The Birds

Yesterday was a strange day. I was woken up not by my alarm clock but by crows. Crows are to PEI what raccoons are to Toronto. They are absolutely everywhere and rip apart your garbage bags and make a huge mess. Except here, the crows are out all the time, not just at night. Usually you see them everywhere but just like anything you become desensitized to them and ignore them. but yesterday morning, they were impossible to ignore. First of all they were so loud that they actually woke me up. It sounded as though the entire house was surrounded, and sure enough, when I looked out the window to figure out what the heck was going on, we were in fact completely surrounded. The trees looked as though they were fully leaved, except instead of being pleasantly green and leafy, they were black and noisy and pooping everywhere. The trees all around the house (out my bedroom window and the bathroom window) were saturated with crows. It was so erie and I couldn't help but remember two things: the movie The Birds, by Alfred Hitchcock, and the incident I had walking to school in November.

I was walking to either school, work or the pool, I can't remember where but I was walking up University Avenue. It was fairly chilly out because I was wear my UPEI Panthers toque. So here I am, minding my own business just strolling along (oh wait, I remember now, I was headed to the farmers market to sell raffle tickets for swim team, hence why I was dressed in Panther attire) minding my own business. I was walking just past the Harley club, and there is a crow sitting on the sidewalk. I notice it but think nothing of it and keep on walking. A few meters later, out of no where, all of a sudden I feel something hit my head and I look up, startled, and see my toque flying away down the sidewalk! Before I could even figure out what happened, the toque thankfully lands about 100 meters in front of my on the ground. This stupid crow had actually snuck up behind me, snatched my hat with it's razor sharp talons and flown away with it!! I picked up my hat and put it back on and kept walking still not fully understanding what had just happened, and thinking to myself that if I had witnessed that scene from a car driving by I would probably be laughing hysterically at the sight of some girl running down the street chasing a crow carrying a hat. So the lesson of the day: beware of hat stealing crows, or all crows on the island if you want to be safe.

Also when I woke up yesterday, it was unusually cold in our house. I thought nothing of it since it's -30 outside and our house is old and poorly insulated. Sam checked the oil the other day with our landlord when he was here filling potential mouse holes with tinfoil, so I knew we had oil. I went to the pool for the first session of AUS Swim Champs, followed by a lunch banquet kicking off the weekend, and then came home around 130. When I got home, it was really cold in the house. I checked the thermostat and it read only 11 degrees! It was still set as it usually is so I put two and two together realized that our heater must be broken again. Big Bummer. Sam and I sat in a 10 degree house for a couple hours while we waited for the landlord to come fix it, and then we had to get more oil delivered to be sure that we would have enough, but they couldn't come until Monday, which would be way to late. So 50 bucks later, we got oil right away. Oil is a huge pain. It's super expensive and if you need it within a 4 days of actually requesting it, they charge you a million dollars extra. But there wasn't much we could do other than that. So we left the landlord fixing the heater and bleeding the lines as we went off to work crossing our fingers that the house would be withing the double digits when we got home.

We had a little mini dance party in celebration of heat when we got home from work. Yahoo for working heaters! We watched a movie and made smores in the oven and had a marvelously chill night here at home and then went to bed in preps for my big day of swimming today! I haven't raced since first semester of last year, and I am very excited! I've done some personal best times this year in practice, and while I know I am not as prepared to race as I have been in the past, I'm just so excited to actually race that I know it'll be super fun either way. Racing is fun, and it's the reason we train twice a day so I'd be more worried if I felt 100% prepared and wasn't excited about it.

As for now, I have to go get all my swimming stuff together; I'm in the pool warming up in 30 minutes! The panthers did awesome yesterday, we had a whole bunch of people in consoles/finals and I think almost everyone had either a personal best or a seasonal best in the prelims. I'm hoping everyone will feed of the awesome energy from yesterday and kick some more butt today. I am hoping to contribute to this butt kicking. I'll try to find a link to the results page to post tomorrow!