All alone

This is a sand cat. It's a type of wild cat that hails from north Africa and southwestern Asia. This poor thing is all holed up in a small glass cage at the Lincoln Park Zoo. When I visited the cage, its companion, another sand cat, paced back and forth restlessly. It was clear as day that it needed one of the three: food, water, or attention.

Today was a crappy day because I got into arguments with a few people and I discovered that a close friend of mine had been harboring some unpleasant feelings about me for some time now. I escaped to the Lincoln Park Zoo hoping that the cute animals would cheer me up. While their annual light show (where they put up Christmas lights and decorations all over the zoo) made me feel a little bit better, I still needed to be comforted. When I visited the sand cats, my heart went out to them and I felt that I could relate to both of them, as, figuratively speaking, I'm trapped in the dark, such as the cat in the picture, and I'm restless but I can't escape.

Abstract feely-weely stuff aside, I ran into someone on the way back home. It was someone I knew from my old job. When I worked there, I always spent my lunch break at a restaurant nearby, where he was an employee. We got to know each other a little bit until I quit my job. Well, tonight we boarded the same bus, and we got off at the same stop. We decided to grab a drink together. It was nice catching up with him. We played some darts too. I think I found a new neighborhood friend.