A twist on the old cliché: if you hate someone, put him in a cage.

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fter I got off work at 9am, I rode my bike down a particularly and unseasonably cold and drizzly Main Street to the Charlottesville Municipal Building at the east end of the Downtown Mall. $80 lighter, I rode away. The bureaucrat behind the desk had given me a remarkably un-Kafkaesque experience. She said the water and gas would be turned on not three weeks from today, but this very afternoon!

Seven the Cockatoo © 1993 by E. J°®d@@n with JPEGification © 1997 by the Gus

A scruffy man in a filthy trench coat was selling something in one of the UVA bus stop shelters on Jefferson Park Avenue. Normally I avoid street vendors unless what is being vended happens to be inexpensive food on a Friday night. But this morning I just wanted an opportunity to take a brief rest from the rain spitting in my face. That's when I saw the birds. The scruffy man had dozens of cockatoos, parrots and parakeets. They were all on deep discount owing to their ill health. I studied each bird carefully as they shivered in their rusty wire cages. Then I fixed my gaze on the healthiest of all. He looked me in the eye and said "Four Oh Four, Dammit!" Suddenly I was in love. For only ten dollars, I became the proud owner of a cockatoo! Pictured at right is Seven, my new companion bird. Isn't he just the peaches? I didn't ask any questions as to where Seven came from and why he was so inexpensive. No doubt someone is missing a very special friend. Seven speaks a number of phrases which give me some indication of where he might have come from. The most amusing of these is the mysterious "I've been hacked again, damn fishnet!" He also whistles the melody for the song "Time" off of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

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nce I'd hid Seven in my room (my new housemates are allergic to birds I fear), I worked out all the expenses for the house. I've paid $905 so far and Matthew has paid $700 ($720 by the end of the day). By putting this in the musings I have some sort of record of it all. Doing this accounting made me feel very responsible. To use an astrological metaphor, it gave my Grand Earth Trine a chance to try out its wings.

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s I awoke in the mid afternoon, I could hear the toilet occasionally flushing and people taking well-needed showers. This was welcome evidence that the brief stone age period was over. Reliable utilities and a lack of Gutter Punks made me feel considerably less cranky today.

Peggy and I went in the Dart to the Dynashack to do some last minute cleaning of my old room and to get some wood with which to weatherize the back porch of 129 Observatory. I gave John my key. He showed me a list detailing some money that I supposedly still owe the Dynashack. It comes to significantly less than the six days worth of rent that I am owed for not having a place to stay last week.

I'm concerned by the sheer quantity of mindless television I watched in the evening. The Simpsons are worthwhile, of course, but Seinfeld isn't. And neither were any of the other dumb ass shows that served as a sink for our attention.

Following a tip from Matthew Hart, Deya and I picked up 18 anomalously inexpensive Williamsville Beers ($3 for six) from the JPA Quickmart. Meanwhile Matthew and Peggy prepared pasta.

Drinking beer, telling jokes and stories and ignoring the teevee made for a good use of our cold and rainy but wonderfully sheltered little domestic evening. Our house is cozy and appealing (and extensively decorated with my paintings). We're all content, for now.

My pre-work nap ran into a reef of laughter, thumping and shouting from downstairs. The housemates were being drunk and rowdy. Matthew Hart had broken into the Popov vodka, you see. If I'd only been running a fan I wouldn't have heard them, I'm sure.

I was just kidding about the cockatoo. Sorry, it was sort of an in joke.

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