Chris Wondra . com

The car skidded off the road, and the two occupants, a man and his son, were badly injured. In the ambulance, on the way to the hospital, the father died. The son was taken straight to emergency surgery. The surgeon on call took one look at the patient and gasped, “Oh no […]

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It’s about a thirty-minute drive from our house to my parents’. Getting to Lisa’s parents’ takes twice as long. For a 5-year-old, this is an excruciatingly long time to be strapped into a car seat with nothing to do. In fact, in a 5-year-old’s universe, this is roughly equivalent to what an […]

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I get a lot of comment spam on this blog. To date, Askimet, my spam filter, has captured 9,277 incidents of spam. This amazes me. I wonder who these spammers are and why they think what they’re doing is the least bit affective. I mean, I can’t imagine clicking over on […]

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This is probably going to sound weird, but I actually have a few magical talismans. I found them when I was a kid. Of course I didn’t know it at the time. They aren’t wands or weapons or glowing crystals. They’re just plain, ordinary . . . things. I didn’t […]

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A story coming out of Orlando, Florida today outlines with broad strokes how Middle School teacher, Kasey Goodin, was suspended for her recent creative use of duct tape in the classroom. Here is the actual lead for that story:
A middle school teacher accused of using duct tape to bind a student to his desk […]

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Palindrome: A word, phrase or sentence (or even series of sentences) that can be read the same from left to right and right to left. (forward and backward)
In 1992 John Jensen, of Carlton University posted a request for original palindromes on an internet writing forum. Here is just a sampling of the better […]

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Let me just say, for the record, that I hate trivia games. I’m terrible at them. My mind just doesn’t roll that way. I am in awe of people whose minds do. This includes, “Name That Tune” types of games.
That said, I got an email this morning that was jam-packed with […]

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Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
Because I have a few posts that get relatively large chunks of traffic (and so larger chunks of stupid, meaningless or inappropriate comments), I’ve set my administration of comments to “approve”. That way I can quickly mark dozens […]

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Did anyone ever tell you, “Don’t worry. Be happy!”?
Didn’t you want to punch that person in the mouth?

Lisa shook her daughter and whispered sharply.
“Emma!”
“Mffhh.”
“C’mon, honey, it’s time to get up.”
“I’m tired.”
“I know but we’ve got a lot to do today. So you have to get up now.”
“Why? What day is it?”
“It’s Saturday.”
“What are […]

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Almost every day, my students get a vocabulary word. Then, every ten days or so, they have a quiz. There are three parts to this quiz:

Matching
Fill in the blank, and
Using in a sentence.

I’m correcting just such a test right now and thought I’d share a few of the more interesting sentences I’m getting. […]

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