Not so Fast Food

If you're a cannibal, an Olympic sprinter would be considered fast food.

~ Jarod Kintz

I have a few indoor photos to share. Pour a cup or a glass of something you enjoy and have a seat. There are always refills available upon request. I wonder if you can guess the reason for the above quote. Read on and you'll find out.


During the cold winter months, Skitty likes to position himself over the heating vent. This is not a dumb cat.






Of course, when the sun is shining, he'll just hightail it to the nearest warming rays. Give him a little scritch behind the ears (if you're not allergic), and let's move on. Skittles will be back before the end of the post.






This stemware has been around longer than I have. It belonged to my parents and was passed along to me quite a few decades ago. It's a large set and I keep finding more glasses in boxes as I try to empty them, once and for all. About a year ago, I thought I had all of the pieces put away in the china cabinet. But twice now, I've opened another box and found several more.






This house is the only place where there's been enough space to accommodate the full set - about 52 pieces in all shapes and sizes, so far. I may still find more. The cobalt blue stems have always appealed to me.






Anyone from the province of Nova Scotia might recognize this scene. It's supposed to depict the beautiful Peggy's Cove with its easily-recognizable white and red lighthouse up in the top right corner. It was a jigsaw puzzle given to me by Frank's son, Francis at Christmas time. We worked on it from time to time during January. I think it's about time to start another one.







And if Maritimers could recognize the previous image, Montrealers would certainly know this name. Schwartz's Deli is a smoked meat tradition for many of us from my native Montreal. It has gone through some changes through the years and the restaurant, which has been around since 1928 is now partly-owned by Celine Dion and her husband. Frank happened upon this packaged version of their ready-to-heat and eat smoked meat at our local Foodland - out here in the Ontario countryside. Whouldathunkit?






I've mentioned before how several ladybugs are wintering over inside our house. They came in during the late autumn seeking shelter from the cold and have become a regular sight on window ledges, walls and sometimes flower pots where we'll transfer them to the leaves of a houseplant when they seem to be in danger of getting washed down the kitchen drain. There's really not that many of them - probably a couple of dozen in all and possibly half of those will have died by the time spring has arrived, and we send the rest of them on their way. On any given day, we'll happen upon one or two of them and we do often find the dead ones here and there.

On this day, I was watching this lady bug pay very close attention to the body of one of its deceased comrades. At first I thought it was concerned about its state of lifelessness. It appeared to be trying to turn it over from where it had died on its back. As I kept watching through the macro lens, I witnessed what was really going on.

Have a look at the video. A word of mild warning to those of you who may be squeamish about such things. Please forgive the shaky quality and the going in and out of focus. Those of you who are reading this in email will probably have to click over to the blog to see the video.




Evidently, we don't feed our little house guests well enough. I have since read that cannibalism is rather common with ladybugs but we had no idea that this was going on under our roof.






Skitty will have to keep a sharper eye on things from now on.