The Numbers Game #54, Dec 30, 2024. Please Play Along!

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Welcome to “The Numbers Game #54.”  Today’s number is 175. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find that include that number and  post a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below. Here are my contributions to the album.

Click on photos to enlarge.

 

for Cellpic Sunday, Dec 29, 2024

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Click on photos to see detail. Especially the first one!

This colony of tiny ants shown in the first photo has taken up residence below the flowerpot holding my Washingtonian Palm. When I water, they come swarming out from beneath and swarm up the sides, carrying their eggs.

For Cellpic Sunday

El Lago

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Coots and grackles replace the white pelicans
who have circled over in their last goodbye
like other snowbirds heading north.
Sandpipers whistle their reedy pipes,
as if to rein in the small boy
who runs with a rag of kite
streaming out behind him,
creating his own wind.

This is just one stanza of a longer poem. just publishing it here again along with this photo I wanted to show  Annie H. in response to her photos and narration  about choughs sent in reply to a question I had about them. A chough is  a type of crow we don’t have here in Mexico. I, however, love watching their cousin  the Grackle. pictured here strutting along the beach in La Manzanilla.! We have lots of them around Lake Chapala as well.

Prophecies, For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 687

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Just the vestiges of sunset.

Prophecies

Some say the constellations
foretell our narrow fate—
that the evils of our future
they are able to relate.

But if tea leaves swirling in a cup
can reveal the knocks and blows
of the future’s mean misfortunes,
and its undertows,

It is also true a shooting star
can predict a brighter future
as good fortune stitches up each rend
with its healing suture.

With three circles scribbled in the dirt,
I predict future glories—
a psychic precognition
of happier life’s stories.

Curses once faced and overcome,
flames doused with timely rains—
create a reckoning of ashes
that smother fire’s pains.

For The Sunday Whirl  the prompt words are: curses reckoning ashes three circles scribbled flames constellations narrow blows once future 

The first and third photos of Orion and the shooting star are public domain photos downloaded from the internet.

Christmas Day, 2024

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After excitedly ripping open his gift, Santiago quickly tossed it aside and asked to go see the doggies!
Here they are seen sporting as earrings the tree ornaments I had used as napkin rings but meant as gifts for them all.
Members of my small writing group and partners arrived after Santiago and parents left.
White Elephant Gifts
Liz chooses her gift.
Liz models Larry’s hat while he holds up the footwarmer pads that accompanied it.
Getting Barbara medically organized
Don’t squeeze that ketchup bottle!! (Relax. It was a long red string that came shooting out when she squeeaed it. Larry’s practical joke that was in the same package as the pill organizer and small pillbox.)
Juan and Liz and Larry
Jo opens her gift
Liz gave exotic gifts to us all from her line of clothing and house linens. Here Chris models her kimono.
Liz got a lovely candle holder and candle.
Lin got a Barbie
Lin’s Classic Barbie compared to new “Normal “Barbie that Beckie and Lach gave me a few years ago. Note that Normal Barbie has more realistic measurements. Her calves are larger than the original Barbie’s thighs!
Michael chooses his White Elephant
Michael and Barbara
Juan rips into the gift he chose
Ruins of the dessert.
I seem to have been type-cast when it comes to Xmas gifts. A large box from Michael and Barbara yielded these three large bags of Cheetos Torciditos
Earlier that morning, Sergio and David handed a package over my wall that they said Santa had delivered to their house by mistake.
Read instructions above.

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

For two years, I’ve been turning friends and especially the small writing group that meets at my house on to my special recipe Sangria and Cheetos Torciditos..by popular demand, serving them once a month at our meetings and regularly to other visitors at my house.  This has led to a yearly Cheetos gift from my neighbors, Sergio and David, who will go to any length to procure a new Cheetos-themed gift.  Two years ago it was a swim towel that looked like a huge Cheetos Torciditos bag.  The next year it was a perfectly-ordinary-looking brown mug that when you poured hot coffee into it turned into a bright orange copy of the Cheetos bag as well. This year was the most original of all. You can see it pictured and explained on the photo of it’s box above.

Merry Christmas to all a few days late.

My Year, for SOCS Dec 27, 2024

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Click on photos to enlarge.

For SOCS

The prompt was “My Year,” so I’m choosing a photo from each month of the year 2024 to post here in a gallery.

Hibiscus at Sunset, FOTD Dec 27, 2024

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Click on photos to enlarge.

For Cee’s FOTD

Another Sunset, for Photo Challenge 547

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Another Sunset

This bald
horizon line,
teeth of far-off cliffs.

An orange that hurts, it is so bright—
the face of the sunset
makes its daily pilgrimage.

Only yesterday breathing in a sea.
Today, facing the hard stone
of an offshore outcropping.

We, the tender-hearted,
wait for you each evening.
We line our hearts up for you.

Over here, I’m the girl
In red sequins at the front,
waiting for your black velvet brother.

For Photo Challenge

Here it is Again! Fibbing Friday, Dec 27, 2024

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1.  Ackamarackus:  What my father used to say every time someone began to play the shakers in Latin music.
2.  Anencephalous: What some people accuse a man with tiny feet of also having.
3.  Antediluvian: What they call a boy who has finally agreed to give up his Teddy bear.
4.  Accismus: The next holiday after a Thanksgiving.
5.  Agelast: The woman in a beauty shop whose main job is to put gel in your damp hair before blow-drying it. 
6.  Arabinose: What they call a Palesitinian man’s large proboscis
7.  Antimacassar: What they call a man who curses every time he passes a Macdonald’s Hamburger Spot.
8.  Anagrammatic: What Anna became after graduating from college with a degree in English.
9.  Aichmophobia: Someone with a dread of pain.
10. Atrabilious: Someone who develops a stomach disorder every time they hear music sung by Ol’ Blue Eyes.

 

For Fibbing Friday  Image by Alamy

Bougainvillea for FOTD Dec 25, 2024

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For Cee’s FOTD