This story was part of a talk I did at Valiocon on June 6th 2014 in San Diego.
Read part 1 and part 2.

My grandfather met the love of his life when he was 75. He lost her 9 months later. That was the moment I realized every day and every single hour matters. Thanks to being a freelancer, I was able to just take days off and be there for him. I wasn’t at my desk all day, but I still got things done. Crisis situations often call for different life styles. You start to handle things in…

the sad story of living a model life

This story was part of a talk I did at Valiocon on June 6th 2014 in San Diego.
Read part 1 and part 3.

I was the perfect example of a model student. I never left school early, I always made my homework on time, I got red by only thinking about looking at a classmates desk, so I never cheated. I never drive too fast, I never drank alcohol, never did drugs and I was eighteen when I first had a boyfriend, who is still my boyfriend right now. …

About two years ago, my boyfriend and I finally got the green light from our landlord to adopt a puppy. After two years of waiting to finally have a pet in the house again, we were incredibly excited. But before getting started on actually owning a puppy, I did some research to see which breed would fit our lifestyle best. The landlord had two requirements:

• No neighbour should be bothered
• It should be a small dog

Keeping his comments in mind, we started the search for what would become our puppy. …