Beauty over personality? RE: choosing pets

[Dina Lerret]

I went into the pet store and saw this *beautiful* white-faced
cockatiel.  She was almost all white, except for her back with
cinnamon feathers to create a 'pearl' spotted pattern.  However, she
was too busy ripping up the newspaper in her cage and kept her back to
me.  Then I noticed this normal grey cockatiel and I said 'hi' to him
and he scooted to the front of his cage and got all excited like 'buy
me, buy me'.  Awww.

Jeez, to fit the human stereotype, gah, I still really, *really*
wanted the girl bird because she was so pretty but I'm torn by how
friendly the boy bird seemed.  Gah, the girl bird costs $130 and the
boy bird costs $86--not including FL sales tax of 7%. :-\  I'm also
torn by the price of one bird but I would so love to get both... but I
just spent over $300+ for an eye doctor visit and new lenses (no
vision insurance) to find out I'm near-sighted in one eye and have
astigmatism (translates to myopia again) in the other eye.  All this
time I thought both eyes were just near-sighted with one being worse
than the other.  It's been over five years since I last visited an eye
doctor and got these glasses, so I saved up for new lenses.

The eye doctor had to do some tests to balance out my prescription.
He was my third eye doctor; my first didn't do so hot and why I kept
getting headaches--it was explained because one eye was working harder
to compensate for the other.  Dude, if I can see and not get
headaches, that'll work for me.  As one of those 'da-amn' moments,
without glasses, the first letter of E on the eye charts was uber
blurry and I couldn't see the rest of the chart.

For a gal with bad eyesight, it's amazing how much appearances still
count for me.  Thus, back to the dilemma of I really would like a
second cockatiel, but I should be glad I already have one, even if she
doesn't like people to touch her... Sometimes, it's too cute to get
her pissy. ;-)  Try to gently pet her head and she squacks like I'm
killing her. {chuckle}  She likes attention but no petting.

Dina