This afternoon, Sammy was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule — which really just consists of sleeping, eating, pawing furiously at his own reflection in my closet mirror, and sleeping some more — to let me take pictures of him.

Nature, schmature. Sounds like someone was playing Jumanji to me. That’s the only way to explain this:

Texas authorities busy trying to clean up after Hurricane Ike have a new problem on their hands: There’s a tiger loose.

Galveston County Judge Jim Yarbrough put it this way: “Turns out there’s a tiger, and I understand he’s hungry … so we’re staying away from him.”

The news follows reports of a lion holed up in a Baptist church with its owner on Bolivar Peninsula as well as livestock and other animals roaming amid Hurricane Ike’s wreckage.

Read the story: Tiger roaming hurricane-ravaged streets in Texas

The bus I’m on has Wi-Fi.

Clearly, I’m on the bus from the future.

A future where people blog about being on a bus with Wi-Fi.

I’ve had a problem with sleep hallucinations and sleepwalking for as long as I can remember. When I was really little my family discovered me hanging out inside the fireplace in the middle of the night, and once when my sister was having a sleepover I eerily appeared in the living room like some kind of possessed demonchild and just stared at them until someone was brave enough to escort me back to bed. Luckily, it doesn’t happen to me much anymore, but there was a time — when I was around 17, 18 — where it happened a lot.

I was working as a waitress at Souper Salad when I was 17, my senior year of high school, and my main responsibility as a waitress at that place, since it was a buffet and people got their own food, was to take drink orders and “pre-bus” tables (meaning, take dirty plates away from tables while the patrons went back up for seconds, thirds, tenths, etc. on potatoes and iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing). I didn’t consider this a stressful job, really — Sunday mornings were the only times when things were truly nuts there. Everyone in the town seemed to have the same weekly tradition: Go to church, go to Souper Salad. They’d stand outside before we even opened, peering through the glass and licking their lips at the sight of all the days-old, bleach-washed vegetables and salty soups they were about to pile on plates.

Despite the fact that they had just spent an hour or so at church, a place they presumably went because they saw themselves as good people and/or wanted to be good people, some of them were set on making our lives as Souper Salad employees complete miserable Sunday after Sunday. This cornbread isn’t warm enough! Why don’t you have my favorite soup today? Bring my children a plate of sliced lemons! My wife and I would like fo-ca-chee-ya bread that is right out of the oven! Apparently they never realized they were eating at a $5.99 buffet restaurant. Or that it was obviously way too crowded and we were understaffed because Javier, the dishwasher, couldn’t find a ride again and Desi, our 17-year-old pregnant waitress, had morning sickness.

Sundays were stressful, sure, but I never knew just how stressful they were until I went to bed. I’d set my alarm for 6am but would wake up at 3:30am, look over at my clock, and see 6:00 displayed on it. So I’d slowly get out of bed, still asleep, with this faint awake-voice saying, “Hey, ummm… it’s not really 6am. Look at the clock.” The clock said 6:01 now. I’d squint or get right up to it and look deep into its clock soul, and it’d still say 6:01. Awake Me would say, “It is not time to get up! Go back to bed!” One of two things would happen at this point: I’d completely wake up, feel very confused about why I was standing there and why I had just been about to get in the shower and get ready for school, or I would actually get in the shower and get ready for school. The latter only happened a few times, and I remember my mom knocking on my bathroom door one of those times asking me what the hell I was doing. That woke me up, snapped me out of it — I went back to bed with wet hair. I’d always remember exactly what had happened the next morning, which is why I describe that voice of reason telling me to look at the clock again and go back to bed as coming from Awake Me. It’s a strange feeling to sort of watch yourself from above like that.

