Quest for the meaning of 'Lo'

This morning as I prepared to go to work I thought it would be best to check the thermometer.  As you can see the outside temperature was 'Lo.'  But, what does that mean?  I had no choice, I had to go outside and find out for myself!

So, the first thing I did was collect my defensive gear.  Today was a day for gloves and a beanie.  Lo, here I come!

At first I thought I would ride my trusty stallion, but on entering the carpark it could not be seen.  Wait, there it is in the middle hiding under the snow.  My stallion is cunning!

I turned to begin my quest for the meaning of 'Lo,' and Lo, there in front of me was my children's preschool.  I can only hope that my kids were sitting down to a warm breakfast.  But not me, I was on a quest!

 The early signs were not promising.  Perhaps I should have heeded this sign?  But my students were waiting for me, and so I had to press on.

Soon I came to a fork in the road.  Should I take the narrow road or the broad road?

I took the wide road and soon discovered that there was nowhere to rest in this quest for 'Lo.'

Unfortunately some other travellers were not as fortunate as I were...

When crossing the bridge that spanned the mighty river I could not help but notice another traveller distributing food to the birds that lay below the bridge.

Here is the sun rising as I cross the bridge.

 From below the bridge smoke could be seen rising from the murky waters below.

I pressed on...

 At this point I lost feeling in my legs.  It was if the little red man was controlling me!

 Here are some icicles.  In the background you can see the smoke stack for the communal heater.

 At this point I lost feeling in my cheeks.

 At last I see that I am nearing my destination

Only one more corner!

 When I look at this shopfront, I feel very sorry for the mannequins wearing nothing much...

At last I arrive at school.  Now I truly understand the meaning of 'Lo.'

I apologise for the low quality of the photo's.  I took all the pictures with my phone camera because that is the only camera I can operate whilst wearing my thick gloves.  You can click on the photo's for bigger, clearer images.
It was actually minus 22 degrees Celsius when I left home and my thermometer only reads down to minus 20.
Apparently the night before it was minus 27.  Cold eh?

The Mysterious Red Fruit

In my fruit bowl I have a red fruit.  Well at least I think it is a fruit.

The Ugly Duckling in my fruit bowl

I'm really not even sure how it got there.  Did I buy it by accident?  Was it a gift from one of my wife's students?  Maybe it is an advanced listening device installed by our landlords?

In any event it has been sitting on our fruit bowl now for a couple of weeks.  When it first arrived we thought it was some sort of tomato because it was green, like a tomato that isn't ripe.  Now it is red.  Does that mean we can eat it now?  Whatever it is?

I suspect that it is one of those Chinese fruits that are so popular at the moment.  Some poor Chinese peasant probably picked it and put it in a train.  The train travelled a thousand kilometres to the port.  From the port the ship took our little fruit across oceans before arriving somewhere in Europe.  Then some truck driver drove another thousand kilometres to deliver it to our shop.
Now, somehow it is sitting in my fruit bowl.

I must eat it.  To do anything less would be insulting to the Chinese peasant who picked it from his (or her) tree, the train driver, the captain of the ship, the truck driver and the shop assistants who made it possible for this fruit to sit in my fruit bowl.  Even though I still have no idea what it is.

Does anybody know what it is and what I should do with it?

Here is another view (if it helps)

Getting ready for NaNoWriMo

Today is October 27

It’s approaching the end of the month, so of course I have a lot of things on my mind.  For example making sure I have recorded all of my hours at work; making sure I have paid all the bills due this month; finishing off my Australian tax return (all I have to do now is lodge it); and preparing for NaNoWriMo.

Last year my preparations for NaNoWriMo were pretty much non-existent.  I found out on the 1^st of November and managed to type up almost 2,000 words in the first day.  I had no plot, nor did I really have any characters.  All I had was an introduction to a story which didn’t fully coalesce until a few days later.

