Build your own nest box!

As you know, my cockatiel Chauncy has laid four eggs. She has been sitting on them night and day like a champ because Olive (the father) is either too lazy or too stupid to help with the incubation duties. Anyway, from day one, Chauncy has refused to use the totally sweet nest box I bought her. It's made out of wood and has a removable lid and all sorts of awesome features, but she prefers the cage floor. Whatever.

At first she wouldn't even sit on the eggs if there was a paper towel under them. Eventually I got her to accept a paper towel, then a modified Swiss Miss cocoa box with paper towels lining it. But here's the problem I've been running into: OLIVE KEEPS POOPING IN THE NEST BOX. It's not like he's sitting in the nest box and using it as his own huge toilet. He sits on the perches above it and drops his little poop bombs on top of it. That was fine when the eggs were still new and I could change the paper towels. But it's getting to the point now where the chicks inside the eggs are pretty developed and getting ready to hatch, and you're not supposed to be moving the eggs around because it could disorient the chick and screw up hatching. Also, what am I supposed to do when the chicks hatch? They can't go stumbling blindly into piles of their father's poop!

The answer, my friends, lay in what I'm calling the nesting tiki hut. I cut up another box (this time scalloped potatoes, not Swiss Miss) and made a roof and four pillars to hold it up. Then I taped the pillars to the corners of the Swiss Miss box and taped the roof onto the pillars. Finally I taped a piece of cling wrap to the roof so I could remove it and replace it with a fresh sheet if Olive pooped on it. TA DAAA! Nesting tiki hut!

At first Chauncy eyed it with suspicion, but after a couple of minutes she got right in and hunkered down to brood on her eggs. This picture makes me laugh harder and harder the more I look at it. But isn't Chauncy so cute?

An intimate look into my work life

This is my garbage can. More specifically, it's my office garbage can. Sadly, my office garbage can portrays a very accurate image of my snacking habits. Let's examine it more closely, shall we?

First, let's count the Diet Coke cans. There are eight cans visible, and probably twice that many underneath. You have to really strain since it blends in so well with the silver Diet Coke cans, but there is also a Pop Tart wrapper (there is actually at least one or two more in there, covered by the soda cans), flavor: S'mores. Have you had the S'mores-flavored Pop Tarts? Holy geez, they are delicious. I am not to be trusted around them.

You can also see the drink cup from Cafe Rio (or, as I like to call it, Mecca), from when I ate there last Friday. I got a veggie salad but they charged me for a pork salad. I got a refill on my way out to make up for the overcharge. (I would have gotten a refill on the way out anyway.)

Witness also the Red Vines wrapper. I finished off the last five pieces today as dessert after breakfast. You'll notice I carefully folded the wrapper and then tied it in a knot. I like my garbage to be as neat as possible. Red Vines are far superior to any other licorice on the market today. Especially Twizzlers, which are waxy and gross.

On the floor you'll see the wrapper (red) of a Lindt truffle. It's the last of the package I got for Christmas. While I appreciate the thoughtfulness, the truffles were sub par at best, which is why they lasted a month and a half. The Pop Tarts lasted exactly two and a half days. It was a twelve pack. I'm not proud of it.

And there you have my office garbage can. Be grateful it wasn't my kitchen garbage can. It's full of poop-covered bird cage liners.

Toe up from the flo' up

Call me a prude, but I believe a woman's personal grooming is something best kept between her, her partner, and her gynecologist. It is not something to be flashed at innocent, unsuspecting souls in the Comcast parking lot when all they want to do is pick up their new cable box and get back home to set the DVR. But try telling that to the nasty woman in the red dress and faux fur coat that parked next to me yesterday.

I have seriously never seen anything like this before and I never want to see anything like it again. I came walking out of the Comcast building and saw this woman standing next to her Toyota minivan changing her shoes. As I got closer, I realized that bending over had caused her dress to ride a good THREE INCHES up her backside, showing crack from both the back AND front nether regions. The great tragedy of it all was that to ease her task she actually hoisted her leg up into the van. I think you're getting a visual now. If this woman and her lady bits haven't already been featured on People of WalMart, they will be soon. All I could think was, "This woman must be a prostitute." But I still can't figure out why a prostitute would be driving a new minivan.

The only good that might come from this whole experience is the possible coining of a new term, flooned: when you're simultaneously mooned and flashed. What do you think?

DVR

Okay, I think I'm going to finally break down and subscribe to DVR. The regular TV season is in full swing and I have shows on every night that I really don't want to miss (and sometimes two shows a night, which forces me into a which-will-I-watch showdown). I totally forgot the final season of Lost was premiering tonight and made plans to get together with my best friend from high school. I tried to find out if it was going to be rerun or available on On Demand, but there's just no guarantee. So I guess this is the kick in the pants I need to quit being so freaking cheap (hello, it's only, like, $16/month) and reclusive (when you're not accepting invitations to social engagements because you don't want to miss one of your ten favorite shows, it's time for change), and join the throngs of the living. I'm sure that once I get it, it will change my life and I'll wonder how I ever lived without it. But it still chafes a bit to finally break down and do what everybody's been telling me to do for years.

Egg Watch: Exciting News!

THE COCKATIEL EGGS ARE FERTILE! Do you like how I just threw that out there, first thing? No intro? No warning? Just BAM! fertile. That's right. I want you to feel the way I did when, on a whim, I candled all four of Chauncy's eggs (even though the day before they were all empty except for a big, yellow yolk), and saw red veins and tiny fetuses! I'm surprised I didn't drop the eggs, I was so shocked. It's too bad most people won't ever get to see a candled egg in person because it's seriously one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life. I actually saw the tiny heartbeats in two of the eggs! And when I say tiny, I mean tiny. Like, go get a book, open to any page, and then find a period at the end of a sentence. That's how big the heartbeats were. The fetuses were barely the size of a grain of uncooked rice (if that big). But you could tell that's just what they were. So. Freaking. Crazy!

So now I have a female named Chauncy, a male named Olive, and four babies on the way. In about two weeks, this


is going to turn into this


then this


and finally


Aren't baby birds ugly? It's a good thing they get cuter or nobody would ever want them as pets. Yeesh. I'm going to have four of those ugly things stumbling around in just two to three weeks. And on that note, you should know that, as this is THE FIRST AND LAST TIME I plan to have cockatiel babies, I will be documenting the whole experience from hatching to new-home-finding here on the blog. So gird your loins, because this is probably going to be cockatiel baby central until at least May or June.