We interrupt your regularly scheduled program...

...to bring you the latest exercise from my writing class. For this exercise we had ten minutes to write about a cup of ice. Here's what I came up with.

Cup of Ice

She shook the cup of ice violently back and forth, in part to speed its melting into something more closely resembling the diet soda she'd just finished. She also shook it as a way to channel her rage at being stood up.

It wasn't like she'd never been stood up before, but she had sworn this time would be different.

"If I say yes," she vowed, "this will be the one to stick."

She had gambled a lot on the blind date her sister and brother-in-law had insisted on. So she never saw the bluff coming. He was supposed to be a nice guy.

"He's the sweetest guy in the world," Bill had declared. "You guys would be perfect for each other."

Perfect? What was perfect anyway? Perfect was the two-story house, the picket fence, the two kids and the dog that magically appeared in her head as Bill described Tim or Tom. She couldn't remember his name and had planned to slur her greeting had he actually shown up to cover that fact.

That was perfect, she thought. This, sitting alone in a crowded restaurant getting sympathetic stares from the waiter, is not perfect.

"Screw this," she rose and threw a few bills onto the table. "I'm out of here."