It saddens me to announce that this morning I was forced to part company with something dear to me, something that had been with me a long time. We had literally seen the world together, but in the end, it wasn't enough.

When you come home from a trip and one of your cats pees on your black duffel bag, you can scrub it with the natural cleaning supplies and try your best to get the smell out. You can even largely succeed, but when you do you find yourself putting the bag in the basement and opting for a different bag the next time you go on a business trip, for fear that said bag will cause great hordes of drug-sniffing dogs to go crazy at the airport, or, worse, your good clothes will emerge from the bag smelling like cat pee, which is, of course, awesome when presenting at conferences or meeting Big Important People™. So, into the basement it goes.

When a great whopping hurricane comes barreling its way into your town and brings water into your basement, and when it comes into only that part of the basement where the black duffel that may or may not smell like cat pee currently happens to be residing, well, that's a goddamn sign.

Farewell, black duffel bag. We had some great times. You're gonna be hard to replace. (But the next time I'm at the outlet mall, I'm sure gonna try. And then I'm keeping it away from the cats. And the basement. Yeah, that's the plan.)