On April 3, 2010, at 3:15pm, I turn exactly 30 years old. This post
is part of a very ambitious effort to share each of the last 10 years.
Thanks to Mike and his recap of the
2000's for the inspiration.
2008 was a really rough year. This blog was also in full swing so if you'd like to read up on anything in particular, just search. But it's too much to go back and dig into details so I'm going to keep it broad and short.
We noticed Biscuit was sick over the holidays in 2007, and spent the first few weeks of 2008 taking him to the vet, running tests, and trying medicines. But he had an incurable disease and succumbed to it that March. It was incredibly painful - it is even now, two years later. There's really little else to say. One bright spot though was that we actually got to cremate him (we didn't do it ourselves, obviously). He's currently in an old Oreo Sandwich tin on a shelf in our apartment. The tin has the word 'biscuit' on it.
At the end of March, I had a trip scheduled to Ithaca, where I was going to start a three-year stint sitting on an alumni advisory panel for my communications school, the Park school. A day or so before leaving, I was sitting at my computer with my old flip phone on my desk. Baker had been walking around the desk, saw the phone, and pulled the classic pat-pat-pat-pat-shove cat move, knocking the phone off the desk, onto the floor, shattering it. The phone had had a good run - probably over 6 years - but now I needed a new one. (And despite losing my phone, I still laughed hysterically at what Baker did.) And with little time until my trip to Ithaca, I needed it fast. So just as the boys had got me blogging seriously, Baker got me phoning seriously: I bought my iPhone (out of urgency).
A few weeks later, another load of crap in 2008: some heartless, thieving asshole stole my bike; the bike I had had for 13 years, since I was 15 years old. The thing that gave me freedom before I could drive. I was sad, and I still miss it, but I was - and am - more pissed about that than anything. F****** NYC. (F****** humanity.)
In May, I got a new job, making a bit of a lateral move from one digital industry to another. My worldview on all things digital, coupled with my awesome iPhone, really started to broaden around this time, as did my socializing. Despite what the critics say about social media, it's social media that has made me more social in person over the last few years. I still have some serious introvert issues I grapple with almost daily, but there has been much improvement.
In November, I helped elect President Obama. That was pretty amazing.
Around this time, and after a few months with just Baker, Amber and I really wanted to find him a playmate. He is an absolute pistol: great shape, full of energy, and likes to interact. Usually he's great fun, but he was occasionally a gigantic pain in the butt. So we window shopped for a little girl at our vets office where they temporarily house foster animals.
We were fortunate enough to find a sweet little doll with a folded ear tip, Zander, who we snatched up immediately. It took a week of major watchfulness and eased, calculated socializations between her (renamed Scout, after "To Kill a Mockingbird") and Baker. We had to keep them in separate rooms, with Scout purring lovingly in our bedroom and Baker hissing from the living room, two closed doors away. But a post-Thanksgiving Day miracle brought the two together, rather quickly after our first big free-for-all: a week of hissing leading to a couch full of kissing. They still spar as most kitties do but they're both very sweet to one another and melt our hearts often.
2008 was a really rough year. This blog was also in full swing so if you'd like to read up on anything in particular, just search. But it's too much to go back and dig into details so I'm going to keep it broad and short.
We noticed Biscuit was sick over the holidays in 2007, and spent the first few weeks of 2008 taking him to the vet, running tests, and trying medicines. But he had an incurable disease and succumbed to it that March. It was incredibly painful - it is even now, two years later. There's really little else to say. One bright spot though was that we actually got to cremate him (we didn't do it ourselves, obviously). He's currently in an old Oreo Sandwich tin on a shelf in our apartment. The tin has the word 'biscuit' on it.
At the end of March, I had a trip scheduled to Ithaca, where I was going to start a three-year stint sitting on an alumni advisory panel for my communications school, the Park school. A day or so before leaving, I was sitting at my computer with my old flip phone on my desk. Baker had been walking around the desk, saw the phone, and pulled the classic pat-pat-pat-pat-shove cat move, knocking the phone off the desk, onto the floor, shattering it. The phone had had a good run - probably over 6 years - but now I needed a new one. (And despite losing my phone, I still laughed hysterically at what Baker did.) And with little time until my trip to Ithaca, I needed it fast. So just as the boys had got me blogging seriously, Baker got me phoning seriously: I bought my iPhone (out of urgency).
A few weeks later, another load of crap in 2008: some heartless, thieving asshole stole my bike; the bike I had had for 13 years, since I was 15 years old. The thing that gave me freedom before I could drive. I was sad, and I still miss it, but I was - and am - more pissed about that than anything. F****** NYC. (F****** humanity.)
In May, I got a new job, making a bit of a lateral move from one digital industry to another. My worldview on all things digital, coupled with my awesome iPhone, really started to broaden around this time, as did my socializing. Despite what the critics say about social media, it's social media that has made me more social in person over the last few years. I still have some serious introvert issues I grapple with almost daily, but there has been much improvement.
In November, I helped elect President Obama. That was pretty amazing.
Around this time, and after a few months with just Baker, Amber and I really wanted to find him a playmate. He is an absolute pistol: great shape, full of energy, and likes to interact. Usually he's great fun, but he was occasionally a gigantic pain in the butt. So we window shopped for a little girl at our vets office where they temporarily house foster animals.
We were fortunate enough to find a sweet little doll with a folded ear tip, Zander, who we snatched up immediately. It took a week of major watchfulness and eased, calculated socializations between her (renamed Scout, after "To Kill a Mockingbird") and Baker. We had to keep them in separate rooms, with Scout purring lovingly in our bedroom and Baker hissing from the living room, two closed doors away. But a post-Thanksgiving Day miracle brought the two together, rather quickly after our first big free-for-all: a week of hissing leading to a couch full of kissing. They still spar as most kitties do but they're both very sweet to one another and melt our hearts often.
