Showing posts with label florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label florida. Show all posts

Sunday, April 24, 2022

Apr 24 2022 - Honeymoon

 

Now that is interesting!  I could never guess this origin of the word Honeymoon.

"Honeymoon" was the month after a wedding, when the bride's father would give the groom all the mead he wanted. Mead is a honey beer while the Babylon calendar was a lunar calendar. The Babylonians started calling the month the "honey month" but we now call it a "honeymoon"

Why would the father-in-law be so generous and do that?

The word "honeymoon" itself is derived from the Scandinavian practice of drinking mead, or fermented honey, during the first month of the marriage (measured by one moon cycle) in order to improve the likelihood of conception.


That seems more like our human sense of incentives.

And what about this origin from Susan Waggoner, a wedding historian and author at brides.com:


Unsurprisingly, honeymoon history is a bit gloomy, just like many wedding traditions. Wedding historian Susan Waggoner says the honeymoon "dates from the days of marriage by capture when, after snatching his bride, the groom swept her away to a secret location, safe from discovery by her angry kin." And there he would keep her until "the family would either give up the search or the bride would become pregnant, making all questions of her return moot." 

Compare that to the answer at the weddingideasmag.com website

‘Hony’ meaning honey, symbolised the sweetness of marriage and the European custom to supply newlyweds with the month-long lasting alcoholic liquor called mead made with fermented honey and water.

‘Moone’ was believed to have referred to the body’s monthly cycle. So the hony moone was the period in your life following your marriage, where everything is sweet and rosy. It also suggests that not ALL moons of married life are to be as sweet as the first. This is why you will often hear the term ‘honeymoon period’ banded around.

I expect the modern definition applies to Honeymoon Island in Florida, pictured here.

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Friday, March 20, 2020

March 20 2020 - Berserk on Florida Beaches

"Youth is wasted on the young"

This is attributed to Oscar Wilde and to George Bernard Shaw.  It is considered to combine wistfulness together with jealousy.

This is a perfect quote for the pictures of college students on the beaches of the Eastern U.S. where Florida  and other southern states are struggling to get on with closing beaches, and then to make the closures actually happen. 


That's because the headline yesterday - on March 19th (a week after closures of everything was underway here) - was:

'If I get corona, I get corona': Coronavirus pandemic doesn't slow spring breakers' party

This comes from a CBS video and is the headline that is being repeated over and over on social media and other news sites.

We Canadians turn out to have our own eccentrics and foolish people - at the other end of the age spectrum.  The National Post covered the story of Bruce Beach, born 1934.  He lives in Horning's Mills, 2 hours northwest of Toronto.  He has built 10,000 square foot nuclear fallout shelter out of old school buses, buried beneath several metres of concrete and soil.  The National Post article from 2017 is HERE. The article repeats that he is originally from Kansas.

The Global News article in 2015 describes how it is the site of the biggest preparedness event in Canada. The article is HERE.  This article has pictures of the 'bunkers' and gives sufficient creepy details of the zombie survival event.  This makes Bruce Beach a worrisome figure and a pathetic one given he predicted the doomsday date to be December, 2002.  


So I guess foolishness isn't wasted on any age group. 

We're on to blue lilies today.  It is Brian's birthday and so we celebrate the hybridizer's wildest dreams.
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Sunday, December 30, 2018

What do doggies do on Bacon Day?

Why is a dog licking?

You will see this explanation all over the internet: this is how the mother communicates with her new puppies. 
Mostly with domestic dogs, licking is a sign of affection - and means things like I'm hungry, I submit to you and Let's be friends.

In comparison to a dog licking, here are things I don't expect a dog to do, especially not Dezi:

There's a dog that holds the world record for the fastest 30 metres on a scooter. Another dog has the recognizer for the most number of balls caught in its paws in a minute.  That was Purin who caught 14 balls in a minute. What about Jiff, a 'famous Hollywood Pomeranian' who has several records - two for quickly running on hind legs and also on front legs.  You can see him in a video in the Time article on all these dogs HERE.

There's a dog that has the fastest time to pop 100 balloons and another at the fastest 100 metres with a can balanced on its head. There has to be one with the most balls held in its mouth - five tennis balls. And someone has counted the number of bottles recycled by a dog - 26,000 plastic bottles over six years by a labrador in the U.K. in 2010. He would collect them, crush them and pass them to his owner.  I wonder if they used an excel spreadsheet for this and had an independent auditor.


We're not anywhere near national dog day - it is August 26th.  It celebrates dog ownership of all breeds.  We are actually at Bacon day, falling needles family fest day, and bicarbonate of soda day.

What I like about bacon day is the saying that goes with it:  everything is better with bacon.  Our pictures today show a 2016 Florida sunrise progression.

 








Wednesday, February 15, 2017

I am Joe Canadian

We find out that it might be Joe Trudeau rather than Justin Trudeau in the U.S.   It seems that Justin was too hard to pronounce for Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary.  The hilarity that ensued on twitter was entertainment for most people on Valentine's Day.

I enjoyed the tweet that said "not only do we have alternative facts now, but also AlternativePrimeMinisters".


We are at that time in February when the Yosemite Horsetail Fall has the optical illusion of the "firefall." The natural effect gives the illusion that bright orange lava is flowing off the cliff at the park in California. This magic trick is a natural occurrence that only happens for a couple of weeks each February and draws hundreds of visitors each night.

The "firefall" comes to life when the angle of the setting sun causes light to hit the waterfall just right; making for some amazing Instagram-worthy photos.  You can go to images for yosemite firefall.

