My Tiny Yellow Puzzle

I used to collect puzzles and brain teasers -- from jigsaws to Rubiks to wood puzzles (from geometric shapes to animal shapes and such). When I moved to another continent, I left them all behind. Except one... a small yellow plastic geometric puzzle that I dismantled several years ago, and virtually forgot about. Until yesterday, when I accidentally found it in one of my treasure boxes.

I don't know what possessed me to put it back together, but it was like it was the first time I worked on it! I spent close to 7 hours fidgeting with it. I stayed up late last night solving it and gave up when my eyes started to sting.

This afternoon, I spent another few hours of sheer concentration... hell bent on getting those blasted pieces to come together. Until finally!





Whew! Now I remember why I was digging into my treasure box... I was looking for something to take pictures of. And I imagined this puzzle would be a nice subject. Well, now that I've solved it, I don't really care if the photos are good or not. Haha!

Faces

Our treadmill is positioned so that the treadmiller (new word?) faces the fountain pond outside. Here's the POV of the treadmiller:



When you're staring at a particular view for about 30 minutes almost everyday, you kinda notice some details you'd normally take for granted. For example, I noticed that when the treadmill is on a 10-degree incline, I could see the tops of all the cars that drive by, and about 80% of them have sunroofs. Oh ye, we're in Florida.

Also, there's a new tenant on the second floor unit across the pond. I haven't really seen the person, but I'm assuming he's male because he doesn't care if he leaves the blinds up all night, or hanging crooked all day. And the resident with the small black dog lets his pet wander close to the pond. The dog seems to always be wearing a red vest -- maybe it's a life vest, in case he falls into the water.

Anyway, what I wanted to share today are the -faces- that stare at me when I do my treadmilling (another new word?). Yes, faces. Just faces. No bodies to speak of. Just faces. These faces:





Don't they look mean and bad-tempered?! The boogly-eyed one looks male -- I call him Gonzor. The other face looks female -- I call her Grenza. Why? No particular reason -- they just look like a Gonzor and a Grenza to me.

Their features are obviously the result of trimmers pruning the trees. Would there be some way to cut the branches so that the tree trunk scars will have smiling faces? That should be fun.

Pinecone Tree

And this is the tabletop tree that the pinecones adorned:



A Merry Christmas to all!

P.S. Check out the candle holders that I made out of clam shells.