A Bad Beginning for a Bizarre Book?

This could be a Bad idea ... Because it could be totally Boring - But I was in the shower the other night and I had this Bizarre idea, for the Beginning of a Book, just kind of create itself in my head, so when I got out of the shower I wrote it down ... and then decided that it might be handy for my B post for ABC Wednesday ;-)

so ... Be ready to Be Baffled, Bored or Bugged - here it is:

Aguor sneezed. He could feel the hot redness rise up from his hairy chest, to the top of his ears, and back down, even redder and hotter - red enough to be seen on his hairy cheeks and neck - as he realised that what he had sneezed was now lying on the tablecloth, in a soggy wriggling lump. A hairbiter - black, with lots of legs. Thankfully his hosts were educated enough not to be too upset - enough to know that hairbiters and other pests could be caught by clean people, if they had to mix with those who were not. Normally he would have engaged the services of a groomer, with a well trained snufflecat ... but as he had not left the crowded and unclean city via the normal road, but rather, he had fled just a little too hastily by diving into the sacred pink lake of saltiness and swimming to the lonely temple, he had thought there was no need - and there should not have been - the salt kills hairbiters and other nasty hangers on. As he was bald from the top of his mouth, up over his ears, and down to the middle of his back, he had figured it did not matter that he had not totally submerged his head - but he had forgotten about the hairs growing inside his nose!


... pretty Bad, isn't it?

I am not quite sure why I started thinking of Book Beginnings ... I am fairly sure it may have Been Because I was thinking about the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest - a contest that, as it says on the website is "a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels" ... the 2011 winners are here ;-)
To enter this in that contest, I would have to remove that first full stop and replace it with "and" ... and that would give me 3 lines of horribleness until the next full stop ;-)
(which possibly means I shouldn't put it on my blog yet? ... then again - seeing you are probably the only person actually reading this I don't think it matters anyway - LOL  ... besides ... now that this post has sat mostly written but not posted for a few days, and I submitted that Beginning to the contest in Between writing Bits of this post - can I get in trouble for plaigarising myself by posting it on my Blog after i sent in the entry? Besides ... what can they do - take away my Birthday?  ;-)

Talking about Books ... which I guess I wasn't - Because that B$^%^t up above is only the Beginning of an imaginary Book - I do actually know a couple of REAL authors, who DO know how to write books!
I met them both on the #CSIROTweetup and I have read stuff written by both of them and really liked it.

One is Claire Corbett (her website is here ) I have a copy of her book "When We Have Wings" but I have not had time to read it yet (although I have read the first chapter ;-)  and I also read a short story she wrote, one that is the idea her book is based on - that is here (click on the page numbers to see the pages and read it) ... as if I didn't already wish I could fly ... now that I have read that - I want to fly even more ... if that is possible! LOL

The other Author is Patty Jansen (her website is here ) She gave me one of her e-books (so I could read it and write a review of it ... which I did ... but not sure if I am any good at that sort of thing - lol) and she also has several other stories/etc available as e-books some are Here on Amazon (some of them are free ... and what ones are free seems to vary over time ;-) and she also has some on www.smashwords.com ... where they have a whole pile of different cheap and free e-books - some are full length books, others are short stories or even collections of poems/etc (I have downloaded and read a few of the free ones, including some by Patty, on my iPad ;-) I read them while I was away over Christmas. I also downloaded a heap more the other day ... not sure when I am going to get around to reading them all ... I have enough trouble getting around to posting stuff to my blog! LOL (this one sat, mostly done, as a draft for a few days ;-)

btw ... anyone want to write the next page of that silly story? ... could be interesting to see what happens next - lol

ps ... needed a photo 4 the ABC Wednesday link [andrea has a quick look 4 one] ah - this will do - something I had for tea one night a couple of weeks ago - how about a Beef Burger and a Beer?!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas, Where have I been? Where am I going, and other Weird stuff.

