Ungrateful Birds

OK, so it's been a while.

Since coming back from our travels, and certainly since my last post, Gwen and I have been decidedly grounded into the grind. Work, come home, maybe work out, eat dinner, watch something, I play Madden (or she plays Final Fantasy), I make chess moves on itsyourturn.com (that's right - I'm playing a lot of email by chess! Its f*cking NUTS!), I obsessively analyze my fantasy baseball team, she plays Puzzle Quest, we go to sleep. Then repeat. Work has kept us both busy.

Our weekends of late have also been dull . Since our run to "The States" (as we jet-settingly call them now) in March, we burned out on traveling a little, and we haven't taken a single trip, or gone anywhere, other than to a little BBQ party about an hour or so away near Frankfurt. It was a little reunion for Gwen and her brothers-in-arms buddies from Iraq, which was cool, but only soaked up one Saturday night. (The party was fun, but possibly even better - for me - was driving back on the Autobahn on a Saturday night to some wicked-sweet Euro-techno radio show which lined up perfectly as we drove through Frankfurt. I was in heaven - Gwen would try and say something to me and I would reply, "Not now, honey - I'm driving at high speeds to Euro-techno," with a smarmy grin on my face. Awesome beyond words. )

In fact, other than the party above, the single most exciting thing we've done is tried to figure out what type of bird seed the local stoic German birds seem to enjoy. In a flash of inspired lawn care, we put up a bird-feeder up in our back yard one day - one easily visible from the window. The first day we loaded it with some generic seed and then glued ourselves eagerly to the window, like five-year-olds staring down a pot of dirt mere minutes after planting a potato plant beneath the top soil and "demanding" it grow right in front of their eyes. For many hours, we watched. And no birds came. We were distraught. So we increased our efforts - after cursing the ungrateful sots - eventually braving a German version of a Home Depot Garden Store (sadly it was a lot like an American Home Depot Garden Store; no black-spandexed employees, no techno - nothing) to buy FIVE different kinds of bird seed and do a little Pepsi/Coke birdseed challenge.

We placed piles of bird seed around our picnic table in separate groups with big stupid grins on our faces. (I felt like I was Wile E. Coyote baiting a trap for the Road Runner.) We also hung a different kind of "string food" up in the tree (it's like a small branch with chewable bird food - or something) near the birdhouse.

Well, again we watched, and were disappointed with the lack of turn out. We again cursed the ungrateful German birds, and things once more degenerated into childish name-calling. And so we sort of gave up. But no sooner after we had done that, the German birds started to surprise us. Once they found the food, things picked up. They checked it out, warily at first, but then more comfortably, told their buddies about it, and finally they made their selections. Most of the smaller finch-type things prefered two specific seed types. And that "string food" thing has become a universal hit - anywhere its located brings in several birds at once - so much so that I envision male birds escorting their lady friends to "the string" for hot dates prior to sassy bird love-making (it is Spring, after all).

And so with the results of our study complete we have loaded up our birdhouse with the "popular" food, slathered the tree with the uber-hip "strings", and tossed the rest out. Now so many birds are here that even the neighborhood cats have taken notice. We've found several cats napping in our yard at times, or better yet stalking under bushes near the house. At this pace, I will soon have the wild natural park - complete with cat-on-bird slaughter - that I have always wanted and so richly deserve. And right outside my own window!

Other than that, there isn't much going on.

I caught Spider-Man 3 recently and was more or less disappointed. Like any Spider-Man movie, I watched with the anticipation of a nervous mother, hoping - just hoping - it wouldn't screw up. Well, Spider-Man 3 screwed up. It tried, but it failed - most noticeably in the middle when Tobey Maguire a.k.a Peter Parker became "dark" because of his new suit. There was a 15-minute sequence involving him prancing around the town that was somewhere between absolutely laugh-out-loud funny (not intentional) and wincinbly bad. Also, in a brilliant stroke of directorial genius, Tobey Maguire pulled his bangs down "when he was being darkly influenced by the symbiote suit". This was ridiculous. He looked like he was trying to fit in with the goth kids on South Park. ("Life is Pain.") It was all very sad, and despite momentary flashes of good old fashioned Spider-Man fun, I found the movie to be a let down.


And now, Gwen and I are off to the States once again. First, its a wedding in Bermuda. Then my a graduation in Texas. More to follow. Hope all is well with all the (patient) readers of this thing.

Out.