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As Valentine’s Day approaches people everywhere are looking for a token that will express to the one they love just how much they love them.

Today’s prompt is to take a few common love tokens and craft a scene using as many of them as possible within the scene.

Tokens:

• A bent coin
• Paper hearts
• A ring
• A locket
• A ladies kerchief

Valentine’s Day approaches, so today I was thinking a good prompt might be to develop characters a little by thinking about what they might do to show their valentine that they want them to be their valentine.

I just spent two hours sitting in a waiting room of a doctor’s office. Then I spent another hour waiting in the back for the doctor, so I am in a mindset to offer up waiting rooms as writing fodder.

At one point this fellow in a very nice suit with a golden tone name tag came in.  He carried a document case and after only a moment to speak to the nurse he was sent straight back into the back area. Not long after he went into the back I heard this weird sound that my first thought was “What the heck was that?” and my second – “What was that guy? Some creature back there feeding on patients?” Yes. I have a warped imagination.

Looking back on it now I can imagine he was the devil’s legal assistant and was there to close the deal on someone’s soul.

Another odd occurrence was a business machine repairman came in just after normal business hours and put a stack of money on the counter. He stayed there a while, waiting for the nurse, then checked his blackberry and after another moment with no receptionist showing up he took back his mney and left.

Then there was the gal dressed like she was on her way home from church that came in with a little kid to drop off a Tupperware® container of food.

You see all kinds of muse fodder when you hang out in a doctor’s office waiting area for two hours.

What kinds of people watching has your doctor’s office visits given you?

Have you ever seen one of those little books with the sketches in it, each one a little different so that when you hold your thumb on the edge of the book and let the pages flip it creates an animation.

Imagine how someone from another world might interpret one of those little books if they were to find one. Maybe they came to earth and find it as they are exploring, or maybe it was on a space ship that went out into space? Perhaps aliens abducted someone and hey have the book in their pocket?

This is a thinking prompt to get you to thinking about the most unexpected of things we tend to not even think about, and how someone that had never seen or heard of such a thing might interpret it.

It is groundhog day and Punxsutawney Phil has made his forecast – his shadow chased him back into his hole. Six more weeks of winter. The weatherman was fast to point out that Punxsutawney Phil has only a 39% accuracy rating though.

That was not the most amusing part, however, because the news played in the background as I worked on the computer and I remember something just after Punxsutawney Phil’s forecast about the news gal made a comment regarding something else they were discussing and she said something like: “Everything tastes good fried. Twinkies, groundhogs-… I’m just saying!” She caught a lot of flack from her coworkers, and twas very amusing, but… it made me think about ol’ Punxsutawney Phil and the reactions that people might have to his predictions.

This leads us to today’s prompt. What might reactions be to Punxsutawney Phil and his weather predictions? Might a disgruntled person truly fry up the poor groundhog for predicting more winter? What might a weatherman do if he were recently fired and saw the weather predicting groundhog getting all that attention? There are other weather predicting critters in other towns around the States, what if a small town somewhere  decided that their claim to fame might be to prove that Punxsutawney Phil is really from their town and was kidnapped years before?