"We Wish you a merry Christmas, We Wish you a merry Christmas ... " etc ... I don't have time to go digging in my photos and make up a Christmas card right now, and I didn't do it earlier because I seem to have been rather busy doing all that other stuff people do when not sitting in front of the computer (and a bit too much getting lost on Twitter when I have been at the computer ;-)  ... not sure if I will get to do it later either - because I am going away ... DH is working night shifts over Christmas, so he is staying home (which is handy because else who would look after the cat and the dog ... DD maybe - seeing she will probably working Christmas Eve and Boxing Day) so ... I am hopping on a plane tomorrow, and flying to Queensland - to visit my parents for a week or 2 ... and they don't have huge piles of download to use each month like I do here at home, or GIMP on their computer  ... lol

But ... because I have not posted for a little While ... and it may be a Week or more before I post again (depending What I might find in the Way of free WiFi/other Internet access ... and/or Weather I feel like going off and finding some McWiFi - lol) I have decided to Whip up a quick post With a few Weird photos of Weird stuff for the Wonderful ABC Wednesday's W Week ;-)

Wow! - I just realised - now that it is after Midnight - I am actually posting this on a ... Wednesday! LOL
(but the linky thingy isn't there yet - I will have to remember to try and find a spare 5 minutes to log in to Blogger While I am at Work tomorrow and add my link then ;-)

now ... What Weird and Wonderful stuff can I find photos of in a hurry? (I still need to organise a few things because I have to be packed and ready tonight, because I leave pretty much straight after Work tomorrow) and I still have not taken the dog for the Walk I promised him (he doesn't care What time of day/night he goes - lol)

OK ... found some ... and they uploaded quite fast and Worked ok - Wonderful!

These few Were all taken with my phone ...
(might be why they loaded fast - smaller photos than my camera is set up to take ... but the couple of camera photos I put in here also loaded fast ;-)

Some Weird Wet person (me ;-) at the #CSIROTweetup:

the same Weird person (me) Wearing a Wig With antennae on it - at the #CSIROTweetup - next to a model of one of the Mars rovers ;-)

Weird animals ... Waiting for a scratch?

 ditto:

Cat's Whiskers: (white ones ;-)

Weird sky

Weird sky again - the clouds really Were that colour!

What is this? and Why is it on my desk at Work?!

yes - it IS a live possum - I work at a high school, and Mr E's class Went into their sceince lab one Monday morning (about a week or 2 ago) - and there, in the corner, was a possum! (it had been living in the roof, and fallen through the ceiling tiles ... they are fairly sleepy during the day so it was easy to just grab a box, stick it over the possum and shove it's backside into the box, shut the flaps and carry it out of the room ;-)

 (btw - that last photo was not my from my phone - I also took a photo with my camera ;-)

oh - and the possum was released into some trees. later in the day.

This is also a camera photo, not a phone photo
... and this one was yellow because it was taken with the flash off (I took one with the flash on too, but I like this one better ;-)
The colour could be said to be a hint as to what I was doing at the time - I just happened to have the camera in my pocket When I Went to ... do What I Was doing in there ;-)  and the dog Was Waiting for me to finish. (he doesn't like it if you shut the door, and if you don't actually close it properly he just pushes the door open and comes in anyway - lol

... and this is some birds Walking around.

I was walking around too - with the iPad - which is what I used to take that photo ... and yes it is a boring one - I only put it in here to see what would happen ... because I probably had the ipad upside down when I took the photo - the thumbnail was upside down ... but (because the ipad knows which way up it is?) the photo comes out the right way up when it is opened ... I got curious to see if it was upside down in here ... no - that just seems to happen at random when there is a glitch - lol (had that happen once ... rotated a photo that I had taken sideways, and it looked fine, as a thumbnail and open, on the computer - but it came out sideways in here! - weird?)

Anyway ... time to finish messing around, and post this - While I still have some night left to Walk the dog, organise the other few things I have to pack/etc, and also squeeze in a good night's sleep before I have to get up for Work in the morning (oops? ... that adds up to a bit more than the approximately 7 hours that it is going to have to fit into!

