CassieQ

Ending up at a cornfield as your destination sounds like a great horror movie set up. I get that this was the beginning of GPS, but Garmin was awful. I don't think my sister ever used it again.

Can't blame the girls for keeping a close eye on your hubby after that. That would have scared me to death as well, and I'm a grown ass woman. Thanks for sharing!

I love reading about ghost and ghost stories although I don't really believe in them myself. But when I was reading about how haunted the Place d'Armes was in New Orleans, I couldn't resist. (Besides the hauntings, it is beautiful and right in the French Quarter). The only time i felt uneasy about it was the first night there, but that was after quite a few drinks at Pat O'Briens. So I totally understand my friend getting freaked out. Thanks for the kind words, they are much appreciated!

This did make me laugh a little bit, thank you. My Dad loves to sneak up and scare me and my sisters. One time he found a spider, which he knows I am terrified of (Cassie is arachnophobic) and acted like he was going to drop it on my head. I screamed and threw a video game controller at him and it hit him in the head. He was mad, but he didn't try to tease me with spiders anymore. Just, you know, in case you find that kind of info useful.

For those who noticed my status update, my Dad was jailed over the weekend for driving under the influence. He had gone out of town for a golfing trip and this happened. I don't know the details and I'm not sure I want to. Also, my aunt has an aggressive cancer that may be incurable. We are waiting to hear on that as well. So, things are not great. I have decided to write a few stories that cheer me up, and usually make me laugh or smile when I tell them. Cause damn i really need that right now. I am going to share them here. The first one is about my first trip to New Orleans. I went with my friend, who I am calling R, and we met up with @joann414 and her friend, D. It was my first vacation after a really rough year, and I wanted to get a full experience, so I naturally rented a room at the most haunted hotel I could find. I did not share this with R until we were already there. That was a mistake. R does not like ghosts. She was not thrilled when I shared the history of the hotel with her, she outright refused to check out Marie Laveau's shop and somewhat reluctantly joined me on a walking tour of some of New Orlean's most haunted places. I was having a blast. I loved the walking tour (which was on our last night there). R did not. She was freaked out by all the stories we were told (granted, some of them were pretty gruesome). We get back to our hotel, set our cell phone alarms as usual, and go to sleep. Well, Cassie went to sleep. R laid awake for a while, thinking about ghosts. And quietly freaking out. Right at midnight, the radio alarm went off. Which we never set. Full volume. R sits up in the bed and starts screaming bloody murder. Cassie is woken up and confused, as it is dark, the alarm is still going off and R is still screaming. I finally get the lamp turned on, turn off the alarm. R is out of bed at this point and is insisting that we leave right away. It is still the middle of the night. I am trying to calm her down, telling her that there are no ghosts in the room, when the radio alarm which I am holding in my hand, goes off again. We end up yanking it from the outlet, and hiding it in the closet for the rest of the night. I am sure the cleaning staff came in and set it by accident. But still, when we were getting ready to leave, we filled out the comment card: "Room is haunted. Otherwise, had a great stay!" R has not gone back to New Orleans since. * * * Another story is from when I first moved to my current hometown and was working at the hospital. It was the holidays and I had Christmas off, but had to work Christmas Eve. Every Christmas Eve, without fail, all of the family gets together, usually at my Grandma's house, and we eat, drink, and open gifts (but mostly drink). I got off work Christmas Eve and went to meet my sister at my parent's house. Because of reasons, we leave a little bit late, around 6. It usually takes around an hour and a half to get to Grandma's. Since we were both moved here fairly recently, my sister was going to use her Garmin GPS to guide us to Grandma's. Now Grandma lives in a very small, kind of run down town with very spotty cell reception. Just FYI. We start off and everything looks good at first. We are following the directions that the Garmin gives us (well, my sister is driving, I am mostly looking around and delivering witty commentary). Garmin takes us down this long ass road that looks like something out of a horror movie. Narrow, poorly lit, with tall woods on each side. I question our directions and then gleefully start telling my sister that if we were in a horror movie, this is where the car would break down and then a crazy guy comes out of the woods to chase us down before killing us. My sister is hissing at me to "shut up, shut up, shut up". We notice a strange, flickering light in the distance. We joke about UFOs. We get closer and discover that it is a house that has caught fire. On Christmas Eve. (Foreshadowing IRL)! There are already cops and firefighters on the scene, so we are forced to turn around. But it is okay. We have the Garmin. Garmin flips out when we turn around. We are sent down back roads, dirt roads, roads that don't have names. A half hour later, we went up right back in front of the house that is on fire. Somewhere during this entire fiasco, we decided that we should call our dad and see if he had some better directions than heading down some unnamed road in the middle of the nowhere. Cell reception where Grandma lives is spotty, so we are unsure if this is going to work, but we were lost and desperate. We also both had to pee really badly at that point, and there was nowhere open because it was Christmas Eve. My aunt (the one battling cancer) answers the phone and she is, predictably, drunk. Either the reception is so bad that she can't make out what we are asking, or she is too drunk to get it, because she is wanting to know if we are going to be there in time to open presents and if I like my new job. We finally get our dad on the line and I try to explain best I can where we are at and how we got there. His response was that he had no idea where we were and what kind of directions we were following. We finally had to ask the police officer who was turning traffic around at the house if she knew how to get to where we needed to go. She did, and the directions were so easy and simple that I wanted to throw the Garmin out of the window and run it over with our car. We get to Grandma's around nine o clock that night. We had missed dinner, but there were plenty of leftovers and once I had a deep fried turkey leg in one hand and a margarita my dad made me in the other, I was a pretty happy camper. Those are two of my favorite stories, happening the way I remember. I like them. If anyone wants to share their own, they are more than welcome to, but I just needed to do something to lift my spirits because I have a feeling things are about to get really bad. I hope I'm wrong.

