Here's one more to go with your "Vexillology" post. It was what I immediately thought of when I saw what you posted.

YouTube

Sheldon Cooper presents Fun with Flags: Episode 1

Amy and I spent a good while producing this fun educational video. Then Leonard had to run in during the middle of the shoot and ruin it. Perhaps my next epi...

Winning Colors - was an American Hall of Fame Champion Thoroughbred racehorse and one of only three fillies to ever win the Kentucky Derby (1988). Though she was registered as roan, she was, in fact, a gray with a white blaze on her face. Winning Colors was bred by Echo Valley Farm near Georgetown, Kentucky owned by Donald & Shirley Sucher. The couple had previously bred the Hall of Fame filly, Chris Evert. During her racing career she was owned by Eugene V. Klein and trained by D. Wayne Lukas. 

In the spring of 1988, the large filly won the Santa Anita Derby, defeating colts her age by 7½ lengths. Sent to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby, she was up against a stellar field of colts including Risen Star, Seeking the Gold, Forty Niner, Regal Classic, and co-favorite Private Terms. As was her habit, Winning Colors broke fast and raced to the lead. Although Forty Niner made a charge in the homestretch, she held him off to win by a neck. In the Preakness Stakes, the second leg of the U.S. Triple Crown, Winning Colors finished third to Risen Star, who then won the 1½ mile Belmont Stakes by fifteen lengths while Winning Colors finished out of the money. Winning Colors was voted the 1988 Eclipse Award for Outstanding 3-Year-Old Filly. In 2000, Winning Colors was inducted into the United States' National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. As a broodmare, Winning Colors produced ten foals and six winners. Winning Colors was euthanized February 17, 2008, at the age of 23 as a result of complications from colic. She was in foal to Mr. Greeley. She is buried at Greentree Farm, a division of Gainesway Farm near Lexington, Kentucky.

YouTube

Kentucky Derby Flashback | Winning Colors 1988

Winning Colors becomes only the 3rd filly in 114 years to win the Kentucky Derby. Trained by D. Wayne Lukas and ridden by Gary Stevens, Winning Colors gave t...

Cute video!!

Xbalanque and Hunahpu (also known as the Maya Hero Twins are the central figures of a narrative included within the colonial K'iche' document called Popol Vuh, and constituting the oldest Maya myth to have been preserved in its entirety. After being invited to Xibalba by One-Death and Seven-Death, the Lords of the Underworld, to a game of Pok Ta Pok, a Mayan Ballgame, Hun Hunahpu (lit. One-Hunahpu) and Vucub Hunahpu (lit. Seven-Hunahpu) were defeated and sacrificed. Hun-Hunahpu's head was put in a tree. When Blood Moon, the daughter of Blood Gatherer, one of the Lords of the Underworld, passes by the tree, he speaks to her and impregnates her with his spittle. Her father finds out that she is pregnant and convenes with One-Death and Seven-Death. They decide that if Blood Moon is not willing to tell them who the father is, she should be killed. Blood Moon truthfully answers that she has not slept with anyone, which is taken as a lie because she is visibly pregnant. Thus, they order their Owl Messengers to kill her and bring back her heart as proof. She tells the owls the truth and they agree to spare her. They create a faux heart out of red tree sap which they bring back to the Lords of the Underworld. The owls then show her the way to the world above. Here she goes to the house of Xpiyacoc, the mother of Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu, who lives with One-Monkey and One-Artisan, the first born children of Hun Hunahpu which he conceived with Egret Woman. Blood Moon tells Xpiyacoc she is pregnant with her grandchildren. Xpiyacoc at first does not believe her and orders her - as a trial - to pick a big netful of corn ears from the garden of One-Monkey and One-Artisan. When Blood Moon arrives in the garden, however, there is only one maize plant. She calls upon the Guardians of Food and the corn plant magically produces enough ears to fill the net. Xpiyacoc now recognizes that Blood Moon is telling the truth. She later gives birth to the children, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. The sons—or 'Twins'—grow up to avenge their father, and after many trials, finally defeated the lords of the Underworld in a ballgame. The Popol Vuh features other episodes involving the Twins as well (see below), including the destruction of a pretentious bird demon, Vucub Caquix, and of his two demonic sons. The Twins also turned their half-brothers into the howler monkey gods, who were the patrons of artists and scribes. The Twins were finally transformed into sun and moon, signaling the beginning of a new age.[3] The Q'eqchi' myth of Sun and Moon, where he is hunting for deer (a metaphor for making captives), and capturing the daughter of the Earth Deity. In these cases, Hunahpu has no role to play)

Calling it a night………..

24 hours.....................