So, in order to avoid the mistakes of last year I have spent the last few weeks and months preparing.  So, here is what I have done:

1. Read some books.  In the last couple of months I have managed to read an assortment of books including:

• The Rage Against God by Peter Hitchens - read about my thoughts of that book here
• The Shack by William P Young
• Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Xenophobe’s Guide to the English and the Polish
• Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler
• The Secret of Happy Parents by Steve Biddulph
• Eastern Standard Tribe by Corey Doctorow
• And a few eBooks including Robert Louis Stephenson’s Fables

(I would like to thank my sister for introducing me to the Book Depository, which delivers books worldwide without charging postage and handling)


2. I have updated my author profile on the NaNoWriMo website

3. I have tried to blog more regularly in order to get back into the habit of writing (not very successfully)

4. Blocked most of my Facebook applications and installed Tweetdeck so I don’t get distracted

5. I have an idea for a story and the glimmerings of a plot (I don’t know if ‘glimmering’ is the right word here, but I’ve used it anyway)

6. Asked my wife if she minded I spend two or three hours a day sitting in front of the computer every night.  Funnily enough she didn’t seem to mind too much.

7. Downloaded the latest version of Scrivener.  The software of writers.


That’s it, I’m ready now.  Only a few more days to go before I start my next novel adventure.

CAPTAIN RHUBARB AND THE IMAGINATION BUCKET

This is a feeble attempt at a children's story.  Tell me of you like it!  If you are a bit of an artist/illustrator then feel free to help me with some pictures...

Once upon a time, a long long time away (after about a million sleeps), there was this boy.  I can’t remember this boys name, but it might have been Tommy or Bobby or Alexander.  I don’t remember.

One day when this boy was playing with his father’s telescope he looked up into space and he saw a spaceship.  It was a very small spaceship far far away.  Inside the spaceship he could see a little girl calling for help.

Oh no!  He thought to himself.  I have to rescue her!  So he found his father’s telephone and called the Emergency Space Services…

Hello, this is the ESS, how can we help you?…  What? A girl trapped in a spaceship?…  Yes, we’ll send our fastest spaceship straight away!

The problem was that the fastest spaceship wasn’t very fast at all.  In fact it was very slow.  Very very slow…  It was so slow that when Billy or Timmy or Archibald watched it through his father’s telescope he could hardly see it moving.

Danny or Sammy or Frederick was very sad for the little girl in the spaceship far far away.  But then he had an idea!  He went down into the basement, looked through his mother’s cupboards until he found something.  It was his imagination bucket!

The imagination bucket was very old, even older than his school teacher.  It was made of wood and had a metal handle.  But it was a very special bucket because whenever he imagined something, the something that he imagined would come out of the bucket.

And so Jimmy or Becky or Theodore started imagining things.  But all he could imagine was picking strawberries at his grandfather’s farm.  Soon the basement was full of strawberries and so the boy went upstairs and imagined some more.

Next he imagined picking potatoes, and as they came out of the bucket his house filled up.  Then he imagined picking rhubarbs until there was a mountain of rhubarbs.

Then he imagined that all of his friends were imagining picking imaginary things until soon the pile of imagined things coming out his imagination bucket reached to the sky!

But the little girl was still trapped in the spaceship.  And so the little boy (I don’t remember his name) imagined that he crept silently into a dark cave and rescued a super hero from a dragon.  And the name of this super hero was CAPTAIN RHUBARB.

Captain Rhubarb flew out of the imagination bucket as fast as lightning.  He flew up over the mountain of rhubarbs, around the pile of imaginary imagined things and up into space.  He flew past the very slow spaceship of the ESS.

And then, Captain Rhubarb landed on the spaceship where the little girl was stuck.  The little girl was very happy to see Captain Rhubarb and she invited him inside to have a cup of lemon tea.

Captain Rhubarb and the little girl then waited patiently for the ESS spaceship to arrive.  When they finally got back to earth the little girl gave the little boy a little kiss.  And they all ate strawberries and potatoes and rhubarbs for the rest of the month.