Kelly in Japan

Three Birds … and Two Real Birds

// May 16th, 2009 // Uncategorized

In completely unrelated topics …

Number 1: I’ve been noticing a lot of roses around the neighborhood recently. I saw some real lavender roses in someone’s yard, just growing on a fence or something. I’d never seen them in real life before. They were very pretty. There are also several bushes of differing shades of red/magenta that seem to glow in the dim light of this week’s rainy weather, making them all the more noticeable. They really do love their gardens here in Japan.

Number 2: I love using the clipper stapler at work. I don’t know what the real name of the clipper stapler is. I found it in a dirty pan full of clips, binder clips, and clipper staplers of various sizes. Basically it’s like a stapler in that you stick the papers inside and something happens. But instead of poking a staple through the paper, it clamps the papers together with a squarish paperclip. Sorry, I can’t find a picture right now, so you’ll have to rely on my description. At any rate, it gives me a perverse sort of pleasure to clamp all those hated pieces of paper (paper! who uses paper?) together with such force, and then to drop them on someone else’s desk to become their problem. Mwa ha haa!

Number 3: I really, really hate rain. I am getting sick again from the change in weather this week. It’s not really even real rainy season, because it’s chilly. According to our information, rainy season is supposed to be hot and rainy. So I’m sitting here feeling sick for no reason …

And the birds: Recently a pair of birds moved into our apartment complex. With all the empty apartments, you’d think they would choose a location with more space, but no — they decided to build a nest in the stairwell beside our apartment and the other sole inhabitant’s apartment. The result was stepping in bird poop when we left the apartment. Another result was hearing their chirping all the way in our living room. The final result was being dive-bombed when we came home at night. I waited for our neighbor to do something, but no action was taken. So finally one day I took our tiny, half-sized broom out there and leaned out across over the nothingness to beat down their nest. No, there were no eggs or baby birds in there, so you can all relax. Anyway, the birds were very unhappy, as you can probably tell from the related posts on my Twitter feed. They camped out on our gas meters for nearly another week, asking each other what had happened to their house. Finally they left, but I believe — based on the fact that I can still hear them from time to time — that they merely moved up a floor, to the roof. This is fine with me. Although someone in bird land had a vendetta against Kory and pooped on his backpack on the way to work soon after these events occurred. Last week I took out my little broom again and swept all three flights of stairs free of mud and bracken to remove all vestiges of their inhabitance. The poop, however, remains.