"but Wait - there's more"

I almost forgot to add the first photo I found - was not going to put it first - figured it might gross a few people out a bit much being right at the top - more Weird stuff at Work:

Yes - that IS a plastic bag of EYEBALLS ;-)

better in the plastic bag than here!

 ... high up on the Wall!

... it was a particularly rowdy class that disected eyballs the day this happened ;-)
(usually the leftover chopped up greebly bits come back in the trays or whatever, and I just have to scrape them out and bin them, and wash all the trays/scalpels/forceps/probes/etc, rather than having to find a long stick to remove greeblies from the wall, and go find a mop and clean the ceiling!  ... "and what did you do at work today?" "well, I scraped an eybeall off the wall, and mopped the ceiling ... "  I guess it keeps the job interesting - LOL)

and ... if it Works (it said there was an error, but now it says it is uploading ... I guess I will have to "hurry up and Wait" for a While to see if it worked, and try again if it didn't)
here is will possibly be a link to a video of some Wonderfully Wild and Wooly Weather:

(it wasn't uploading on blogger, said "rejected by server" or somesuch - so I decided to try putting it on Photobucket instead ;-)


hmmm ... maybe it wasn't such a good idea to start uploading a video at 1:30am, and then noticing that it is 298MB in size! ... dog is now walked, other bits I had to do are done (unless I have forgotten something) it is now almost 4am ... and 25% of it has uploaded ... I wonder if there is a size limit? LOL
I will post this, and add the video later, if it uploads, (and if I can log in to photobucket and blogger some time/place and do what I will need to do, and if I remember ;-)

[the next day] OK - here it is (it took half the night, but seems it did upload ok ;-)


The video was taken at around Midnight one night late in November ... it was rather stormy most of the night, but for over half an hour it was like this - constant flashes and booms - amazing!
(kind of made me imagine weird things - like maybe it was elephants who had become angels and they were having a disco in the sky ;-)

Yucky?

Yes ... time for a letter Y post for ABC Wednesday ... Yes - this might actually be sort of on time (if I finish it today, that is).
I was tossing up wondering what I should post about ... noticed I had already done one called "Yikes ..." kind of want to do something with spiders in it (kind of related to some fun I have been having on faceobook - putting spiders in my profile picture, and posting status updates with links to spider websites ;-)   and the profile picture I have up there at the moment is a golden orb spider, which has a Yellow web - so maybe I could do one about Yellow stuff? ... [Andrea starts rummaging around in my photos looking for more orb spiders and other yellow stuff] ... hmm found a few Yellow flowers and I have a Yellow dog ... but there are already photos of those on my blog ... but I found a few Yucky things I have taken photos of - I know ... seeing most people don't like spiders, or some of the other stuff I like taking photos of - how about I do a "Yucky" post - and put a whole pile of gross stuff all in the one post and get it out of my system? lol

so ... in no particular order ... here we go ... a bunch of Yucky photos I took last Year:

A Huntsman of some sort::



I think it was on the wall outside the back door (can't remember offhand, but the background looks like the outside wall of our house)

A garden orb weaver that I found while walking the dog one evening:


actually I think I nearly walked IN to that web while taking a photo of the tree!
I also have photos of these in the back yard ... again - nearly walked into one of them when it built its web on the hills hoist (clothes line)


A soggy wet worm:



on the path somewhere during one of the lots of rain we have had recently.

A soggy wet dog - having a good old time, in the water that was running down the floodway in the rain:



he was actually playing one of his favourite games - fetching rocks/stones we threw INTO the water!

A spider on my hairy arm:



I found this when tidying up on/under my desk at work, picked it up and then realised it wasn't a daddy long legs ... so I looked for it on a spider website I found last night, and discovered it is a spitting spider!
fascinating spiders those - http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/australian/Scytodidae/Scytodidae.htm

Dried up cow poo in a paddock:



taken while walking the dog a couple weeks ago.


Dead things in spiders web:


taken in the same paddock as the cow poo.

