A couple of weeks ago I was walking to my office when I started chuckling, and I snapped a picture of this marker. Why? It was supposed to make me think, “Caution: Wet Floor Might Make You Fall.” Somehow, though, that’s not where my mind went. Continue reading
It’s invisible—
but when it pushes on you
then you know it’s there
Yes, this is a haiku, but it’s also my A haiku – a haiku linked with the letter A, the first letter of the alphabet and my first entry in the A to Z Blog Challenge for 2016. Can you identify the word that begins with A that the haiku refers to? Tell us in the comments!
Here’s a picture I took last summer, near Treasure Island on the Canadian shore of Lake Ontario. Look familiar? It reminded me of the splendid series of water lily paintings by Claude Monet, especially The Clouds. Perfect for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge: Life Imitates Art.
This weeks’ WordPress Photo Challenge is to find the alphabet in the world around us, and that’s what I did. It’s been a scavenger hunt, looking at everything in this new and slightly strange way: Does that look like a letter? What if I turned it upside down, or cropped it just right, or looked at it from a different angle . . . It stretched my brain. Continue reading
This week’s WordPress photo challenge was to post a picture that’s a failure – and this one was dead easy for me. Behold: The Zombie Cake.
I made this for my daughter’s 22nd birthday. We had just replaced our old electric mixer, and the lowest speed on the new one turned out to be faster than the medium speed on the old one. The result: seriously overbeaten cake batter, and a cake that disintegrated into loose bits of chocolate dust when I tried to take it out of the pan. I warmed up the frosting to use it as a kind of glue to hold the whole thing together, but, as you can see – no luck. By the time I was putting on the final touches I was laughing so hard I almost couldn’t hold the camera to take this photo.
Yes, I stuck a candle on this monstrosity and served it on my daughter’s birthday. We all laughed about it, and we still talk about the Zombie Cake with fond amazement. From this experience, I take away two lessons: I stink at making cakes, and I have a terrific family with a generous sense of humor.
This week’s WordPress photo challenge is all about eyes, so when I saw these adorable fellows last weekend I had to snap a picture and post them for your enjoyment. With owls, it’s all about the eyes, isn’t it? I can’t look at them without smiling.
I don’t have any pithy words of wisdom or writing-related advice to add here. Just enjoy these charming antidotes to the grim news from around the world these days.
Where’s my happy place? In the shared imagination of my gaming friends. Here’s my heartfelt ode to fantasy role-playing games.
Grades are done!
I just submitted the last grades for the last students in my last class. Summer, here I come!
During the month of June I have various events to attend (workshops, meetings, celebrations), but nothing like the demands of teaching 17 credit hours over the last 15 weeks. The semester went pretty well, though; I’m generally pleased with how well my students did, and had some really good experiences watching the lightbulbs go off in class. Still, I’m looking forward to devoting more time to other things, like writing, and sipping tea in the shade.
Memorial Day is the holiday this weekend here in the US where we honor those who have served our country, by barbecuing meat and buying things on sale. It’s also the start of summer for many of us; for instance, my proper Southern-raised mother insisted you can’t wear white before Memorial Day (or after Labor Day in September), and to this day I can’t bring myself to break that rule. On Monday I can put on my white sandals for the first time this year.
How about you? How do you celebrate summer?
Just a short note to send you and yours the blessings of the season.
May the force be with you. Always.
Word Wacker 