Random Thursday (or the adventure of the black slug)

Or Thursday random. I've tried it both ways.

Spring approaches. Although we've had very little winter, with flowers in bloom since December, there's a distinct change now. More flowers and blossoming trees, more people in flip-flops (even when it's raining,) more people sitting outside in the sun.

And more strangeness. Today, at the coffee shop, I at first thought the man sitting by the window had a newfangled bluetooth receiver in his ear. It was large and smooth and black and curled, and looked very much like this picture of almost-entwined banana slugs (except for the color.)

Here in the Pacific NW we know about slugs - common brown ones that infest the garden, and the exotic yellow, spotted or black slugs that live in the rain forest. When I googled "black slug" I found 450 pictures on Flick'r alone, proving that these slithery natives can be as fascinating as they are off-putting.

If I lived somewhere else, I might have thought of another image when I saw the gentleman's very specialized earring (an earring it was, by the way - he wore two of them, and neither one looked electronic) but here - no contest. Slugs.

I wasn't quite close enough to read the words tattooed around his neck.

The amaryllis bloomed gloriously, then faded away. As a memento I'm using its picture as a screen saver for a while.