Slip-slidin' away

This week's Tuesday Challenge is to "take a picture of a creepy-crawly - spider, insect, etc. Preferably a real one, and preferably close-up enough to make out detail. Preferably artistically pleasing rather than just a documentary shot."

This fulfils at least some of the criteria.



This tinkered-with version looks quite interesting as well:

With a little help from my friends

I can't seem to get rid of the annoying caption at the top, but here's my Tuesday Challenge storyboard. Many, many thanks to the lovely people who've helped me (you know who you are).

 

Cherry pink and apple blossom white

Wrong. Whoever wrote that didn't know much about fruit trees.

Cherry blossom

Apple blossom

Run for home run as fast as I can

This week's Tuesday Challenge was "Ten second start". Basically, find out how your camera's self-timer works, put your camera somewhere with a guard so that it's unlikely to get stolen (or, in my case, run over), and run away as fast as you can.

Here's mine:

You take your left arm out ...

... Oh.

What a silly man.

Got no time for explanations got no time to lose

Piggy's having trouble peeing again. :( He was fine this morning, but by lunchtime he was straining to produce only a few drops. So I called the vet (Easter Sunday - good timing Pig!) and went to the surgery, where he was duly rodded. He was such a brave boy, standing still and not grumbling while a tube was pushed up his willy! The vet couldn't feel anything that might be a stone obstructing him, and got a fair amount of urine (not as much as I thought he needs to pass) to test. It's a bit too alkaline (the usual dalmatian stones form in acid urine) and she couldn't find any crystals in it when the sample was spun and looked at under the microscope. With any luck it's an ordinary infection and the antibiotics and anti-inflammatories we've got will sort it out. But in the meantime the poor fellow's still having problems and is an unhappy little soul. We'll see how he does tomorrow - it won't be life-threatening fora couple of days, and I won't let it go that long - fingers crossed the inflammation will have subsided and he'll produce a flow and be a happy boy again.

I really don't want to have him opened up again.

You like tomayto and I like tomahto

Here's something I've been meaning to ask those of you from across the Herring Pond; what's the correct pronunciation of Barack Obama's first name? Is the accent on the first syllable, as in a soldier's billet; Barrack, the way we'd naturally say it over here? Or is the accent on the second syllable, as in Baroque?

Just wondering, in case I ever meet him. It'd be awfully Bad Form to get it wrong.