New Place!!?!?!

May 21st, 2006, 10:08 pm PDT by Greg

I am cautiously optimistic that we have found a new place to live in Burnaby. It’s only about 3 blocks from our old place. Kelly and Paul looked at it tonight: 2 bedrooms, (small) kitchen and living room open to each other, shared laundry, clean, to be painted, etc. Cheaper than our current place too.

All that remains is to get the landlord a deposit—Kelly and/or Paul should be dropping it off tomorrow. The landlord is an older-sounding Chinese woman. Communicating by phone has been a bit of a challenge, but I think we understand each other. I’m still not sure she totally understands that I’m not in Vancouver, though.

That’s a load off. Now, all I have to do is get a plane ticket, book movers, forward the mail, buy a car (for NC), figure out how to get to the airport, and actually get some work done at some point. [shakes fist in the direction he imagines his current landlord to be]

Evolution of Dance

May 20th, 2006, 12:24 pm PDT by Greg

Okay, this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing we should do very often, but we thought a good chunk of our friends should watch the Evolution of Dance. (6 minutes)

Kat suggests picturing me doing the dancing. I don’t understand why that would be funny. It’s a good thing I didn’t have anything in my mouth to spit at my screen around 2:45, though.

They do exist!

May 19th, 2006, 11:48 am PDT by Kat

I just took a 2 hour walk around the UNC Campus.

I walked by the gym, through the campus cemetary (will take pictures on the next excursion, I promise!), around the cemetary, to Battle Park (a wooded park managed by the UNC Botanical Gardens), and through what is called “Forest Theater”, which is a stone amphitheater set in the woods that I think is included in Battle Park. I saw lots of cardinals (yes, Oli, I will take pictures next time!), starlings, robins, Eastern bluebirds, some sort of wren, Carolina, probably, the local thrasher (don’t remember which one that is at the moment), brown, maybe, northern mockingbirds, what I think was a red-headed woodpecker, a female eastern rufous-sided towhee, and … wait for it… HOUSE FINCHES!!!! They exist!!! I spotted a pair flying from out of a shrub into a tree at the edge of the cemetary. Then I saw about 4 more males and two more females hopping around in the grass and around headstones in the cemetary. On my walk back I cut through the woods near the university’s stadium and saw another pair. The stadium is pretty much right next to the Biology buildings! Yippee!

On another positive note, I got clearance from the director of the university’s grounds department to hang feeders and traps in the wooded areas. I just have to tell them where the feeders will be, they draw them on some map, and then present that to the groundskeeping guys so they don’t disturb them, or so that they can inform me when they have to do maintenance nearby. This is great!

So, I think I’ll be hanging some feeders on Monday. Have to still contact the grounds guys, so I think this weekend may be out of the question, but we’ll see how fast they get back to me.

Now all I need is a car so I can get here after dusk and before sunrise!

Moved!

May 18th, 2006, 5:52 pm PDT by Greg

We’re here now. My blog has been combined with Kat’s and I’m hosting myself with WordPress. Sorry if I’m breaking anybody’s bookmarks–any of my students know I hate that.

It still needs some gussying-up, but that’s the easy part, right?

Biking around Chapel Hill

May 17th, 2006, 5:53 pm PDT by Greg

We spent a little more time today making traps. I did manage to finally take a ride around Carrboro and Chapel Hill with our digital camera.

Rather that writing about it, I have captioned the pictures in our gallery, and I’ll point you to that.

One other story from today: At one point during the tour, I was waiting to walk across an intersection and there was a crazy-looking, toothless old guy standing there too. “Great,” I though, “he looks like the kind of guy that will start up a crazy conversation for no reason”. I was bracing myself for something like “All the chipmunks are plotting against the Mormons, you know.”

Just then a young, well-groomed guy carrying groceries walked over. Apropos of nothing, he said something like “Not everybody could carry these groceries, good thing I’m such manly man. Dang, you know it.” He had like three bags. He went the other way across the intersection.

Toothless and I looked at each other, smiled, and shrugged. Just goes to show, you never can tell.

Trapped

May 16th, 2006, 10:53 pm PDT by Kat

That’s what I hope my birds will be soon. Since I haven’t seen a bird in any of my traps, I decided to make new ones. Funnel traps, they’re called. I got specs from Dana, but didn’t have any materials.

So, off to the hardware store. Had to have greg help with this one as I wasn’t totally sure how to go about building these things. I had Greg meet me at the hardware store. He travelled by bike, me by bus. The local hardware store is great! They had everything and had very helpful people. We also went to the grocery store to pick up sunflower seeds (a 10 lb. bag). After making our purchases, we had to somehow get them to school. Since greg had his bike, we piled the seed bag over the middle bar, and greg balanced the roll of chicken wire between the handle bars, and off we went – walking along the bike trail to school. It wasn’t actually that far, and the weather was nice today, so it wasn’t too bad. For pictures see the gallery.

The build started out with paper models (so as to not waste the precious chicken wire). And, by the end we ended up with two funnel traps complete with 4 doors each! Not bad for an afternoon’s work.

We finally left school around 7:00. I realised I had been at school for over 12 hours. Can’t complain though. Spent most of the morning blogging as I was waiting to see whether any birds would use my old traps. They didn’t. Now I get to sleep in tomorrow! Yippee!

