STAYING IN ON A SUNDAY...
...for one day, I became a hermit...
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So how uneventful was today? In a phrase, Very Much So. This is the kind of day that you watch Paint Peel. It was such a lazy day that I saw a Dog chasing a Cat and they were Both Walking. Okay, that's exaggerating things a bit, but maybe not all that much, actually. My main reason for living today was that I wanted to see today's Double-header between the Seattle Mariners and the Texas Rangers. I saw Ichiro get his 200th hit of the year this afternoon, and he's now done that 9 seasons in a row, and no player's ever done that, consecutively, for such a long time. (I know I'll sound like Rick Rizzs, the over-inflated, miniscule-detail-oriented Seattle Sportscaster, but...Pete Rose had ten 200-plus-hits seasons...but not 10 in a row...or 9 in a row.) As I type this, Game 2 is still on. The Mariners won last-night's Absolutely Drenched game, which was played in rainfall that would've sunk the Titanic; they won the first game today and are on the way to winning the second unless they suffer a severe relapse, but we all know that never happens to the Mariners...right?
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A by-product of staying in today was finding out what Captive Birds do All Day Long. Well, they eat. Then they clean their feathers. Then they climb around the cage. Then they repeat the process over and over again all day long. Of course, my cockatiels are out of the cage pretty-much all the time when I'm home. So today was spent in the ol' La-Z-Boy, trying to watch the Mariner's double-header with birds Climbing All Over Me. If I give one some head-scratches, that's what the other wants too. It's not easy to scratch two birds' heads simultaneously. It's harder than it looks. Of course, I bring bird food over to the recliner, so they can munch without having to go back to their cage. No, they're not spoiled (are they?).
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Here's Shadow, my gray-headed female whose personality is picky, picky, picky. When she's sitting on my shoulder, and nibbles at my glasses, that's when she wants a head scratch. Unless it's late afternoon; that's when she wants food. And I'm supposed to know all this. If I try scratching her head when she wants food, she'll gently 'beak' my fingers and emit a hoarse-sounding mini-screech...but actually, she is very well-behaved, being rather reserved. Although she's developing a bad habit...she likes COFFEE. She'll stick her head in my coffee cup and take a couple of beakfuls...
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The next photo features "Sunshine", my yellow-headed, pied female, which I and the pet-shop owner thot was a male, because it chirped loudly and behaved rather aggressively. This is the bird that laid an egg ON me. So it's a female. She's almost like the obnoxious brat-little-kid who's tossing food and screaming like a banshee in the restaurant booth right next to yours. But sometimes, she's so sweet. She'll sit on my knee and make her little beak-grinding sounds (a sign of contentment in a cockatiel); that tells me I've done good with her. And then she gets aggressive again. Case in point: This afternoon I microwaved a couple of those cheap little Meat Pies (hey, us humans have to eat after all), and after they cooled, took 'em both back to the bird room. "Sunshine" immediately got curious, so I tried giving her a little bit from my fork, and she backed off...not used to warm food, possibly. So I took a mouthful, and that was when she immediately crawled up my chest and began stealing food out of my mouth! It's a sort-of bird-bonding thing, I guess.
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What I'm still getting used to, is the fact while both birds will take all my energy, as soon as 6pm rolls around, they want the cover tossed over their cage, they wanna sleep and they don't wanna have anything to do with me. But ya know, sometimes that works out, because it leaves me a little bit of time in which to watch some evening baseball and do some blogging. Sometimes, if I'm going to be gone all day, and I know they'll be asleep before I get home, I'll just leave 'em be and go watch TV in the bedroom. So far, the arrangement is working out. Most days I'll spend 2-3 hours with them in the morning/early afternoon. But then I've gotta get out; if I don't, I'll start chirping instead of talking.
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Finally, here's something that's a little bit different...I've mentioned that one of the bridges down here is a drawbridge, something that a person who lives in a land-locked state doesn't come across very often (unless your commute takes you over the Mighty Mississippi). The other day, I was headed to the beach, and had to stop. There was absolutely no doubt about it. You see, there was no choice...
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Several of the larger fishing boats in this area are actually moored on the landward side of the bridge, which means they've gotta go under the bridge to get to where they're going, except that they're too tall, so something's gotta give, and in this case, it's the bridge. It's a 5-10 minute wait at the longest, and this is an instance which absolutely proves that if you bring a digital camera along, what might irritate you actually becomes something pretty cool to photograph. And below, this is the vessell which was responsible for The Big Bridge Incident...
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One night last year while headed homeward, I came upon The Dreaded Open Drawbridge, so I waited for it to close. And waited. And waited some more. I finally ended up driving a 25-mile loop just to get home, which is about 3 miles north of the bridge. So every now and then, I still find meself goin' round in circles. Finally...the Mariners swept the double-header and the Seahawks shut-out Los Angeles today. So, the birds are sleeping and My Teams Won. All in all, not bad, not bad at all...