Coffee Share 220318: Free Pi

This essay was shared on Natalie’s Weekend Coffee Share at this link.

Hello.

I’m so glad you stopped by.  It’s been a busy and productive week so Let me tell you the quick version. I have new lizard facts and observations. I also have 3 new flash fiction stories to share.

I was tired of writing small experiences of Stub and his buds so I studied up and found some relevant and fun facts.

The Blue Belly Lizard (aka: Fence Lizard) despite not liking to be held much are often kept as pets. There is lots on the web tabout how to care for them.  I’ll not be doing that, but just enjoying their living behind our brick planter box and trying to discern their ways.

They live from 5 – 7 years, grow only to about 6 inches (just over 150 mm) and it’s now verified that they can change their skin color to match their environment – except for their iconic blue belly.  That stays bright blue.  I’ve been trying to catch a photo of one of their displays of their cool neon green, but, A) they don’t do it often and B) they’re not keen on showing it off.  I did manage to catch a couple of them, um, let’s call it playing in the sun (but I really have no idea what they were doing other than it looked fast, rowdy and fun) until I came upon them at which time they stopped, starred at me like the most unwelcome guest to the party ever.   Fine, just give us a quick smile — and  “click” — got it.  You can carry one. Excuse the blur – they wouldn’t let me get very close.

The photo did not capture as much green as I saw, but recall their natural color starts with the color of this guy’s hind leg. The green covered his back and much of his tail.  This feat of changing one’s skin color is fascinating and I’d like to know more about how they manage it.

Oh, I did update my coffee share last week, but who goes back and reads those?  I’ve had now two Stub sightings, so the old man is still with us.  In his reduced condition, he is nowhere near to 6 inches long, but the bugs he hunts don’t seem to discriminate and he looks otherwise healthy and well fed.

Then writing this week. A devoted Wilson reader would have consumed three stories this week.  Two were new 99-word items and the third was a 1000 word normal short story

• The first one for the week was from The Carrot Ranch asking for a story about “Free Pie” It seems that the college where Charli teaches decided to celebrate “Pi Day” by giving out free slices of pie.  After high school, I attended a vocational college to study Electronics Engineering. In those days, they insisted that we use only slide rules to do our work, but after 2 semesters the overwhelming popularity of pocket calculators was undeniable so they opened their doors to these silicone miracles. We loved the change of course, but could afford only the most basic – which did not yet include a Pi key. Anything to do with analog sine waves is based on Pi – so we had to memorize it.  To this day – I can still instantly pull from the much older gray matter the digits: 3.1415926 without looking it up. Most folks, if they understand anything about Pi, have to stop at 3.14 (~ March 14, thus Pi day). Anyway, This prompt took me to a memory of a friend who I painted my way through (later real) college with and a job he described that involved real “free pie”.  I think this is pretty funny. My 99-word story is fiction but highly based on his memory, told to me back in the 1970s. Here’s the link to “Free Pie Day”.
• The second 99-word story came from a KL Caley photo, She asked us to tell a story of where some dark stairs went. I again chose to produce a 99-word story because I want to master this art form and, frankly, I find that I can normally produce something decent in just a few hours. I really like my result for this challenge and hope you’ll spend a quick 30 second with:  A Deeper Trauma :: N2W 220317
• Finally, if you still have 3 minutes for a quick dreamy visit to a tropical island, I hope you’ll spend them on my final short story for the week: The Laps of Life  This is the kind of thing that happens in a man’s mind when he’s — um, well, just give it a read and you’ll see. It’s a fun flash fictional story where I play with the narrator voice versus pure character dialog.

Photo by Asad Photo Maldives on Pexels.com

That’s my week.  Thanks for stopping by. I’ll be making my rounds later today and this weekend to visit yours.

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I hope you have a great week queued up.

Blessings all! 

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