Another Coffee in the Park

With the weather returning to a more moderate summer normal, we have been able to get back out on decent walks at decent times.

Thursday took us down to Main for our walk where Sue spotted bright, yellow daylilies which may be of use for an upcoming vibrant photo challenge. A good photographer will twist herself into whatever contortions are necessary.

Why not drive thru for coffee and why not take it to the park on a very nice day? And why not pose for approximately our thousandth selfie?

There was a gap opposite our bench, revealing all sorts of kids at the canoe club summer camp 1n their crafts.

I surreptitiously took various people candids, but I didn't  love most of them. I wasn't surreptitious about capturing a cyclist as he pedalled past. I don't think he exactly approved, but he was by in a flash, so there was nothing to be said.

Grabbing a drivethru coffee is a good thing, and sitting in a pretty park on a nice day is a good thing. Doing these two things simultaneously is a very fine thing, indeed.

The $343.17 Mishap

Late last week, I received an envelope from a bank we no longer deal with. I opened it on the weekend and at first thought that someone had made a $343.17 purchase on our supposedly defunct credit card. Then I saw the minus sign and understood that it was a credit.

That could only mean one thing:  that I had paid off the wrong credit card — the defunct Visa B instead of the current Visa A card. Silly me! I do these sorts of things on occasion.

We don’t even have that physical card since I shredded the last one because we don’t use it at all. Other than that card lingering on somehow, we don’t even have an account with that bank. 

It gets confusing.

I had mistakenly paid on the number of my old Visa card from Bank B that lingered in my bill paying list, but the verification snail mail came to Sue on her number. I learned that my card number is totally defunct, but the bank somehow still knew enough to credit Sue’s card number because the two cards had been joined, and Sue had been the primary cardholder.

Confused yet? Wait there is more.

We had no way to access the funds because we had no account with that bank. We just had a credit card on the books but no physical card in actual fact.

We would require a physical card, so that we could make purchases with it until we used up the $343.17. At lest that seemed like the best workaround.  

A phone call to the credit card division of the bank could not sort it out because we were calling from a new phone number than the one they last had a record of, and at time we couldn’t even for sure recall the old number enough to verify it.

We would have to go to a physical bank, get authenticated somehow, and only then call the credit card number back to get issued a new card. 

Thanks goodness, there is a physical bank in town. There wasn’t when we moved her, which is why we changed banks in the first place.

But first to find out old phone numbers. Was it our ancient number from Sarnia or our somewhat less ancient number from here?  I took a stab at our ancient Sarnia number and called Shauna to verify. She did. I was correct. (By the way, I still remember my boyhood number from 63 years ago and my friend’s number too. I wasn't quite so sure of our number from 20 years ago, but my memory did not fail completely.)

Meanwhile, what was our old number from here before we abandoned our landline, probably 8 to 10 years ago? Sue found old paperwork, and we were pretty sure that one of the two numbers (Sarnia or old number here) would be what the bank had on file. 

Phew! When he got to the bank we found that we were correct. The former landline was on file, and that got us started.

Much ID verification later, the teller worked us through authentication and set us up with the banking app on the spot and a top secret password to actually use once we logged in using Sue’s phone. We had to take the phone home to log in because Sue would require her email password to log into the app (why? we don’t understand), and she didn’t know it on the spot.

At home, she was able to complete the installation of the banking app, and anfter using the temporary password that the bank had given her, she set up a new, permanent password and so on and so forth.

Finally, she was fully authenticated and was only then able to call in to the credit card division and request a new credit card.

The new card will arrive in approximately ten days and will be a new number. We will then be able to use it to draw down the $343.17 by using it in place of the cards that we normally use.

The money was never permanently lost, but it was quite a foofaraw to get access to it.

In case you are wondering, yes my dears, I have deleted that particular credit card from my bill paying list to prevent myself from making that mistake again.

Fire and Lightning

Tuesday's excessive heat resulted in much lightning late that night. Sleep was being its elusive self yet again, so I wandered about the house munching arrowroot cookies and observing the lightning from several vantage points: my den window, front porch, bedroom window, and patio doors.

I tried a photo from the bedroom window, but the screens were a problem because the phone wanted to focus on the screening rather than the light show. I wasn't about to start removing the screens with Sue sleeping just a few feet behind me, so I took the phone to the patio door downstairs.

