So I am planning this bike trip…
It started out two years ago as a silly idea in a bar with two friends - one of whom was interested in participating and evolved into a 1-year solo journey through a bit of South America trying to raise money for the non-profit Heifer International as well as obtain sponsorship and funding for myself.
I’m leaving in April and there is so much to do. And me without a computer at the moment - my other laptop - a fancy new Sony Vaio decided to bit the bullet and quit working. I have returned it to the source (I hope) via my Extended Warranty and hope to hear something about its fate soon.
So things to do:
- Finish trip description
- Develop sponsorship/donations request letter
- Find contact names for
- Patagonia
- Whole Foods
- ESRI
- Bruce Gordon
- Shimano
- Pearl Izumi
- REI
- Marmot
- Big Agnes
- Figure out website configuration - Need to create a new website but want the blog to be incorporated. Have contacted TypePad to see if MoveableType is what I should be using. I like TypePad’s features though but would like to incorporated the Weblog in with other pages.
- Design the website - oh goodie
- Plan my departure from work
- Have I mention save all monies possible?
- Canvas, canvas
- Market myself to raise money for a worthy cause - Heifer. Heifer is a really great organization and they have a great marketing technique for donation money. You get to buy a cow or chickens or a llama for someone. Well, really the money is used where it’s needed most, but who cares - it’s fun to buy a goat for someone.
- Figure out how to market myself
- Email everyone I know and ask for help
- Oh, and there’s that little thing about learning Spanish
So I’m a little frazzled without a computer.
So - my darling Kitty is dead.
Screw you people who get pissy about people putting pictures of their pets on their web sites. Pictures of pets are like pictures of babies - no one really cares except the people who’s pet/baby it is. And I cared about Kitty. So let me honor the shell, the fleeting image of my feline friend and remember the companionship and unconditional Kitty love that he gave me. OK, so maybe it was because I fed him and cleaned the litter box, but I like to believe otherwise.
The decision to kill my cat, put him "to sleep", was the hardest decision I ever had to make. He was slowly starving to death. Imagine being hungry but not being able to eat because of the nausea from the medicine that was supposed to be helping. We took to calling him "Skeletor" toward the end - a little black humor for us all. He mostly likely had intestinal lymphoma and I did the best I could for him - hand fed him, got him medicines, took him to the vet, bought every treat known to the feline world and all to no avail. Did I mention the tears? There were lots of tears.
I’m glad that I could make that decision and spare him the torture of starving and being eternally thirsty from the steroids that he was on and I’m also glad that this has been the very worst thing in my life. It can only go downhill from here.
When you’re a kid - death doesn’t seem real - you haven’t lived enough to appreciate life and you have not yet begun the contemplation of the cessation of life. The gerbils die and so do the relatives, but it just doesn’t seem real - one is really just a souped up rodent and the other you see maybe once a year or so and is about as close to you as some stranger at the mall.
As you age, you think about what is beyond life - the unknown - for yourself, your parents, friends, pets, the predominately evil people, the greedy people, the predominately good, everyone. And it kinda sucks - this not knowing. That is, you may question these things when you don’t blindly believe in this religion over that one. So certain people of one religion get naked virgins when they die and the other gets eternal boredom, and in yet another you exist yet cease to exist as you - where’s the fun in that? OK - I’m not theologically sound here, but I believe you get the picture.
That’s it.
RIP Kitty.
