People often ask Phillip and me how Gladden is holding up after the deaths of Gladys and Squeak.

Gladden went though a period of depression after Squeak died, but now he seems to have mostly recovered. He has, however, developed a puzzling and troubling habit.

Right before our nightly playtime, Gladden has been acting out all the signs that all three sugar gliders have shown when they're ready to be let out of the cage to play: He runs around the walls and ceiling of the cage, he runs in the noisy wheel, and he runs up to the cage door - and he repeats these actions until we let him out.

The past several nights, however, Gladden has been going through those actions right up until we turn on the red light and close the bedroom door. Then he climbs back into the house, and refuses to come out. He'll bite or crab if we try to coax him out of bed, acting as if we'd woken him up suddenly. With enough coaxing, and by taking the house out of the cage, Gladden will eventually climb out to play in the bedroom.

We can't figure out what he's trying to do, or what he's trying to tell us.

I had another 4 o'clock doctor's appointment today. I took the 12 bus there again. I didn't imagine that the appointment would last much longer than an hour, but if it did, there was a chance I wouldn't make it home in time to change and get to the 6 o'clock yoga class. The doctor's appointment was more important, though - besides, if I missed the yoga class, I could make it up by going to the Saturday morning class.

The visit with the doctor lasted only 45 minutes. An 8 bus arrived about five minutes after I got to the bus stop, and I got home just a few minutes past 5 o'clock.

A disorienting thing happened when I arrived at yoga class: The door was locked. I looked at my watch, and realized that I'd forgotten to take off my watch before leaving for class. It was 20 minutes until 6. I stood outside and waited for someone else to show up. Twenty minutes didn't seem too early to show up - I wasn't sure, since I didn't usually wear a watch to class. Was I somehow wrong about it being Friday? How could I be? Lisa opened the door and let me in. If I wasn't supposed to be there, she would have said something. There was one other student there - apparently, she and Lisa had been working on something together. I got to roll my mat out next to the altar again. A few minutes later, other students began arriving, and the class started filling up.

My body is starting to learn how to move into the asanas, although my shoulders need reminding sometimes. Yoga is becoming easier and easier - it feels more like a part of me.

Lisa has stopped asking permission to move my body into the proper alignment. She's learned that I don't mind being touched.

Dad's all-morning-long surgery turned into an all-day-long surgery. When two o'clock came and he still wasn't out of the O.R., I was an emotional wreck. Fortunately, he was only a short bus ride (the 3 or 4) away from work (from 9th & Jefferson to 17th & Jefferson). When they brought him to his recovery room this evening, he looked good - amazingly good for someone who'd spent the entire day on the operating table.

I got home tonight feeling drained. Then there was a letter in the mail from Kelly. She made me laugh with fond reminisces. That was a wonderful day, that day Kelly & I went to see the play Harvey. Then her letter continued with some awful issues of her own.

It is so wonderful that Kelly is returning to Washington after so long away. This horrible, weird year makes it difficult for me to believe she is actually going to be here soon - very soon.

I just got finished watching the last episode of The Long Way Round. I've enjoyed the series a lot, but it was too, too short. I can't believe they condensed the journey from Anchorage to New York City into a single one hour episode (with commercials). Granted, the ride across Montana on freeways may not be as thrilling as trying to cross Mongolia's undeveloped roads - but those long stretches of difficulty-free scenery should be part of any round-the-world trip. I hope that someone releases an extended DVD set.

Right after I wrote last night's post, I started thinking about a book I read a long time ago: Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard. I don't remember who recommended the book to me - I remember only that it was a guy I didn't know very well, like maybe a friend of a friend - or when I read the book. It was recommended as a good book to work up to the more intense J.G. Ballard novel, Crash.

Concrete Island starts with an architect speeding along an empty freeway close to Heathrow Airport. One of the tires on the Jaguar he's driving blows out, he loses control, and crashes into an "island" between freeway lanes. The island is lower than the freeway, and surrounded by high walls, so no one can see him there. The architect works in two offices, with no set schedule. He knows that when he doesn't show up for work, people would assume that he went to the other office. He has a wife and a mistress. He knows that when he doesn't show up at home, his wife would assume that he's visiting his mistress - and his mistress will assume that he's with his wife. So, he becomes a modern-day castaway.

Now that we have our computer back, I really have no reason to catch the early 60 in the morning. (In other words, I don't need to get into the office a half hour early to check my personal email, or make a blog entry.) But I've been doing it out of habit. I've been rarely, if ever, catching the bus home - and I'm finding myself walking the same way home every day.

Maybe it's time to shake up a habit or two.

My society has an interesting negativity toward voicemail (or answering machines).

I was reminded of that today. My two office mates both went to class, leaving me to run the place alone. Before she left, my boss gave me the following (unneeded) advice: "Remember that voicemail is your friend."

I was handling a call from a patient when the second line (of four lines) started ringing. I let the second call go to voicemail. That second call was from a transit company, wanting to confirm a patient's appointment. The woman started her message with a rather snotty comment: "I'm calling during business hours, so I don't understand why I'm getting voicemail." She managed to repeat that comment at least twice while saying why she'd called. I called her right back. A recording told me that all lines were busy, but an operator would be with me shortly. No exaggeration: I was on hold for a full twenty minutes, waiting to leave a brief confirmation, before I hung up to answer another call. All the while I was on hold, I was thinking: "Why is this better than voicemail?"

I was reminded of a phone encounter at my previous clinic. Some doctor had called to speak to one of our doctors. Before I had a chance to transfer him, the caller explained that he'd tried to call the doctor himself, but got voicemail. Therefore, the caller wanted me to take a written message. I explained that the doctor he was trying to get ahold of was a research doctor who worked in another part of the building, and didn't visit the clinic, or stop by the front desk, on a regular basis - therefore, voicemail was a much faster way to reach him. The caller was insistent about not wanting to leave a voicemail, so I wrote down his message and taped it to the front desk. A couple of days later, I noticed that the note was gone. I don't know if it got to the research doctor, or not. I don't know why the caller thought that that was better than a voicemail message.

I remembered something I heard on the news several years ago. Someone, somewhere, was trying to start an initiative to ban all voicemail systems at Washington's state government offices. All phone calls, the initiative proposed, would be answered by a human being who would take a written message. I don't know how far the initiative got.

Meanwhile, I miss Squeak a lot.

This blog continues to escape Google's listing. Typing in feedingsquirrels and clicking "I'm Feeling Lucky" (which used to bring you to an archive page of this blog) now brings you to something called Blogshares.

How my blog got listed on Blogshares, I don't know. Apparently, it isn't rated very highly because no one links to it. I'm not going to be worrying a lot over that.

Kurt came over last night and fixed the desktop computer. I barely understand what he did. We have our computer back. We can web surf with bookmarks again. We can upload photos and play Half Life again.

The bad news is that this computer is not in top shape anymore. (It was never the best computer around.) We face a choice of either backing up important files and doing a complete system re-install, or backing up important files and buying a new computer. Neither choice looks like fun to me.