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Does it never end? I thought I would have a week to myself without any classes or exams to worry about.

My last exam -> This Saturday night.
The start of the summer class -> Three days later on the Tuesday.

*sob*

There are so many things I wish to write about but didn’t have the time yesterday but perhaps I’ll start off with a little story of our friend Agelaius phoeniceus.

I was thinking that I had the bird beat a few days ago when I decided to move my car eight spots farther down the parking lot to avoid Agelaius. I pull into the parking lot space #8 while listening to some morning news, minding my own business when I put it into park and am about to hop out when I freeze.

“Where is Agelaius?” I ponder.

I scope out the territory and don’t see Agelaius anywhere so I think I am safe. It is raining out there so perhaps birds lay low for the time being. I reflect on the fact that I don’t really know a lot about birds at this point in my life and wonder if I am missing out not being a bird watcher. My own mother emailed me the other day and indicated that it is not a morning dove, but a mourning dove. Funny how the spelling of a word can bring such a happy picture of a bird to a tragic one.

I exit the vehicle seeing that the bus is waiting at the stop and it has been known to pull away at the last moment. I have 50 meters of pavement to dash across so I close my door and look around. I’m safe! Agelaius is not to be seen!

At the half way mark I am feeling pretty good until I hear the shrill cry of the Banshee. In other’s ears, they hear “Tweet, tweeeet!”. In mine I hear “You thought I was gone. I have returned. I will wreak havoc on your vehicle.”

In fear, I turn suddenly to find out where my arch enemy is to find that he is hopping and shitting along someone else’s car. Excellent. Perhaps he will be amused for the entire day with this other person’s vehicle, although I now wonder if I should leave a note on their car indicating that I wish to create a task force (perhaps Delta Force?) to take care of this problem.

All was well when I got back to my car that night to find it had rained on it all day long and most of the crap on the car that I had failed to wipe off was gone.

Fast forward to this morning, I am feeling like a new man. I still decide to pull into Parking Spot #8 (a few meters away from my old spot, but all that more to run to the bus with) and am feeling good. The sun is shining, I hear Bluesfest is coming to town (holy crap, I just read Dose on the bus this morning and found out that Matt Mays and Sam Roberts are playing together. I am in heaven.), and life is good (other than the exam I have to write on Saturday night). I hop out of the car.

“Hey buddy, how’s it going?” I hear.

I peer to my right and there he is. The bane of my existence. Agelaius up in a tree. I look around. There are no other cars in this section because I came in a little early this morning.

“Oh no.” I think. What do I do?

The bus pulls up and I have 45 meters to cover. Do I go back to the car and park it on the far side of the lot? That will mean I have to wait 10 minutes for the next bus. But I will have peace of mind when I think of the bird shit and the bird clawing away at my paint job. In a rash decision I run to the bus thinking that Agelaius will find other cars closer to his tree to bother today.

But I still felt the pain when Agelaius swooped in towards my car and started to hop around the side mirror so it could see its reflection in my window. You’ve won this time Agelaius…but the war is not over.

Pros:

• The feeling you get when you think you’re ready.

Cons:

• Missing the Jeff Martin concert.
• Missing the Jeff Martin concert with surprise guest Oliver Black opening up. (insert Darth Vader’s ‘Nooooooo!’ yell from Episode III here)
• Finding out that 85% of the questions on the exam were the same ones in the three test the Prof had in class.

Pros (again):

• Realizing that you definitely aced the exam…but you could have made it out to the concert.

Lesson Learned:

• Never stop rocking. Go to the concerts no matter what or a magical night will escape you.

http://www.tulipfestival.ca/en/Concerts/

Check out the concerts coming to town for the Tulip Festival!

I will be out on May 12 to see the Novaks and the Trews if anyone wants to join.

As for the rest of the lineup..can’t say I’m overly interested. I think I shall just pick up an evening pass for this Tulip Festival.

I also don’t care how they put all the musical acts during the weekend…ESPECIALLY during the long weekend in May. We all know that’s not a time to hang around inside the city. 😉

More commonly known as the Agelaius phoeniceus (who am I kidding…who uses these words?), this little fellow has been hopping to and from the cars in the park and ride lot for the past few weeks.

