Aya Cracks Cadbury Crunchie Code

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Happy that Detroit de-ices the plane, no matter how much the delay.

The glass ocean behind the Bill Reid canoe glistens in the winter sunlight at Vancouver:

The trouble with food photos is I eat it as fast as I shoot it. What would BC be without Nanaimo Bars?

And then Aya, with some Baja Vanilla, did even better than my favorite Cadbury’s Crunchie bar:

Sad to leave unskied snow in the distance on Cypress Mountain but friends were waiting in Toledo.

Tess thought the best item in the Ann Arbor Art Museum was the padded bench for artistic posing.

Now the poor bees only get 20 minutes of winter solstice sun on a clear day when a shaft of light slips  between two houses. But if you put your ear to the hive and tap, they do buzz so they are still in there huddling into a ball for warmth.
Sorry the telephoto shots on the Android cell phone are so fuzzy. The macro photos seem fine. Anybody got any clues?

Two December Days in Abu Dhabi

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Surprised to see snow already in Kurdistan, and the Tigris river on the flight out from JFK.

Flew over Baghdad and saw the first flares of oil wells at Basra, Iraq.  Over the Arabian Gulf much bigger flares showed that we still want oil so much more than gas that it is not economically viable to bother gathering it.

Abu Dhabi has oil, that buys big buildings, gold, and toys for boys.

The 40 th anniversary of the formation of UAE (United Arab Emirates) was celebrated with a very low level fly-past along the Corniche. Hopefully the You Tube link will play an Android phone video for you:

Down at sea level it is equally dangerous to try to capture images of the incredible high heeled shoes worn by the mysterious ladies loosely draped in black.

But the desert is never far away. This development (including premises for a Sorbonne remote university) is temporarily on hold.

I ran out of easy reading for the long flight home so went to the website market on my Android phone for a book. It offered latest Salm’n Rushd’e and Richa’d Dawki’s works, but when I tried to purchase both them were “Not available”.

Return flight over Tehran, Moscow and Greenland where there is still no sign of life. At that high latitude we outraced the setting sun and it appeared to rise as we flew westward.

5 Felines Faceoff For Thanksgiving

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Queen AliceNewton

Prince Pinot

Olivia & John brought their 2 extremely well behaved cats. Bossy Queen Alice fled to the basement to tell timid Hermes. Prince Pinot was left to defend the palace. Newton’s evil eye above is only a flash reflection. If I half press the shutter and wait a second the green eye goes away, but so do the cats.

Nutmeg behaved perfectly – watching everything.

After 3 days Alice finally took over & cornered Newton & Nutmeg under the bed just in time for us to pull them out and carry them to the car for the 10 hour drive home to NYC. Looks like one at least has a seat belt.

Once they were gone, Hermes who has lived shyly in the basement for months, decided to come upstairs and see what really happens at 341.

Later:  In La Guardia,  while awaiting my flight to Abu Dhabi, I hear that Alice & Pinot are exhausted too.