Yesterday was the family get-together day.
My folks showed up early for lunch and a game of Scrabble while BC was busy taking his test and, after that, a nap.

They knew I'm thinking about getting a digital camera, so they brought their old one to try out. Just the camera. No instruction manual or accessory cables necessary to charge it up or anything like that. It's a 5.0 megapixel Olympus with several modes, although I have no idea what they do differently since I have no manual. I tried to take a few shots to see how they would turn out.


Mr. Grackle. He and his posse were hanging out frequently yesterday. (As you can see,
I haven't mowed my lawn yet, and I have almost as many weeds as blades of grass.)

There would have been more pics of Mr. Grackle and his posse, but Dad kept chasing them away with his unbridled enthusiasm:

"WHAT A MESSY EATER!" (Mr. Grackle flew away mid-sentence.) "What? There was more feed falling to the ground than going into his beak!"

"WOW, THAT'S PRETTY! WHAT IS THAT?" (Ms. Cardinal flew away mid-sentence.)

And so on. We did see many birds, though. Cardinals -- including what must have been a juvenile male -- a blue jay, a brown-headed cowbird, freaking house sparrows, robins, a couple of mourning doves, one of those grey birds I can't identify, many a grackle, and something reddish which I had thought was a house finch had made an appearance, usually up close. One really big grackle kept trying to come back to the feeder, but since it was close to empty, it swayed back and forth too much and he couldn't get his balance. You probably had to be there to see it for yourself, but it was pretty funny, especially after the second or third time when my normally quiet mother said, "Come back and try it again when you're not drunk!" We saw pretty much everything I've seen except starlings, the black and red birds I can't ID, and the orioles which are supposed to be attracted to my other feeder but haven't been yet.


Lookit me lookin' at you, Mr. Birdwatcher...DOH you forgot to say say cheezburger!

The pic of the mourning dove didn't turn out well due to the tall grass. I missed a lot of other photo ops while waiting for the 3x zoom to kick in (it kept resetting itself), and many were scared away by the flash I couldn't seem to turn off after Dad had calmed down a bit. I definitely want something closer to 6x-12x optical zoom and an instruction manual with my digital camera. I didn't get a pic of my folks (or of me, or of BC & Mel, or of my house, etc.) because the camera battery was dead by the time the Scrabble game was over.

They had been beating me around turn eight or ten while I was paying too much attention to the birds, but of course I won in the end. I mean that purely as information and not at all as gloating.

We met up with BC & Mel at the 75th Street Brewery and had a great time. I love that place, but it's usually a haven for chain smokers. It hadn't occurred to me that the smoking ban could take effect immediately, although I knew it had passed. So now we can go there without anybody's health being affected by stale smoke and without our clothes smelling like it afterward, as an added bonus.

It hasn't been very windy lately, so I think my new roof turbine has fixed the problem, but I won't know that for sure for another week or so.