Just walked through to the kitchen to rinse something out, glanced up, and saw Blackbeard watching me curiously from a curtain rod across an open window.  The little bugger was enthusiastically attacking one of the doors of his cage this morning, but I checked it at the time and the bolt holding it shut (yes, we had to start using bolts and dog-clips a while ago because they worked out how to pry open the doors from the inside) was still secure.

• weekend started on Friday, due to illness.  One of those damnably bad headcolds that shouldn't be debilitating but make it impossible to function at work (and where the work environment actively makes the symptoms worse);
  
  
• spam storm that started on Thursday evening continued throughout the weekend.  There's this strange, recurring problem I have with my primary email address (graeme@ispname) where every other client of that ISP is incapable of configuring their mail clients and always puts my address in the field.  This time around a combination of clueless namesakes, IT-ignorant financial advisers in NSW, outsourced virus-scanning, and the Dark Age mail technology of my own ISP flooded my primary email address with an ongoing barrage of thousands of repeated messages (with 800kb attachments), rendering that account unusable.  Email was an ongoing source of frustration;
  
  
• didn't see the girls at all on Saturday.  Slept in (blame the headcold) and Marina left with them early to go "feed ducks".  Duck feeding turned out to involve girls going with Jane (Marina's sister-in-law to be), while Marina stayed behind and - I think - played WoW.  Not quite my idea of feeding ducks with kids.  Apparently ducks are also nocturnal, because there was no sign of Marina or the girls by the time I left that evening for a birthday BBQ party (which was one of the reasons I'd been resting so conscientiously through Friday and Saturday - I wanted to be fit to go out for at least a couple of hours on Saturday evening);
  
  
• the cat we don't have spent all of Saturday asleep in the top shelf of the girls' wardrobes, someplace it hadn't occurred to me to look for her, but which has now been added to the list of places she hides when she doesn't want found.  Magpies began lying down on the front porch to sun themselves;
  
  
• combined birthday party for Allison and Cassie.  I wasn't quite the oldest person there, but was probably in the top three.  This was the first "normal", social party I've been to in many years (i.e. not Halloween, not Pirate-themed, not family), so to mark the occasion - and in a burst of nostalgia - I dug out the old black suede Pendragons and was pleased to discover they're as comfortable as ever.  Purple pirate shirt was kind of wasted, as I kept my jacket on all night, but it also fit the nostalgic mood I was in;
  
  
• fun party, although Cassie seemed surprised that I knew no-one there (except a couple of people by sight, who don't remember me).  It's an age/social circle thing.  Certainly the most Concentrated Geek I've been exposed to in a long time (since the old Montrose Street barbecues, in fact, which this was very reminiscent of), and I mean that in a good way.  By the end of the night, the party had divided into the card sharps at one end of the room, and the superhero/gaming fans at the other.  I hovered in the middle, talking to the late-arriving magic_hammer ("That last game of Stacraft went really fast - there's time for another fast one before I have to leave.") - I don't know how to play any card games, and these days, while I have a reasonably good idea of what's happening in mainstream comics, I tend to find the industry and the creative process more interesting than the actual comics themselves.  Did contemplate contributing to the Manga vs American comics debate with "Bah, 2000 AD pisses over the lot of them", but didn't fancy my chances of making it out the door in time.  Plus, being a virtual stranger to most of the people there, that seemed a poor way to make an impression.
  Being partly deaf and mute from the cursed headcold was also something of a disincentive to joining in the fairly robust conversation.  But, you know, there was a good atmosphere, and a friendly buzz in the air, so it was a good way to spend an evening;
  
  
• Sunday another quiet day, involving more WoW and no Genevieve, who'd been left behind the previous evening so she could go to a Blue Light Disco.  Eventually returned with tattoo on the small of her back which I'm assuming is temporary.  With Kaylene in tow, took Catherine out to Borders so she could use the gift card Mum gave her for her birthday.  Tried very gently to steer Catherine away from things like stickers and colouring books and towards "real" books that will last a little longer.  End result was a good compromise - Catherine picked up an "activity set" (colouring book and puzzle book) and a couple of prose novels;
  
  
• magpies continue to make many invasion attempts.  The cold weather is making them hungry.  Fear the day they acquire a taste for human flesh.
  

• nothing conveys suspicion quite like a lovebird when you put something new in their cage;

• at the same time, nothing conveys uncontrollable curiosity quite like a lovebird when you put something new in their cage. Unless, of course, you put something new in the budgies' cage...;

• rampant greed: Flint goes gleefully berserk when given his morning serve of broccoli. The branch is denuded of buds within minutes; and minutes after that the stalk has been chewed back to the bars of the cage;

• acting a little more slowly, but with no less enthusiasm once they get started, the lovebirds wait until Marina and the girls are out the door before launching an assault on their bowl of fresh food. Half the broccoli appears to evaporate almost instantly, and the apple and sugar-peas almost look like they're going to follow when Aubrey and Barbossa abruptly adjourn for their favourite pastime: intensive shredding of the sandsheets lining the floor of their cage (second favourite pastime is dumping the shredded strips into their water dish so Marina has to clean it out three times a day);

• The Stare: what you get when the lovebirds (born-again fresh food fanatics) start eyeballing you if they feel you're being too slow to deliver. The Stare is enhanced by the fact both birds have black heads, and white rings surrounding large black eyes. It's unnerving. and they know it.
  

Hypno-Cat.  Fear it.