HOME

February 16, 2010

On the Bright Side, I Didn’t Die Last Night

I call this: On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 4:48 pm

OK I’m going to follow up the death of Sadie with a funny story from last night.

We were loading out from Morgantown, WV. Our truck was at the dock, and next to it was parked a little box truck with some sound equipment in it. I’m not sure if it was gear rented by the venue for our show, or a totally unrelated show also going on at the school. Anyway, the point is it was not our stuff.

Shortly after they began loading this other truck, Olivia came back to our truck with some snacks — these things that were kind of like pigs in blankets, but with slices of sausage instead of hotdogs. While we were waiting for the next load to come from the theatre, we began eating.

I had taken one bite, when around the corner comes a giant speaker on a cart. Now to summarize in brief what our duties are on the truck crew, Olivia is the truck boss and calls the items onto the truck. I direct the items to the proper place and orientation according to our truck pack, which ensures that everything will fit. If something comes onto the truck that’s not what I’m expecting, or with different dimensions than usual, it’s potentially a big problem. Not being used to loading the truck alongside another one that didn’t belong to us, I was so startled to see this huge thing I’d never seen before that I inhaled a piece of sausage! After much coughing, and a trip to the hospitality table for water, I recovered.

Everyone was very glad that I didn’t choke on the sausage, because that would have been a really stupid reason to die.


In Memory of Sadie

I call this: random — Posted by KP @ 12:19 pm

I’m sorry to bring everybody down with a somewhat off-topic post, but this is my little corner of the web and I must take a moment to share with you the memory of my dog, Sadie, who passed away early this morning from lukemia, at the age of 10 (or 70 depending on how you’re counting).

In fairness, I suppose Sadie really wasn’t my dog. My parents got her about a year after I moved out of the house, following the death of our previous dog, who died the week before I moved out. Talk about an empty nest. I would love to have a dog myself, but my lifestyle just doesn’t allow for it, so I have always considered Sadie my dog. When she was little she came to visit my apartment once, and within 30 seconds had peed on the floor. I wasn’t such a fan of that, but I enjoyed going to visit her.

Sadie was born while I was on the road in 1999. I was rather upset because I was excited to be a part of the choosing of the new family pet, and playing with a puppy (my first dog had lived 15 years, so I hadn’t had a puppy since I was three), but my parents were looking for a Tibetan Terrier, and when the breeder they were dealing with had some puppies, they couldn’t wait for me to come home. So they picked Sadie, who I should say was a very good choice, and sent me some pictures — which at that time, had to be printed on paper at a special store, and then put in an envelope and mailed to the person you wanted to show them to. I still carry one of those puppy photos in my wallet, despite the fact that now when people are sharing pet pictures on their phones, I pull out mine and say, “Here’s a video of my dog.” But I also have the puppy picture in my wallet.

Speaking of which, I have uploaded my video of Sadie, which I made when my parents got me one of those Flip video cameras for my birthday a couple years ago. It’s not really that exciting, I just wanted to play with the camera and she was the most interesting thing to film, although her interests at that particular moment were basically constrained to sniffing and lying under the dining room table.

Despite the fact that I didn’t get to see her very often, Sadie treated me like a member of the family from the very beginning. She always looked forward to being driven to the train station because she knew that meant I was coming. She enjoyed chewing on paper very much. For Christmas, she was always more excited by the wrapping paper than whatever toy or treat was contained within. Much to my initial dismay, she had absolutely no interest in playing fetch, and my old dog loved to play fetch, even when she could barely see anymore. I think Sadie was taking too much of a practical view on it — she never understood the point of running after an object, only to return it, only to run after it again. Which I guess I can’t blame her for. If she cared about the object, she would run to it, and then lie down to chew on it. Half the time she didn’t even care enough to chase after it once, she would just sort of turn her head back at the thrower as if to say, “So? It’s over there now.”

Lately she had been having some health problems, but it wasn’t really anything too concerning until just recently. While we were at the Guthrie she was diagnosed with lukemia. The vet thought she might live a while longer with treatment, but then things went downhill quickly this week. She stopped eating a couple days ago, and by last night my parents had made arrangements to have her put to sleep in the morning, but she passed away on her own overnight. I’m very disappointed because we’re getting back to New York tomorrow, and the last time I saw her, right before I left, she wasn’t even sick. If she had lived another day-and-a-half I could have seen her. The plan is for her ashes to be scattered at the beach where she loved to play. I think she would like that.