A Puzzling Whodunit

I have been mostably sick all day. I am much confused as to the cause. Maybe it's that darned egg-nog rearing its ugly head again. I thought originally it was the combined effect of my dad's cats and Hope's family's cats causing my allergies to act up and what not. Scratchy throat, sneezing, coughing, that kind of thing was all it was at first, for a couple of days. All seems innocuously cat related, doesn't it. But then, the day that we were leaving, I started to feel worse, stuffy nose, dizzy, achy and the like, which has continued all day today. So I generally acted like a lump and layed around and watched stupid sitcoms on TV and took an obscenely long nap. This is all very funny because mostly I am just telling myself that it's all psychosomatic and if I would just get up and get going, I would be fine. But then I go off and sleep for many hours, is this proof of some actual ailment?

So, I just got back last night from our trip to Omaha which was pretty crazy. I was supposed to spend one night and an afternoon with my friends, but the night that I was staying over at Hope's house, the driving rain changed into driving snow which lasted into the next day. The roads were too bad for me to get back to my Dad's house across town for New Year's Eve so I was with my friends for an extra night for a marathon knock-down-drag-out-down-and-dirty game of Apples to Apples (and I am oh so proud to report that yours truly emerged victorious from the fray). Those of you from Western New York might not think this unusual at all, but it doesn't really happen in Omaha all that often that there is so much snow that you can't get around, so that was interesting. Eddius had a hotel room because he's allergic to cats (like yours truly) and so me, Hope, Francis, and Eddius crashed there for New Year's Eve.

We wanted a little bite to eat so we headed on over to the old Chipotle for some chow. So there I was, I just ordered a drink, I took out my wallet, paid with a 20 cause that's all I had, put the change back and then suddenly, by the end of the evening, the wallet was gone. Let me clarify: my wallet is at least an inch thick, the restaurant was so small that we could see basically the entire place from where we sat. Only a few people came in after us. I was certain that I had the wallet when I went in and certain that I did not have it when I came out. We duly interrogated all the Chipotle employees, but they insisted that they had not seen hide nor hair of my wallet. So where the heck did it go? I had thought it was with me in my purse the whole time, which was only an hour or so, I wasn't bumped into by any dubious strangers, there was no opportunity at which the stupid thing could have been taken, so I really don't know what happened. My charismatic upbringing leads me to believe that dark spiritual forces have interfered with my financial well-being by snatching the wallet. But I don't buy it. I just cannot for the life of me figure out what happened. I canceled my check card so the greatest loss I suffered was forty bucks and all of my Australian money, which is the loss that I am most upset about, except for the loss of the wallet itself which was real leather and cute. So this was the most bizarre, non-serendipitous thing which happened the entire trip. And that, dear friends, is the only story you're going to hear tonight.

Mazel Tov,
S.