Feeling a tad cranky

Lucy is in heat. She's the youngest of the three kitties I inherited when I moved to Bishkek, and she's the only one who came to me un-spayed. I knew she'd be going into heat soon, but kept putting off doing it because I don't have a cat-carrier and didn't so much like the thought of carrying her to the vet in my backpack. Anyway, she's started prowling around the apartment scouting - and crying - for a boy cat, and it is unceasing. Additionally, this started at exactly the same time that the weather became warm enough to open the windows (a must, as the state-provided heat is still blasting into my apartment). Unfortunately, as I live on the ground floor and my windows have no screens, I can't really do this, as Lucy just pops out the window and goes running down the street with her ass in the air. So I'm stifling in my apartment until I have time to both take her to and pick her up from the vet. Given my schedule and the vet's schedule, this doesn't seem likely to happen for two more weeks. Gah! Also, somebody (I'm assuming it was hormonal Lucy) peed on my awesome green coat last night. Grrrr, anger. Getting it clean is going to be a bitch.

This morning, after awekening to discover that my coat had been peed on, the power went out. Since the sun is already up by the time I get up (even though that's at 7am these days), it wasn't too much of an inconvenience. My MercyCorps Компаньон driver - the super talkative and friendly one - told me that the biggest power supplier to Bishkek is the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Plant. He said that the plant used way more of its water reserve this past winter than usual, as people were using more electricity than usual to keep warm. This means that the water reserves are now low. As such, Bishkek is still shutting off power periodically to various disctricts in order to conserve electricity and to allow the water supply to replenish. Meanwhile, he told me that Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have an agreement: U-stan gets water from the Toktogul reserve, while K-stan gets gas from U-stan. Since K-stan might have to renege on its part of the deal on account of low water reserves, U-stan is threatening to cut off K-stan's gas supply! Sheesh. There goes cooking dinner.

And speaking of my super-friendly driver.... it turns out that he's an Evangelical Christian! Booo. So now every day he tries to talk to me about god and keeps asking me to go to church with him.

Today was supposed to be my Kyrgyz lesson day... I got to class early, and waited for my fellow students to arrive, but no one came. Neither did the teacher. Eventually I sent out some text messages, and learned that class had been cancelled, and somehow everyone had been told of this except me. Annoyed.

Then I decided to quickly go and check my email. I figured I'd just pop into Шаттл, the crappy internet place by my house since all I wanted to do was check my messages. Well, the internet in Шаттл isn't exactly reliable (as I've mentioned before), but usually it works. Of course today it didn't - and like before, I still had to pay for the privilege of sitting in front of an offline computer, before walking 15 minutes to the other internet cafe. Sigh.

So I'm feeling cranky. And I guess now I'll go home and take my pre-afternoon-class nap in my hot and stuffy apartment with the horny and noisy cat.