This is great news! Congratulations!

I dig it.

I can give Tyler a pass on his initial reaction. Hearing that your best friend is gay is one thing, hearing that he is gay and in love with you is a bit much all at once, so I can see why Tyler bolted. However, shutting Isaac completely out of his life was a really shitty way to treat a friend, and they missed out on years of friendship (and more) because of it.

This was very interesting. It brought up some points I had never thought of before. Nicely done.

Tyler's initial reaction was horrible, but I'm glad they worked things out in the end. This was lovely.

I don't think I have ever heard someone use the word necromancing like you just did here. That's impressive.

You scare me.

I'm glad you enjoyed Geeks, thank you so much for all your comments!

Thank you for reading. I could write on and on about these boys, but this is where their story really ends. (The bonus chapter is just fun).

Thank you for reading. I could write on and on about these boys, but this is where their story really ends. (The bonus chapter is just fun).

I happen to think you are awesome. Because you are.

After what they have been through, I think the boys deserved some romance. Hyacinth is interesting, never know what to expect with her. Mikeal handled himself very well. Thanks for commenting!

Adam is a very good boyfriend and I think Mikeal realizes that one some level underneath all the turmoil. Thanks for commenting!

This is adorable and Elliot finally taking a stand at the end was very sexy! Well done.

The bond between them just keeps growing. I love it too. Thanks for commenting.

It's been a roller coaster, that's for sure! Poor Mikeal has been through the wringer. I'm glad you are enjoying it and thank you for commenting!

Thanks. I think this is the first real argument the guys had and they resolved it well. Make up sex is always fun! Thanks for commenting!

Glad you enjoyed it, this was a fun chapter to write!

I will take any criticism/advice/whatever IF it is constructive. I've only gotten frustrated twice with my beta reader, and that is when he tore into two of my stories because he didn't like them. I read through scores of comments about why he hated this and this and this and this, but NONE of it was helpful. No "this doesn't work, so maybe try this" or "I would change this for reasons X Y and Z" or "this doesn't work for this character". I knew full well going into it that he wasn't going to like what I wrote and that is fine, but reading through a bunch of comments that didn't really give any useful advice at all was a frustrating waste of time. So I guess it depends on the feedback. Give me some constructive advice and I'll follow it. Give me a bunch of baseless hate and I'll blow it off.

Thank you very much. I'm so glad you're enjoying Geeks.