Outdoor Survival Training

First Venture into the Outside World (AKA: The Condo Balcony)

First Venture into the Outside World
(AKA: The Condo Balcony)

Let’s get one thing straight:  I’m a kept cat.  I’m accustomed to a certain level of luxury and status in my life.  I have two human servants that exist to pamper me.  I get treats feed to me by hand any time I request.  I have total command of the couch at all times, and most days, get the best spot on the Tempur-Pedic bed.

I’d finally gotten my humans properly trained and they decide to make me learn new skills.  Here’s what they’ve been putting me through:

Survival Training Level 1: Harness and Leash
One day I was minding my own business when my humans put this strange contraption on me.  It must have weighed 150 pounds.  I had to hunch down, get close to the ground, and walk very slowly while I built up the strength to support it on my body.  Once I was moving easier, they attached this long strap to it.  I don’t think they know what they are doing.  Don’t they know I’m a cat?  At least it’s better than the sweater they made me wear once.

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The Sounds of Sterling

While I’ll certainly miss family, friends, and food, there are a number of things I won’t miss about suburban condo living.  Most of them can be classified under what I call “The Sounds of Sterling.”

Even with the windows completely closed, each day brought the following menagerie of predictable sounds. Continue reading

New Truck Research Thwarted

Lynx is upset with the time we spend on the Internet and is hereby throttling our bandwidth.

“I’m upset with the time my humans spend on the Internet.  I’m hereby throttling their bandwidth with my tiny paws.”

The endless new truck research continued today.

Every day my humans are feverishly researching trucks and debating tow packages and engine sizes.  They should instead be playing with me and feeding me extra treats!

If things don’t calm down around here soon, I will alert the ASPCA.

For now, I’m thwarting their continued research efforts at the source.

Our Ultralight.Life

Welcome to our Ultralight Life! We are two mid-30s professionals on a life adventure. We’re too young to retire but refuse to wait until retirement to start living the lives we really want.

We’ve thrown ourselves off the “meeting the expectations of others” train and are instead forming a new and experimental path of our own choosing.

We dislike tradition, restriction, regulation, and HOAs. We avoid physical and virtual things that are heavy and tie us down.  We’re not interested in acquiring “things” for the sake of having more.

This quote from Ellen Goodman says it best:

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”

We don’t want to be normal.  Instead, we want: Continue reading