Category Archives: Uncategorized
DAILY CALENDAR CHALLENGE #81 – MARCH 22
#1 THE ORIGAMI CALENDAR CHALLENGE – TRICORNE COMPLETED
After three days of folding on this task we finally get to see what the finished product looks like.
It’s a tiny triangular dog dish! In case you have a small triangular dog.
And guess what, it looks just the same when you turn it over.
#2 THE MENSA PUZZLE CALENDAR – DECEPTIVE CROSSWORD CLUES
And guess what? I was deceived on some of them.
In the backward answers, the ones I missed are in italics.
nodnol/nobsil delia/dehca steg/sten retac/revoc ahcom/aococ iborian/ilopirt
#3 THE PAGE-A-DAY PUZZLE CALENDAR – COVER STORY
I don’t know, but are these puzzles getting a little Greek?
If you want to test you literary acumen,
stop scrolling down now!
Because the answers will appear on the next line.
☟ ☟ ☟ ☟
WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE: MY NEIGHBORHOOD
I have a dumb phone and I like it! I really don’t want a cell phone that does anything other than being a phone. That’s because I do have a compact camera that’s about the same size as most smart phones and is always in my pocket when I’m away from the house. As a matter of fact, every photo I have ever submitted to the WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE has been taken with this camera. So phoneography? Humbug I say, it all phonygraphy to me! So welcome to MY NEIGHBORHOOD … as seen through the lens of my SONY Cyber-shot.
This is a walking tour of West Walnut Manor. It’s a suburb of Saint Louis that’s been around since 1830 and in some ways it still has that rural look of yesteryear. It’s very hilly, and while it does have paved streets, it does not have sidewalks.
And it has a lot of trees …
And a brand new Wendy’s!
And regular visits from the library’s Book Mobile.
We do have a problem with street signs …
All photos were taken in my neighborhood while on a walk with my faithful companion Mlle. Renee.
DAILY CALENDAR CHALLENGE #062 – MARCH 3
#1 THE ORIGAMI CALENDAR CHALLENGE – SUNDAY SPECIAL
Well, since I mastered my weekend learning lesson on Saturday, I decided to use what I learned last week (Kite Base) to illustrate my Saturday afternoon visit to the opera via the Met’s Live In HD theater broadcast of Wagner’s Parsifal. Here’s the review I posted to my opera group.
Parsifal … loved the performers and their performances, but thought the tempi was a tad slow at times. (Sure, it only ran on for six hours.) However, I absolutely desisted the director-gone-rampant production. The post-apocalyptic scorched earth set with never-ending cloud projections was the dreariest I’ve seen since the new Tosca. And I won’t even go into the pool of blood covering the stage. And didn’t anyone else think the knights lumbering over the top of hill in act 3 resembled something out of Night Of The Living Dead. Attendance at my theater was down to about a fourth of the usual. After performance chatter was about 85% negative. 
Traditional setting of the opera.
Setting for the new production.
The pool of blood covering the stage.
And here is my origami visualization of the opera …
Swan swimming in the pool of blood.
#2 MENSA PUZZLE CALENDAR – SUNDAY PUZZLE MY SISTER’S DIARY
Well, since I never had a sister I never had to worry about getting into her diary. And if I did have a sister, I would advise her to make like Leonardo d.V. and use backwards writing (mirror writing) like I did. BTW, the guest chicken is named the Hubba Bubba Birdie.
#3 THE PAGE-A-DAY PUZZLE CALENDAR – WORD CROSS
OK, I’ll give you a clue on this one. A is the letter in the green box where the two words cross.
DAILY CALENDAR CHALLENGE #061 – MARCH 2
#1 THE ORIGAMI CALENDAR CHALLENGE – THE DIAMOND BASE
Another weekend learning experience from the School of Origami Tricks and Short Cuts. Though as you have perviously learned … there are no short cut in Origami. Buy if you do pay attention to mastering the basics, paper-folding will become a tad easier. EURIKA … The Diamond Base!
Well, I’m quite sure that didn’t bowl you over. Base Folds usually lack the standing ovation element. That’s why I usually add a little something extra on weekends.
Behold the Weekend’s Origami star, The Amazing TWEETO, The Wicket City Blue Sky Parakeet! What? You were expecting tricks or a soliloquy from Macbird or something? Hey, this bird doesn’t even know how to use Twitter. He’s like a weekend added attraction or short subject.
#2 THE MENSA PUZZLE CALENDAR – SATURDAY HALF… GET ON TRACT
OMG, things are really going to the birds this weekend.
If you’re so inclined, feel free to name the chicken.
