election day!

hey everyone--
make sure you get out and vote today! i sent my ballot in (i'm a permanent absentee voter)... we get to vote for mayor and king county executive (offices currently held by greg nickles and ron sims), along with a bunch of initiatives, monoral board members, and port commission members. if you want to know who and what are being endorsed by organized labor, you can see the king county labor council (afl-cio) political endorsements here:
http://www.kclc.org/endorsements%202005.pdf

if you're not from king county, you can follow links to other counties from the washington state labor council website:
http://www.wslc.org/cope/index.htm

the housecall vet comes today. i'm very apprehensive about it...but i've spent the last week getting used to the idea, and i'm going ahead with euthanizing jester. she wants me to dose him with valium before she comes--10mg. (normally i give him 2.5mg, which is half a tablet, before a vet visit, so giving him 2 tablets will seem like a lot.) i think i'm ready. i'm averse to killing things (don't even kill spiders if i can avoid it), though, so no matter how ready i think i am, it will be difficult.

pets

jester died today. it was very peaceful. this is the second time i've seen a pet out of this world (both times with the same vet), and i just have to say...oregon has the right idea. assisted suicide should be legal. terminally ill people should be able to choose a death like my cat had today, and like my dog had a couple of years ago, if it's what they want. (i don't know if it's what i would choose or not...but it should be available.) (added later: it isn't entirely true, that i've seen only 2 pets out of this world...there were also a gerbil and a rat, and family pets before that, though i wasn't personally present for any of those deaths, only after the fact, as witness, pall bearer, and grave digger.)

my apartment feels unbelievably empty now. such a small cat...yet his personality really filled this space (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse). i always say that cats *are* the forces of chaos. jester almost got named satan when he was a kitten--because he murdered every houseplant i owned. i mean really, he didn't just knock them over or chew the leaves or dig in the dirt. these were not slow deaths. no. every day he would target a new plant for destruction. i'd come home from work and find the wreckage: dirt everywhere, leaves completely shredded, root balls decimated. completly unsalvageable. and him, asleep on the couch, the little shit. what will i do now, when i set up a stack of papers and they don't get knocked down? when i leave a glass of water on a table and it doesn't get spilled so he can have a drink? when i take out a sweater to wear and it's not covered with white kitty belly fur? he was definitely a pill--mouthy and demanding--but he was also curious, playful, and extremely sociable. he would jump shoulder-high for treats. he fetched plastic bottle caps. he liked to ride on shoulders. he made friends with all of my neighbors. over the last couple of days, everyone stopped by to see him and pet him and say good-bye.

wow. this is the first time i've been petless since i was about 21. (and my parents have had pets my whole life, so...i've *never* been petless, really, until now. what will it be like?)