thrown for a loop

I'm back from Cleveland. Being back is nice in some ways and odd in others.

My friends have a 15-year-old cat who got sick with something in February and survived it, but is nothing but skin and bones and can't eat properly. She winds up throwing half of the food around. I think she's got throat cancer or some such. Anyway, my friends decided that before the cat starts suffering, they'd have her put down. Problem being, she panics if she gets put in a carrier, so they called a vet to come out to their house and do it. We spent an entire day hanging around waiting for the vet, who never showed up (holiday weekend and all, y'know). So that was rather odd. I'm just as glad I missed it, though.

I've ignored my e-mail since last Thursday, and when I checked it, there was a message from my sister asking if we can put off my birthday festivities for a week since she has to work all day Friday and would have to come down here with the rush hour traffic. What can I say? She's the one doing all the driving. So my birthday is postponed, and the money I set aside last week has to wait another week, and I have to figure out what I'm going to live on in the meantime.

My apartment, as usual, smells like old cigarette smoke. It always does when I've been away for a while. I get used to it, but I should probably do something about it one of these days. That's a lot of carpet cleaner to buy, though.

Life right now is just weird, and that's all there is to it.

other tidbits

Something I call an elephant bug has bitten me once on the back of each leg. I have no idea what actually bit me. I call them elephant bugs because the welts they leave are enormous, and when I was little I said that they ought to bite elephants if they're going to leave welts like that. They itch like fury, too.

I spent a large amount of the evening of the 4th at a party fixing problems with the host's computer. Well, to be fair, it wasn't entirely fixing computer problems. It was finding a cell phone manual online, downloading it, discovering that the computer in question didn't have Acrobat Reader installed, finding that and downloading it. Mind you, this was all done via 56K modem, which kept hanging up on me. So I sat there and kept it from hanging up every fifteen minutes for a couple of hours, and when I was done downloading things, I fixed the auto-disconnect settings besides. I guess if I can't accumulate moving karma, I can accumulate computer karma. Sometimes, though, I think it would be easier if I disavowed all knowledge of Windows in general when in company.

My Cleveland friends gave me a garlic press for my birthday. Which sounds silly, but I did want one.

I have to go return library books tomorrow. And buy milk and such. And use up all those limes I bought last week. Limeade, anyone?