Yuki-onna (is a spirit or yokai in Japanese folklore that is often depicted in Japanese literature, films, or animation. She may also go by such names as yuki-musume ("snow daughter"), yuki-onago ("snow girl"), yukijoro (???, "snow woman"), yuki anesa ("snow sis"), yuki-onba ("snow granny" or "snow nanny"), yukinba ("snow hag") in Ehime, yukifuri-baba ("snowfall witch" or "snowfall hag") in Nagano. They are also called several names that are related to icicles, such as tsurara-onna, kanekori-musume, and shigama-nyobo. Yuki-onna appears on snowy nights as a tall, beautiful woman with long black hair and blue lips. Her inhumanly pale or even transparent skin makes her blend into the snowy landscape (as famously described in Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things). She often wears a white kimono, but other legends describe her as nude, with only her face and hair standing out against the snow. Despite her inhuman beauty, her eyes can strike terror into mortals. She floats across the snow, leaving no footprints (in fact, some tales say she has no feet, a feature of many Japanese ghosts), and she can transform into a cloud of mist or snow if threatened)

Yuki-onna (???) from the Hyakkai-Zukan by Sawaki Suushi from the 1700s.....................

Off to work........................

Zinnia - is a perennial plant belonging to the family Asteraceae. The flower is a great attractor of pollinators like butterflies and birds, and it's usually cultivated in butterfly gardens. The flowers come in various colors, hues, shapes, and sizes. The Zinnia is a low-maintenance plant that blooms typically around autumn and spring. The flower requires full sun and thrives on moist, fertile, and well-drained soil, with a pH level between 5.5 and 7.5. They are native to scrub and dry grassland in an area stretching from the Southwestern United States to South America, with a center of diversity in Mexico. Members of the genus are notable for their solitary long-stemmed 12 petal flowers that come in a variety of bright colors. The genus name honors German master botanist Johann Gottfried Zinn (1727–59).

Round 9..............................

American Gothic (is a 1930 painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood was inspired to paint what is now known as the American Gothic House in Eldon, Iowa, along with "the kind of people [he] fancied should live in that house". It depicts a farmer standing beside his daughter – often mistakenly assumed to be his wife. The painting's name is a word play on the house's architectural style, Carpenter Gothic. The figures were modeled by Wood's sister Nan Wood Graham and their dentist Dr. Byron McKeeby. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron evoking 20th-century rural Americana while the man is adorned in overalls covered by a suit jacket and carries a pitchfork. The plants on the porch of the house are mother-in-law's tongue and beefsteak begonia, which also appear in Wood's 1929 portrait of his mother, Woman with Plants. American Gothic is one of the most familiar images of 20th-century American art and has been widely parodied in American popular culture. From 2016 to 2017, the painting was displayed in Paris at the Musée de l'Orangerie and in London at the Royal Academy of Arts in its first showings outside the United States)

Nan Wood Graham (the artist's sister) and Dr. Byron McKeeby (the Woods' family dentist) in the Gallery at the Cedar Rapids Public Library, September 1942................................

also, a TV show that featured former Hardy Boy Shaun Cassidy (my sister was named after him, Mom was a fan) and it lasted one season.........

Calling it a night.....................

Bob Baffert - (born January 13, 1953) is an American racehorse trainer who trained the 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah and 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify. Baffert's horses have won a record six Kentucky Derbies, seven Preakness Stakes, three Belmont Stakes, and three Kentucky Oaks. According to his supporters, Baffert's style and personality, combined with his success, have made him a target for controversy. Over 30 horses Baffert trained have failed drug tests. Baffert has paid out over $20,000 in fines, but compared against over $321 million in career earnings. He routinely challenges most sanctions, usually agreeing to accept fines but vigorously fighting suspensions. Horse owner and racing reform advocate Barry Irwin has stated, "He's Mr. Teflon." In raw numbers, most of Baffert's medication violations were for exceeding allowed amounts of authorized medications such as phenylbutazone, a pain medication commonly administered to horses. However, his violations for use of prohibited medications has sparked controversy.

In 2021, the post-race test of Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit showed 21pg/mL of betamethasone. In Kentucky, any amount of betamethasone detected in post-race testing is a violation and could result in a disqualification. It was Baffert's fifth violation in 13 months. At a news conference on May 9, Baffert initially said that Medina Spirit was never administered betamethasone. He told reporters that he would fight the issue "...tooth and nail." Nonetheless, Churchill Downs suspended Baffert from entering any horses at their racetrack pending the outcome of an investigation. Baffert responded by saying the situation "was like a cancel culture kind of a thing," a remark which earned him noticeable criticism from the press. On May 11, Baffert stated Medina Spirit had dermatitis, for which an ointment containing betamethasone was used. Sports Illustrated suggested that the positive drug test was a sign that Baffert's "leaking credibility" had reached "the saturation point." On June 2, 2021, Medina Spirit's split sample also tested positive and Churchill Downs suspended Baffert through the end of the 2023 Spring Meet.

