Murphy Visits

I didn't blog yesterday because it was one of those days where everything went wrong, and I don't like making people listen to my complaints. Most of the snafus were relatively minor and cleared up today. A couple of them were more of a hassle; I had a flat tire, which I got fixed today at Sears. It was a leaky valve; it only cost $20 to repair, but the service guy didn't tell anyone when he was finished, so I had to wait longer than necessary. Eugene arrived home before I did, and I normally get home a couple of hours before he does. Another glitch that I need to figure out is what to do about my dentist now that my company is changing insurance plans and she's no longer in their network. I talked with our HR person today about it, and it looks as if it may not be much of an issue. There is one major problem (I don't think I should go into detail about it here) that I still have to try and resolve, even though I can't prove what happened. It won't be the end of the world if I can't get it to work out, but I won't be happy about it either.

Speaking of the end of the world, the OWW's writing challenge for October was posted to the mailing list today. The challenge is to write a story using this as the first line:

"The world ended yesterday, and I want to know why."

From one angle, this intrigues me: it is a strong hook. On the other hand, the first things that comes to mind feel a bit cliched to me. I think of mysteries (which I've never written, so that would be a good challenge) and of the deaths of parallel universes. For a short story, I'd rather focus on something smaller, like the death of one person's world. But I don't have a clear direction for that either yet. It would be good for me to try this challenge so my writing doesn't stagnate. The question is whether I can work this up into a story before October 2007. I wish the Challenge Dictator for OWW would give us more lead time for these challenges, as it takes me a long time to incubate a plot before I'm ready to start writing.