At first, I thought “Hey, that’s pretty neat. A bird who actually hops around on the mirrors and hoods of a car. It looks like it’s trying to get its reflection!” This bird doesn’t even bother flying around. Perhaps it is wounded somewhat?

Then when the bus pulled out today and I looked back at my car, I noticed the bird had moved to my car and then I realized this is where all this bird shit is coming from every day on my car.

Red-winged blackbird, you’re going down! I’m thinking of putting some glue on the mirrors.

In other bird news, Mom was saying how she heard some morning doves near my house when she up here…turns out there is a morning dove nest right next to the neighbour’s door. The bird stays there constantly as it is protecting its eggs. Craziness. I live in a zoo!

At least the rabbits seem to have disappeared…

I was talking with a woman at work today and she was talking about allergies and how traditional medicine never helped her son out with his allergies, but someone mentioned they should try an accupuncturist.

She was not a believer in the alternative medicines, but she gave it a shot, and it worked.

Her son also had migraines so bad that he would faint and all the doctors in the area could not figure out how to cure it. They tried medicine after medicine after medicine. She went to the accupuncturist and after ten visits with him, he was cured. No migraines anymore.

She also has a daughter who was allergic to cats and after going to accupuncture, she now has two cats.

She had awful pains in her feet at one point in her life and went to the accupuncturist. Afterwards, no pain.

You all know me and medicine…I stay away from it. But I know there are a lot of you out there that suffer from allergies, migraines, etc.

I can say that after hearing these stories, I am more open to trying alternative medicines like accupuncture. They sound pretty wild.

She was a sceptic when she first went and let them know it. All they said was if it doesn’t cure them, they can have their money back. You have to know it’s going to work if you’re going to give a guarantee like that!

So, to all those out there reading this and have something that has been bothering them and the traditional doctors can’t cure it…try your hand at alternative medicines.

Situation: You’re at a 75th birthday party for your grandmother.
The people: A mixture of people that are old and young.
The talk:

Prety well everyone over 60 at this party: “Ryan, I haven’t seen you since you were this high!” (motions to their knee level)
Ryan: “Oh really.”

Then they walk away and I don’t even know their name because I was so young that I don’t remember.

A message to us all. When you’re going to comment that you haven’t seen a person since they were ‘this’ high’, do them a favour and tell them your full name, and how you are related to said person. It helps. Otherwise, you just have some blogger out there commenting on all the older people he met on the weekend but don’t know who they are.

I love when you see this massive arrangement of food laid out for you and you think “Alright, it’s feeding time!”

Then you begin to approach it methodically. Not too many carrots, a little turnips, oh, alright, I’ll take two scoops of potatoes. Let’s move onto the parsnips, and hey, is that brocolli? Ok, ok, we’re getting towards the end, WHOA, coleslaw! I don’t need that because right next to it is the STUFFING. MMMM…stuffing. No one will notice if I take two scoops of…ah crap, someone is eyeing up how much stuffing I’m taking. Better just put that extra scoop onto their plate. They’ll think I’m nice. Alright, onto the meat. Oh, here’s some ham and turkey! Bonus! Oh, no one will mind if I take that one with the skin on it. No one likes skin. Mini-pickles! Yum! A few buns here and there also.

Before you know it, the plate that you were trying to lay out nicely has become a disaster area with some potatoes mixing into the turnips and god knows what that monstrosity over on the far edge of the plate is. It’s a cross between brocolli, some sort of baked good and resembles The Blob. Then you top it all with gravy because you can’t really find the meat anymore and it just holds it together a little better.

Instead of a nice turkey dinner, you now have Easter Ghoulash on a plate. Top that off with everyone shovelling it in in 3 minutes or less and you have the typical North American turkey dinner. I say North American because I have eaten with some European families and they like these things to spread out over three days. In those cases I feel dumb for shovelling down the plate so I have to get another one just to feel like part of the crowd. Europeans are strange that way. 😉

I hope everyone had a similar experience when it came to Easter dinner. I know Mel and Mike were having an army over at their place so I can only assume that they also encountered this phenomenon.

I wonder if it would just be easier to actually MAKE a ghoulash for dinner.

Special thanks to Paul who pointed out this brilliant show coming out (hopefully?)

http://www.muppetcentral.com/news/2005/090505.shtml