Senior Maintenance Technician John Birkel lives with his wife, his tattoo artist daughter, one dog, two cats, and until recently, 20-30 parakeets. “My wife couldn’t take it anymore…They got adopted out by the pairs. We never did get an accurate count, the guys wouldn’t hold still long enough for us to figure it out.” But how did they come to have such an uncountable flock? “A lot of them kept getting fostered on to us and yep, there were a couple breeders. They just kept coming.” 

After listening to how he likes to spend his nonworking hours, one might conclude that he doesn’t do much but work. “No real hobbies. More like chore-based hobbies.” He’d rather cook (his specialty is Sicilian Lemon Chicken) or clean than watch TV, and he hasn't touched a video game in 30 years. Still, when pressed, John admits he does like to sit down for one thing: horror movies. But his depth of knowledge in this genre makes clear that this interest could qualify as a hobby. He is into the classical stuff and without hesitation proclaims John Carpenter’s The Thing as his favorite. “I think I watched it when I was way too young and it still scares me today.” He also recommends the original 1922 Nosferatu over the one that came out this year, though he thinks 1979’s Nosferatu the Vampyre was pretty good too, though more funny than scary.

Speaking of Nosferatu, there is one more thing you should know about John. “We keep our Halloween decorations up all year round. Lots of jack-o-lanterns all over the place, some statues, but none of those motion detector things, those get kind of old. We’ve got a life-sized Nosferatu.” In other words, when John tells you he's a pretty boring guy with nothing interesting about him, do not believe it.