Bird. Bird. BIRDS!

Merry Christmas! As many of you know, Dan and I have friends. Ben and Jara are our friends, and they have birds. Since they are lucky enough to be spending the holidays with family, we were enlisted to watch two of their birds: Cleo and Alfie. And thus the adventure begins. Picture this: a bird on the boxes, the incessantly screeching, pooping, flailing, food-flinging, Dan-biting heathen by the name of Cleo. Cleo does not like Dan and Dan has sworn off Cleo for life. Alfie is a much calmer, and larger, poop machine. He is positioned on the desk and he likes to shred paper, eat broccoli and sit for long periods of time on my knee. It should be known that Alfie does like Dan, so the theory that Dan emits an odorless bird repellent does not fly, so to speak. I take turns holding the birds and keeping them away from Dan, but they really hate it when I leave the room. There is an ear-splitting cacaphony that follows my exit which consists of screeches, whistles, clicks, hoots, flaps. Dan contributes to this by swearing and cursing the noisy beasts. So things are very lively at our place.
In other news, we have been busy with visitors (see previous blog), holiday happenings and work. Our other friends Kyle and Nancy have an annual holiday party we would be crazy to miss. We get to catch up with people we rarely see and meet new people we won't see until the next holiday party! And the food! Nancy is serious about her party fare, and we look forward to her yummies every year.
I have been working at the hospital a lot lately, mostly filling in for those lucky enough to have vacation time. The 3pm-11pm in the lab is actually a lot of fun because the people who work that shift are great and there aren't any supervisors around that late so we get to screw off a lot and wear tennis shoes! I hope none of them read this...
On Christmas Eve I worked 3-11 and Dan met me after work so we could go to the Midnight mass at St. Saviour's which is right behind the hospital. We walked home and fell asleep around 2am.
We got lots of cool stuff for Christmas, most notably (for me) a bunch of kitchen accessories like the Pampered Chef chopper and the Williams Sonoma aprons! Dan got some CDs, a new man-purse made by Victorinox, Pictionary and some stuff we have yet to open. Which is why I will sign off, because I need to get home and open more presents!