not your typical Friday night

Let's see...

- go for a walk, and get startled by a bright blue bird (budgie? parakeet? definitely tropical, obviously tame, and evidently disoriented) hopping beside the lane... check

- get some birdseed, wait till it eats from your hand... check

- coax said bird into a makeshift bird cage (actually, the carrier that recently carried your pet cat to its untimely demise... a long story... more appropriate avian accomodations forthcoming)... check

- plant potatoes... check

- get startled by a dead baby raccoon under the woodpile (so maybe that's the smell you thought was a skunk), and move the corpse to the manure pile... check

- rearrange kitchen/dining room to make way for new feathered friend, already making itself at home and swinging on its perch improvised from baler twine and a stick from the yard... check

- trundle delighted soon-to-be-10-year-old boy off to bed... check

- call Mom, and commiserate re: her bird issues (the cute couple in the nest on the balcony having given birth at last to various tiny poopers apparently intent on trashing the place)... check

Well, that about does it for this Friday night. And to think, at one point we thought about going to a movie.