Spiky spider in a spiky weed:


this was the owner of the dead dragonfly in the previous photo ;-)
I am not sure what it is - went looking on that spider website ( http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/australian/Spidaus.html ) and found that it is probably some species of orb or wheel weaving spider ... and ended up LOL @ a newly described genus called ... Backobourkia (I wonder if that is where they found it? - "Back o' Bourke" is an Australian expression for any place that is way out in the middle of nowhere ;-)


Soggy wet mud where i had just spent the night camping:


yes - that blue tarp was where I had just been sleeping - I woke up, carefully climbed out of my swag, packed it, and my pillow/quilt/etc up on the table with my other gear, and took this photo - and the only thing that got wet was my feet, the water bottle and flip flops (thongs/jandals/whatever else you call those things) beside it, and that blue tarp! - I had managed (not sure how after half a dozen beers ;-) to find the ONE spot in the tend that was about 1mm higher ground than the rest of the ground in there! ... but if I had woken up about 10 minutes later I probably would have got wet because the water kept running in. This was the Sunday morning of the big 4WD show out at Queanbeyan in about Febuary last year - it kind of got rained out ... this was one of the things I was going to post about for the letter F ... but kind of didn't get time.

half disected hearts in a science class at the school I work at:


one of the less mangled ones, where you can actually see the valve and stuff like they were supposed to - some of the students mucked around (as usual) and kind of ended up with diced mush ...
Another spider ...
with a packed lunch?


and I didn't notice until I was looking at the photo deciding if I wanted to put it here - the spiders bundle of food looks like it has maggots crawling out of it! - so of course I had to put it here in my YUCKY post!
Most people go to the beach and look at waves and shells etc - I take photos of spider webs on the rocks!


this was in the middl of the year when DH and I went to Tasmania. (I also took photos of the water and the sand and shells and stuff)

Also taken on the Tasmania holiday - my bowl of miso soup going all curldy and weird looking:



Miso soup seems to do that ... actually made some quite interesting patterns at times. When I first tasted it I thought it was a bit Yucky ... kind of tasteless and weird ... so, I figured I might see if putting some wasabi in it made it taste better - it sure did - YUM!  (Miso soup is now one of my favourite foods ... but only if I have some wasabi to put in it ;-)

again ... go to the beach and take photos of ... Yucky old seaweed and slimy foam?!


well ... I liked what it looked like!
(that was some beach in Tasmania too - it was evening and DH sat in the hotel room reading a book or something and I went for a walk on the beach in the dark ... slopping around in the wet sand/etc as the tide went out ;-)


er - I only got through about half of my "2010" folder of photos - but I think that might be enough for one blog post!

... and I only used SOME of the photos of spiders and caterpillars and mud and stuff that I have - I found so many spider photos that I may have to do Arachnids for my A post! ... and I could do one for Insects and Mud and Prickles and Caterpillars ... but I might have to start doing some nice ones too - like Art and Crochet and Beads ... and I guess You are all wishing I had done Yarn for my Y post! (I might have if I had actually thought of that before now - LOL)

if you want more "yucky" stuff - go to that spider website ...
or maybe visit the what not to crochet website - lots of yucky stuff there! (ditto whith a few of those other "what not to ..." type websites)

hmmmm ... just did a search on amazon - and there are a LOT of books about Yucky stuff! - In fact there are a whole pile of them: Search Amazon.com for yucky or ... Search Amazon.com for spiders 


ok - time to post this before I have to do my usual and say "I WAS going to post this Yesterday but ..." (and then still not post it until it is a week, or even a year, later - lol)

Parhelia ... and other Peculiar Photos.

