PROMPT: Family Traditions

Daily writing prompt
Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.

1.) The Feast of St. Nicholas of Myra: It’s like Secret Santa, but each family member draws a name from a hat, and they then abscond with a prized position of the person whose name they drew and pawn it at a local pawn shop. They then hide the receipt in the house. Family members each have 15 minutes to find the receipt. If they find it, they get their shit back. If they do not, the “Secret Santa” gets to keep the cash.

2.) Hide the weasel: You hide a hungry weasel in someone’s room without telling them, and they have to find it before they get a toe bit off.

3.) Candle lighting roulette: candles are set in a revolving candelabra, which is given a spin. Family members take turns stepping forward to light the candle that is closest to them. One candle hides an M-80 firecracker which explodes to spatter the unlucky family member with hot wax.

Glazed Acorn [Haiku]

Winter storm
ices over acorns:
branches hang low.

DAILY PHOTO: A Line of Shrines

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Photograph taken at the Bateshwar Temple Group in Morena, India (north of Gwalior) in Madhya Pradesh.

PROMPT: Leisure Time

Daily writing prompt
What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?

Nothing that involves wearing a leisure suit, or a suit of any kind. Except, perhaps, a swimsuit or my birthday suit, or playing a suit in a game of cards… What were we talking about?

DAILY PHOTO: Macaque Family

Family of macaque monkeys on Gudibande Hill in Karnataka, India.
Baby macaque monkey on the rocks atop of Gudibande Hill.
A family of macaque monkeys on Gudibande Fort in the state of Karnataka in India.

PROMPT: Close to Home

Daily writing prompt
Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.

Exhibition: Bigfoot! (a.k.a. The Sasquatch Museum.) It’s not very close, but it is by far the closest of this nation’s many Bigfoot and Sasquatch related collections.

Spring Swerve [Free Verse]

Photograph taken at Jvari Pass in the Republic of Georgia as a rain cloud works up the valley. The previous day, it had snowed.
Spring can swerve.

White patches,
holdouts from yesterday's snow,
are melted by today's rains.

Buds no sooner form
than are encased in ice.

No self-respecting Summer
day could bring snow.

Winter won't hatch
a butterfly.

Autumn can't turn
a red leaf back to green.

But Spring can swerve.

Invaders [Haiku]

Photograph taken in Tbilisi, Georgia near Tbilisi Reservoir in Late Spring.
Spring glade:
small patch of light blue nests
in a yellow sea.

DAILY PHOTO: Tbilisi Scene from Queen Darejani Palace

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A photograph taken in Tbilisi, Georgia with Metekhi Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the fore (left) and Narikala Fortress in the background (probably from Queen Darejani Palace.)

Redbud [Haiku]

Photograph taken in Tbilisi, Georgia in late Spring. The pink flower buds appear to be from a Redbud tree.
dense clusters
of pink flower buds
brighten the trail.