Angry birds
Ah, I had a lovely break last week. There wasn't any particular occasion; the city had its anniversary day so we got Monday off (yay 3-day weekend), but I took the rest of the week off as well. I called it my own Christmas / New Year's holiday since I was unfortunate enough to be the guy working over the actual Christmas / New Year's break, drawing the short straw because of my lack of plans and lack of dependants.
So what did I do? Well, constructive stuff surprisingly: I worked on improving this website's stability (5 days without an error page! Fingers still crossed.) and other features for myself, I started writing this idea I had for a story based on a song my guitar buddy and I came up with last year, and because of said story I did a bit of extra subject matter reading which unfortunately had me read some pretty bad books. I also trimmed and replanted what used to be my 2-feet-tall basil plant into 2 much smaller / more manageable plants (gave a lot of leaf cuttings to my family, had basil in almost every meal the weekend that I spent with them).
As for things that fall into the unconstructive basket: I bought Castlevania: Lords of Shadow :D
Towards the end of the break, I spent the weekend with family, and upon returning to my place, found the living-room window smashed from the outside and a helluva lot of glass on the floor.
While the possibility existed, I didn't really think my place had been broken into; there were signs that wasn't the case. Instead, my mind, and everybody else's who I mentioned it to (landlord and property management company included), got to wondering: what the hell caused that hole?
Without CSI-like knowledge or a CSI-like flashback of events, it was a difficult question to answer. The blinds were down at the time, so whatever smashed the window was likely bounced back out after it did its job. Everyone had their theories: bricks, epic strong winds, a water balloon which defied physics and obtained the mass of a brick (that tiny red thing on the window sill in the right shot was a deflated balloon), etc. The most common theory though, was that it was a bird.
On hearing the bird theory, my mind made the following logic leaps: bird > bird hurling itself towards my window > bird breaking shit > bird must've had a temper > Angry Birds.
For the 5 of you out there who don't know what Angry Birds is, it is quite possibly the most popular iPad/iPhone game ever (with ports for various other devices being made) in which limbless birds, controlled by you, hurl themselves at terribly-constructed structures to kill the limbless animals that live inside for the satisfaction of watching large numbers appear on screen proportional to the damage your bird has done.
Thinking about that game, things started making an odd sort of sense in my head. I didn't imagine that someone had been hurling birds at my apartment building in hopes of knocking it down, but thought that the birds of the world, having had enough of being portrayed as projectiles for destruction thanks to the game, decided to get their revenge, ironically, by acting as destructive projectiles.
Why the hell they picked me, I'm not sure. I don't even own an iPad/iPhone. Hell, I imagined myself sticking my head out the broken window, turning my head towards the birds above and shouting: "WHY ARE YOU TARGETING ME!? I DON'T EVEN LIKE APPLE PRODUCTS!" Unfortunately for my imagined self, there were Apple fanboys crowding the streets and alleys outside, so instead of birds throwing themselves again at my other windows for my remarks, there were Apple fanboys throwing their iPods, white earbuds and all, at my face.
The window isn't fixed yet - living several stories above ground makes proper repairs a bit difficult. My dad and I, with the help of a lot of spare tape from a friend who lives up the road, covered the hole with thick plastic and backed by wooden shelving from the kitchen. We kinda went overboard on the tape as well, the visible surface of the window covered with more tape than plastic.
A glazier came over the next day, remarked on the good job of the tape and shelving overkill, and replaced it with a temporary pane which was simply glued to what was left of the window, and sealed with 4 bits of tape. Suddenly the job my dad and I did to cover the window lacked both practicality and elegance.
At least I have a sort of window now. I just owe my friend a helluva lot of tape.