I didn't go out but just opened the door a tad on a hot night and took a few photos. It was sheet lightning, so it just lit up the sky generally as in the following image. Both before and after the lightning flash the sky was almost black.

The lightning will show up much better in the clip, below. The show went on and on like this for a considerable time. (You know that you can embiggen the video, right? Just click the middle icon of the three on the bottom right.)

The phone is amazing. It tells me to hold the phone steady for up to 10 seconds for night exposures, but it still keeps the image pretty sharp. I tried another app, for long exposures just to see how it would work, but it picked up unintentional camera movement because you can't hold a phone steady for 15 seconds, and its algorithm does not compensate for that. When I saw what was happening, I moved the phone even more, deliberately, and this ↓ is the fun result.

The power did go out but not for long. On our morning walk, I took a photo of our smoke-diminished sun. This happens every summer now, but I don't remember it too much in the first of our two decades here.

Meanwhile, we’ve probably all see stunning photos in our online haunts. 

Posting About Monday on Wednesday

I am posting in the present tense, but I wrote this piece on Monday, and have just updated it a bit since then. I say this in case the timeline gets confusing.

I am in my chair early in the morning, doing my morning things, such as checking your posts. My casement window is open on the perpendicular, which is as wide as it can open.

When the nights become cool enough to turn off the AC, I do open the window as far as it goes before I turn in for the night. 

When the window is open on the perpendicular like this, there are moments when it catches the sun in such a way that I am almost blinded as I do my morning things in my chair at close to a ninety-degree angle to the window.

It’s not quite blinding me this morning because there is a softening smoke in the air due to forest fires from northwestern Ontario, I think. If I were to crank the window back just a few degrees, it would not reflect like this, but I don’t think of that at night when I try to grab every cubic centimeter of cool air that I can. 

The sun is also reflecting off the computer screen. I do get some interesting light off the device.

And . . .  here I am, back after our walk (still written on Monday). We took a shady route, starting at the market and heading north to the trail bridge. But first, I snapped a photo of our echinacea.

When we reached the bridge, I zoomed in on the purple loosestrife growing down by the rocks. They return to the same spot every summer. One might think that the rushing water in other seasons would wash the seeds or roots away. Strange.

There are always dogs on the trail. Sometimes, they want to say hello. We lingered long enough for the couple to give us treats to hand out. 

Meanwhile, the man talked ot me for a long time about his photography. He seemed to know me and was asking abut my camera and software, and he was probably unimpressed that I now use the phone. I have no memory of previously meeting this man, but I know a lot about him now. :)

Sunday Walk, Mostly Flowers

Today will be blistering, climbing into the higher 30s Celsius and getting close to 100F. We shan't be venturing forth. However, Sunday morning was delightful when we walked to the park.

Wild Carrot by the Pond

Riverview from the Bench

I'll sneak in these Coneflowers: also from the park, but they were seen on a previous day.

At home, the first daylily had opened: posted especially with the Furry Gnome in mind.

I picked a few fresh flowers for the little bouquet in my room: especially for Boud.

Selfie + Purple

Selfie + Purple was Sue's photo prompt on Saturday. She dressed up with a purple scarf, and off we went to the park. I was to be her human selfie stick. She composed the photo, situated herself, and I pressed the shutter. 

Of course, she made a collage.

Here are two singles.

She has a flair, doncha thnk?

This Little Light of Mine

We have had a solar garden light out front for many summers, but when we set it up this spring, it decided that it was too tired to shine again. Because it still has some merit as a decoration, we left it up anyway. Lo and behold! More than a month later, just last week in July,we noticed it casting a minimal amount of light one evening. When, I saw a smidgen of light emanating from it for the second time on Friday night, I grabbed my phone and tripod to memorialize the event.

These photos cost me blood, for the mosquitoes were ferocious, and I was soon itching and scratching in many locations on my body.

It seemed right to get some photos of the light that is trying so hard to shine, but that is me anthropomorphizing an inanimate object. I have also tended to feel the same way about the last few vehicles that have lived fairly long lives, and I kept my Christmas poinsettia in the window until just a few days ago because it was trying so hard.

Sentimental and silly.