InterNutter

Indie writer seeks audience with an audience. Paying customers welcome. [pronouns: ze/hir] Daily free stories happen because it is an excellent counter to Writers' Block.

Burpengary East http://www.cmweller.com 12607 posts

Challenge #01562-D101: In the Neighbourhood

There are those who delight in annoying their neighbours. This one had made an art of it, noisy music, renovations at the crack of dawn or into the night. For sale signs went up and people moved. Then the new owners arrived next door and retribution ensued. -- Anon Guest

Skating on the thin ice of the letter of the law was an art form that Gary indulged in. He didn't like Those Types living nearby, so he did everything legal to annoy them into moving. Mowing the lawn at mere seconds past eight in the morning. Playing loud music until seconds before ten in the evening. Aggressively pruning anything that came over his property line. Purposely planting things that would kill the things along their mutual fence line. Deliberately leaf blowing seconds after they had hung the washing on the line.

All that passive-aggressive stuff that isn't, strictly speaking, illegal - yet skating on the very edge of the law. And, of course, always combined with complaining about the slightest thing that the unwanted neighbours did.

It took three weeks to convince them to move out. And Gary had an entire week of peace before the next set of neighbours moved in. Gary should have guessed he'd have trouble when he saw that their mini-van was painted up like some kind of Star Trek space ship. They, too, played or did loud things on the cusp of legality. The lady of the house installed a strange structure over the Hills' Hoist that protected the laundry from leaf-blower dust whilst also letting the evaporating water escape out of some kind of whirligig.

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Tea fixes everything

I've been bingeing on the herbal teas since I got crook. The addition of a little ginger to the pot has helped immensely. And also drinking an undertow-mug's worth1 of tea at a time helps. And it helps for a surprising length of time.

The cleaners didn't arrive yesterday. I can hope that they'll come today, but because Easter, everything's up to debate. Giving the kids a ten-minute clean-up task definitely helps. Especially since it's their gateway to having access to

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Challenge #01561-D100: Time For Change

Stranded alien offers gender re-assignment technology in return for fuel and food. Afterwards people can father or bear a child. What happens next? -- Knitnan

Communicating had been the first hurdle. Bella had managed most of it with pantomime and imitation. The second hurdle was that Earth technology was centuries behind what this stranded entity had on hand. Most of their months together were spent building the tools to build the things that Yrxnahb needed to repair their vessel.

Bella tried to

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Glarghle

Lurgi confirmed. I am falling down with a thing.

Bugger.

I have Elderflower tea and a whole bunch of other teas, so I should have no trouble staying hydrated. I'm going to try and take it easy, but the day is a wee bit crowded.

I've just had a bunch of plumbers come in and give a quote on the sink fix. Later on today, I have the cleaners to help restore the house to some small form of order.

Hopefully, I

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Challenge #01560-D099: Unintended Consequences

One man's trash is another man's treasure. -- Knitnan

Sooner or later, someone will buy it. This is the mantra of both Junker Nomads and Tall Tale Tellers alike. Some of whom do both jobs at once. The further one goes, the more one can sell it for. Unless, of course, said object is everywhere. In which case, one has to take it to the Edge Territories or beyond.

And every trader, large or small, has a minimum of one Standard Weight

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Blarg

Sneezin' and Wheezin' Season has hit, I am sure. The sniffles that only plagued me in the bedroom have migrated outwards. The good news is that I am only slightly miserable, as opposed to the last bout of immense misery that had me pondering whether or not to break Keto for my usual cure of juice and ginger ale.

I still have to go out and get some bulk vinegar, and a replacement thing for the window. Because I was a dummins

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Challenge #01559-D098: He's Only One Year Old

My brow furrowed. "You're a thirty-foot-tall robot. How did you order solar panels?"

"Ebay." -- RecklessPrudence

I tutted at him. "You do know you can order them direct from cheaper places, right? And they're more likely to work."

"But those need a drivers licence and I can not get one."

"Show me those sites, please." The screen on his midriff lit up, displaying the sites in question. And they were all questionable sites to begin with. "Rugro... have you been using Bing

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Procrastination is my co-pilot

I have work to do, errands to run, and stuff to acquire. So of course I'm watching YouTube instead of doing any of it. Go me.

But I did do some things to help with progress around the house. I also am instilling a new policy. The kids have to do one ten-minute task to help with the house before they sit down at their devices.

With luck and vigilance, this should help keep the mess down so that progress can be

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Challenge #01558-D097: New Start

For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse. So collapse. Crumble. This is not your destruction. This is your birth. -- RecklessPrudence

There's a saying in the streets, It's easy to fall, harder to rise. The streets are hard, and hot, and freezing cold at the same time. It makes people that are hard, who have hot tempers and cold hearts. They grasp for anything that will get them ahead. Even if

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Day of Rest

I've had an entire week of running about. An entire week of fetching, hassles, setbacks, fetching, going, et cetera. I just want to spend an entire day of slobbing about.

But of course we have plans to fix a window above an AC unit. We filled in the space above the AC with fibreboard [which I said was a bad idea and Beloved said was protected by the roof] and is now slowly rotting into an unhealthy mess because cyclone season.

One

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Challenge #01557-D096: Strange Fellows

They were canvassing house to house (try political candidate or party member).

"Oh! Oh! I think we might want to miss this one."

The letter box was a suspiciously shaped blue object, the bin left out on the kerb was full of empty jammy dodger packets, and the clothes line, well it didn't bear thinking about! -- Anon Guest

Paula looked. Dangling in the breeze from the hills' hoist were three Starfleet uniforms she recognised and potentially three more that she didn't.

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Fun times ahead

MeMum actually won a li'l something in the Lotto, and each member of the family syndicate gets a little over $100 bonus. However, Mum doesn't trust the post office to get a letter to anywhere if it has cash in it, so I'm courier for Beloved's Mum's dividend.

What happened to sending a 'Congratulations' type card with said dividend inside? It's not like the post office scours letters for that kind of deal. But then I remember that there's change involved and,

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Challenge #01556-D095: Intellectual Pollution

(Follow-on from the tramp freighter pilot finding Earth)

What really excited the scientific and engineering community was the 'build-your-own' educational manuals from [Space SCA] - centuries out of date tech for the pilot's society, but theory backgrounds and detailed instructions on how to build everything for a number of tech levels with tools from a number of tech levels, some of which we can build the tools to build the tools for. -- RecklessPrudence

Galrax had left it behind by mistake, in

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SABLE

For anyone in the crafting arena, or anyone who lives with someone in the crafting arena, also knows about SABLE. For those who don't know, it's an acronym for: Stash Above and Beyond Life Expectancy.

...I happen to have enough earring and beading shit to currently last me a lifetime. So I should very likely make myself sit down and spend an hour or a half hour making earrings for EGDB like I've been gassing about for forever and a week.

I

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Challenge #01555-D094: What the Hell, it Goes!

It's often held together with paper clips, wire coat hangers and duct tape. But it will last 'long enough' and get you to where you are going safe and sound. -- Knitnan

Unriddling a kludge is half the problem. Engineering a permanent solution that works as well as the kludge is nigh impossible. Desperation makes truly bizarre engineering. Rael, who had spent some time with actual engineers, thought he was getting pretty good at translating kludges to semi-proper engineering that did the

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