Weekly Wordzzle Challenge Week 122

It's week 122 of the Weekly (formerly known as "Saturday") Wordzzle Challenge. Special thanks to Please Don't Feed the Pixies for supplying me with words for next week's challenge. Much appreciated. I'm running late and hungry kitties are staring at me with longing in their eyes, so I'll post the mini and 10-word and post so anyone who wants to can add his/her name to Mr. Linky. Ok... so I got side-tracked and it has been hours since I posted Mr. Linky... and I'm only just now finishing the mega. Apologies also for misspelling pugilist... (I've corrected it now. I'm an awful speller by nature.)

Words for this week's 10-word challenge were:

summer time blues, glasses, google, pregnant pause, integrated, suit and tie, parallel parking, shimmering, post card, slam dunk and for the mini: gradual, eagle's nest, martyrdom, pizza, pugilist

My 10-word:

Martin Muzzlewit gazed longingly at the postcard lying next to his computer. To say he had the summer time blues was a major understatement. He didn't much like wearing a suit and tie in winter, but in shimmering heat of summer it was even worse. Integrated Management Systems was not a company that cared whether it's employees were happy. No casual Friday's here even in 110 degree heat. He hated the place. He hated driving here, hated going through the curse of parallel parking every day because the good spaces were reserved for the elite. He hated what the company did. He wanted to work someplace like Google, where they liked each other and cared about the world and didn't have to dress up - or that's what he had read, anyway. "Muzzlewit," a voice behind him growled, "stop daydreaming and get back to work." He didn't know why, but for some reasons, those words were the final straw. After a brief, pregnant pause, he put on his glasses, turned to the source of those words, and replied. "Screw You! I quit, you miserable slave driver." It might turn out to be the stupidest thing he had ever done, but right now, in this glorious moment, it felt like a slam dunk. He was free!

My mini:

In the town of Eagle's Nest Alaska, aging pugilist Mike - the Fist- Mulligan - gradually succumbed to the vicissitudes of age and obscurity. Retirement had felt like some kind of tragic martyrdom at first, but now, sitting across the table sharing pizza with his wife and children, it didn't seem half bad.

And the mega:

Pugilist Pete Google eyes (because he wore glasses) Pomroy considered wearing a suit and tie to be a form of martyrdom akin to being skinned alive or shot with a thousand arrows and had done it only three times in his entire life. A black man who had grown up in the deep South before it was integrated, he had - after making it big in the fight game - moved to the far northwest where he lived in relative obscurity in a picture post card setting that took his breath away each morning when he stepped outside. Nature's daily slam dunk, he called it. He didn't miss civilization one bit. No more crowded city streets, no parallel parking, no noisy neighbors (except the loons), no dance halls or restaurants... Just beauty and the soothing sounds of nature. Not quiet, maybe, but the kind of noise that sang to his heart. There were no summer time blues for him, though he did have to admit that he missed pizza sometimes... and Chinese Food. But on the whole, he loved everything about his wilderness home, from the sunlight shimmering on the lake, to the magnificent birds flying to and from the eagle's nest at the far side of his property, to the gradual fading of the light on a summer's evening and that short pregnant pause before the sun lifted itself off the horizon on a winter's morning. It was a good life for anyone, but for a boy who had started life in a shack and seen his uncle and his cousin lynched, who had literally fought his way out of poverty, it was a daily miracle and he never stopped being grateful for it.

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Please Don't Fed the Pixies brings us next week's words, sourcing Jagger/Richards. "I'm going to send The Rolling Stones to your aid here - as I have a copy of "Exile On Main Street" in front of me and will pick song titles and words from the cover (something you can try if you get stuck again - though obviously from a different source) for a future challenge: "

Words for next week's 10-word challenge are: rocks, rip this joint, casino, tumbling dice, frayed, angel, cup, on the run, ventilator, face

And for the mini: wine, plundered, signifying, river, survivor

Thank you for playing! Newcomers can check here for some guidelines (and they are only guidelines, not rules) to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week!

Don't forget to add

your name to Mr. Linky!