Happy Pi Day!

"Pi" Plate with Pie

Saturday Snapshot: Garden Figures

Here are a couple more photos from our beach week, earlier this month. Shots of the figures decorating the exterior of one of our favorite restaurants in Rehoboth Beach.
The mannequins are painted with gold metallic paint, and are lit with Christmas tree lights at night.
A little eerie. A little kitschy. But the food is great!

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books, and as she says: "To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online."

Outdoor and Wordless Wednesday: Really Big Roadside Attraction

Giant Martin Guitar
Tennessee, November 2010

(Click on photo to enlarge.)

Outdoor Wednesday is hosted by Susan at A Southern Daydreamer.
To see many, many more outdoor photos or to post some of your own, please visit her blog.

For more Wordless Wednesday offerings,
please visit the website here.

Special Day!

Today is 8-9-10!

One of those once in a lifetime days. But then, aren't they all?

Do something memorable!

******

Shadow Shot Sunday #106: Spider Shadows

Garden sculpture, Marble Falls TX
October 2008

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Shadow Shot Sunday is a weekly photo meme hosted by Hey Harriet. To see many, many more shadow shots or to contribute some yourself, head on over to her blog.

Hello Again and a Few Chuckles

It's been quite a while since I posted anything here at Joysweb. Been concentrating on my book blog and trying to get lots of reading done. Also a lot of health and medical stuff going on recently - but you don't want to hear about that. (And neither do I!)

So I thought I'd post these funnies. Don't know where they came from originally; my husband received them in an email at work. So if I'm stepping on anyone's copyright here, I apologize and hope to be forgiven (we're talking church stuff here, right?).

These allegedly appeared in actual church bulletins around the country.

1. The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.
   
   
2. The sermon this morning: 'Jesus Walks on the Water.' The sermon tonight: 'Searching for Jesus.'
   
   
3. Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.
   
   
4. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say 'Hell' to someone who doesn't care much about you.
   
   
5. Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help.
   
   
6. Miss Charlene Mason sang 'I will not pass this way again,' giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
   
   
7. For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
   
   
8. Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.
   
   
9. Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.
   
   
10. A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
    
    
11. At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be 'What Is Hell?' Come early and listen to our choir practice.
    
    
12. Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.
    
    
13. Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.
    
    
14. Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.
    
    
15. The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.
    
    
16. Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow.
    
    
17. The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.
    
    
18. This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.
    
    
19. Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B.S. Is done.
    
    
20. The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.
    
    
21. Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.
    
    
22. The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
    
    
23. Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church.. Please use large double door at the side entrance.
    
    
24. The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new campaign slogan last Sunday: 'I Upped My Pledge - Up Yours.'

Wow, if number 17 is to be believed, church has gotten a lot more interesting since the last time I was in attendance.

Wordless Wednesday: No Ifs, Ands, Or ...

(Click on photo to enlarge.)


For more Wordless Wednesday offerings,
please visit the website here.

Musing on the Twelve Days

The writing prompt for yesterday's edition of Holidailies was "The Twelve Days." And since I have to admit I'm failing pretty miserably at coming up with things to write about, I decided to do a little research on the "Twelve Days of Christmas" song. Found out that, while I had always assumed it was probably written by somebody in Tin Pan Alley back at the turn of the 19th/20th Centuries, it's actually an authentic traditional English carol. And although there are various theories on when it first appeared and what it's supposed to signify, no one really has definitive answers for those questions. Is it just a nonsense rhyme meant to inspire joy and gaiety? Or a good mnemonic device to help keep the senses sharp? Or something more meaningful - are the items in the song religious symbols? For instance, some have suggested that the twelve drummers drumming represent the twelve apostles (beating the drum for Jesus?).

Well, whatever it is, it always reminds me of my own favorite "enumeration" thingie (can't really call it a rhyme or verse) - one that was popular in my speech and drama classes back in high school. It supposedly originated as a radio "announcer's test" back in the 1940s, but I first heard it on TV in the '60s when Jerry Lewis used to recite it on the old Tonight Show. Don't know if it has a real title, but I always think of it as "One Hen, Two Ducks," and the idea is to repeat each item as you add a new item, so that at the end, you're repeating all nine items plus the tenth. Seems easy-peasy, but when you're doing it from memory, it can be really maddening. We thought it was hilarious. Well, it was the '60s and we thought a lot of strange things were hilarious. Here we go:

• One hen
• Two ducks ("One hen, two ducks")
• Three squawking geese ("One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese")
• Four Limerick oysters ("One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four etc.")
• Five corpulent porpoises
• Six pairs of Don Alverzo's tweezers
• Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array
• Eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt
• Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates with a marked propensity toward procrastination and sloth
• Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who hall stall around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery, all at the same time

Of course, none of us had a clue about those tweezers by Don Alverzo. And for the longest time I thought it said "old men on roller skates . . . with a marked propensity toward procrastination and slaw." Messy stuff when you're on roller skates.

These are also very much like the old children's game "I packed my suitcase and in it I put ---" with each person adding a new something to the original something. Sometimes it's referred to as "I packed my grandmother's suitcase." Sometimes the items have to start with succeeding letters of the alphabet. And, of course, there are the more risque versions, too. Not sure where I'm going with any of this, but definitely not there.

Onna Fence

I found this on a site called I can has cheezburger. Loads of funny cat pix.

As for me, Sarah Palin has sort of knocked me off the old fence. I still like this photo, though.

Attack of the Amazon Ants!

Well, Ziggy Stardust may have had his Spiders from Mars, but now the University of Texas has ants from Mars! According to the latest UT Newsletter:

A new species of blind, subterranean, predatory ant discovered in the Amazon rainforest by University of Texas at Austin evolutionary biologist Christian Rabeling is likely a descendant of the very first ants to evolve.

The new ant is named Martialis heureka, which translates roughly to “ant from Mars,” because the ant has a combination of characteristics never before recorded. It is adapted for dwelling in the soil, is two to three millimeters long, pale, and has no eyes and large mandibles, which Rabeling and colleagues suspect it uses to capture prey.

This is great news! Just what I was hoping for – even more bugs to contend with!

Image: C. Rabeling and M. Verhaagh. Copyright: University of Texas at Austin.