He was excited to find 150 new emails in his inbox.

He was excited to find 150 new emails in his inbox.  And only 69 of them were spam!  Martin had never gotten so much attention before, so he plunged right in and started checking them.

The first one was asking about a school assignment.  Fair enough.  The second one was a student-wide email asking for people that wanted to go on the annual hike and cookout.  That sounded exciting.  Several more were asking where he bought his shirt, a few were reminders of weekly meetings on the hall and… a boy was asking him out to dinner?

Martin’s day was made.  Punching the air, he started taking things out of his storage trunk and seeing if he had anything good to wear out.  After finding a few things, he flopped on his bed, smiling.  He had a feeling he was going to like this college.

He didn’t want to go out on such a night, but…

He didn’t want to go out on such a night, but what else was there to do?  They were out of good firewood in the house and if they didn’t warm up soon, it would be an awful for his family.  Putting on his coat, Jack pulled it tight and opened up the door.  Immediately, he was greeted by torrents of rain splashing into his face a gust of wind that nearly threw him against the wall.

Pulling the door closed behind him with great effort, he walked up the stone steps to their garage.  His socks and pants were becoming icy cold as the storm drenched them, but he kept at it.  Once he got to the garage, the wind suddenly picked up and he was almost lifted off his feet.  But he grabbed the garage door and pulled it open, hanging on for dear life as the gale threated to carry him away.

The whole family had been cursed since…

“The whole family had been cursed since the last winter,” Old Hedgin said as she limped along behind Carlos.

“No kidding,” he said, paying mild attention to her.  It was starting to slow, though very lightly, and the shawl he was pulling tightly around himself wasn’t going to be much protection.

“Yes indeed,” she replied.  “So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from that girl on the hill!  Her curse will bring ruin upon you!  Understand?”

Carlos wanted to turn to Old Hedgin and say that who he spent his time with was none of her business, but thought better of it.  She was quite elderly, after all, and he wouldn’t likely here the end of it from his mother if he disrespected an old woman so.  Instead, he turned and said, “Look, I’d rather not discuss this.  The snow’s coming and we both need to get home before we freeze to death.”

What happened to 2015?

It's New Year's Day. You wake up to find it's 2016. What happened to 2015? Try to piece together 2015 using pictures from your phone or Facebook.

Where had the year gone?  There was no Rip Van Winkle beard across my chin, so I had clearly been

active.  But what had I done?  Why couldn’t I remember?

As with everything in the new millennium, the answer is social media.

Logging into my computer, I began to look scroll through my profile to see what had become of my

missing year.  Oddly enough, there were no Christmas pictures, which meant that I wasn’t conscious

or something really bad happened around then.  Once I reached the month of November, everything

became clear when I saw a mountain of condolence posts about my missing beloved.  Missing?

Not dead?  What was this?

I am delighted by...

I am delighted by the atmosphere that comes around every holiday season.  No matter what December holiday you celebrate, there’s always something magical about this time of year.  People seem friendlier, places seem more inviting, and sentiment hangs in the air like mistletoe.  In my house, we celebrate two holidays, so the air is like fusion cuisine over here.

Our Christmas tree sits right next to our couch, ready to bathe the evening in multicolored lights.  A little ways from it on the counter is the menorah, passed down from my mother and ready to wash the room in a different kind of light.  It’s almost poetic how these two symbols of very different cultures come together in harmony, perfectly encapsulating the best ideals of the season.

To be honest, I could get used to this kind of thing every December.

She clung on to the piece of driftwood, praying for daylight

She clung on to the piece of driftwood, praying for daylight.  The icy cold waters lapped against her fingers chilling them to the point of numbness.  But she dared not let go, for letting go would mean death in this frozen sea.  She was exhausted, having drifted for hours, but she knew that she couldn’t fall asleep.  Tonight, sleep meant death.

She didn’t have to look around to know that the ship was still sinking; she could still hear the large bubbles from the undertow gurgling loudly in her memory.  Onward she looked as the driftwood floated on, hopefully to some shore.  If she was lucky, she would float to Nova Scotia before day broke.  Then she could run to get help for her injuries and get treated for what had to be hypothermia setting in.

Just think of Canada and America, she thought…