Budgies in the morning....

There was another daring prison-break today when I was cleaning Kaylee's cage. I was sleepy, and not to attentive, and I left the cage door open for about ten seconds... "Thank goodness they didn't get out," I said to myself, and then realized that one of the happily-chirping budgies was on top of the cage, not inside it.

I thought I'd have to leave the cage door open when I left for work. My budgie books say not to do that; there's just too much trouble a budgie can get into.

But twenty minutes later, at I was eating tapioca for breakfast, Kaylee wandered back in. I guess she just wanted a chance to fly around and sit on the curtain rod and prove her freedom. Or maybe the lure of her breakfast, back in the cage, is what did it.

I know I should let them out more.

The Union Meeting....

I don't belong to a Union, but at the end of November every year Harry's Local has its Annual General Meeting and I attend to take minutes, freeing up the regular secretary for other duties.

As an outsider to both the workplace involved - a government department - and the Union itself, my primary impression is how incredibly boring such meetings are, though the attendees are really into it. And I find enough to amuse me and keep my brain awake in just trying to make legible notes about subjects I know nothing of. They had two speakers this year; they were easy to take notes for, compared to the speaker last year, who spoke quickly, used a lot of technical phrases, and worse - a constant stream of government acronyms that made no sense to me at all.

After the meeting, we went to the Colonnade for supper - where they have the best pizza this side of Italy. Harry and I shared a large combination. We even managed to have room left afterwards for half a key lime pie each.

When I left for work this morning it looked like rain, and might have drizzled a bit. When I left work at 4 p.m. there was a gold, strong wind that was making the temperature drop fast. When I left the restaurant it was so cold that dry bits of snow were blowing against the curbs and the sidewalks had patches of glittering, solid ice. I thought of the Stark family; not so much their motto "Winter is Coming" but the one I suspect will appear in the books that George R.R. Martin hasn't written yet - "Winter has come".