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Nova Zembla Rhododendron
Archives for May 2006
The Birds are taking over!
Ok, how do I get birds to not build a nest under my window air-conditioner? I’m afraid that this is going to be like when we lived in an apartment and the birds are going to take over!
After a mostly too cool month of May we’re suddenly in the midst of a hot humid heat wave here in Toronto, and we don’t have central air. We have two window air conditioners that we put in each year and for the most part they do a pretty good job.
But, last year, the day we put the upstairs air-conditioner in the window some birds started making a nest between the bottom of the AC and the outside window sill where there is a good sized space. I think the birds were little house wrens or something similar. I didn’t mind having them there, but they did get noisy, especially early in the morning. Chirp Chirp and small little bird squabbles at 5:00 a.m. are not how I like to wake up.
Yesterday when Chris installed the upstairs air-conditioner he put a row of bricks underneath it to try to prevent the birds from noticing the gap and building a nest. It didn’t work!
I’m afraid the birds were waiting for their favorite spot. As soon as the AC was in and running we started hearing a lot of chirping outside that window and we could see the birds flying back and forth through the drive way with pieces of grass and other wonderful nest building materials in their beaks.
When we lived in our apartment we used to be bothered by pigeons. For the first few years they just visited, but after one particularly warm winter we could see the pigeons visiting our balcony regularly one February so we decided to check out our winter abandoned balcony and low and behold the darn birds had build a nest in a protected corner and already had eggs! We removed the nest and eggs but that didn’t stop them, they did it again and again.
The next year the pigeons succeeded and actually had their eggs hatch before we noticed. Being animal lovers we couldn’t hurt the babies so we let them raise their two young ones. I was actually curious to see a baby pigeon. I’d never seen one before. I can tell you that they are pretty big right from the start and quickly grow to look like smaller versions of their parents which is probably why I hadn’t noticed baby pigeons before since they are almost the size of their parents and look quite a bit like adults within a month.
Over our years in the apartment we tried everything to get rid of the pigeons and keep them off our balcony. We put out the fake owl. Didn’t work. We strung fishing line strategically across the balcony rail so it would catch their feet and disturb them when they would land. Didn’t work. We strung fishing line from our upstairs neighbors balcony and attached each line to our balcony railing. We put the lines about two inches apart. Yeah, that’ll work, they won’t be able to get through, it will hit their wings and scare them. Nope, didn’t work.
We ended up abandoning our balcony in the last two years or so that we were there. It ended up being a pigeon poop covered mess despite our efforts to get the birds to stop landing on and using the balcony. I hate pigeons!
Now, I’ve got birds building a nest under the air-conditioner. Oh, yes their cute harmless birds, but considering what happened to us last time birds started liking our property, I’m afraid. Very afraid. The birds are going to take over. I just know it! LOL Help!
ChrisLand where time stands still
I’m married to Peter Griffin! Well, not exactly. My husband isn’t a cartoon character, and he sure doesn’t look like Peter from the Family guy … But at times, well, he sure acts an awful lot like Peter!
He’s always starting projects around the house, and coming up with ideas that end up getting him into trouble. Usually into trouble with me.
I’m thinking of this past weekend as Neighbors weekend. It started Saturday with Chris going outside to hang our Canadian flag. The whole post, flag included, blew off our house in a windstorm late last fall and with the bad weather we just decided to not put the flag back out again until spring. That day was Saturday.
He’d asked me to give him a hand positioning the flag pole as he had to drill new holes into the brick, but before I could come out of the house our neighbors adult kids were over and offering advice. It was like watching a construction crew at work; one worker and the rest standing around looking like foremen telling the one working what to do. It shouldn’t have been a difficult job, but it some how became one.
The beer came out and the voices got louder. My husband talks loud, especially when he’s outside with the guys. I could occasionally hear him call out to others as they walked by or stepped out onto their porch “Hey Neighbor!”. Gee, maybe I’m married to Ed Flanders from the Simpsons? That’s what it always reminds me of when he calls out this phrase.
With that job finally finished the neighbors and my husband moved to the backyard. Chris had started painting the small picket fence at the end of our drive a few weeks ago. Our elderly neighbor Sophie shares part of this small fence with us and her son had said he’d paint her side as well. Naturally, her kids never got around to doing it, and after seeing how nice our side looked she’d been insisting that we paint it for her.
We some how seem to end up doing everything for her, rather than her own kids doing the odd jobs around the house. We’ve been getting frustrated with this, so when it came to painting her side of the fence we stalled. Every time Sofie’s sons have been over we’ve mentioned the painting job to them, usually after Sofie herself had pointed it out and asked us AGAIN to paint it for her.
He son promised he’d do it but never did. So finally on Saturday, after Chris went to the store to get more paint (which Sofie paid for), we pulled out our own brushes and handed them to her son and grandson and said here you go- paint! Chris did some touch ups on our side while they painted her side of the fence.
The flow of beer continued, and the small job was finally done.
By this time it was perhaps 7 pm. I was ready to eat and had already prepared dinner – it just needed to be BBQ’ed by the hubby. However, at 6:30 our boarder had mysteriously decided to go out. He’d said he’d come home for dinner … but, uh we were just about to have dinner when he left. Arghhh. He didn’t come home until close to 9 p.m and by that time I was pretty upset at him and my husband was no where to be found!
Now nothing in here describes my husbands “Peterness”, but believe me, if you saw him interacting with the neighbors or the way he acts around me at times, he’s at least 60% Peter Griffin.