Anyway, let’s start with the puzzle answers …
#1 CONTRACT
#2 DISTRACT
#3 ___TRACT
#4 ___ TRACT
#5 ___TRACT
Well, I didn’t expect me to give you all the answers, did you?
#3 THE PAGE-A-DAY PUZZLE CALENDAR – WORDCROSS
And I had to save something for the second day of the weekend!
So until tomorrow, you can watch Mlle. Renee play with “her“ box that came in the mail yesterday. Because it was snowing again, she carried it around the house all afternoon.
She’s also very protective of her boxes.
DAILY CALENDAR CHALLENGE #051 – FEBRUARY 20
#1 THE ORIGAMI CALENDAR CHALLENGE – LITTLE BOXES THE SEQUEL
With a little help from a wise old owl who just happened to drop in on my calendar today I went to work on day 4 of a 6 day challenge.
Yesterday we had this … 
Today I folded this … 
Which assembles into this …
Only two more days before we see the finished product. It better be good!
#2 THE MENSA PUZZLE CALENDAR – STAR SEARCH
No problem with solving this one! OK, so you can see one erasure. I just put the last star in the wrong spot.
#3 THE PAGE-A-DAY CALENDAR – SHAPE MATCH
No problem with this one either but be careful, those shapes can fool you.
DAILY CALENDAR CHALLENGE #050 – FEBRUARY 19
Wow, it’s hard to believe that this is my 50th challenge post of the year! It’s a shame I didn’t keep track of how many challenges I complete successfully, and how many missed completely. Well, every day is a new day and a new challenge!
#1 THE ORIGAMI CALENDAR CHALLENGE – LITTLE BOXES DEJA VU!
Yeah, the challenge on this calendar keeps repeating!
Here’s where we left it yesterday …
And here’s what we folded today …
And added to what we had yesterday, we have …
And it three more days it will be a tiny gift box! And guess what?
While I was working on that challenge, a pretty yellow origami butterfly flew in and landed on my calendar.
#2 THE MENSA PUZZLE CALENDAR – GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
And I was able to solve them all except 4 and 7! Hey, that’s 75% completed!
And in case you need the answers … reilodnog 7 enitolliug enobhgih, 4 erianoigel llewsdnuorg ssensuothgir
#3 THE PAGE-A-DAY CALENDAR – ALPHAMETICS
Guess what? I was able to figure out the numbers that HEAD represented, but I screwed up with TO … and it took me a while to figure out that they left 6 out of the puzzle. I eventually figured it out. Don’t peek, here’s the answer!
DAILY CALENDAR CHALLENGE #042 – FEBRUARY 11
The start of another week battling the challenges of my three daily calendars. It’s not the three table top calendars that add worry to my mornings … it’s the large photo wall calendar hanging on the back of the kitchen door. It’s the Saint Louis Zoo Calendar. Now, while January’s Snow Leopard was kind of cute, February is just rather annoying.
Reptiles are not my morning cup of tea! But on to today’s challenges over on the table.
#1 THE ORIGAMI CHALLENGE CALENDAR – THE SLY FOX
While this one was easy to fold; it was a real problem to photograph.
#2 THE MENSA PUZZLE CALENDAR – THE LAST NAME’S THE SAME
It took me four names to come up with a last name on line one. I flunked out with the people on line two. On line three I thought the first two people were Richard and Seth Green, but I had never heard of a Clarence Green. The poet gave it away on the fourth name. On the fourth row I got the surname on the first person. Even though he really was before my time, he was one of my favorite actors. So I scored 9 points out of a possible 20. That’s 45% — and I doubt if that’s a passing grade.
#3 THE PAGE-A-DAY CALENDAR – SEEK WHENCE (WHAT AGAIN?)
The object of this puzzle is to explain why the first number sequence could the logically continued as any of the a, b or c sequences. BTW the puzzles was created by a computer. I don’t know about a or b, but I could explain why c could be continued … but it would take too long and no one would understand what I would type out. Dumb SEEK WHENCE … I hate when computers make puns with their puzzles.
And what was Mlle. Renee doing while I was face to face with an evil Komodo Dragon?
Sleeping on my bed … and cleaning her feet!
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT …
That’s what I said to myself this morning shortly after I asked myself, “What should we have for breakfast?” Naturally my constant companion, Mlle. Renee shouted out, “BACON!” And quickly followed up with, “BUTTERED TOAST!” Renee has a two-track mind when it comes to comfort breakfast food. “No, I want something completely different this morning,” I said. To which she replied, ” Oh, no, experimental breakfasts again — quick pass me the dogfood!”
