DEAD RATS AND WOLF SPIDERS

Some of you may not know, but I co-host a podcast called Grace Talk Soup every Thursday morning with my dear friend, JoJo Tabares. We deal in communication skills, always with a dash of grace, a lot of love and a big handful of humor. JoJo teaches us spoken communication skills and I teach written communication skills. She is Lucy Linguist to my Ethel the Editor and we do a segment called I Love Language. It's lots of fun! You can join us every Thursday morning at Talk Shoe, 11AM EDT/8AM PDT. (We are show #19736, but it's programmed into the link.) You can go to the site and download shows. This morning's was a blast!

Now all that being said. . . we seem to wander (read that "get pushed") into the Land of TechnoTroubles about 10AM Eastern every Thursday morning. JoJo has seen the entire Talk Shoe network go down around her. I have to use two computers to make sure I can see the chat room and be able to research things throughout the show. We have our cell phones out, just in case. We have had phone lines go dead, chat rooms crash. . . if it's technical trouble, we've had it. Want to know about our latest escapades in technotorture? Just show up a little bit early for our "pre-game show" and you will hear us cracking up and telling how we did it so that the show WILL go on.

Now techno troubles are not the only kind we get. On about 10:30 this morning, my mother calls me from the other side of the house. She's ranting. I think I would be, too. She tells me she's been up since 3AM watching a huge, hairy brown spider on her ceiling. She is petrified of wolf spiders, having had a few encounters with them in the past. She tried to suck it down the vacuum cleaner hose, but. . . difficult since she's about 4'8" tall. She couldn't reach it. Then she tells me she had to use the bathroom real bad and. . . there was a dead rat in her sink!!! Nothin' says I gotta pee like a dead rat in your sink, trust me. OYE!!! Now it's almost 10:45, 15 minutes to show time. She's still ranting. I tell her that my one son has a half-day at school today, when he'll be home and he will do the dastardly deed. Mr. B is our main creature dispatcher around here so I'm confident he'll do her proud.

Now it's ten minutes to show time. My chat room screen won't come up. Finally, it does. I hear JoJo say, "Oh, there she is!" I dial in once. No go. I dial in twice. No go. Three times is the charm, right? YOU BETCHA!!! I hear JoJo's dulcet tones through my telephone. WHEW!!! We do our pre-game chit-chat. The room is filling up. Gonna be a great show!!! JoJo signs us on and I hear the Talk Shoe logo. She says, "Welcome to Grace Talk Soup! Thank you all for tuning in each week. I'm your host, JoJo Tabares". . . now that's my cue to say. . . "and I'm Carla Ives." Then JoJo takes over with more of our standard intro. Just as she says, "I'm JoJo Tabares". . . BOTH COMPUTER SCREENS GO DEAD BLACK. I'm sitting there looking on in disbelief, but I am still on the phone, mind you, and I could have just followed the intro which I have in front of me. I'm like. . . WHAT DO I DO NOW??? I'm still thinking about dead rats and spiders. So. . . I say nothing. Dead air. Nada, zippo, nuttin' honey. I hear JoJo take a deep breath. I realize what I need to do. I start to giggle and say. . . "and I'm Carla Ives." So off we go despite all this "stuff." Maybe 30-45 seconds later, while I'm trying to concentrate, BOTH computer screens pop back up. VOILA!!!! Just like nothing happened. I didn't even wiggle the mouse. They did not time out in the first place. What the. . . . !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a peek inside our world, ladies and gents. We love bringing you Grace Talk Soup. Today's show was, as they say in my home town of Philthydelphia, DA BOMB! It was open discussion. We had lots of people on the phone lines and we had so much fun, it shoulda been illegal. LOL Yet. . . my chat window went down at least 6 times and my laptop crashed twice. Most of you that were there didn't know that, I bet, except for the few times I mentioned it. Still. . . Grace Talk Soup was on the air!!!

And to whatever evil spirits are lurking out there, forcing JoJo and me to visit the cloudy, murky Land of TechnoTroubles every Thursday morning, I have this to say: If a dead rat and a big, hairy brown wolf spider didn't stop Grace Talk Soup, you won't either. Read it and weep, baby!!!!!!!!!!" Grace Talk Soup will be back next week, same bat time, same bat channel. BRING IT ON!!! Or should that be "same rat time, same rat channel?" bwahahahahahaha