It’s Wednesday, time again for Melli’s ABC photo challenge. We’re supposed to look for letters in common everyday things or in nature without actually manipulating anything to make the letter and without photographing the letter itself in a word or sign. We’re doing two letters a week, and this week it is O and P.

I originally thought I should look for oval-type Os. There is one lying sideways in the top scroll work here:

But then I thought the more circular O was okay since in printing in kindergarten you start with the ball and circle formations.

An O on a tree:

Several here:

Some on my dashboard:

Delectable Os (bought for research purposes only. Not!) I actually would have liked to have taken a picture of the display rack at Krispy Kreme, but felt too awkward to. If they hadn’t had a line of people waiting, I might have.

Cereal Os:

I had a hard time finding a P — until I realized they were all lazily lying on their sides.

Here are two head to head holding up a sign:

Here are two forming the base of a cart corral:

This one is a little trickier.

That was a decoration on top of a pillar in a little shopping center, and this is a similar, only more elaborate one above the entrance to our mall.

I can see a few other letters there as well!

You can head over to Melli’s to see what others found for Os and Ps today, and even join in yourself if you’d like.

Happy Wednesday!

Melli is hosting an ABC photo challenge in which we’re supposed to look for letters in common everyday things or in nature without actually manipulating anything to make the letter and without photographing the letter itself in a word or sign. We’re doing two letters a week, and this week it is M and N.

You’d think these would be pretty easy to find, but I didn’t find one of them easily.

In fact, I won’t describe…because I would embarrass myself…how I drove 15 minutes out of my way because I thought I remembered a house with a fence that had an N shape to it — but the curve of the fence curved under instead of over, making it not an N shape, but since I was in the neighborhood of a Sonic and love their munchy, crunchy ice, and we don’t have one right nearby home, I decided to stop and try one of their breakfast items, but apparently they weren’t open (who serves breakfast items and isn’t open at 8:15 a.m.? Then again, a lot of places are still without power from the snow — maybe that was the problem), so I drove 15 minutes back home,found an N in my own neighborhood, then almost got my car stuck in the ice in my own driveway (frozen from the meltoff from yesterday), then tried to download my photos into Picasa only to discover, in place of all my photos, little icons that look like a torn pieces of paper, which, according to their “Help” section, means I need to rebuild my database, (but, they say, you should back up your pictures before doing so…but how can I do that when the pictures aren’t showing up? Argh. It did this once before and then fixed itself. Hopefully it will do so again, and then I will back up the pictures taken since the last time I backed them up and try the database rebuilding thing), BUT I did learn something new: that I could download pictures to Flickr straight from my camera and edit them there.

And that, my friends, is probably the worst sentence in the history of the English language.

But I emerge triumphantly facing this challenge with my M and my N! I got that done today if nothing else! (I did also happen to find a Q and R for future use as well!)

So here they are:

An M on the gate to Suzie-the-dog’s fence:

(I don’t know why it is in the shape of an M. Maybe the manufacturer’s name begins with M? Or maybe it was meant to be a decorative scroll and just happens to look like an M?)

And here are a couple of N’s I found on a house in the neighborhood (and I hope they didn’t see me taking a picture of their home and wonder what in the world I was doing):

You can find other participants to the ABC Challenge at Melli’s today, who I hope had a less eventful time of it this week. I am off to get breakfast now so I can become coherent again.

Melli is hosting an ABC photo challenge in which we’re supposed to look for letters in common everyday things or in nature without actually manipulating anything to make the letter and without photographing the letter itself in a word or sign. We’re doing two letters a week, and this week it is K and L.

K was by far the hardest one for me so far and the one I spent the most time looking for. Somehow I thought I’d find one in tree branches, and I was hoping my neighbors wouldn’t come out while I was walking around with my camera in hand and ask me what I was doing.

“I’m looking for a K.”

“A ‘K’? What do you mean?”

“I need to find something in the shape of a K.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to post it on the Internet.”

“Ooooookaaaay…”

I don’t know my neighbors very well, and I can imagine the impression this would make…

But thankfully no one came out while I was scouting for a K.

When I picked Jesse up from basketball practice, I drove around the parking lot looking at trees and such, but I saw no Ks there, either. I did tell him what I was doing. It’s OK, he’s used to me by now. 🙂

Then he saw one on the way home, and took this picture for me while we were at the red light, so I could keep my eyes on the light, cars, and everything else a responsible driver is supposed to be watching rather than looking for Ks.

This is the side support structure for the crossbar that goes over the overpass from which traffic lights are hung.

Ls were much easier to find:

Wouldn’t you know I wouldn’t see that speck under the end table until after I had taken the picture, downloaded it, then uploaded it. But I will leave it because it is late and I need to go to bed, and so you’ll know my house isn’t perfectly kept. Just in case you entertained any thoughts that it might be.

You can check Melli‘s for other people’s adventures with K and L this week.

Happy half-way-through-the-week day!

Do you remember the Magic Eye craze several years ago: a picture of squiggly lines or confused images which didn’t make sense, but if you stared at it in just the right way, you’d see a 3D image.

I could never make those things work.

But we had wallpaper in our bedroom and bathroom made up of swirly images that, if I stared off into space for a while, thinking of something else, suddenly I’d see a picture take shape in the wallpaper.

I guess you could call it an optical illusion, or sometimes it is the optical version of a homonym — a shape or object that can look like several different objects. There probably is an official word for such things.

That is kind of the premise behind Melli‘s ABC challenge. We’re supposed to find everyday objects that resemble letters of the alphabet, but we’re not to put something together to make the shape, and we’re not supposed to photograph letters themselves in a sign. We’re taking two letters at a time, and this week we’re looking for I and J. But along with this challenge I wanted to share some other optical homonyms. I am saving the best for last!

First my I and J. You can see straight lines that could be used for an I everywhere, but I really wanted to find something with the top and bottom crossbar (I would have loved to have found a lower case i — I’ll be interested to see if any of the other participants did.) The closest I could come is this — the side of the CD holder on the computer desk.

The J I noticed a while back: this is a hook outside which will support hanging plants when the weather gets consistently warmer.

Some years back when this piano was new, the one thing I didn’t like about it was that I thought the book support on it looked like kidneys:

Then a friend pointed out that it also looked like an insect’s eyes or twin embryos. I don’t know if that made me like it any better, but it was interesting!

Our “sunroom” has wooden paneling, and right above the computer desk is what looks to me like an eye:

Also on the ceiling of this room is what looks to me like an animal’s face. It’s a high ceiling and I can’t get quite close enough to get a good picture of it, but here’s the best:

In real life it does look like a 3D image: it looks like it is emerging from the paneling.

For the record, I really don’t like Southwest-style decorating, either the color or the shapes (no offense to those who do), but other room renovations have taken precedence over this one, and we just haven’t gotten to it yet. This long shape looks like some kind of bug to me:

And this looks like a man with a Mohawk wearing a gray suit:

Finally, our church has a “ladies’ lounge” connected to the restroom.

The wallpaper is made of these white-on-white urns or vases with bouquets and garlands of flowers:

But I noticed one day that from across the room it looked like a series of Gene Shalit faces, complete with bow tie:

Don’t you think?

(For my international readers, Gene Shalit is a book and film critic whose trademark look includes bushy hair and a bow tie.)