Kaleidoscopic Topics

I haven't blogged much because it seems like a lot of work to get photos downloaded onto my smartphone, then go over to the laptop to download them, and then back to my smartphone if I want to seize the window of opportunity to leave my actual balcony window open (with the screen door shut, of course) and sit out here, pink flannel nightgown to match the magnolia blossoms along one tree in a still mostly gray background of other tree branches - and bright yellow forsythia, and a little shy like green on a some trees in the background of a yard across the street.  The tree outside our bedroom window in the morning shows the first angles of reddish buds if I look closely, but most of all the birds are squalling and tweeting their conversation.  My cat hears it too, and lies rolling on the rug just inside the screen door, biting his toy fish, one of the few toys he has left that has the idea level of flimsiness because I haven't darned it too much.  It's the kind of day when...

If you like thrill-seeking amusement rides then you're bound to like walking through a busy supermarket after having had cataract surgery because everything seems to be lurching and spinning towards you.  At least this was my experience today going grocery-shopping with my husband (Don't worry, since my vision was impaired he did all the driving, as well as acting as a sort of "seeing eye guide" for me.) I had really wanted to get out of the house and see places I haven't seen I'm the two weeks since my eye surgery.  I mean I was going stir-crazy - even though yesterday the weather was mild enough for me to take two walks around my neighborhood - so had been looking forward to running routine errands today. But the actual experience left me irritable. (Did you already guess that I am NOT a fan of thrill-seeking rides or of having things appear to spin and lurch into me?  If you've read my last blog-entry, about my trip up the Empire State Building, you mig...

I hope all my zillions of raving fans (I can dream, can't I?) will enjoy these views from the Empire State Building, where I recently went up to the 80th and 86th floor observation decks. Some of the views I'm about to post are of NYCs most iconic places, like the Crysler Building and the Freedom Tower, while others are simply of buildings I like for their architectural features. Most of the NYC skyline is very much contemporary steel and glass, but look just a little bit below the tallest skyscrapers, and you can find late 19th and early 20th century style buildings in a variety of styles.  Maybe you can help me identify some of the places I haven't already captioned. Manhattan skyline(s) Let's start with a portrait of the Empire State building itself and then a view from the 80th floor looking south toward Freedom Tower. NYC really has two tall areas of skyline, with the Empire State Building and rest of Midtown making up one tall area, and Freedom Tower and the rest ...

I've decided to try to adopt the motto "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" as I share with you a few of the many many photos I took of the fascinating varieties of flowers growing in Akureyri Botanical Gardens in Akureyri Iceland which my husband and I saw during our cruise in July to celebrate our 30th anniversary.  Yes, we were assured by our tour guide, these long-petaled flowers actually are native to Akureyri's atypical warm microclimate.  During the leisurely days of vacation I had planned to look up more information about this microclimate to verify what was said during our tour, but ran out of time to even so much as look it up in Wikipedia let alone any independent sources - vacations, after all, also entail lots of other fun activities from looking up everything else we planned to see to listening to jazz music in the ship's lounge and a film version of "The Magic Flute" as presented by the Metropolitan Opera in December 2022 t...

Puffins take a summer stop-over in Heimey, Iceland - Blog for July 9, 2023  We had hoped be able to take close up photos of a few of the millions of puffins that stop here briefly every summer for their young. However, it turns out that puffins nest high on cliffs like these beautiful sights that greeted us this morning when we docked off the Westman Islands in Heimey.... Heimey is one of the major puffin stopovers in the world. Iceland Review website (Retieved July 9 at https://www.icelandreview.com/ask-ir/when-do-puffins-arrive-in-iceland/) "Puffins spend much of their life at sea and are actually only in Iceland for a relatively short time to breed and nest. They tend to arrive in Iceland beginning in April (usually later in the month, just before May) and generally begin to leave in August. " Although we didn't get any close-ups of live puffins here's a photo of the next best thing: Not to worry, here's a photo I Googled just now (July 25, 2023) of an actual p...

July 3 and 4, 2023   Actually, we enjoyed a great fireworks show back in our hometown in New Jersey on Saturday, July 1, on the eve of our flight to Iceland to catch our cruise ship. Having arrived in Reykjavik on July 3 we had plenty of time for our first shore-excursion; whale-watching off the bay of Reykjavik. I snapped the photo below of the Harpa Concert Hall as we headed out, but my husband got a terrific photo of the interior... Here's my husband's photo of the inside of Harpa. (Dang! I should have gotten one myself, but it slipped my mind while I was admiring the way the light plays through these colorful windows whose shapes are inspired by the basalt columns that make up so much of Iceland's geology...) The Harpa (Its name is inspired by the musical instrument NOT the harpoon!) overlooks Faxaflói  Bay, where we set out for our four-hour whale-watching excursion on a little motorboat that seated maybe 100 people.  You can find out a lot more about the Harpa's a...