A new bike sounds like a great idea! Is Göteborg as uniformly flat as Amsterdam? It’s so flat here, people refer to the bridges over the canals as “mountains”, like “we only have three more mountains to cross before we get home!”

I’d love to visit you and explore Göteborg some time. It looks like it has lots of the features I love about Amsterdam, plus a lot of its own uniqueness!

My cats actually have passports, but I’ve never had to use them, since they like the just hang out at him and lounge about all day.

But thanks to this great technology on the internet called “Cat Pictures”, high resolution images of them can easily travel to Göteborg without even bothering them from their naps!

The best decision I ever made was to get a pair of brothers as kittens — they’re the best of friends and never lonely, and they both have very distinct personalities — kind of like the odd couple. They’re named Nelson and Napoleon, but they’re actually named after Nelson Mandella and Napoleon Dynamite, not these two mortal enemies:

Here they are as kittens with their banana full of drugs:

Now they’re a LOT larger:

Nelson is really cool like The Fonz, mostly black but has subtle shades and colors in his undercoat, and he is currently wearing ONE WHITE WHISKER (I think that’s so he can tell left from right).

Napoleon is very goofy like John Candy, and has big asymmetrical pure white blobs and a white undercarriage on his otherwise dark fur with similar undertones like Nelson’s. He has a weird fetish: he loves to be spanked on the heiney, while he leans over the back of a chair!

Here you can see some of Nelson’s subtle shades and tones:

His classic pose is to extend his legs out front:

And he fucking LOVES sour cream, but is not as sneaky as he thinks he is:

They can be rather petulant when the feel like it:

And here’s the goofiest Napoleon photo that perfectly captures his personality and never fails to cheer me up:

On 22 Sep 2018, at 10:22, Laura Creighton <lac@openend.se> wrote:

It would be great to see you. I have been extremely ill, for more
than a year, but I am much improved now. I got a weird sort of cancer
which they have only seen 4 cases of, ever, in all of Europe, and
that's all gone now (YAY) but I had lots of neurological damage from
the chemotherapy (not-YAY). Try feeling as if you are on fire and
having electrical shocks in your hands and feet, which otherwise are
numb. Guess what -- there are no pain killers that work against this,
aside from morphine at such high levels that addiction is pretty
certain.

While all of this is going on you need to think hard on finding and
understanding other possible solutions. Ooops, you cannot because the
chemotherapy is making remembering anything you think pretty close to
impossible. Everything from 'what did I name that variable 2 minutes ago' to
did I pay that stack of bills (yes, 3 times it seems, must remember to write
the date of payment on the bills so I don't do that again ...).

It still will be many months before I am up and back to exploring the
world with my old vigor, but 2 months ago I couldn't really walk more
than 3 blocks without needing a good long rest, preferably with
sleeping. But we found some medication that turns the burning off
(Gabapentine, usually perscribed for epileptic seizures) and I have been
doing a serious about of physiotherapy, and last it seems that my nerves
have begun to reconnect and regenerate -- perhaps due to the real sleep
I am finally getting now that I don't feel as if my feet are on fire all
the time.

Things are so much improved that this week -- I am considering buying
a new bicycle, as my old one is too tall for the current level of
dexterity in my feet. It's pretty cool that I can even think about
getting around by bike again.

You can come up here and visit, you know. Göteborg is a nice place, and
I have 2 spare guest rooms, so come, bring a friend if you like, and hang
out. You could even bring the cats, though I suspect they have the standard
feline hatred for travel.

All the best,
Laura