I walked home through swirling snowflakes; the city is beautiful tonight. I'm in my comfy cotton leggings and flannel shirt and ponytail. Cricket is curled in her cat bed next to the desk. I can hear laughter from outside and nothing from my neighbors. Life is good.

What's even better is that the cat is snoring a little. That cracks me up.

My father came up from DC this morning to spend the weekend looking at apartments and hanging out with me. He's cool like that. We met for lunch, then walked down to the South End and met up with the charming realtor with the cool multi-ethnic name. I like him. Somehow, I'd pictured someone older, smoother, silver-haired; he's young and reasonably hip and low-key. We talked for a while (me interjecting periodically for translation from Mortgage to English) and checked out a couple of apartments.

One of them was 325 square feet. I've seen dorm rooms bigger than this apartment. But now I know what 325 square feet looks like.

We got dinner at Clery's and I had a glass of wine. Understand: I drink about five times a year. I have no tolerance for alcohol. My father took advantage of my tipsy state to deliver a pretty stern message to get more proactive about my health (heh, that was diplomatic). He thinks I should pester and plead and bully my way into an appointment with a new endocrinologist sooner than the late-April meeting I have at Mass General. He's probably right. Can I tell you how much I hate my thyroid?

I got protective when he started questioning my baby doctor, though. My primary care doctor is a resident, so she's, uh, still learning. I like my doctor. She was a ballet dancer before she went to med school. She carries a Palm Pilot. She introduces herself with her first name. And she's really into what she does. So step off my baby doctor.

We got the early edition of the Sunday paper and circled ads for tomorrow. At least we're hoping we get tomorrow together; we're supposed to get a nasty nor'easter tomorrow night, which will of course hit Washington first and, say, close the runways. So we'll keep an eye on that. He took Friday off; BNN might not want him to get snowed in up here for a couple of days. In my opinion, they owe him for that stint in Tallahassee.

In other news: I saw Risa last night for the first time in four months, and she looks amazing. Her hair is much longer and sun-streaked. She's a buff, tan, smiling goddess in a town full of pale, cranky women. I can't tell you how good it is to laugh with her again.

She brought me a marionette, a sequin-festooned monkey. It is without question one of the strangest things I have ever owned. The strings in its hands look like stigmata. (I thought of Rob re: stigmata and Dana re: monkeys. What are the odds?) I love it and am trying to decide where it wants to be. Right now, it's on top of a couple of videotapes on a shelf at a slightly unnerving eye level. We'll figure it out. I just don't want it looking at me while I sleep.

Here's my question, before I turn the monkey to the wall and go to sleep: why does my cat follow me into the bathroom? She gets up out of a curled-up potato-bug sleep to nose the door open and socialize a little while I pee. What's up with that?