I had something totally different in mind. When I went shopping on Thursday, I had discovered something new a local artisan bread maker had on the bakery shelves … PRETZEL BUNS!
I sliced it in half and popped it into the toaster oven for a quick warmup and toast.
Then I spread the bottom side with peanut butter which quickly melted into the warm dough and topped it with blackberry jam. You didn’t expect me to sacrifice such a royal roll to the plebeian likes of ordinary grape jelly? (Actually, I don’t even like grape jelly.) It was extraordinary!
Even Mlle. Renee was attracted back into the kitchen by the aroma of the toasted pretzel bun and the melting peanut butter. She even added a few long sniffs followed by a lip lick and said, “Actually, that smells pretty good.”
Yeah, I even saved the last bite for her.
Forgot to mention, it snowed last and we woke to find everything covered with a thick blanket of white.
WAITING FOR THE STORMS TO START
“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”* But that sure doesn’t stop her from fooling around with us. Yesterday she sent the temps up to 74F and cloaked what should have been a mid-winter treat with fog, damp and gloom. She also left me a bit under the weather. You know that semi-queazy feeling that automatically makes you think about the dreaded norovirus and makes you limit your food intake to chicken noodle soup, toast and tea. Well, when I woke up this morning I was hungry, and there wasn’t a thing in the house I wanted to eat. And that, despite the fact that yesterday I had gone to my local stupidmarket and restocked my cupboards and freezer with wonderful edibles. Though I don’t know what inspired me to buy … 
Probably the same thing that drove me to buy …
Anyway I then over compensated by adding ….
…to my cart.
Then I read the ingredient list on the side of the bag.
OMG! I found a lot of those ingredients listed on the bag of wild bird seed I bought to feed the birds. It was rather tasty with my chicken soup last night and I now know what triticale is. It’s a hybrid cross of wheat and rye that was originally created for animal fodder. It’s also lower in gluten and higher in protein than wheat flour.
But I digress in my search for something to eat for breakfast. For some reason frozen pizzas and fish fillets did not inspire me. Neither did the two cubed steaks in the fridge that might become country-fried steak for dinner tonight. You know what it’s like when you’re really hungry, but nothing you see appeals to you … and you really don’t have anything chocolate in the house. So I decided to improvise and dip into my emergency food supply! (Surely, you have a cache of food in the cupboard should you have a power failure and can’t cook. Though I don’t know what you could cook with sardines.) But you can cook with a can of …
So I opened the can cut a couple of slices which I then diced and popped into my skillet to brown. Then I went to the freezer for the bag of diced potatoes. (You can use them for a lot of other things other than making hash browns.) I added a handful to the skillet to cook with the cubed meat. When the potatoes were cooked through and starting to brown, I got an egg from the fridge which I scrambled in a cup with a little milk and salt and pepper. I poured this over the Spam and potatoes and cooked until the egg mixture was set.
My SPAM HASH SCRAMBLE!
And it was perfect brunch for a day when you’re hungry and don’t know what to eat!
It’s my life …And welcome to it!
* It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature© was a line originally written in the early seventies by D’Arcy Advertising Agency for a television commercial for Chiffon© Margarine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLrTPrp-fW8 Chiffon was a whipped margarine made from cottonseed oil that was packed in a plastic and promoted as a butter substitute. While Chiffon has disappeared from the dairy counters, the line lives on as a colloquial expression. SPAM© by the way is celebrating 75th Anniversary which makes it older than I am.
DAILY CALENDAR CHALLENGE #026 – JANUARY 26
It’s the weekend, time to be short-changed by the challenge of my calendar collection.
Just a weekend experience of learning another origami fold. I’m sure I’ll be asked to use it create something amazing on Monday.
Hmm, he is not impressed. Doesn’t look like any organ I know.
The Mensa Calendar – Saturday Puzzle
What did I learn … It’s Australia Day in Australia! I also know the first of the three words will start with CRUT, but I’d rather go search for needles in that haystack out in the back forty.
I’ll save the third calendar puzzle for my Sunday post.
And did you know …
Today is the 25-Anniversary of the opening of Phantom Of the Opera on Broadway. And all the times I went to New York, I was never able to get a single ticket to see it. And I was always staying at the hotel right next to the Majestic! I eventually did see the National Company when it played St. Louis in the mid-90s.
EUREKA! I just realized that the first word after CRUSTY is probably CRUTCH. Now I’ll have to go check.
... a somewhat unknown or perhaps imaginary actor, writer, director, producer, photographer, friend, brother, uncle and all round good fellow that you really should get to know because he lives with that most glamorous fourpaw Mademoiselle Renee. (Mlle. Renee for short)
