Archive for August, 2008
Linds and I had been very worried about our upcoming move: How will the cats react to the actual move and the new location; we need to get cable/internet; Bryce (me) a job; gas, electric turned on; and the official apartment chosen. I chose to work for as long as I could so we could try and work on a transfer within my company. With just one week before Linds’ birthday and a week and a half before the move the impossible happened: Bear slid one door open and bolted past Lindsey who threw boxes to stop him out the two propped doors while Linds was hauling boxes upstairs for the move.
Approximately 10 minutes after this Linds called me while I was just finishing lunch bawling saying Bear had gotten out. I advised to call the shelters, and some friends to help her look and a couple hours later I left work to help look. We looked on and off until roughly 5am when I finally got 2 hours of sleep before getting up for work at 7am.
Our schedule for the next several days were wake up around 3-6am, look for Bear, get ready for work at 7am. Work till 5, home at 6, dress in jeans and long-sleeved shirt and go out in the woods calling and looking. Linds has the excellent idea of putting some things that smelled like him out there to draw him in: his bed and his favorite toy. We have no hard evidence of this ever working. We then made signs and from 7:30 until midnight spent one night going door-to-door through the apartment and immediate surrounding neighborhood taping them up and putting them in mailboxes. Imagine our hearts breaking when by early the next morning the apartment had each and every one of the nearly 140 posters taken down and thrown away without a single call or warning.
Another great idea Linds had was to use his bowl and put some of his catfood in it. Of course this would help in two ways, first the bowl smells like him and cats have excellent senses of smell, second, he’d be very hungry having limited if any practice hunting and killing prey. So now imagine our hearts breaking with someone, probably the apartment workers, stole the food dish the next morning. And then the next day stealing the paper plate we had to put the catfood on.
We bought a “HavaHart” trap, which is a live animal trap, to lure him in. Instead we trapped 2 farel cats and a messed up raccoon. On a lighter note, we had to wake the raccoon up twice before he finally exited the trap. Of the two cans of catfood we had in the trap, he ate one and defecated in the second one. Guess we know which he preferred.
On the second to last night of looking we think we might’ve seen Bear. The cat looked more like Bear than the other black cat in the area, but didn’t at all react like Bear. Also, this would imply he’s lived on his own for over a week and didn’t come to any of our calls. The idea that it could’ve been Bear drives us crazy because he was literally a couple feet from us and we weren’t able to get him.
As we drove away and slept that first night, I was very sad when Bitty came and laid on my pillow much like Bear used to. It’s always sad when an animal dies, but the feelings Linds and I are having are of guilt/anger/sadness/confusion. We haven’t given up our search, but we’ve had to more or less move on. We are having one lady (who’s close to insane herself) look for him during weekends with the hope that he’ll come, and if anyone were to find him we would probably fly or drive back that next weekend or even right then, but we realize there is a chance we will never find him and he’s either dead or become some one else’s pet by another name.
Anyway, unless there is further news, I guess this will be my last post about Bear. I just wanted you all to know the whole story and if you don’t mind, shoot a prayer out to St. Anthony/Jude/Gertrude because you never know, maybe he’ll turn up somewhere and any prayer will help.
August 30th, 2008
Lindsey- Happy birthday. Times are tough and busy, but then again, we’ve moved or been settling you into someplace new on your birthday every year for the past 6 years. Of course, the addition of Bear being an idiot and running off makes things harder this year, but I hope it doesn’t spoil your day.
I love you Linds, Happy Birthday.
August 25th, 2008
August 24th, 2008
#1 Luciano Pavarotti- Ave Maria
And this one is solely based on my grandpa’s influence.
#2 Etta James -At Last
#3 Jane’s Addiction- Jane Says (Live)
#4 Led Zeppelin- Stairway to Heaven
#5 The Beatles -Julia
#6 Nirvana- Heart Shaped Box
#7 Metallica- One
#8 Bush- Glycerine
#9 The Who- Baba O’Reiley
#10 Ray Charles- Georgia on my Mind
#11 Billy Joel- Piano Man
#12 Beatles- Hey Jude
#13 Simon and Garfunkel- Bridge over Troubled Water
#14 Pink Floyd- Wish you were here
#15 Ben Folds- Emaline
#16 ELO -Mr. Blue Sky
Just finished RC meeting ready to head home.
#17 The Beatles- Day in the Life.
Such a great song. Love that Paul and John both put in their little parts. Brilliant.
#18 DMB- Satellite.
Love the guitar in this song.
Had lunch. We have a meeting at 4. Thank God.
And just got signed up with Dish Network!
#19 Queen- Bohemian Rhapsody -
Great song.
#20 Oasis- Wonderwall
I have loved this song and loved it even a little more when I heard a man with a heavy french accent playing it on the steps of Mount Marte.
#21 Led Zeppelin- Going to California
I really have no idea what this song is about. I’ve never really looked into the lyrics. But I love it.
Just found out all 140 posters we posted last night about our missing cat has been torn down. What a major let down. Why would they do that? Was it management or people? Either way, I’m furious.
#22 Bob Dylan- Like a Rolling Stone
I loved this song so much more after I watched No Direction Home, the Dylan documentary.
#23 John Lennon- Imagine
Just got yelled at for not being on the phones. Won’t miss this.
# 24 A long December.
Now I definitely remember posting this stuff before. I will persevere because I have a decent idea the only readers of the blogs during the summer is Miles, Holli, and Lindsey.
I think I’ve done another one of these. But I can’t seem to find if I ever posted it.
