Why use 1 word when you can use 6?

I'm reading a Clive Cussler novel, Polar Shift, which has been mostly entertaining. One annoying thing I read today was this sentence: "a shape like a flattened sphere". Umm.. you mean... a circle? or perhaps even 'circular'? Maybe Clive had a senior moment and couldn't recall the vocabulary word and his editor didn't catch it.

Here are some more photos that I've been meaning to publish for..over a month. They are from July 4th this year, although I could lie and say they were from my birthday this week cuz we saved a package of fireworks to shoot off last Saturday. As I said to Beth at the time, it felt naughty lighting fireworks at 9pm on a day NOT the 4th of July. I'm not sure why I took four pictures... I guess they were prettier in person.