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.

Pinecone Decor

I always thank my mother for the creativity genes she shared with me. She was a stay-at-home mom and her hands were always busy crafting something… from pastries, to paper beads, to pompom poodle bottles. Today, I'll reminisce one of her favorite holiday decorations: jazzed up pinecones.

Back in those days, we would go to a Farmer's Market to buy big sacks of pinecones that were brought down from the mountains. The objective was to hang the cones on our Christmas tree, so my mom would tie each one with a ribbon. Then she would dab white glue on the tips of the cone’s flaps, sprinkle glitter on the glue, and shake off the excess glitter. Then she would add a cute bow on top and voila! Of course, by the time we were ready to hang the cones, our hands and faces would all be shimmering in green and gold glitter!

This time, it's a little different. I picked up the cones from the lawn across the pond. There's a huge pine tree out there that drops quite a bunch of rather large cones in the middle of the year. So, I've had these pinecones since April, I think.

Some of them fell with part of their stems intact, so it would be easy to tie a handle on them. Those with no stems, I drilled small holes and hot-glued twist ties to serve as their handles.

Then I used an acrylic type metallic paint to color the tips of the cone flaps "glorious gold" and "royal ruby."





Add some ribbons, gold balls, and other accessories, and we're all set.





Now all we need is the tree to hang them on.

What Was I Thinking: The Bagel Incident

I have a long list of excuses: "Senior moment" (most valid, of course), "I was distracted" (it's my ADD), "I'm new here" (I look like a foreigner wherever I am), "Sorry... instinct" (you can't blame me for a knee-jerk reaction), or "I didn't get the memo" (aka: "Why didn't you tell me?").
What are these excuses for? For my "Duh" moments, which I will refer to as my "What Was I Thinking?!" moments. Let me start with the good ol' bagel incident.

For those of you who've been patiently reading my online ramblings, I wrote about my first encounter with the bagel here: Romancing The Bagel.

As if my romance with this wanna-be-donut pastry wasn't enough humiliation (however private it was) sure enough, I had another episode where I just knew that someone behind me had said, "What the heck is she doing?"

We were at a hotel breakfast spread. I was barely awake (excuse #1). They had the average fare: cereal, oatmeal, fruits, coffee, juice, milk, doughnuts, muffins, sliced bread, and bagels. Some hotels have waffle makers and microwave ovens; this one had a contraption -- like those pizza cooking gizmos -- with a conveyor belt and a heating element over the belt so that you toast only the top portion of whatever you want to toast the top portion of… like maybe your bagel. But unlike pizza conveyors, this one doesn’t go in one end and out the other -– it goes in one end and out underneath.

In other words, you put the bagel on the conveyor, and it slowly travels into the toaster, falls through the back end, and slides forward so you can pick it up just under the belt. Easy.

This was our first time at this hotel, and the first time I saw this contraption (excuse #2). And that morning, I wanted a bagel. What I've always done with my bagel was split it open (learned to do that already), spread some cream cheese on each half, and pop the cheesed slices on the toaster oven. I get warm bagels with a slightly crusty cream cheese topping. Just the way I want it.

So, instinctively (excuse #3), I picked up a bagel, split it open, and spread some cream cheese on the slices. I looked up and about for a toaster oven, but it seemed this conveyor contraption was all they had. So I placed by cheesed bagel slices on the belt. And they started traveling into the machine.

Suddenly, it's like I woke up. Aach! Before I could take another breath, my slices rode deep into the machine, disappeared from view, and fell into the back of the toaster... cheese-side down.

I had to grab the longest pair of tongs on the table so that I could reach the bagel slices now upside down and totally stuck to the back end of the chute where the bagels slide out.

I dashed away with my warm half-bagels, nevermind that most of the cream cheese topping ended up on the floor of the toaster. I was hoping nobody noticed, but surely someone will whisper a curse when his bagel gets stuck in the chute because some idiot put a cheesed slice in the toaster.

The good news is, that was a lesson well learned. I will know what to do (or not do) when I use that conveyor toaster again.

The better news is, now there's a bagel toaster that doesn't use conveyor belts to heat only one side of the slice. These bagel toasters are regular sliced bread toasters but with wider slots to accommodate the fat half-bagels; and if you press the button that says "Bagel" it heats up only one side of the slot.

Here's the model we got:



All I have to remember is to cheese my bagels -after- I toast them.