It's No April Fooling. That's Indeed my Blogging Central

Today’s is April 1. That means April Fool’s Day. I’ve known the significance or triviality depending on your point of view, of April 1 since elementary school. And there were always some enterprising pranksters who would pull a stunt on two on unsuspecting souls. Even the newspapers were guilty, coming up with some make-believe headlines to beguile the gullible or the unwitting among us.

However, I’ve never known the origin of the “festival” of sort. So what better day to look it up than today, and to Wikipedia I turned. Believing that it’s not a April Fool’s day rendition, I learned that one source puts it as “in some way or other a relic of those once universal festivities held at the vernal equinox, which, beginning on old New Year's Day, the 25th of March, ended on the 2nd of April.” That it is a European “invention” seems beyond doubt as I note further that “French and Dutch references from 1508 and 1539 respectively describe April Fools' Day jokes and the custom of making them on the first of April.”

I for one do not subscribe to April fooling, typifying it as an act of indulgence that only serves to derive some laughter from the reaction of embarrassment at best from others upon realization that they have been had, no matter how benign or innocuous the hoax, which is exactly what it is, turns out to be. However, I do put myself on higher alert lest I fall victim to these practical jokes as they are called, on April 1.

After last night’s excitement over the semi-final mismatch between the Gators and the Bruins, I hope today will be a day of serenity free of April fooling so that I could prepare myself for the grand finale that will play out tomorrow night, not that I have any doubt who will repeat as champion as the Buckeyes obviously does not fit the bill.

The first thing I noticed when I looked out of our bedroom window this morning was an ascending air balloon, just over the tree canopy. By the time I grabbed my Nikon L6 and went up to the 3rd floor, the air balloons already numbered six. And the scene was just like right out of the sky in New Mexico as seen in many postcards.

The soaring air balloons from my top room window.

The grid-like outline is the wire netting encasing the outside of
the window through which the shot was taken.

Our friend, Yu Huei, treated us to a breakfast at Einstein Bros Bagel, which is within walking distance from our new home. This is our second visit to an Einstein Bros outlet (the first one being in St. Pete). As is at the first one, this one has many tastefully rendered pictures hung on its walls. Here are some fine examples. Now I know it is Melvyn (top) and Elmo (bottom) Einstein's house.

This is the coffee corner with the array of
different flavored brews for the connoisseurs.

As is evident, Elmo is bald headed while Melvyn is full-bearded.

What a fabulous tag team in bageldom.

Being along Fowler Avenue, the outlet also offers a great view of the scenes of life going on outside from the vantage point of behind the glass partition, cut off from the cacophony of the hustle and bustle. The top image juxtaposes the overhead lamp with its wide-angled conic lamp shape in the outlet over a fluttering American flag by the roadside.

On second thought, perhaps I should've trimmed the edges
so that the shot would look like a heavenly hanging lamp
shining upon the land of the free, their axes
(the centerline of the lamp and the erect flag pole) in perfect alignment.
The white blob in the sky is possibly a reflection
of the lamp on the glass window.

Then I caught sight of this moving advertisement, one of Busch Gardens with its trademark monster ride, a sheer vertical drop dictated by gravity called the Sheikra.

This is consumerism at its best,
repeated assault on our senses (in this case, sight)
to make sure the mental image stays.

Back to our home after watching life going by us in a bit, it's blogging time. And for that I have set up my own blogging command center tucked at a corner of the kitchen (there are two such corners each complete with a corner table top with drawers and an eye-level fluoresecnt light that emits a smooth light) so that both my wife and I can engage at our respective activities together, she doing the cooking at close proximity. And that's one reason why we bought this house.

This is the basic setup minus the sound system and the printer
that would complete the blogging command post, which reminds
me that some time in the near future we should get ourselves a LCD monitor.
Then again maybe NOT. Why spend money just because it's there?
And yes, there is a message here somewhere.