Treated Greg to Japanese dinner for all of his help. “Treated” is funny because I haven’t gotten paid yet, and Greg actually paid my last credit card bill! Hee! Hee! Anyways, there’s a nice sushi place just down the road from the apartment! We braved the sushi combo, and it wasn’t bad. Will update tomorrow if badness kicks in tonight!

Making Traps

May 16th, 2006, 10:08 pm PDT by Greg

[The links here are to pictures from the gallery of pictures from today.]

Today was the day to make traps to catch birds. What we had to make were “funnel traps” Basically, picture a bird feeder in a wire mesh cage. The cage has some “funnel” shaped entrances.

The idea is that it’s easy to get in, but hard to get out. Not really a “trap” per se, just some kind of probabilistic thing that on average contains more birds as time goes on.

So, we got some hardware cloth (chicken wire with small gaps) and other stuff at the hardware store. We had to cart this back to campus–the bike came in handy, but we got some funny looks.

We set out to make the cages and the funnels. It all came together pretty well, I think.

But, cut hardware cloth has a lot of pointy bits. It looks like I’ve been attacked by an angry cat.

Kat’s plan this week is basically to do everything she can to get some birds. Keith gets back next week, and she’ll definitely have something to say.

Roach

May 16th, 2006, 9:38 am PDT by Kat

Almost forgot. Saw my first NC roach today. Had to wake up at 5:30 to get to school to set up traps (it was already light by the time I got to school, but I was on the first bus in!). Was brushing my teeth when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. There it was, in the bathtub. A large cockroach. I figured I’d try to fling it into the toilet and flush it. Got a piece of cardboard and leaned in the scoop it up, and it scuttled out of the way with the speed of a hummingbird! Crap! Now what! I could squish it! I grabbed the heaviest thing I could find, a CLR bottle from under the sink. I hit it with what I thought was a lot of force. Nope, still alive looking like nothing happened. Dammit! It was now getting late and I had to catch my bus. So, what did I do? I left it in the bathtub and left a note for Greg that it was in there so he wouldn’t inadvertently join it in the tub! Apparently he was able to squish it with the CLR bottle. Bug spray is being added to the shopping list.

Catching birds is hard

May 16th, 2006, 9:28 am PDT by Kat

I’m trying but nothing is going in the traps! Not even sparrows! Dammit!

I think I have three problems:

1) Non-ideal location in our aviary: I think I have to catch somewhere else on campus (but I’m not sure I can do this – have to wait for Keith to get back), or go to Keith’s backyard and set up there.

2) Non-ideal seed: I need to get sunflower seeds.

3) Non-ideal traps: I need to make feeders and funnel traps. Thanks to Dana I’ve got specs and am ready to start constructing.

On the bright side, my starlings are doing fine. I guess worse-case senario, I catch juvenile starlings and work on them… that’s a pretty bad senario though. Not giving up yet!

Everyone cross your fingers and do a little HOFI dance for me! Dance people, dance!!!!

Super Walmart, Farmer’s Market, Costco, and Thank you for Smoking

May 16th, 2006, 9:15 am PDT by Kat

So this weekend was chock full of “stuff to do since we have a car.”

Friday night we set out on an expedition to Super Walmart. Greg was pysched for his “American Experience” – he brought the camera. Sure enough, it was huge. (there should be pics up on the gallery) We started off the “experience” with dinner at McD. Yes, Greg ate meat! Had to get the full experience you see. Anyways, after gorging and feeling not quite right afterwards, we started shopping. Holy crap this place was huge! The experience ended with a slow, cashier. I wanted to pay with traveller’s cheques (to get rid of them) but I thought that might be too much for the poor woman, so we charged instead. Also didn’t want Greg to have an anuerism.

Saturday morning we rolled out of bed out into the Farmer’s Market. Felt like home except there was no chocolatier! The weather in Chapel Hill is probable not so good for selling chocolates. We bought some cheese, strawberries and pound cake and some tarts (one sweet potato and one pecan) from a woman who Greg already described in his blog. She was great! Can’t wait to see her again this Saturday!

Then it was off to Costco in Durham. Also stopped off at World Market (think Pier 1) and bought 3 bottles of wine (gotta love the states where you can buy wine and beer everywhere!). Also went to Bed Bath and Beyond. Was one of the first times it felt like home. Not in the “Chapel Hill is home” sense. More like, this looks like home in Vancouver sense. I think it’ll take a while for this to be like home. It has it’s charms, but it’s not familiar enough yet. Maybe in a few weeks… Anyways, went to Costco (also a homey feeling as all Costco’s look the same!).

Sunday morning we went shopping for a futon. The old tenants left us their futon, but I’m going to use that as my sofa. So, at the end of the summer I’ll need a bed (we’re borrowing the tenant’s bed for the summer). Figured a futon is the way to go (cheap!). Got one on sale (yea!) and it’s set up in the office where we needed a place to sit (to watch stuff on the computer) anyways!

At a loss for something else to do, we went to see a movie. The nearest large movie theater is in Durham. Saw “Thank you for Smoking.” Really funny – go see it!

And that was our last weekend with the rental car.

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