While we were waiting for our boarder to return home, Chris was outside and one of the other neighbors called him over and asked if he could help move some things. Chris told me he’d be 10 minutes. Did I believe him? No way! Time in Chrisland is extended. 10 minutes is close to an hour in real people time.
The neighbors he was helping this time are these two really cool gay guys. They’re a hoot to hang around with, but since I was waiting for Chris to come back I wasn’t totally impressed that Chris had gone over to help. Chris ended up coming back with two other neighbors that we hadn’t met before. He was showing them our garden. This time it was two ladies and their dog.
When our boarder finally came back, and I got Chris to stop interacting with the neighbors, we got down to the business of eating dinner. After dinner I went back outside to finish watering the garden- a job I had started while I was waiting to get dinner going. By this time it was at least 10 pm.
Chris came out with his guitar and played for me while I sprayed the garden. How sweet is that? Live music, songs sung to me while I worked in the moonlight? Nice.
We moved to the front yard to finish the garden work, but Chris’ guitar playing was attracting attention. The husband of the only neighbor I really dislike happened to see and hear us outside and waved at us through his open window. His wife is the one that I talked about in an earlier post who, both times that she’s been here, I’ve ended up taking care of her baby. The last time her kid was walking around eating my flowers – ones that I thought might be poisonous. She’s a winner!
The husband seems like an ok guy, a bit whipped perhaps, but he’s definitely nicer than she is. He came out of his house and wandered over to listen to Chris play guitar. More beer flowed. More neighbors poked their head out to enjoy the music. Drunk party girls walked by trying to entice my husband to play something for them – he didn’t.
It was close to 1 a.m. by the time we went back into the house. How does watering the garden turn into a 3 hour job? Well, for most people it doesn’t, but if you are like me and you live in Chrisland that’s the way things go. Everything slows down, sounds get louder, and strangers come over at all hours of the day and night.
Lets see, all in all, we were visited by or visited 8 or more neighbors on Saturday. Sunday was a slower neighbor day – it only involved 5 neighbors and his mom and aunt dropping in unexpectedly. Today will likely include people from work dropping by. Oh life in Chrisland, don’t you envy me?
It’s a wonder that I ever get anything done around here.
The Daily Dump
No, that’s not the name of a new regular feature on this site. Nope. It’s the title of a new site that I spent some time looking at on Sunday.
The site owner, Chris, stumbled across my site after he’d visited one of my landlords – Mscateyes. He took the time to stop and write a nice comment inquiring about renting on my site. His site is new and he’s not been accepted yet on BE so he can’t start getting his site viewed by BE members, and he can’t attempt to get a rental spot yet either. So he was trying to figure out a way to promote his site via rental and decide to write to me about it.
He was in luck! I was in a very helpful mood and I replied back with information about all the other traffic engines that I use to promote my own sites.
Since I’m in a generous mood I decided that I’d let my visitors know about this new site.
The Daily Dump is a site comprised of a number of regular writers. Their styles vary, but seem to mesh together well enough to make quite an interesting read. Considering that there are so many contributors to the site, each with their own style of writing and topics that they favor I’d say the Daily Dump has something for everyone.
Why don’t you pop in and take a peek and see if you like the Daily Dump? Let Chris and the rest of the gang over there know that Tricia sent you.
Evil Thoughts
I’m dragging my feet about posting these days. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to write about, it’s just that a few things have happened this week that made me feel a bit down.
Mostly it was my visit to my family dr. that got me down. She promised me that she was going to get me back on some of my crohn’s meds if I continued to get worse and AGAIN she decided against it and wants to experiment with some herbal mixtures. I can officially say that I’m fed up with every single one of my doctors now. I can’t get better and get back to work if I’m not being cared for properly, and I’m starting to go just a bit stir crazy sitting at home.
Anyway, enough of my grumbling. Since I’ve been feeling more than a little bit evil this week it seemed like the perfect time to take the “How evil Are you” quiz:
You Are 38% Evil |
A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well.In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil. |
How Evil Are You?
It turns out that I’m not as evil as I thought I was, but looking at the questions and having answered yes to most of the top 4 paragraphs I was starting to think the quiz was going to say I was 80% evil or something.
I found the questions very revealing in some ways.
Yes I do have vengeful feelings. I have broken the law in minor ways in the past, I’ve looked at nudie pics on line – can’t help it when you come across them accidentally can you? That I’ve lingered over a few of them wasn’t asked but to be honest, yes I have.
I’ve wished people harm but I’ve never acted on those feelings. I believe in fate and Karma and the people that have hurt me will probably get theirs eventually. I don’t hate kids or harbor secret desires to be mean just for the fun of it. I would never pick on someone with disabilities.
I do however have a lot of trouble tolerating blatantly stupid people or people who act weak but can and should be doing something for themselves to change the situation they’ve got themselves into.
I already know that I would give my life if I had to in order to save many others. In fact, thanks to SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) hitting Toronto in 2003 and working as a nurse in the midst of this terrible infectious disorder, I knew I was potentially risking my own life by continuing to work in the emergency department. However, if I, and others like me, weren’t working to help stop the spread of SARS it would have infected and killed many more people than it actually did.
I’ve never spit in someones drink, but I must admit that I’ve felt like it. I have blamed a fart or two on other people. Who hasn’t?
I have kissed people that I shouldn’t be kissing, particularly when I was just sweet 16. That is a story for another day though.
How about you? Did you take the “how evil are you test”? Did it make you think about things a little bit when you saw the quiz questions?
Are you a vengeful person? Have you taken revenge on someone? Or would you never dream of having an evil thought or doing something that might be considered mean no matter how deserving a person might be? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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