Of Lost Tiles, NFL Blues And Bird Wars

by Kevin Burton

   Great jumpin’ Jehoshaphat I am jazzed! 

   Joyous, jubilant even!

   This post is dedicated to providing updates on some of the stories I’ve told previously on Page 7. This first update is a happy one on a very recent post.

   I mentioned that I lost the letter J tile from my scrabble set (Can A Scrabble Game Launch A Rock Song? Jan. 23). Well I found it. 

   It was in a bag of supposedly extra tile.  Sometimes I take the scrabble set downstairs and do a practice game. I obviously missed one tile when I brought it back upstairs last time.

   Playing with a full set again, what a joyride!  Makes me want to jitterbug. 

   Full disclosure: I can spell jitterbug but can’t do the dance.

   I have a set of replacement Scrabble tiles in my Amazon cart. I will probably buy it even though I found the missing tile.  Given my propensity to lose things, that would be justified and judicious.

   I’ve done more than one post on dumping the Cleveland Browns as my favorite NFL team and picking up the Cincinnati Bengals. How is that working out?

   Well Cincinnati, my Bengals, wouldn’t win when I wanted them to early on. Then late in the year when they had the chance to secure the third draft pick and a star offensive lineman from the University of Oregon, they wouldn’t lose, beating Pittsburgh and Houston back-to-back.

   Then the Browns made the playoffs.

   What would Charlie Brown say? “I can’t stand it!”

   But the Bengals get their injured quarterback back next year. They will unveil new uniforms.  They secured the fifth draft pick, which should be good enough to get one of the top two offensive linemen. Thinking good thoughts in the jungle. 

   Sorry, there will be no update on decluttering, (What’s So Difficult About Decluttering? June 16, 2020).

   Well OK, if you must know.  There is a medium-sized box of get-rid-ofs near our front door.  It has been there for some time and not many things have been added to it lately. 

   And today I confess, I fished something out of the box that my wife had put there.  But I also put something in so I broke even, right?

   Don’t judge.

   I did two posts about a family of birds building a nest, without permission, on a light fixture hanging above our front porch. 

(Unwanted Visitors Had Us Crying Fowl Sept. 8, 2019 and (Birds Rebuffed In Nest Wars II, We Think) June 14, 2020).

   The problem with that was after their little birdie dinners, they decorated our porch in a way that didn’t match our color scheme.

   The first year we waited them out and cleaned up after them.  Last year we hosed down the light and knocked down whatever partial nest they had built.  Even with bird brains they eventually figured out this wasn’t going to work and found someplace else to build. 

   So here’s the update. We just did some fairly extensive renovations to the house, siding, trim and gutters, even a new front door.  As part of that process we bought a different light for the porch and had an electrician swap it out for us. 

   The old light was motion sensitive but had a perverse sense of humor.  I would turn the light on to take the trash out at halftime of Monday Night Football, but the light would not come on.  I would put the trash in the barrel, take the barrel to the curb and come back to the house and THEN the light would come on.  Between that and the bird thing, that light had to go.    

   There is no place to land on this new light, so the Burtons win the nest war, unless they try to build in our gutters.  I’ll let you know. 

   In related news and to wrap up this post, I am excited to announce that we have a gently-used light fixture for sale (see, I’m great at decluttering). 

   It’s a dual-lumination unit, designed for optimal directional lighting. Its color is white, mostly, or off white. It could be the perfect accent for your porch, deck or greenhouse!

   Any takers? Make your best offer in comments below.