On many nights, though, I’d have a different sleep hallucination that actually had to do with my job. Made sense considering I typically worked 4pm-9pm on weekdays and went to bed around 10:30pm. I’d wake up in a panic, jumping out of bed to walk just outside of my bedroom, which was on the second floor of my house near the staircase and overlooked the living room and kitchen. I’d stand there with my heart racing as I watched tables and tables full of customers down there who needed drinks and were visibly angry that they were already half-way done eating and hadn’t even gotten their drink orders taken yet. I’d really messed up this time — how was I going to get all those drinks out? But there was that awake part of me again: “No one is there. You are not at work. You are at home. Turn around and get in bed.” I’d suddenly wake up standing at the top of the stairs, blink, and everyone was gone.

This stopped of course when I no longer worked there. But months later when I was in college and got a job as a cashier at a grocery store, they started up again. I’d sit up in bed and watch as apples, bananas, pancake mix, loaves of bread, and milk went by on a conveyor belt and the cash register next to me waited. That job was the worst, so I quit after a month and that took care of it.

If I’ve had sleep hallucinations since the grocery store job, I don’t remember them, though Todd tells me I talk in my sleep sometimes — and I know because I’ve woken up to him asking me what on earth I’m talking about several times. But last night — oh boy, last night — I had one. I thought I was sleeping on a train.

I’ve determined there are four parts to my sleep hallucinations: 1. Panic 2. Action 3. Whoa, what am I doing? 4. Back to bed.

So I sat up and here’s what I thought: “The train is about to stop at the station, people are going to get on, and I have no pants on.”

I jumped out of bed after saying something to Todd, probably something like, “My pants! Train! WE ARE LATE FOR PUTTING ON PANTS,” but I think after knowing me for six years he’s finally trained himself to sleep right through my nonsense. I found some pants and put them on and stumbled to the bathroom on the other side of our condo where I thought, “This train is oddly spacious and has a layout just like my con— WAIT A SECOND” and woke up.

So glad to be back in America, though the TSA confiscated our Nutella. I had no idea chocolate hazelnut spread qualified as a liquid, but I guess they just wanted to prevent us from making the world’s most delicious bomb.

Our hotel in Frankfurt is awesome, especially compared to the hostel we stayed at last night in Innsbruck. That place was the worst. Paper-thin walls, tiny room with six people (again with the six-person, closet-like rooms!), weird bathroom situation, no air conditioning, and a window that would not stay open to help ventilate the place. I set my alarm for 5:30am, since that would give me just enough sleep to function today and would get me out of that room as early as possible. I woke up at 4:30 and really considered leaving then. It felt like a sauna in there.

We ate at a really awesome Thai restaurant tonight and tried to go to the zoo — it’s practically next door — but they were closing in three minutes. Todd and I got a kick out of the charming British male voice recording that played over the loudspeaker: “Okay, the zoo is now closing. The animals have to sleep now. Please, if you’d kindly turn your attention to the exits.”

Tomorrow morning we head home! It’s been fun.

The ride from Verona to Innsbruck was by far the most interesting train we’ve taken — we got to see all of these tiny towns built on cliffs as well as wineries that went right up to the tracks as we wound through the Alps. I would use the word “breathtaking” to describe the view, but that would be so cheesy.

Innsbruck is windy. The kind of windy that, if you were in Texas, would make you think a tornado was around the corner. But nobody here seems to mind — they’re all used to it, so it’s got to be a daily thing.

So… it’s windy, it’s hot, no matter where you look there are gorgeous mountains acting as a backdrop. I get it.

The two-day end-of-trip countdown excitement is hard to deal with. I hate to sound like an ungrateful jerk, but I have to be honest: I’m ready to go home.

In Verona, they’re way cool about making tourist stuff affordable. For only 8 Euros, you can buy a Verona Card that gets you into a ton of different places…

…like Juliet’s House (still not entirely sure what the story is behind this or how this could possibly be the balcony, but it was way too crowded to find out)

and the Church of St. Fermo

and the Verona Arena, a Roman amphitheatre built in AD 30 that they still use for operas and concerts

AND the Boner store!

(For some reason it wasn’t part of the Verona Card.)

Tomorrow we’re off to Innsbruck, Austria.