Baffert with 2018 Triple Crown winner Justify

YouTube

Medina Spirit disqualified from Kentucky Derby, Mandaloun named winner

For the second time in the 147-year history of the Kentucky Derby, a winner was disqualified for a drug infraction.Bob Baffert's Medina Spirit, who crossed t...

Crossword (is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases that cross each other, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages that are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right ("across") and from top to bottom ("down"). The shaded squares are used to separate the words or phrases. The phrase "cross word puzzle" was first written in 1862 by Our Young Folks in the United States. Crossword-like puzzles, for example Double Diamond Puzzles, appeared in the magazine St. Nicholas, published since 1873. Another crossword puzzle appeared on September 14, 1890, in the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica. It was designed by Giuseppe Airoldi and titled "Per passare il tempo" ("To pass the time"). Airoldi's puzzle was a four-by-four grid with no shaded squares; it included horizontal and vertical clues. Crosswords in England during the 19th century were of an elementary kind, apparently derived from the word square, a group of words arranged so the letters read alike vertically and horizontally, and printed in children's puzzle books and various periodicals. On December 21, 1913, Arthur Wynne, a journalist born in Liverpool, England, published a "word-cross" puzzle in the New York World that embodied most of the features of the modern genre. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the inventor. An illustrator later reversed the "word-cross" name to "cross-word". Crossword puzzles became a regular weekly feature in the New York World, and spread to other newspapers; the Pittsburgh Press, for example, was publishing them at least as early as 1916 and The Boston Globe by 1917)

I used to specifically buy a local Sunday paper for the New York Times crossword (would give the rest of the paper to my parents), then I stopped many years ago. However, at work I can still get one sometimes and I have them in a folder to do when I feel like it.

___________
Calling it a night…………

I used to work crossword puzzles a lot years ago. Not so much now.

Dominoes or Domino's

Dominoes - is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ends. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also called pips or dots) or is blank. The backs of the tiles in a set are indistinguishable, either blank or having some common design. The gaming pieces make up a domino set, sometimes called a deck or pack. The traditional European domino set consists of 28 tiles, also known as pieces, bones, rocks, stones, men, cards or just dominoes, featuring all combinations of spot counts between zero and six. A domino set is a generic gaming device, similar to playing cards or dice, in that a variety of games can be played with a set. Another form of entertainment using domino pieces is the practice of domino toppling. The earliest mention of dominoes is from Song dynasty China found in the text Former Events in Wulin by Zhou Mi (1232–1298). Modern dominoes first appeared in Italy during the 18th century, but they differ from Chinese dominoes in a number of respects, and there is no confirmed link between the two. European dominoes may have developed independently, or Italian missionaries in China may have brought the game to Europe. The name "domino" is probably derived from the resemblance to a kind of carnival costume worn during the Venetian Carnival, often consisting of a black-hooded robe and a white mask. Despite the coinage of the word "polyomino" as a generalization, there is no connection between the word "domino" and the number 2 in any language. The most commonly played domino games are Domino Whist, Matador, and Muggins (All Fives). Other popular forms include Texas 42, Chicken Foot, Concentration, Double Fives, and Mexican Train. In Britain, the most popular league and pub game is Fives and Threes.

Comment: The only dominoes I've ever played is online.

Domino's - Domino's Pizza, Inc., trading as Domino's, is a Michigan-based multinational pizza restaurant chain founded in 1960 and led by CEO Russell Weiner. The corporation is Delaware-domiciled and headquartered at the Domino's Farms Office Park in Ann Arbor Township, near Ann Arbor, Michigan. As of 2018, Domino's had approximately 15,000 stores, with 5,649 in the United States, 1,500 in India, and 1,249 in the United Kingdom. Domino's has stores in over 83 countries and 5,701 cities worldwide.

Comment: I know they have good prices on their pizzas, but I can't stand their crust. And for me the curst is very, very important. I'd rather go to Pizza Hut or our local Hometown Pizza and spend a little more money or make my own. I make a pretty good pizza.

Their Hawaiian Pizza is one of my favorites, still haven't tried their Tots yet......

Extreme Ironing ((also called EI) is an extreme sport in which people take ironing boards to remote locations and iron items of clothing. According to the Extreme Ironing Bureau, extreme ironing is "the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt." Part of the attraction and interest the media has shown towards extreme ironing seems to center on the issue of whether it is really a sport or not. It is widely considered to be tongue-in-cheek. Some locations where such performances have taken place include a mountainside of a difficult climb; a forest; in a canoe; while skiing or snowboarding; on top of large bronze statues; in the middle of a street; underwater; in the middle of the M1 motorway; in a keirin cycle race; while parachuting; and under the ice sheet of a frozen lake. The performances have been conducted solo or by groups)

FYI: From my Fun Facts topic folder.

_______________

Off to work......................