Pointless photo of the day:

A bit fuzzy, but posting it because I liked it anyway. If you look closely at the bottom flower, you'll see that the bee wasn't the only member of the insect world that belongs to the Sunflower Appreciation Society.

These particular sunflowers were all planted by the birds who visit Dad's feeders -- this is the flower that produces Black Oil seeds, if you're wondering -- so obviously they belong to the Sunflower Appreciation Society too.

So do I.

Pointless photo of the day:

High Bush-cranberries are edible but aren't the cranberries you have with Thanksgiving turkey (those are Bog Cranberries). Straight off of the bush they are very sour, but if you cook them with sugar and strain them to remove the pits, they make a cranberry-like syrup that gives the plant its name.

A relative, Low Bush-cranberry (Both are Viburnums. High Bush-cranberry, aka Pembina, is V. trilobum. Low Bush-cranberry is V. edule), also has edible berries, but since its strategy to spread its seeds is for the fruit to smell somewhat like a carcass when it's ripe (most animals -- even herbivores -- will take advantage of the energy to be found in a rotting dead animal), your house will smell uncomfortably like old sweatsocks while you're cooking the syrup down.

Not my choice, as you can imagine.

The plant in the picture is nursery stock, but the wild ones look very similar.

Actual new pointless photos

The problem with Dad having a cat named Bob (the tabby that you sometimes see on the blog) is that I sometimes think that Tom here should have been named Jesus. Then the other cat could be Jesus' Brother Bob...

Everybody needs a bit more Arrogant Worms in their lives, I figure.

One thing to note about the picture, by the way. It's hard to see here, but this cat is on a leash and wearing a harness. We used to let our cats roam free during the day when I was a kid, but I'm very much against it now. Free range cats kill millions (no, I'm not exaggerating) of birds, and often have much shorter lives themselves because of fights, illness, and injuries. Check out Cats and Birds for some good reasons to either keep your cat indoors or only let it out tethered and supervised.

On another note, Tom's a handsome dude, isn't he?

I'm going to do a couple of quick scheduled posts after this of a couple of things in the yard (once again, I didn't keep too many of the photos that I took yesterday. Thank Whomever for digital when it comes to bad photography), but here's one to start off with.

I'm honestly not entirely sure what this is and I'm too lazy to find out, but I thought that the speckled pattern was kind of cool. On the photography side, I love the bokeh I get from this lens. Cameraphones just can't do that.

Yet.

I'm sure that they will at some point.

Anyway, scheduled posts and then lunch. Type at you later.

The dawn of a new age

The pointless photo is not exactly picturesque, but then it's also slightly -- just slightly -- not pointless. Not enough to turn the blog orange (old, old joke, so never mind), but there is somewhat of a point to it.

This is my Dad's new modem.

Because of weirdness in his line, he's had to use an external modem since he first got internet service. A while ago an electrical storm fried it (which also managed to screw up his phone service, of course), so he had to call a serviceman in. The guy's reaction? "Wow. That's an old one". Cue forward to just about every phone-related switch and box connected to the line being checked and replaced where necessary, and everything works again. And, as I said, this is the new modem.

Note the antennae. Yep, built-in WiFi.

My Dad has WiFi for the first time, and he's found out that it causes what most of us have known for a while: constantly fiddling with your phone. Now, personally I don't even have internet at home (I don't have a computer, so it would be kind of silly), so I usually save most of my phone-fiddling for when I'm at work, but it's nice that now when I visit here I don't have to burn through my phone data. It's also nice that I can use my tablet for something other than saving things for later (when I can find WiFi). For Dad, though, it's been the revelation of doing his e-mailing and whatever else without having to come downstairs.

Like it says above, the dawn of a new age.

Good thing or bad thing, do you think? I'm of two minds, I suppose. None of us needs to be sitting more than we already are, really, but at the same time it's the way our world operates these days. I think that rather than good or bad I'll just say inevitable, and get back to the phone alert that rang while I was typing this.

After all, I don't have to feel guilty for checking them anymore. Dad's probably doing the same...

Congratulations?

Just a quick post (as usual) in "celebration" of the Turkey Brothers officially making it to Cat Shaming on Instagram.

Yep, Tom sitting on Bob because there wasn't enough room in the laundry basket was post-worthy.

And no wonder...

Pointless cat photo of last month or whenever

Looking out on September? Not at the time I took the picture, no, but I guess you can look at it that way.

Tom, who isn't allowed out unless he's on harness, has apparently decided that he needs to be out ALL THE TIME. Winter will cure that for a while, but I don't think that any of us are in a hurry for that kind of cure.



Anyway, there's a quick post. Bet you thought that I'd forgotten how to do it, right?