Musings

My phone was tied up most of the afternoon getting a free replacement battery, and so was the Guru’s phone. During that interlude, we discovered just how frequently we have an impulse to check data of one kind or another using the vast amount of info available via the smart-phone/internet.

In particular, I kept thinking about photographing this or that, but, nawp, not possible. So, I, um-hem, (k)needed a photo…so this is from yesterday….

Oh, and a happy, happy new year!

Posted at 8:20 PM | Comments Off on Deprived, first-world version

Laughing, we enjoyed an extended family gathering over order-in pizza, then walked down to the park. Some enjoyed the zoo, others the playground, and some of us loved the sunshine…mmmm vitamin D.

Even though the electric in our hybrid didn’t get us home, we got some good views of the sunset/dusk sky, and saw the light-strings atop Stone Mountain that evoke a white conifer’s shape.

Posted at 10:27 PM | Comments Off on Win win

Very glad for the sunlight, as the cold-cold is headed our way…headed toward much of NorthAmerica, I think.

Among our errands, we stopped for our last phở of 2017. Yum.

Posted at 8:36 PM | Comments Off on Slurp slurp

New artsy tool* here, from Santa James to the Guru, and I borrowed it and gussied up this photo. Yeah, well, outta my depth, no?

Then I tried something more contained.

I’ll plow new ground next time….

* Apple pencil (which works with retina iPad that’s the Guru’s).

Posted at 8:23 PM | 1 Comment »

Yesterday’s image was about absent leaves. Today’s images are foliage. MaNachur has decorated this decorative cabbage-family specimen with a single Acer palmatum specimen.

These desiccating hosta leaves provide quite the contrast, no? Their venation pattern creates all the texture, looking rather like the puffy zones created between lines of stitches on quilts.

Posted at 5:57 PM | Comments Off on Flip side

Ah, in the night-time spotlight, this ginkgo is displaying its leafless branches with the stubby side-branchlets characteristic of winter days.

I cannot yet tell the day-length is increasing.

Posted at 6:53 PM | 1 Comment »

Happy and merry! We had a traditional Euro-walk between our Big Meal and our Big Dessert. And I just had Second Dessert to celebrate!

Posted at 8:24 PM | Comments Off on H&M 2U

I am not certain because of the veil of time, but I suspect that “bow” was the word that introduced me to the concepts of homonyms and homophones. I knew about this kind of bow (for hair**, too), then about bowing before royalty*. I really fought the idea that the same spelling could be pronounced differently, and realized that spelling had just revealed itself to be a can of worms, and, I suspect, nematodes.

Then I found out about “beau” and that it was French, and that may have put me off French for decades.

* Confession: we have finished season two of “The Crown” and are working our way through “Shetland.”

** Not mentioning “hare.” Or vale (first sentence). I realized that spelling was a trap. Still is. Many times people told me that Spanish is spelled the way it sounds. Not so. See: the trap is not only in tricky English.

Posted at 9:14 PM | 2 Comments »

Here’s the full effect of our newsbox*-tree. May your (holi)days be bright and warm.

* Auto-correct keeps changing this to newsboy. Nope.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Full effect

The Guru pulled out the decorations and we created our (lately) traditional newsbox “tree”, standing in a forest of lights*.

In places of honor are a pair of elves, one red and one green, given to the Bro and I when we were tiny tots by a family friend who was a very successful Jewish lady-stockbroker in Detroit (verrah unusual in the 1960s, that combo).

* For some mysterious reason, only the green lights are powerful enough to make wee spotlights on the fireplace surround.

Posted at 10:25 PM | Comments Off on Pseudo-tree shines