Today we see some of Florida's sunrise fire in the sky, 2016.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Convert to Canadian!

I found this yesterday as I was researching British and American sports humour. We Canadians look so tough that it makes me want to 'convert' everyone to being Canadian.  Enjoy this comparative story.

Canadian Hockey Conversion Table
50° Fahrenheit (10° C)
 New Yorkers try to turn on the heat
 Canadians plant gardens

40° Fahrenheit (4.4° C)
 Californians shiver uncontrollably
 Canadians sunbathe

35° Fahrenheit (1.6° C)
 Italian Cars won't start
 Canadians drive with the windows down

32° Fahrenheit (0 ° C)
 Distilled water freezes
 Canadian water gets thicker

0° Fahrenheit (-17.9° C)
 New York City landlords finally turn on the heat
 Canadians have the last cookout of the season

-40° Fahrenheit (-40° C)
 Hollywood disintegrates
 Canadians rent some videos

-60° Fahrenheit (-51° C)
 Mt. St. Helens freezes
 Canadian Girl Guides sell cookies door-to-door

-10° Fahrenheit (-73° C)
 Santa Claus abandons the North Pole
 Canadians pull down their ear flaps

-173° Fahrenheit (-114° C)
 Ethyl alcohol freezes
 Canadians get frustrated when they can't thaw the keg

-460° Fahrenheit (-273° C)
 Absolute zero; all atomic motion stops
 Canadians start saying "cold, eh?"

-500° Fahrenheit (-295°C)
 Hell freezes over
 The Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup

source: http://www.jokes4us.com/sportsjokes/hockeyjokes.html

Our pictures today glow with the Topaz Filter Restyle intensifying the sunset colours of Florida's Lido Beach.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

WDW Modelling

What makes a model look real - is this a train day or something else?  

When I saw these pictures I thought they looked just like model railroad layouts.  What made me think this? There's a story that is laid out by the elements in the scene - the boat, the clothes on the line or the native tee-pee and mini-village.  In a model, there's a compression of space, so that the elements are closer together than normal and the spacing of elements is artful.  Then there are usually more things happening in the scene - in the bottom picture there's a lot going on with all the little groups.

These are full scale models at Disney World on the Riverboat Ride.  I guess that's part of the enchantment of the Disney experience - the sense of the created landscape set in real life so fun.  What are the WDW secrets?  Here are some WDW facts:
  • Ever notice there isn't a lot of gum stuck on rides, trees, waiting areas in WDW?That's because they don't sell it on property, just for this reason.
  • There are more than 20,000 different colors of paint used in Walt Disney World.
  • On the Keys to the Kingdom tour they mention that in WDW no trash can will ever be more than 30 steps away from you.  It seems that Walt went to other parks when he was designing the park and counted how long a person would hold onto a piece of trash before dropping it on the ground.  He came up with 30 steps.
  • Small pipes shoot the trash through the utilidors under the Magic Kingdom at 60 mph.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Birds Above and Alligators Below

The Alligator Farm in St. Augustine has a natural bird sanctuary with many of the large birds nesting each year.  

It is a beautifully landscaped zoo with wooden walkways, water ponds for all the alligators and crocodiles, and palm trees overhead, creating a tropical paradise experience.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Sunken Gardens

Sunken Gardens in St. Petersburg has a beautiful collection of mature palm trees, bamboos and live oaks.  Walking under these trees is a wonderful experience - with the canopy overhead forming arbours.  This year, the Angel's Trumpet tree is blooming with dozens of large, apricot-coloured, sweetly scented blooms.  It was a beautiful canopy over one of the walkways, making for a delightful experience.
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Thursday, February 25, 2016

Farewell to the Sunrise

Every day is a different day

Our month of sunrises is concluding today.  These are yesterday's spectacle.  The intensity of the coral pinks and reds on the water was an experience. I had thought that sunsets would be more intense than sunrises, and find science is right.  They are equally wonderful.  The beautiful skies concluded with great cloud cover that brought in winds and rain.  
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Friday, February 19, 2016

So Many Footprints in the Sand

These footprints are bigger than bird tracks in the sand.  We got to see repair work on stairs that go down to the shore. This was on the unit a few doors down.  How does something this large get onto the beach? Lucky for this house there is an empty lot a few doors down for access.  You can see the tracks up the incline.  

While we face the sunrise, the sunset colours also show in the sky and water, and the last two pictures are from yesterday's sunset.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Shells and Shells

In Florida, shells are everywhere - in the asphalt, the cement.  Of course, they are on the beach.  Here are a few encrusted in brick and cement where we go for a walk.  This is the inland waterway side - one can see it is calmer and has piers for boats.  The ocean side is a torrent of waves and tides, so is clear beach as far as one can see.
 

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Bungalow The Origins

Dezi has enjoyed the beach with running, a mistaken swim, and deciding shells were something to chase.

As one drives along the coast, the original houses were the long Florida bungalow, and we wondered the origin of the word.  This was a surprise:

1670-80; < Hindi banglā literally, of Bengal

The word bungalow was originally used to describe the temporary houses set up by English sailors traveling to India to work for the East India Company. These little houses were often just one story high with a thatched roof. Nowadays, the word bungalow can be used to describe any one story house. Think of the little cabin you slept in at summer camp — that’s a kind of bungalow.



What words rhyme with bungalow?  Here are a few from Merriam-Webster

Rhymes with bungalow