We’ve been playing “the guessing game” quite a lot around the house recently. Since I first introduced this little gem to Lily, she can’t seem to get enough. Here’s how it works: Someone thinks of something and offers clues to the rest of us. “I’m thinking of something purple” or “I’m thinking of a food that is yellow” or “I’m thinking of something white and cold inside.”

If Lily is offering the clues, they generally run along the lines of “this girl with long blond hair pricked her finger on a spinning wheel”, or “this girl went into the woods and found a cabin”, or “this girl has red hair and swims in the ocean.” Essentially, all of her clues are about girls from stories, most often a princess of some sort.

For Jack, though, things are different.

“It flies” is the only clue that Jack provides. From this clue, the answers are usually Buzz Lightyear, a kite, a duck, or an archaepteryx, which everyone knows is a flying dinosaur. When you guess right he says, “That’s right! It is an archaepteryx! Good job, Lily!”

I received an e-mail this morning with pictures of a sandstorm in Al Asad, Irag, on April 26, 2005. If you haven’t seen these yet, be sure you do… they’re truly amazing.

A Marine Corps News article said:

A dust storm similar to special effects on the big screen bellowed across the western desert of Iraq on April 26. The storm was spawned near the border of Syria and Jordan. Forward Operating Base Korean Village experienced tornadoes around 2 p.m. The storm moved in a northeasterly direction until it reached Al Asad, around 6:45.

As the storm moved closer the sky changed to a shade of orange until total darkness blanketed the ground. The storm passed over in about 45 minutes, leaving a heavy sheet of dust in its wake. Forecaster say the wall of dust may have reached 4,000 to 5,000 feet.

This dust storm was a spectacular sight and may look worse than it actually was. No one was injured and no equipment was damaged here.

[See additional photos of this sandstorm]