The missing Jolly

Welcome, friends!  I hope you all had a marvelous weekend!  The sun shone here, which was a welcome relief after weeks of clouds and rain.  Sadly, I must report that Jolly still has not returned.  He was last seen somewhere in the western UK, after my friend Jeannie found him playing with her boys in the Netherlands last week and sent him on his way home.  I’m not sure if he got lost, or simply distracted, but a friend in Western England said she spotted him frolicking in the snow on Friday.  Nonetheless, life goes on and I have a commitment to my readers to start the week out with humour and smiles, so I shall do my best to proceed sans Jolly.  Oh, and if anybody sees him, would you please tell him that he is needed and send him on his way?

So, pull up a chair and grab a cuppa and let’s try to find something fun or funny to start our week, shall we?

Through the roof …

Imagine that you are lying on the bed in your  home, chatting on the phone with a friend, when suddenly an 80-pound life raft crashes through the roof of your house and lands on your bed!  That is exactly what happened to Luce Rameau of Miami, Florida last week, and at first she thought a bomb had gone off in her home.

Turns out a Royal Canadian Air Force helicopter was passing overhead when something must have snapped, and the life raft dropped from the bottom of the helicopter, through Ms. Rameau’s roof and onto her bed.  The Canadian Air Force had been conducting an off-shore training exercise and somehow the raft “separated from the helicopter”.

The Canadians are good guys and are planning to help Ms. Rameau with accommodations and other support.  Ms. Rameau was shaken, but not injured.

Homeless …

For Fran Clarke, it was just another day, showing up early for her job at Cobden Technical School in Victoria, Australia.  Until she discovered that the school had sheltered one of the homeless overnight …

Yes, this cute little critter sheltered for the night in the school, apparently sleeping on the couch

“Sitting up right on the couch was the koala. He didn’t want to leave.”

Now, some thought he looked like he was ready to attend classes, but I thought he looked more like he was patiently waiting for breakfast to be served.

What would you do?

If you were a mail carrier for the United States Postal Service, and part of your route was a nudist colony, would you feel comfortable delivering their mail?

One substitute postal worker in Florida refuses to enter the RV complex where octogenarians are not wearing clothes.  To be sure, she does put the mail in the boxes, but when there is a package or other item that cannot be left in the box, she leaves a notice in the box and returns the item to the post office, where the recipient can either travel to the post office to pick it up – presumably after donning clothing – or re-schedule delivery for a time that the regular carrier is on duty.

Since she is a substitute carrier who only works two days a week, it seems to me a minor problem, and the USPS apparently agrees, saying, “Carriers are not required to deliver beyond the centralized delivery units. We can assure all customers that mail and packages are being delivered according to national centralized delivery requirements.”

I suppose one’s point of view varies based on which side of that fence one sits.  I take the side of the carrier on this one, though … I prefer, with an exception or two, to see people with appropriate clothing.  I am old and I can tell you that old bodies are not exactly a sight for sore eyes.

I found it interesting that other reasons for carriers refusing to deliver to certain locales include aggressive wild turkeys in Rocky River, Ohio, and fear of contracting bedbugs at a Detroit apartment building.

Whimsical Artwork

Hakan Keleş is an architect, academician and illustrator in Turkey.  He has done some amazingly fun artwork … I will let him tell you about it in his own words …

I started to draw big characters on street photos I took with my smartphone, named “Lilliputs series”. The name comes from the novel “Gulliver’s Travels”, the city of dwarfs. Here, we, real people, become dwarfs.

Some of them are kind of monsters, some of them are influenced from real people and the others are a bit humorous. They are from different urban areas I visited in Turkey.

And here are a few of his drawings …

Aren’t those fantastically fun?

And now, my friends, I am afraid that you must go off to work, and I must tackle some chore or another.  Did I do okay without Jolly?  With any luck, he will return home soon! I hope you have found a bit of something that brought a smile to your face this morning, and I hope you will share that smile with somebody who needs one today.  Give smiles, give hugs – they cost you nothing and may mean so much to the receiver.  Keep safe, keep warm, and have a great week!  Hugs ‘n love from Filosofa!