well ... I said that last Photo from my Previous Post might kind of lead to this one ... and if I actually Publish this in time for it to be my P Post for ABC Wednesday - then it Probably will - LOL

the last photo was a Peculiar looking sunset ... with a link to a page on this website - http://www.atoptics.co.uk/ ... I originally found that website when I went searching for some other weird thing on there, which I read about on some blog (no I can't remember what one - I look at rather too many, and once I got lost looking up the thing I saw mentioned I probably never went back to the one I had been reading at the time) ... anyway ... I ended up looking around on that site, and noticed something about Parhelia - otherwise know as "sundogs" ... which I think I had seen mentioned in some book I read once ... and had never known what they were (I do now ;-)   
The odd thing was - not long after I read that info about them - I actually saw some! (I don't recall seeing them before that ... and I am sure it is the sort of thing I would have noticed/remembered even if I had not known what they were - in fact I would probably have been more likely to remember seeing something like that if I didn't know what it was).
so ... it strikes me as a bit Peculiar (or maybe it is just Me who is Peculiar?) that I have seen them several times since ... and also a few other odd things that are on that website (although I do remember seeing some of those in the past, before I knew what caused them).
Anyway ... this is probably all a bit boring ... time for some Photos?

actually - it is time to save this Post for later, seeing it is not quite time to Publish it yet anyway, and go do some more imPortant things ...

but first ... while I am in the right folder of Photos - here is a Photo I took just before the last Photo on the Previous Post:

yes - there were sundogs (Parhelia) that time too ... well Possibly only one Parhelion (they often come in Pairs, one each side of the sun, but only if there are hexagonal ice crystals on both sides of the sun for the light to be reflected in) ... a very faint one, but it was there ... for a few minutes ... then the Parhelia faded and the upper tangent arc appeared.
(the sundog is the rainbow coloured patch, level with the sun on the edge of the dark ring around the sun, a bit below and to the left of the middle of the photo ... it is only a very faint one so you will probably have to click through to the full size Photo to see it)

Ok ... Off to do that Other stuff now ...

[later]

... but when I added a bit of the stuff below (a link and a photo or 3) it was only a little while later ... although I have added most of it now - a few days later ...
I kind of kept Playing around - stuck a photo here, and used it for my blog background ... but it was the wrong size so I stuck another one here and used that ... and it was also the wrong size ... (I just deleted those ... they were almost the same as the next one, but with a grotty grey background instead of the Pretty green and grey)

I also ended up Pasting the Photobucket URL/etc (below) into this Post:

http://i545.photobucket.com/albums/hh371/aykayem/Blog%20Stuff/PA041091.jpg (used to be bg b4 I put the above there

... and I didn't even put another ) at the end - lol
(and "bg" is my abbreviation for background ... I knew what I meant ... I tend to use a lot of those sort of abreviations if I am writing/typing notes to/for myself ... and if I am writing/typing stuff for others to read I have to remember NOT to use them - lol)

Peculiar? - yes, Perhaps - but it was a good Place to Put the link in case the 3rd Photo did not work either and I wanted to Put the link back in the thingy so that it could still be the background.

But I did a bit more fiddling, and re-sizing of the Photo, and came up with this:

... which, as you can see (well - until such time as I change it again ;-) is now the background image on this blog.

ok ... this is Probably all getting a bit too Peculiar ... so Perhaps I should get back to the Point of this Post and Put a few more Photos of Parhelia or something in here and then Post this ... ?



Problem is ... where did I Put the Photos of Parhelia ... it would help if I knew what dates I had actually taken Photos of them! LOL

oh well - I will Peruse a few folders and see what I can find:

er ... Piles of Photos! ... and I only looked in 2 folders of Photos (which is about half of October - I take LOTs of Photos ;-)

Anyway ...

here is a Pretty Pink Peony:

 That was at a meeting I was at - and my tea cup (beside it) has a Pink Pig on it (but you can only see Part of it - the Posterior Part - ie its rear end!). That reminds me - a Person wants me to e-mail her this Photo (and/or the other one - I took a couple) ... I don't Put Personal details about People on my blog (unless they want me to ;-) but it just struck me as a bit of a Peculiar coincidence that her first name and surname both start with P ... and, so I had her e-addy to send it to - she gave me her Pretty Purple buisness card!

ok ... I had better Pick up the pace here, if I want to get through Prattling on about the Pile of Photos I have just uploaded, and actually Post this ... lol

Some Pine trees...

 with wallaby/kangaroo Poo in the foreground ;-)

another Photo of the Pine trees - looking quite Pretty in the light

 those 2 Photos, and the next 2, were taken on my morning walk on the Sunday of the quilt retreat.