I am going to try and do another live blog as I finish my top 40. It is my second to last day of work. My mouth still feels really weird from getting 4 fillings Wed. and still no Bear. We hung up 140 posters looking for him last night. We are completely obsessed.
#25
Lynrd Skynrd- Tuesdays Gone.
I’ve loved this song ever since I watched the movie Dazed and Confused. I remember my buddy Charley was obsessed with the song and I guess it rubbed off on me.
As far as work is going, I don’t really plan on making too many calls today. Mostly just getting things straightened out.
August 22nd, 2008
Well, a lot has happened since my last post. For those that use the blog for news, here you go.
Linds has been interviewing in Manhattan, Queens, and Ohio. Washington DC never got back to us, which was definitely one of our top picks. While this was going on and Linds was teaching Geology and Chem labs at Aracadia she was unofficially offered a position at the lab, but it would be for a job she wasn’t interested in.
Linds was then, on the same day, offered positions in Manhattan and Ohio for just $6k difference in the offer. However, when you factor in the cost of living, which Ohio is more the cities and Manhattan is the highest in the country. Not a terribly difficult decision when you base it on pocket book. Also, if you factor in quality of life and a place where we could golf inexpensively and go fishing when we want, it again went in Ohio’s corner.
Linds took a polygraph to get the job which she found very uncomfortable.
Went to the dentist to find out I had 6 cavaties. A new Bryce Rausch record, beating the previous record of 5). Went to the dentist today to have them filled and ran out of time. They want me to come back, but I’m not coming back…never.
I decided to quit drinking, at least for the time being. It’s been almost 6 weeks. I’m not waiting for anything in particular to drink again, I figure I’ll drink when it seems like something I want to do again. (the money saved is incredible though when you look at bar tabs we’ve had in the past).
Told management of my soon departure and immediately started working on a possible transfer. I’d be going to the field, which means face to face sales. More money, but more responsibility. I’m up for it. Posted the resume in case it falls through and been averaging 2 phone calls and emails a day. Most from companies I wouldn’t go near, others from companies that get me thinking hmmmm…..
Looking into Dish Network for our next cable company. Exciting stuff.
Had a second cortisone shot, I mostly forget I ever had shoulder problems, but I know those days will end…
Been watching a lot of the Olympics, but I would say not as much as Miles or Holli (I basically just need to read their Twitters to know when they’re watching it). Phelps did great with some luck in there, too. Nastia got screwed. Was hoping the Chinese Hurdler would’ve won, but instead he got hurt. Water Polo looks like the one sport I would definitely like to learn but would die in the process.
Picked out an apartment which is pretty incredible and assuming the transfer goes through is pretty close to where the office would be.
Now for the biggest news. Monday around 1:30pm Bear ran away. It is now Wed. around 6pm and we still haven’t caught him. I think only Dan has seen this current apartment but we live across the street from some woods and a creek. The thing is, the woods go back probably a quarter mile and the creek runs probably half a mile N and S. Our area is very not “city” and so there are several areas he could’ve run to and been under tree cover. Also, there are many other stray cats in the area, including at least one other black cat. Meaning when we look and think we see him, we can’t even be positive it’s him. There is a chance that the area we think we last saw him (yesterday around this time) wasn’t even him.
Another sad details is Bitty. Usually a very silent car she’s been meowing a lot. She’ll stare at the front door and meow loudly. She’ll search every room for him. Whenever we fed the cats Bear would push his way to the first bowl and Bitty would usually taste the 2nd bowl and leave and comeback when he was done. Now, she just looks at both the bowls for a while, as if waiting for Bear to claim his first. She’s been acting very different and she’s not the type of cat that we think pairs up with just any other animal so it may be really tough on her.
I know many of you are thinking, “it’s just a cat” but remember, in a lot of way they’ve been Lindsey and I’s children for as long as we’ve been here. Linds and I, but especially Linds, is heartbroken at the thought that he won’t come back home until we’re gone, which we leave next Thursday. Just throw a prayer out to St. Jude/Anthony/Gertrude.
That being said, we move Thursday morning. Dad flies in Wed and we pack away until the AM when we’ll head to Parma Heights, OH. Change is on the horizon.
August 20th, 2008
With our infamous Unicel contract running out August 9, Linds and I have been eager to get new phones and even more importantly, a better plan.
First, about our old plan: it wasn’t good. We had, I believe, something like 800 minutes between the two of us, which we went over only once, no free nights and weekends, and no mobile to mobile unless we were in out home area, which we usually were something like 1,500 miles away from. No internet (unless you wanted to pay something like $15 for 10 minutes) and $0.15 per text message. Also, many times texts wouldn’t be able to be sent or we’d have phone problems and were told that we either had to “reset” our phones everyday and turn them completely off (recommended to do it while sleeping) (which I flat out said “no, we don’t have land lines so if there’s an emergency I need my phone on always”) and that our phones would work just fine if we were in our home area. When I called to cancel they literally said, “yeah, it’s a good idea to switch for you” rather than recommending a different national plan.
About our new plan: 700 minutes, mobile to mobile, unlimited texting/pictures sending, and unlimited internet usage. Time will tell how much we use the internet. It also comes with GPS (which I’ve used and was useful once) and an 8GB memory disk which you can put songs and videos on. It’s a very nice phone called the LG Dare which is the LG answer to the iPhone. It’s a touch screen and I usualyl find somethign new with it every day that I play with it.
So, you should all by now have our new numbers, if you see this and are like “WTF, I need the #’s” just let us know.
August 2nd, 2008