Last week I started out the week by traveling to Foster City, CA, for some training at EFI headquarters. Because of the Northern California wildfires, my direct flight was cancelled and I was forced to take a flight through Seattle. By the time I arrived in Seattle, the connecting flight had been delayed and I didn’t arrive in San Francisco until 1:30. Unfortunately, my luggage (a change of clothes and my CPAP) was on another flight which did not arrive until quite later in the day. After waiting in line for at least an hour at the United luggage service counter, I left them orders to deliver the bag to my hotel after it arrived. It was eventually delivered to my hotel while I was at dinner that night.

I was glad to join my friend, Rob, for dinner both nights that I was in California. On the second night, we ate at a nice French restaurant before Rob dropped me off at SFO for my late evening flight home. There were no complications this time and the plane was only half full making it almost enjoyable.

When I got home, Thomas greeted me at the door, clearly glad to see me. Since school has been out, we’ve given him more liberty with respect to bedtime and he has fully exploited the privilege, frequently staying up past midnight. Of course, this also means that he frequently sleeps in past noon. He’s also developing a habit of sleeping on the couch. In other words, he is becoming the teenager that I was. It’s made me realize what I put my mother through back in the day.

On Wednesday night, we both went to bed around 2 am but I couldn’t get to sleep. After a half hour of unsuccessfully trying, I gave up and joined the cats on the couch for some reading. Ming was sleeping in his usual spot behind the couch and I attempted to rouse him to join me for some pets. I thought he was trying to ignore me but when he came out awhile later, it was clear that there was a different story.

He did a lot of sniffing around the room, especially near the perimeter. He moved very gingerly and deliberately but still ran into a few objects that were laying on the floor. Each time he would move to the side and try again. Suspecting that he couldn’t see, I picked him up to look at his left eye. His right eye clouded up years ago and he’s been quite deaf for a couple of years so he was startled when I touched him and a little alarmed when I picked him up but he soon realized it was me and relaxed. His left eye is indeed a little cloudy but not as much as the other eye. After observing him for the last week, I have concluded that he can still see shapes and some movement. He continues to get around on his own and is able to find water, food and the cat boxes in the garage. He even jumps up on the bed at night but he does so with claws extended so he doesn’t slip. Everything takes a lot longer for him now but he’s still functional so we can put off any hard decisions until later.