A conspiracy next door

I forgot to mention my weigh-in on Monday. I did do it, just forgot to post it. I was 237, up one pound. Motherf*%ker...

And yes, I know it could be increased muscle mass because muscle weights more than fat. And I'm not radically discouraged. I think I just got cocky off the start and figured this would be easy. Guess again. Hopefully with the car back we'll be making it to the gym on a more regular basis than the sporadic times we've been getting there the past couple of weeks.

Oh yes, we have the car back, 19 days after we put it in the garage. The good news? Shipping was about a quarter what they estimated, so that's good. The bad news? Because of all the rust underneath the car, it took several hours longer than they thought. Final total? About $3,300.

So I picked up the car, asked if he wanted the left arm, right arm or Visa (sadly opted for the Visa) drove back to work in the car, which seems to be running quite smoothly, and then went into my office, closed the door and whacked my head off the desk for a few minutes.

I've never spent that much on car repairs in my life. Which makes me lucky, I know. Still, gah. I hope the mechanic enjoys the trip to St. Lucia with the money because that's likely where we would have ended up. I've tried to tell myself that at least we got airmiles, so we're not that much closer to Australia (or New Zealand). It's cold comfort though.

In other news, the fire department is steadily coming to the conclusion that a fat fire might have caused The Snack to have burned down. Which will not be one of the great shockers of all time when that is released.

But what is amusing is the reaction of the ravens to the ruins. We went out this morning and there was about 40 or 50 ravens pitched on the rooftop of our building, Arctic Ventures or the wires, plus all the ones on different part of the wreckage. They apparently have decided to claim the ruins for their own. Then there's the noise they make, which can be a caw or a kind of clicking noise. They're a very vocal bird.

We walked out this morning not paying attention until we suddenly noticed all the ravens and paused. I turned to Cathy and said 'Dear, I think we've entered a Hitchcock movie." She agreed and we quickly vacated the area.

Sadly they were gone lunch time otherwise I would have taken a photo. Perhaps tomorrow.

As a side note, I was curious about what a group of ravens are called and found this site. This is what they said: "A group of Ravens is called 'An Unkindness'. It can also be a 'Constable' or 'Conspiracy', though, depending on what they are doing at the time. For example, an unkindness of ravens might torment a dog and steal its food. A constable of ravens is stationed at the Tower of London. A conspiracy of ravens might be seen lurking in the shadows of a garbage dump."

You know, I really like those names. Basically when I came out this morning I was looking at a conspiracy of ravens. And I've certainly seen an unkindness of ravens in the past. But conspiracy works. For one thing, the buggers are hard to photograph. They're just black shapes. Here's about the best shot I got from an attempt to photograph one over the weekend.



They're just menacing dark blobs. I'm sure they can be photographed and I plan on having many more attempts at getting a good shot of one. I'm just saying, they're crafty buggers.

Then again, those involved with conspiracies tend to be.