I don’t know about you guys, but I get twitchy when I’m without computer access for an extended period…and that is what is looming up in my face RIGHT NOW. We are leaving at o’hell early in the morning to fly to Germany to celebrate my baby brother’s nuptials with the whole fam damily. Wish me luck singing! studiozoe and her Tobey are housesitting for us, for which favor I am very grateful. 🙂
And I will wish YOU luck with a contest that I have devised to keep you occupied (and get comments, lots and lots of pretty, pretty comments) while I’m gone.
Just to give you some background and to help with your clever twisty minds, John sells skis and snowboards and Simone is a physical therapist. She is, ahem, MUCH younger than he is. They met when she was an au pair in the States for a year and did the long-distance thing for way too long. He’s been working hard on his German since he moved to Germany a couple of years ago, and is pretty fluent now. He plays baseball, and they are both very outdoorsy, going camping and hiking and biking and skiing all the freaking time. He is an excellent photographer but he is very lazy about posting his photos on his journal (or anywhere else). A journal, you ask, in surprised tones? Why, yes, I reply. A LiveJournal to be exact. But he never posts there because he is a slacker, so don’t bother clicking on the link. Also, Simone is very crafty and loves to make things. She made me 2 strings of paper flower lights for my birthday last year, for example, which I shamefully can’t post a photo of because they’re still not up. My bad.
ANYWAY! Now to the contest!
Seeing as how my brother has reached the venerable old age of 36 (37? 35? hee!) without having ever managed to tie the knot, he is probably in need of some good advice for weddings and relationships and marriages in general.
The contest is to give John and Simone advice, BUT! (there’s always a but, isn’t there?) it must be in the form of a poem, and free-form poetry is, I regret to say, since it’s by far the easiest, not allowed. You can write your advice in rhyming verse, in limerick, in haiku, in sonnet, whatever else you like.
Leave your contest entries in the comments of this post, DO NOT SEND ME AN EMAIL. …because the very lovely Liz Elayne, of Poetry Thursday fame, has graciously agreed to be the contest judge! Yay, Liz! (what a nice name she has, too, by the way, don’t you think?)
The contest will run until our return on June 4th, so you have a whole 11 days to think up things to tell the newlyweds. Everyone can enter (even you lurkity lurkers), and you can enter as many times as you like.
What do we get out of this, you ask? I’m so glad you remembered that part! PRIZES! Pretty, pretty prizes! There will be German souvenirs of the best kind (and possibly the kitsch-iest kind, muahahaa!) for the funniest entry and possibly a couple of other categories that Liz Elayne and I will make up on the spot after the contest is over and since we will be going to Oberammergau (yes, John, sorry, it’s inevitable), which is renowned for its wood carvers, there will be something woody and carvy, most likely, for the Grand Prize Winner.
So, go forth and advise! The contest starts NOW!