post-Clutch, post everything
(Originally started January 9 at 7:30 in the night.)
The long awaited moment when I would see Clutch – my only favorite musical person or group still in existence – has come and gone.
I, unfortunately, was not there.
It turned out that I wasn't really up to going out that night, having had several nights of bad sleep beforehand. Lying around watching The West Wing with my jujuloo was more appealing. And I haven't heard flattering stories about the 9:30 Club, so, next time. In another venue.
Papaya, whose name will be changed once I find a proper Bangla name, is doing dandy. She loves ripping up newspaper and enjoys a good collard green leaf. Shirin is slowly getting used to her. Instead of barking immediately, she sniffs around first before biting at the cage and jumping back while barking. Papaya jumps at her in return. What followed this particular incident was a bit scary.
Shirin went back into her cage a few minutes after her encounter with Papaya, and all seemed normal. Asma soon noticed that Shirin was crying. She wasn't jumping around and spent most of her time on the ground. We thought that maybe she had something lodged in her throat, because the wooden coaster I put in there after we cleaned the cage had a small chunk missing.
That wasn't the case, though, since she ate up the snacks we gave her. We let her out again, hoping that it would cheer her up, but she was again crying, this time under the sofa. So we tried getting her back in the cage. She was running weird, and while in the cage, she wasn't moving around much. She seemed sad, and it took her a while to respond to the snack bag.
An hour later, Asma was looking at some christmas lights she put up (we'd massively cleaned the apartment that day) and joked that maybe the lights were bothering Shirin. That made a lot of sense, for some reason. I unplugged the light and soon afterwards, she slowly began to act more and more normal.
So, do chinchillas have sensitivity to blue light? Because we don't know what exactly caused her to act weird. Shirin has always been a happy munchkin in her new cage.
Anyway, New Year was good. We spent the night at her friend Sarah's, along with Sarah's boyfriend and another friend Cameron. There was talk, Trivial Pursuit, pizza, and Woodchuck. The next day we saw The Life Aquatic and ate at Buca di Beppo. Good movie, good food.
I've started cross-stiching.
Asma and I made a pact that we wouldn't eat out for a week, since it was becoming more of a habit. We followed through pretty easily for more than a week, and broke it by ordering a pizza. And then I had McDonald's at the airport, which is becoming my airport thing to do.
I got into Springfield last night after an airline change and a three-hour wait. United Air was having a lot of delays for some reason, switching people to later flights and whatnot. I even received a call a few hours before my flight telling me that I was supposed to depart on another flight one hour later than I'd thought. It turned out that all flights from Chicago to Springfield were cancelled and that I would theoretically have to spend the night. But the lady at the ticket desk switched me to American Airlines. And here I am again, at home.
Turbulence still bugs me. It's a common occurrence, no doubt, and flights rarely if ever crash because of it. But I feel so helpless, being shaken, feeling like I might fall. I wish I could sedate myself for a few minutes at a time.
Ok, time to revise something for my dad. I apologize for the long delay. I hope things will return to a more normal frequency.
S/he said…
finally!
I want to watch west wing with you tonight.