Outside A Dog

[cross-posted to this site's 'about' page.]

I have a massive pile of books in my room. They all sit there, unread, while I go and, well, buy more books. I know it’s a problem, so I tried to do something about it. For 2008 I resolved to read every single book that I bought. And that didn’t happen, because there are just too many books out there and I have too little restraint. Now that my ‘to be read’ pile is becoming a ‘to be read’ mountain, I’ve decided that I needed to really do something about it.

So I decided that this year — 2009 — I’m not going to allow myself to buy a single book. I know, crazy, right? But because I know how seriously I lack willpower, I added a motivational twist to my mission: for every book that I read this year I’m going to set aside five dollars. Initially I planned to take the money that I’ve set aside and splurge on something major with it — for instance, the limited edition of Les Misérables published by the Folio Society, or maybe an Amazon Kindle. And then I changed my mind.

The current love of my life is my four-year-old German Shepherd. In 2007 she was diagnosed with exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, and in 2008 she was diagnosed with high-grade canine lymphoma. Both could have taken a more serious toll on her, but thanks to modern veterinary medicine and the help of some wonderful people on the Internet, both are currently under control and my darling girl is once again a bouncy, playful pup.

So at the beginning of 2010, I plan to make donations to two charitable organizations: the Canine Genetics Research group at Texas A&M University to support their EPI research and the Animal Care and Assistance Fund, a new, non-profit extension of the Pittsburgh Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Center, a practice that took outstanding care of my pup during her chemotherapy regimen.

I plan on using this site as both a record of my efforts and as a form of motivation — the more that I’m semi-publicly accountable for, the better. I’d like to post my thoughts on what I read and possibly even get feedback and suggestions from anyone who might stop by. For a while, everything here will be a work in progress, but hopefully it’ll all come together eventually.