Monday, March 28, 2011

The Birds Are Dead

It’s been awhile and one of my regular readers (one of three) is getting restless.  My apologies to all of the rest of my readers for my lack of writing, but Dan can eat it…

I have been a bit busy, but not that busy recently.  First was a trip to Orlando, for no reason at all.  Well, for a reason, to meet one of the Three Cabelleros:

Dead Birds 03

Awesome.  We also walked about seventeen miles a day and rode a bunch of rides, did a bunch of sightseeing and ate a bunch of food.  It was just an awesome time.

I went to Disney World when I was in third grade.  I remember almost nothing from the trip.  One thing I do remember is I had an incredible time watching Michael Jackson in a 4D short film.  He basically teaches a crotchety old space beeword not to be such a beeword by dancing.  It was called Captain EO and was directed by Stephen Spielberg. 

When we went to Epcot Center, I was delighted to see that they brought it back.  It was at least 45 times more awesome the second time around, as it was just hilarious.  Just awesomely hilarious.  Thanks Epcot Center.

Dead Birds 04

It’s still very ugly though, that Epcot.  Yipes.

Another fun thing in Orlando?  Universal Islands of Adventure.  The place was jam packed with dorks, as that’s where the new and apparently dork riddled Harry Potter World resides.  Harry Potter World was just OK, but I’m not a huge fan of Harry Potter, so I didn’t want to stand in line for 45 minutes to get into a store that sold scarves from the movies.  Dorks.

The best part of Harry Potter World was a crazy ride that was kind of half movie, half roller coaster and half giant animatronic spiders spitting on you from three feet away.  Amanda was screaming her brains out.  She was genuinely scared and was actually, literally screaming out every few seconds.  Don’t believe me?  Here she is trying to to embarrass herself by covering her screams with her hand:

Dead Birds 05

Just fantastic.  I wanted to get that picture on a blanket, but I couldn’t shell out $99 bucks for a crappy blanket.  Maybe someday…

In other Ryan is busy news, I’ve been trying to get some more photography business drummed up, but it’s hit or miss.  I did have a few things this weekend though.

First, a wedding of some Seattle folks in Arecibo:

Dead Birds 01

And some third anniversary shots of a homosexual couple from Naples in Old San Juan:

Dead Birds 02

In house news, which is probably why you read this terrible web log, two of the three floors are rented.  Awesome.  The third floor houses two friends with jobs, so that should be some steady income.  The first floor has the previously mentioned single mom.  Hopefully she can come through with monthly money too.  The two rents combined cover the mortgage payment, plus the management fees, so once that second floor is filled, I will actually see a profit from the house.  Hooray.

Selling-wise, no real news.  One interested fellow wanted to offer $150k, but thought better of it when he found out that the heat is baseboard electric instead of steam.  This confused me greatly, as tenants pay for the electric bill, but the building owner pays for the oil that burns to create the steam.  Not to mention the water bill.   I don’t get it.

Now onto stereotyping Puerto Ricans!  Awesome! 

In my last post, I mentioned, and showed visual evidence of two infantile birds that lived, and screamed constantly, outside of our bedroom window.  They are no more. Here’s how they died, allegedly:

When we returned from Orlando after our seven days there, we opened our apartment door and were met with some water puddles by our giant living room windows.  Confused, we cleaned it up.  Not long thereafter, we learned that our building was, and still is, being power washed to prepare it for a new coat or two of paint.  The washers apparently sprayed the crap out of our not so well sealed windows and shot dirty water into our apartment.  Super.

We looked in the bedroom and it was a similar scene.  After cleaning up, I was curious to see what may have happened to the birds on the window sill.  I looked out and they were gone.  I was hopeful that in the time that we were gone, they had learned to fly and left the nest.

The next morning, and every subsequent morning since, we were awakened by a strange moaning bird.  Super loud and ultra depressed sounding.  That is what it sounds like, when pigeons cry.

We surmised that the baby birds had been moved by the workers and now their annoying and in need of therapy mom couldn’t find them. 

Later that day, we were on our way to the beach (which is right outside of our door, whabam) and turned a corner in the parking lot of the building.  Water was misting down from the washing going on above us, and we spotted something.  A dead baby pigeon.

The realization hit us both at likely the same instant.  These laborers had actually just sprayed the baby birds and they, not yet possessing the ability to fly, fell to their death.  Amanda hates birds.  A lot.  But even she wouldn’t throw one five stories to its death.  Incredible.

Puerto Ricans hate birds.  Or they are too lazy to take the time to move the flightless ones when cleaning a building.  Probably the second one.

In the next installment of Stereotyping Puerto Ricans, I will explore how Puerto Ricans are obscenely loud and discourteous.

That should get me a few more readers…

1 comment:

Khristen said...

I love your Prince reference.