Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The Week in Pictures

Not much worth writing about has happened in the past few weeks, so I’ll share some pictures with you. I like to snap pictures of random things that interest me, and there’s usually a story to accompany each one.

In Florida we’ve been suffering, like the rest of the country, through a brutal cold snap. It’s not as brutal as Chicago or Detroit, but for Florida, it’s been really cold. Home heating systems aren’t adequate to deal with it, and most Floridians don’t have proper clothing to cope. But it seems that the people of Florida aren’t the only residents who are suffering. The other day, I was dropping off some dry cleaning, and found the attendant with a bird on her shoulder.

bird


It seems the bird, flying around in search of some warm place to roost, had flown directly into the glass window of the cleaners and fallen, stunned, to the sidewalk. The attendant picked it up, took it inside, and set it on her shoulder. The bird was content to sit there fluffed up, nestled cozily in her hair. In cartoons, people always see tweeting birds when they get hit on the head. I wonder if birds see dancing humans?

My company is very security conscious. Any corporate documents must be disposed of in locked bins. The bins are picked up by a contractor and taken away to shred the contents. The contractor leaves fresh, empty bins behind. Last week, the contractor left these two bins.

bins


Note the absence of a deposit slot on the bin on the right. I find myself wondering if a contractor with this kind of quality-control problem is the best one to handle sensitive corporate documents.

Yesterday a bird shat on my car. It’s an old car, so I wasn’t upset about it. In fact, I’ve been thinking about buying a new car, but I can’t really afford the one I want. But when I saw the stain, I saw Jesus, suspended on the cross, surrounded by a halo of light.

jesus1


Suddenly, I find myself wondering if the bird shit has miraculously increased the value of my vehicle. Maybe I can list it on eBay and a wealthy Christian will be willing to buy it for the price of a brand-new Buick LaCrosse. Hey, it’s worth a shot.

5 comments:

michael said...

is the car a "chrysler"....see where I'm going with that? Ya get it? Ah never mind...
I used to work at a bank in Texas...I don't know if it was the shape of the building (which was kind of unusual) or a feature of the glass but we used to have grackles fly full speed into our windows at fairly regular intervals. I would have this conversation with my tellers quite often," Aww, poor birdie.." "It's a Grackle! there's a million of those horrible things!"
Or...wait, maybe they just hated Chase bank and it had nothing to do with the building at all...
Micahel

Tim said...

I have a friend who was in the Air Force. He used to work at a large radar installation on the coast of Maine. The dome housing the radar antenna had a catwalk around the periphery, and birds used to roost on the railing at night. Three sweeps of the radar antenna, and their poor little brains would be cooked from the inside. My friend had to walk around the dome every morning and pick up the dead birds so that visiting classes of schoolchildren wouldn't see them.

bruce said...

my only comment...

Radar love..

:)

bch said...

...and I think this caption would be appropriate as well...

...Holy crap!...

:)

Anonymous said...

I can't imagine it being cold in Florida! I love by the sea in Cornwall, England and we don't have it too cold.

www.livingincornwall.com