blackknight95857669

Sent over the $1k "Please hold that place for us thanks" payment this afternoon. Time to start planning for a move in earnest. I must admit, I have a big sad though. Not about leaving this place. Fuck this place and everyone involved with it, except the maintenance dude. He's always been pretty up front with me, and does what he can with the little the slum lord owner gives him. No, I have a sad about one individual here. Not a neighbor, exactly, but a tenant, of sorts. The big orange tomcat we named Pippen. He showed up here when he was months old. More or less adopted us. It's been 3 years now, and AFAIK, we're the only people in here he'll let pet him. Definitely the only ones who can pick him up. And can still pick him up, even after we took him to a shelter when he had an infection in his face, where he got a shot of antibiotics, and lost the tip of his ear and his nuts (they clip the ears of "feral" cats here, he did NOT like being in the shelter, lol) We helped him heal when the infection failed to be cured by the antibiotic shot and his swollen "cheek" burst and was pretty awful for most of a month. I'd sure like to take him with us. However, we already have 4 indoor cats. It would be real hard, even in the new much bigger place, to be able to keep him isolated from the others while they got used to the new sitch, etc. And I didn't really want 4 cats, so 5 would not be an improvement, heh. Esp as we already have a male and the few times Pip has come inside to hang out, near fights have happened. We're not the only ones that feed him, so he won't go hungry. I'm sure he'll miss us though. I'm going to miss him. Might have to come by now and then to see how he's doing.

It's been 40 years. I still remember it well. I was in school. It's a few days till my 10th bday. Our (very small, maybe 14 kids) 4th grade class stopped our studies and tuned in the launch. The surreal moment of watching the explosion grow while the announcer calmly continued reporting the stats before realizing there was a problem. The teacher having to explain what we just watched. The day we learned that going to space is still a very difficult task. #Challenger