Ambitions for the afterlife

Heh. One of them would be never to stall for ten days without writing anything. My rather odd work schedule (half-day, full day x 2) has led me into a rhythm for writing, and over the past few days that rhythm has been interrupted. No, make that torn down, spat upon and trampled. It does make one reflect that scheduled time to write, no matter how oddly achieved, is fairly important to the craft.

Among the distractions has been redoing the kitchen vinyl tile. Why uncool vinyl, you ask? Why not ceramic? Because

1. It's an old house with lightly-framed floors and the weight per square foot of the vinyl is less than half that of most ceramic.
   
2. Period kitchen floor covering for a vernacular house of this age (c. 1895) is linoleum. I go with tile because one can do the job in sections, which is impossible with linoleum, or I should say sheet vinyl.

I did manage to inflict a variety of damage on my crumbling body even doing as much as I did, and shall likely do that again at intervals until the job is done. This led me to a reflection on mortality.

All winter I've been watching the back yard symbiosis between the feeder birds and the crows. The former don't come out of the bushes to nibble and bathe until the latter give the all-clear. This is necessary because one neighbour's cat lives mostly outdoors, and shows an excessive interest in the birds. We also have picked up a sharp-shinned hawk. The hawk is of a genus (buteos) that by nature doesn't chase a lot of small live birds. But, absent the accipiter hawks that do, buteo (or buzzard) hawks are opportunists.

The feeder birds, especially the sparrows, are what the poet had in mind when coining the expression "bird-brain." Left to their own devices, they go merrily into harm's way, even if the cat is watching from below and the hawk from above. Not so with crows. I've watched them from boyhood on, and have developed a deep respect for their collective intelligence and survival skill.

Watch a murder (that's what it is) of crows to see this in action. There will not be a single bird in sight. Turn away, then turn back. A scout crow will appear if there is any food to be had. In our neighbourhood, the scout perches at the topmost end of the highest branch of a large oak at the end of the street, swaying nearly 100 feet up. When the scout is satisfied that serious predators (read cats and hawks) don't pose a problem, it will caw.

Then one or two crows fly into the target area, swoop over it, and perch in medium-height branches of nearby trees. They're the close support. Not only can they warn against predators, but they can attack them. Hawks, with their binocular vision, are vulnerable from behind. They can be chased off by birds much smaller than crows. Cats--at least this one--seem nonplussed at being buzzed by birds nearly as large as they are, and most retreat when crows show up.

Once the crows have established their perimeter, the rest of the family arrives, and everyone (or nearly everyone) gets a turn at the goodies, be they a bird feeder or a pizza carton in someone's trash. There is always a scout, and there are always close support guards, and they seem to take this by turns.

In the case of our feeder, when the crows arrive, the feeder birds pitch in, secure amongst the bigger, more alert cousins, who don't seem to mind the little birds. The crows do object to sharing with squirrels, who generally wait for their chance under cover. Then, at some crowish signal, the whole circus melts away, to repeat the same act elsewhere.

Should there be anything in reincarnation, one could make a good case for coming back as a crow. There's something to be learned about cooperation and learning. Like cockroaches, their ancestors were around long before ours--and probably ate some of our ancestors after their incessant conflicts. The descendants of both will probably outlive our self-destructive species by many millennia. The cockroach may be more durable, but the crows are smarter.

Learning on two fronts

First we visit the ever-popular job search front, where we have a sign that things may indeed be getting better. In the past week I was, first, approached by a potential employer about a job I would never have thought of for myself. This used to happen in the good ol' dot-com boom days, when all one had to do was hang out a cyber shingle, then find the world at the door. The interesting thing about the interviews that result from such things is that the dynamic gets reversed. Instead of you persuading them about your abilities, they are persuading you what a good fit you'd be. No, I did not fall off the turnip truck. When I get in this situation, due diligence follows.

Next, another echo from the good ol' days. I applied for one of those jobs that usually rings the "overqualified" chime with employers. Hope having abandoned me, I expected nothing but the usual black hole treatment. Au contraire: HR called first to set up a phone screen. When I called back, they said that on second thought they were sending this up to the hiring manager. She in turn responded with almost 20 pages of exams, of a sort that I haven't seen since I studied for my certificate. I opened that email Saturday morning and didn't start until Monday (see below). At the moment the score is tied, and I hope to get this paperwork done tomorrow.

The reason I didn't start until Monday comes from the second front, home improvement. I bet you didn't know that a porcelain toilet tank can spontaneously crack when the weather is very hot and the water in the tank is very cool. Odd, yes; rare, yes, but it can happen and did happen last Thursday night at Chez Oncle. The only witnesses to the actual failure were the two very astounded cats, whose puzzled noises (and the sound of rushing water) brought the humans.

There is much more water in those tanks than you would think.

Early the next morning we called our plumber, who called back in under an hour. (This is what happens when you give all your business to one plumbing contractor.) After a bit of hemming and hawing about style, space, etc., we had a new crapper soon after midday.

It has one slightly creepy feature which will endear it to wives wherever plumbing is indoors: after a slight push, the seat closes itself. Slowly, I might add, so one has time to get clear and watch this thing from across the room.

Back to all that water. The deluge moved a nice-to-do project—re-tiling the bathroom floor—up to an immediate priority. Buying the tile took care of Friday afternoon. Regular readers may recall that this is the only john in the house, that it is on the ground floor, and that it was once a cute Victorian side porch. This was the bright idea of the strange character who lived here in the first half of the 20th century. I am the third generation of oddballs to live here.

It's not the strangest bathroom location hereabouts, though. I've been in two antique houses that have even smaller necessaries stuck under the stairs. However, once the appliances are in, that cute side porch makes a very small bathroom. The size means a small tile budget. However, it also means working a section at a time so that the facility can remain in use at stated intervals. Small also means an uncommonly large amount of twisting and turning, as well as cutting and fitting, which means the job takes about twice as long as would your ordinary 5 x 8 bathroom.

That job is not entirely done. When I ran out of Sunday, three old tiles remained unconquered. Now that my priority is taking my third go at coding exams. When that's done, it's back to the tiles. Interesting how what, in other circumstances, would be a trial turns into a respite.

Any suggestions for inter-costal sprains?

Too much of a good thing

If you follow the local news on the South Shoah, or the Boston Globe, you may be aware that Boston Harbour's famed Minot's Ledge lighthouse is up for sale.

Now, before you make a bid or call Rate My Space, I ask you to contemplate this Globe file photo. As some of my neighbours have already discovered, there is such a thing as too much ocean view.