2019 Halloween, Pre-pandemic Year

The pandemic came early in 2020. The images I captured in 2019, imho, convey more carefree times with no inkling of the coming year's pall and caution over contact during Halloween. The video includes scenery from 25 houses, ... Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Roving Around Halloween 2021

It's gotten to be a tradition with me to wander/rove around to find Halloween scenes. This year, I decided to video-record the sites. ... I made the rounds to the 21 sites a few days ago. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Red-tailed Hawk Catches Mid-day Squirrel Meal

Captured images in early 2020 of a red-tailed hawk—from initial perching on first tree to perching on second tree with its captured squirrel meal. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Auther, Authur, Author, Other

Two misspellings, then correct spelling ("author") led me to think of "other". Although directly unrelated to auther/authur/author, "other" letters spell like they could have been pronounced with a short "o" and unvoiced "th". It also seems illogical that the "o" is pronounced as a short "u". These thoughts nudged me to write about some language items, such as some older English-language letters, consonant pairs, silent letters, vowels, and the schwa. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Pairing Up Chemex Carafe and Coffee Machine Filter Basket

The 12-cup electric drip coffee maker from only 2017 quit after brewing a partial pot of hot coffee. The reservoir still had some cold water. When I poked around my supermarket website for candidate replacement coffee makers and spotted a Chemex, I thought, "Whoa! I have one of those!" I'd had it for many years but didn't use it and forgot about it.

Anyway, I made short-term use of my Chemex with the broken machine's filter basket and filters instead of hunting down square Chemex filters. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

Cicadas Overnite Early Aug 2021

On August 2 morning, I spotted 5 items—a live but nearly immobile cicada and four exuviae (exoskeletons). The cicada and an exuviae (Specimens A and B) were on one porch column. Another exuviae (Specimen C) was on the second column, and two (Specimens D and E) were on the third column. Read the entire article and comment there, please.

EZ Blender Hummus 2.0

 

This hummus recipe is blender based, tweaked from my first batch in June 2021 (YT video, blog article). It's thicker and smoother, very little of it getting runny by the next few days. Read the entire article and comment there, please.