Cathy C. Hall Writes

When I saw this pic, I had to bring it to the attention of Oldest Junior Hall and give him a little comeuppance.

As you may recall, he spent a year or more in New Zealand and now he’s back and not a day–not one single day–goes by that OJH doesn’t find a way to bring NZ into the conversation and remind us all how cool he is, just because he went to NZ.

Like last night, he said, “I’m so glad you picked up chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Can you believe that people in NZ HAVE NEVER HAD CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH ICE CREAM?”

Well, honestly, no. I can’t believe that anyone could live their entire lives without eating raw chocolate chip cookie dough. It’s kinda unfathomable to me. And then I remembered these truly awesome photographs of all these indigenous people (by photographer Jimmy Nelson who may have taken the picture for that meme, come to think of it) and figured there are probably all kinds of people all over the globe who haven’t had this delicacy. Or might not even consider it a delicacy.

Whoa.

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy seeing their pictures because these cultures, these tribes, are passing away. And though the world could make do without chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, I think we’d sorely miss a truly cool Mongolian wolf hunter.

It may not officially be summertime yet, but I’m already on Summer Time.

I’ve already missed a deadline, completely forgot I was s’posed to bring a covered dish to my church yesterday, and found three messages, lingering on my phone. And that’s only the stuff I know about…

My brain seems to turn a bit mushy once my feet slide into flip-flops. So I’m not so good for the hard-core writing work but the fun stuff? Why, yes, thank you. And I thought maybe you’d like the fun stuff, too. Like these gems:

The Second Annual Pretty Much World Famous Illustration Contest for Children’s Illustrators over at Susanna Leonard Hill’s place. She always has lots of fabulous prizes and lots of fun at her contests, so if you have any illustration talent, give it a try. (Technically, I don’t have any illustration talent. But somehow, in the summer, I think I do. My friends in Margaritaville might have something to do with that…)

Anyhoo, here’s a contest that you don’t have to do anything. I mean, you have to zip over to Goodreads and you have to sign up, but that’s not asking too much when you consider you might win Lovely Lisa Ricard Claro’s debut romance novel, Love Built To Last. Then you can lay about on your lounge chair on your back deck, reading and wishing you had a hunky carpenter like Caleb Walker working on said deck, maybe leaning over you to get to his hammer, or losing his shirt because it’s just so dang hot, or…um.

Yeah, moving on to a contest where you can win another book, Power Elements of Character Development by Rebecca Luella Miller. So no uh…day-dreaming… with this one, but possibly your dreams of writing the most awesome, super fantastic book ever can come true if you win it! And all you have to do is write a Burma Shave type jingle. Which appeals to me because a. jingles are ~~shirt~~ short. And b. Well, I seem to have forgotten b.

See what I mean? Summer Time, y’all. (Good luck!)