FRIDAY's FAVE FIVE

more participants at Susanne at Living to tell the Story.

1. It starts to be very windy and very wet too. In short it rained every day. My asthma which I had since beginning of this year had completely disappeared in the dry climate of the South of France, and now it had come back after 4 days ! I had thought it had disappeared forever. So I have to use my puff again.

Of course it is not very inspiring to go outside, so I spent my time mostly at the computer.



I did a new collage of Toby our grandson for the frame in the living room. He changes so quickly ! In a few days he will be three years old !

2. It had been quiet a long time since Dominique, Nicole and I had lunch together. We took the risk to be blown away and being wet like sponges and went to "our" Asian restaurant and had a very nice meal. During our chats, we decided to celebrate New Years Eve together with other friends at Dominique's.

When I came home I had an idea for an invitation and 



and created this, which took me some time !

3. It's rather strange that the flowers in my pots in the front yard are still blooming ! In the backyard I had already taken them out of their pots. 



As I don't like garden work and reduce it to a minimum, I had bought these fake plants for the winter, to put in my pots in the front yard. To fix them in the pot's earth, I needed some crooked wire, which I fixed in the balls and now I only have to stick them in the pots. But first I have to take the flowers out, even if they are still blooming. I am convinced that we won't have a real autumn weather, the leaves on most of the trees are still green, but immediately go into winter temperatures and then everything will be frozen. Now I wait for a day the sun is shining or at least that it is not raining to put the plants in the pots.

4. Our deep freezer had a thick lay of ice and needed badly to be cleaned and defrosted. During the whole week I composed meals with things which were still unused. I even baked a cake, which I had done once, but it was eaten by cat Arthur because it stood on the table. This time I hid it ! The rest of the things I brought over to Dominique and then when the freezer was ready, I did a big shopping and now it is full again.

5. I had decided not to paint cats anymore, but just abstract paintings. I was so enthusiastic, that I sprayed my colors on my neighbors painting, pullover and jeans ! Even the one sitting on the other side of the table got some blue spots. We all laughed and I had to slow down and paint a little more carefully.

I don't know yet what will come out of my painting ! Ever since my teacher had told me "to free myself" I do it with my brush !

THE ZERO EXPLANATION ATTEMPT

more participants at Jenny Matlock's Alphabet Thursday

Now I am wrong again ! Last week I wrote for Y (see here) just a letter ahead, and with my personal logic, I continued to be one letter ahead that means I ended this alphabet round one week to early with the letter Z !

Raking my brain for a post with a "Z" word, I had zero ideas, which gave me the idea to write about zero. Which meant I would write about nothing ! But this was a big mistake.

After having learned that zero came via French zéro from Venetian zero, which (together with cypher) came via Italian zefiro from Arabic صفر, ṣafira = "it was empty", ṣifr = "zero", "nothing" which was a translation of the Sanskrit word shoonya (śūnya), meaning "empty",  I was breathless and thought it would become a very difficult post.

Having read about "zero" in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, Islamic world, Greeks and Romans, my general knowledge seemed to be improved, although I have to admit that I nearly fell asleep.

I learned that the first known English use was in 1598, which was rather late compared to the above mentioned countries.

When I started to read the zero use in math, where I had always been a zero at school, I thought that now at vintage age the part of my brain concerning math would have improved, I tried to understand :

Please read zero instead of O

Addition: x + 0 = 0 + x = x. That is, 0 is an identity element (or neutral element) with respect to addition.
Subtraction: x − 0 = x and 0 − x = −x.
Multiplication: x · 0 = 0 · x = 0.
Division: 0⁄x = 0, for nonzero x. But x⁄0 is undefined, because 0 has no multiplicative inverse (no real number multiplied by 0 produces 1), a consequence of the previous rule; see division by zero.

I can understand if you just skip this part.

So I came to the conclusion that for me zero is a person who is a zero in something  like me in maths or if I have 1 Euro and add a zero then suddenly I have ten Euros and if I add even more zeros I would be a rich girl.

I think now I have understood the meaning of zero.