Sat Aug 8

Whilst lying in bed this morning, I heard what sounded like an intense water leak in the ceiling, or I thought maybe the neighbor was doing something weird to his bathroom floor. A few minutes later, there was a loud clunk whoosh flap-flap-flap-flap squeak sound from a hallway closet. I jumped out of bed and peered into the hallway, as did Wally, (Geoff was at the computer oblivious to any weird sounds), opened the washer/dryer closet. Nothing. I turned around and slowly cracked open the closet that contains the furnace and water heater, and a rush of wings had me screaming and slamming the door shut again. "Geoff!" I exclaimed, "There's a bird in the hallway closet!" Geoff came running out, we couldn't believe it. How in the world did a nasty bird get inside the closet in the middle of the house! And how would we get it out again? We thought about it, and finally decided to just call someone, because we didn't want to be chasing a bird all over the house, and didn't know if it had diseases or whatever. We considered sicking Wally on it, but figured he would probably just run away from it. A guy pulled up a half hour later, bringing a giant net with him. He cracked open the closet door and out flew the bird, a large sparrow, into the hallway. With one swoosh he caught it in his net and carried it outside. He laid it gently on the ground and little birdy flew up and away to be with his friends. He explained that the bird must've fallen into one of the pipes sticking out of the roof, all the way down into our closet, and showed us the opening where little bird dropped in. Weird, he said, birds weren't supposed to be able to get in, and if it happens again to let our landlord know to fix the pipe. After he left, we cleaned the closet with bleach because their was bird blood on the door.

After the excitement of the morning, we headed to Walmart for a new bookshelf, some CD cases, and a new vacuum, because our supposedly nice one broke, and the service warranty was expired. We decided that from now on, it would be cheaper to just buy a new $60 vacuum once a year than a $200 one every two years. Growing up, it seems like we had one vacuum that lasted years. How do we find one like that.

I am now organizing the backroom.