Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Z is for ZZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz ... which I should be doing at this hour of night ... but ... I wanted to do my Wednesday ABC post, and I am on holidays from work and don't have to get up early in the morning ... so I have kind of ended up sliding into a time zone where is a couple hours earlier than here ... in fact dare I admit it here? - yes why not - as far as I know Mum never reads my blog anyway ... probably more than a couple hours in a different time zone at the moment actually ... seeing I kind of accidentally stayed up a bit too late last night and ended up going to bed even later than the "wee small hours" - I think one could definitely say I went to bed at "stupid o'clock"  - and I am definitely living up to my blog title at the moment - because I actually crawled into bed as the sun was coming up!
(and I STILL took half an hour or more to get to sleep because DH was snoring - not quite ZZZZZ ... but zzzzzzzz ... which are probably worse becuase they go on for longer - when he does loud ZZZ he tends to wake himself up and stop).

now - what other Z thing(s) should I mention? Zen? ... I am sure one can search the WWW and find out all about that ... and a lot of other Z things too ...

Surely there must be some place I have been to that starts with a Z ... like Zamalek - which is a suburb of Cairo - I was there in April ... I wish I could afford to go back there (to see a couple of things I know about that I didn't find the first time) ... and/or to all the other places in the world I want to go to but have not been to ... sigh ...

This might have been in Zamalek ... or it may have been nearby ... I can't remember right now and would need the map I was using over there to work it out (I had a quick look but couldn't find one that had the suburb names in English and looked the same online, and the paper one I was using over there could be anywhere - most likely in the bedroom where DH is asleep and I should be - lol)



The sheep were lying around on the footpath where Mum and I were walking around (near the hotel we wee staying in ... which is why I need the map - I can't remember what suburb the hotel was in but I can find it on that particular map)
They were there on more than one day when we were going past there ...

(here they are again a day or 2 later)



so I guess that is where they live?

yep - looks like it:


- they have a water trough, and they probably get fed there too.
On the other side of the road was a tiny shop, too small to swing a cat in - about half the size of this room (4th bedroom/office) and that is including the counter and the space behind it ... it was a squeeze to find standing room if there were 3 customers in there at the same time! ... and to go in there one had to go down a few very steep steps, because the floor level was 1m (3') lower than the footpath outside ... but the reason I went in was because there were balls of cotton crochet/etc yarn stacked up against the window - yes I bought some ... then I went back later and bought some more (one way to use up those few odd pounds and piastres that were too small to be able to change back to Aussie money ;-)  I even bought a couple of balls of yarn, from that shop, that were made in Turkey - which is where we went just before we were in Egypt - lol

I found out about some of the interesting things in Egypt/Cairo (some that I did find/see and some that I didn't) from someone I know (we know each other through both online quilt groups and the fact that we are both members of Canberra Quilters) who actually spent a while living in Zamalek - her blog is here http://jennybowker.blogspot.com/ ... she started the blog when she went over there, but has kept blogging here and there ever since ... but unfortunately she didn't know how to put the map there, that she just put there recently ... so Mum and I ended up being right next to one place I wanted to go, without knowing where it was or realising how close to it we actually were. ( I guess I will have to think of some way of making lots of money so I can go back there again ... and/or to all the other places I want to go to!)


Z is also for ZZ plant (no not ZZ Top - they are a rock group - lol)
... I was going to do some "googling" sometime and see if I could find an interesting plant or animal or something with a Z name to do this post about - but some kind person saved me the trouble today! - someone on the freecycle e-mail list (go to http://www.freecycle.org/ to find out what that is all about) just happens to be giving away some plants - and one of them is a Zamioculcas zamiifolia, otherwise known as a ZZ plant (due to it's name being such a mouthful I guess - lol) ... so all I had to do was copy and paste that name into the search box and I now know the name of, and some stuff about, yet another interesting member of the plant kingdom! (there is some more info about it here http://www.plant-care.com/zz-zamioculcas-zamiifolia.html ... or search the www for it and you will find all sorts of stuff ... in fact there is a google search thingy in my side bar - I put it there a while back because I thought someone might find it useful - lol)

... but what is really weird is - I got a really good laugh out of the page I have sent you to with that first link - I noticed from the URL that it is part of the website belonging to a company that hires/does all sorts of things here in Australia ... but I just had to laugh when I realised that a company called RentoKILL is into hiring out (live) plants for people's offices/etc!

Now I have got 2 good laughs related to that same company ... the other one was many years ago, and it is a bit weirder and maybe not the sort of thing everyone would find funny (so apologies if you find this a bit stupid/tasteless - just skip to the next paragraph ;-)  I was talking to some bloke I knew somewhere, and he was wearing a Rentokil company shirt ... so I asked if he worked there and he said no ... so silly me asked how come he had the shirt - turns out that a mate gave him the shirt in return for a favour ... and the "favour" was to go into the female toilets (in some office building or somewhere) and "borrow" one of those sanitary disposal bins (another thing that company does/did was to provide and empty sanitary waste bins) ... and the reason the person wanted the bin was so he could then put it on another mates front lawn,on his birthday, as a temporary addition to his collection of garden gnomes ...

Talking about plants ... I think it was last time we were up to the letter Z - I posted something about Zygocactus ... and I just happen to have one sitting in a pot near the front door (I kind of meant to do something about finding a nice pot and a good place to put it when someone gave it to me ages ago, but I have not got around to it yet) ... and as DH and I were heading out to walk the dog I noticed that it is flowering - so I took a photo ...




I was going to crop the photo but A: it didn't look good when I did it and B: I figured the photo shows that I have some Zany stuff in the garden!  (if you want to get a better look at the actual zygocactus flowers the photo, like all the others on here, should be a clickable link to a bigger version)

Talking about photos and Zany, Z is also for some of the Zany things I do to some of my photos when i mess around with them on the computer. I did this ...



... the other day.

I gave the photo the file name of "BehindBlueEyes-oncewasatree.jpg" ... the second half of that name was so that I could tell what photo it was that I started with - because it now looks nothing at all like the photo of a tree that I started with!
Hmmm ... I wonder what folder the original photo was in?

[find it and put photo here? ...    no - I don't know what folder I found it in and am not going looking for it now! ... nor am I going hunting for the photos I have that ARE dog fur, rather than just look like it - I might remember to find them later and do "D for dog fur" or something - now it is time to post this and go get some sleep - lol ]

I can't end the Alpabet without at least one more gratuitous scary looking spider photo - so Z is for ... er ... Zoology? ... the Zen of being a spider?



... and if those are not what you call valid exuses for posting a spider picture in my Z post - then consider it a preview for my next ABC Wednesday post (because as far as I know, we are going Around Again, for the 5th time I think) when we start the Alphabet Again with the letter A

(... And because spiders are Arachnids and I might just be too tempted to do A for Arachnid ... Again! )

Anyway ... it it zzzzzzzzzzzzz time (well and truly - 4am - where did the time go?) and I still have some other stuff I WAS going to do before I went to bed (like try and find my glue gun so I can take it somewhere tomorrow afternoon/evening, and also go and dig my bits of crochet teapot, and the load of washing I threw them in with, out of the washing machine, to see if the crochet bits felted or not, and put them somewhere so they can dry so that I can join the bits together ... "crochet what?" ... er ... I guess I will have to take photos and post about that sometime in the next week or so?)  and ... I have at least one more photo that needs to be added to this post - but I still have not even put that Zygocactus photo onto the computer so I guess I will have to finish doing this post tomorrow  [which I just did] ... which is probably ok because I think I am actually still a little bit early (or the person who puts the thingy up for us to add our link to is a bit late?)