at Trollhaugen.  My daughter went skating and then swimming with her dad.  It might seem strange to write fiction to pass one’s downtime between conferences.  I am not fond of writing fiction as I lack creativity.  So, why even try writing one to pass the downtime?  Don’t laugh at me!  Since I lack of creativity, I couldn’t think of anything else to do.   I have two more installations for the following weekends.  Maybe I will complete this story then.  I haven’t thought of the title yet.      

Written by Elisa English, all rights reserved

There is really not much to talk about in Minnesota other than the extreme cold, the snow and the ice when winter lasts about 7 months.    

This morning, extremely cold temperatures have pushed Minnesota into a deep freeze.  Temperatures, even without the wind chill factor, dropped to below zero double digits.  This morning, I have my kids bundled up in layers and myself in my snow boots which have warm felt liners that can protect toes down to negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit, a thermal hat, my ski gloves and my snow pants, and get inside our car enabled with seat-warmer, ready to head out to the school.  Even though I have lived in Minnesota for so many years, I cannot leave the house without bundling myself up in this extremely cold weather.  Our kids are tougher than me.