Happy Easter!

Every year I make up an original puzzle for my youngest to solve so he can find his Easter treats. He just turned 19 so I have to make them challenging. I figured I'd share the one I just made, in case someone else would like to try it. It's in a form that I invented myself.

There are 5 shapes in 7 different colours with letters on them. You place them into the blanks to make words and sentences. The shapes and colours are in repeating patterns. ie if there were only 2 colours, they'd alternate. If there were only three shapes, they'd go diamond, cross, star, diamond, cross, star for example.

Here are the blanks typed out. Except for the last line, each line has one word. The "," are commas, not apostophe's. The solution is a cryptic clue.

_ _ _,
_ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _
_ _
_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _
_ _ _
_ _ _, _ _ ?

You can print it out by accessing this file:
Fill in the blanks.

The shapes are here:



You do get 4 hints to get you started:

The green triangle with the letter Y on it is the 3rd letter.
The yellow egg with the letter Y is the 19th letter,
The red square with the H on it is the 30th letter,
and the blue triangle with the Y on it is the 53rd letter.
...........................................................

So Happy Easter from me, my family and my dog Silas and my favourite plant!

Even Banking Can Be Spiritual?

Last post I mentioned something strange that happened to me and wondered what the Universe was trying to tell me. It's not the first time I've asked that question.

For instance, one day last September I decided to change my research to some kind of science, because I was fed up with religion and wanted nothing to do with spiritual things any more.

That day I received a letter from my mother, who lives in Canada. It included an international money order to be paid out to me, and papers authorizing me to take control of her Australian bank account. She had it for when she came to visit us in Australia, but because she isn't well enough to travel any more, she decided to close it. She wanted me to have the money that was in it.

So, that's fine. I was happy because the money would help me pay off the mortgage faster and I could use some of it for physiotherapy and exercise classes.

The next day I went to the bank. The first thing I did was go to a teller and give him the money order and my bank card and told him to put the money into my chequeing account. He said "No problem."

He swiped the card into the machine, typed something, then handed me a receipt. Done.

Then I went to the help desk with the legal papers to close my mother's account. They got me to wait about 20 minutes until I could talk to a customer service rep.

He looked at the papers, checked out my mothers signature, checked my ID and said everything was in order. He then took me to another teller to close the account and transfer her money over to my account.

There he discovered that the money order from the first transaction had been put into my mother's account, not mine. This weirded out both the bank teller and the Customer service rep- they couldn't understand how it could possibly have happened, since her account hadn't been signed over to me until 30 minutes later. My mother and I have totally different last names, the first teller couldn't have known she had an account there, and he couldn't have known what her account number was. The first transaction went quickly- half a minute or so, so it's not like the first teller had been looking anything up. Besides, the receipt I got had said it was put into my account. He had no idea I was going to do any other transactions either.

Weird, eh?

I'm still trying to think why this might have happened. I've got two
explanations,

1. I sometimes fritz out machines, so this may just be another example of that.

or

2. Maybe it's a message saying that even if I'm doing something as boring and as straightforward and non-spiritual as depositing a cheque in a bank, I'm still going to have the spiritual with me.

Of course there's always the explanation that it was some weird coincidence, but if so, it must have been really unlikely or the bank employees wouldn't have been so freaked out.

How a Backhoe Broke my New Year's Resolution

Hi

Hope you all had a great holiday!

We were away, so I didn't get to make a New Year's resolution until last night. I was thinking about how many things worried me and I decided that this year I wasn't going to be afraid of anything any more.

I was quite happy with this decision, and felt much better once I'd
made it. I then started to plan how I could make it come about.

Cue to this morning. I'm walking my dog at a huge park which is only a block away from my house. It has a swimming pool, many football fields, tennis courts, a dune area and a bicycle path that winds around a couple of its small hills. Currently they are upgrading it so there are a lot of tractors, trucks and backhoes driving around the place.

Anyway, I'm walking my dog behind the swimming pool complex and cut across a couple of unmowed fields to get to an area behind the tennis courts. I notice that one of the backhoes is coming up behind me. It looks like it's heading straight for me.

I decide to go around a hill to hide from the driver, but I can see by looking at the shovel which is poking up above the hill that he's turned to follow me. There is a row of bushes next to the path I'm on, so I quickly take dog behind them and reverse my direction.

He passes me by a few hundred feet, but then must have seen me, because he reverses so he's following me again. At this point I come to a clearing where there are two other people walking their dogs and letting them run free.

I join this group and I point to the backhoe and say- "I could swear that thing is following me!"

After I pointed at the machine, the backhoe takes off to the direction it came from and starts digging, exactly where it was before.

I've been followed by cars before, but never a backhoe! I wonder what the universe is trying to tell me. :)