silly

"Let's Party..." a souvenir we didn't bring home

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Thursday Challenge

Next week: SPRING (Rain, Puddles, Boots, Umbrellas, Sunny Days, Leaves in Trees,...)

werd nerd - univocalic

I've lately subscribed to A.Word.A.Day which sends me a just that -- an email containing a new word (and its meaning) five days a week.

That's how I got introduced to the word univocalic (yoo-niv-uh-KAL-ik) noun. It's a piece of writing that uses only one of the vowels. (It can also be used as an adjective - "Using only one vowel.")

Apparently "strengthlessness" is the longest one word univocalic.

Here's a challenge. How many words can you string together in a univocalic sentence?

My attempt: "Detergent Pete, the meek eel, rents even-keeled feet sets yet seeks
them well bent, prefers never-dented, the greener the better, beet red
the best."

But that's nothing. I just saw a 69-word univocalic sentence. Can anyone best that?

feather paintings

Earlier this week I got an email with some stunning photos of feather paintings - but no artist's name given. Here are three of them.


A little sleuthing on the internet brought me face to face with the artist - Julie Thompson, formerly of Alaska, who now lives in the Puget Sound region of Washington State.

She paints on naturally molted peacock feathers with acrylic paints. Each feather painting takes weeks to complete. She started this form of painting in 1990 and has built up quite a collection in her internet gallery.

Her work is often sold at local craft fairs and is on display in some galleries. She has also sold to collectors across U.S. and Canada as well as Germany, Ireland and Japan. Find out more about her and her work here. Check out her various galleries: Wings, Hooves, Paws, Fins and Miscellaneous.

(I'm annoyed, though, that someone would lift the feather photos off her web site and circulate them in an email without acknowledging the artist. Whoever put that email together in the first place without crediting the artist - SHAME ON YOU!)

annual rite of spring - fritter away some hours watching the eagles

The Hancock Wildlife Foundation (the organization that brought us the Hornby Island eagle cam several years ago) has put up an eagle cam in Delta (BC) this year.

A few days ago the mother eagle brought the eaglets a teddy bear. I just checked the cam, and there is the black bear, right beside the little gray eaglets. This morning they seem more interested in each other than their toy, though.

Log on in non-peak hours for best viewing. Last night traffic on the site was so heavy, the page wouldn't even load.

Delta eagle cam

A variety of cams, from herons to African cats, is available from the wavelit home page. Click on the "Live Feeds" tab.

alley oops!

Seen on our walk down Douglas Street (Langley) yesterday.

nature's graffiti

"What is that? Graffiti?" E. asked as we approached a church on our walk today. When we got close, we saw that it wasn't spray paint that had tagged the walls of the building, but this clinging, creeping vine.

halloween house

Some houses are a mystery, like this one, seen from our walk along the beach at White Rock. We call it the Halloween House - because of its orange and black color scheme and the strange creatures that inhabit it.

On Saturday some new mannequins were out on the deck. Another was lounging in the window. And see the cat peering out another window? It surely is a Halloween House.