We lost Lucy tonight.

Lyssa and I spent a quiet evening in the living room watching Babylon-5 and just before bed I went into the library to check on her and say 'good night' as I usually did, and I found her stretched out on the bottom of her cage. Cold, stiff, and quite dead.

I half-wondered how long it would be, truth be told. Lucy had been slowing down, and she'd stopped running up and down the ramps of her cage to get food, instead preferring to stuff as much as she could into her cheek pouches in one …

Aside from a few bouts of tenderness in the new dental work on Saturday, the pain and infection in that one particular molar are gone. Praise be to the gods of dental medicine. I go in on Friday morning to get fitted for the mounting post and temporary crown. Whether or not I'll be able to afford them is a different matter entirely. Time will tell, as it always does.

On Saturday, Lyssa and I meet up my mother and Judy, who happened to be in DC taking a bus tour of the nation's capital. Even though they were staying …