... the Pine trees/etc looked quite Pretty in the early morning light:

 ... not so sure about this Puff ball in a Pile of Poo (rabbit Poo I think)

a Pretty Pink grevillia flower somewhere near home

and our Peculiar "Puppy" dog:

 what IS he eating?

- yes - soggy wet dirt!

 I guess it tasted Particulary interesting ...

A Power Pole ... but that is not the reason I uploaded this Photo

the clouds have rainbow colours in them!

 there is stuff about this sort of thing on that website I mentioned - the one with the info about Parhelia ...

... and talking about Parhelia (sundogs) - yes - I saw, and Photographed, a parhelion (sundog) that day too!

 it is only a very faint one - on the left hand side of the photo (level with the sun) ... the sundog did not last as long as the rainbow colours in the clouds did.

this photo technically is't a P one at all ... but it does have a Purpose - I found it in the same folder and decided to Put it here while I was thinking about it/knew where it was.

 it is a photo of a wattle tree in flower, and the Purpose of Putting it here is because it shows what I used for my inspiration was for some fabric Postcards that I made for a Spring Postcard swap on an art quilt e-mail list. I can't seem to find a photo of the Postcards either ... maybe I forgot to take one before I Posted them? ... I do still have the spare ones I made, so I can take a Photo of those I guess)

Here are some Pretty Pink flowers at the base of our "street tree" (the one that "they" planted on out nature strip)

I think they are actually sprouting from the rootstock, below the graft - lots of ornamental/etc trees are actually grafted onto stronger (but less pretty) rootstock so that they have nice strong roots/etc to grow a better tree on top .. or something like that ... lol

here is a close up veiw of them:

More Peculiar clouds, with colours in them:

if one was to Paint a sky like this in a Picture - People would think it was a bit Peculiar!

in fact they might wonder what Planet the artist was on ...

 ... or what kind of Pills they had been taking!

 er ... no wonder I have a Pile of Photos on here ...

Pretty Purple Plants (lavender) with a bee ...

and this is where I should be - in bed!

 yes - this was after a bath (which he needed after I took him for a walk and let him have a swim ... and I let him swim in the Pond because he kind of needed a bath anyway). Note that he has his head on MY Pillow!

no - we not quite at the end of the Photos yet - LOL

Here are some Pink flowers that I have in the garden

 and if you Put your mouse Pointer on the Photo and click to get the full size Picture - you will notice there is lots of Pollen on them.

ok - we have had some dog Photos - here is our Peculiar cat:

 sound asleep in a box (with Polyester quilt batting in it) that is only just on the coffee table! (I decided to be a nice Person and Pushed the box a bit further onto the table after I took the Photo - Poor thing would have been a bit Peeved if she had rolled over and the box fallen off with her still IN it ;-)

and ... this seems like a good Picture to finish with - a Pink sunset:

yes - that is the tower at the top of Black Mountain (where I took that huge Pile of wildflower Photos) ... but this Photo was taken from some Place down the bottom of the hill ... where I had just been and watched a rather Peculiar Performance ... (I am not sure how long this link will still work for - but it was this is what I had just been to see ... or if that link it dead this one might work ... the Person did say there was a blog with stuff on it but a search didn't find anything except one blog that had nothing on it yet and more was "coming soon" ... rather a long time ago).

Perhaps I had better Post this?

oh Poop! - it is way Past "stupid o'clock" and I am still up ... should be going to bed ... and I have just noticed I am getting hungry ... lol

I wonder what else I WAS going to Prattle on about in this letter P Post?

Perhaps I will never know ...

if you hear a "Plop" or "Plonk" sound shortly - it will be me "yawning my head off" ...

.... goodnight.