of birds and shredders

i've been awoken the past few days by the sound of something tapping on the big picture window in my living room. it's a little bird that seems determined to either fly inside my house or attack or mate with its reflection in the window. i'm not entirely sure which. but this goes on for a good couple of hours every day. it's kind of entertaining, really, since the bird doesn't seem to be injuring itself, since it never gets too much speed up before hitting the window.

i had intended to work on peanut some more this weekend, specifically to clean out the bolt holes for the head bolts using a tap i borrowed from work and then dry-running the installation of the head to make sure i have all of the supplies i need, but it's about 8:30 on sunday night now and that's not looking too likely. but i did a lot anyway.

friday night i saw hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy with kevin and margaret and a couple of their friends. it was very excellent. not quite as good as it could have been, but well done nonetheless. before the movie, i had dinner with ted from the conference on world affairs, and told him stories from this year's conference. he said that he'd look into finding jobs that our friends savannah and gwyn might apply for when they move to seattle this summer. between dinner and the movie, i had a nice phone call with lindsey, who's in the midst of finals at cu.

saturday i had a short meeting with my realtor, finalizing some of the details of my response to the inspection of the house in des moines. then i read a bunch of shadow of the hegemon by orson scott card and took a nice long nap. the book club that i started with my friend jana had its second meeting on saturday evening at this cool little restaurant/bar in ballard called the people's pub. we discussed the curious incident of the dog in the night-time and ate fried pickles. it was a very good meeting. then i went back to the bar and met up with kevin and andy for some more drinks, after which we went to a bowling alley. the bowling alley was rather crowded, so we just had a drink in the karaoke bar and then went downtown to hear geoff white and lusine at this little club called mantra, which i rather enjoyed. i may have enjoyed it a bit too much, as i left my credit card there. afterward, we hung out at kevin's house for a bit with some drunk people and kevin's girlfriend margaret, who told us about the un-excitement of the bachelorette party she'd been at.

and then today, my feathered kamikaze friend woke me up around 11:30, which is early for a sunday, so i read a bit more of orson scott card and then got to cleaning the house. i've made up a nice pile of clothes and stuff to get rid of, organized my "random stuff" closet, and cleaned up quite a bit of my office. i'm presently shredding a bunch of credit card statements and whatnot, which is taking longer than expected as my little shredder keeps overheating. once i finish that up, i'm going to the grocery store, then i'll probably catch up on my cartoon watching while eating dinner.