Lights Pic

The "Christmas House"

"The Christmas House"

My kids met some new little friends in our neighborhood. I asked the little girl if she has seen our Christmas lights and she replied, "Oh yes! My family calls it "the Christmas house"! That just absolutely made my day yesterday!

The Christmas House. Wow.

Bubble Time

I'm tired.

OK, it's time...

It's finally time to make this an "official public declaration": WE ARE MOVING TO HONG KONG! That's right! Next June, we are packing up the kids, selling the car and buying our Octupus card. We will be living in Ho Man Tin and frequenting such delights as Dan Ryan's, TGI Friday's, Amaroni'sl, Fat Angelo's, and Ruby Tuesday's. I have already submitted applications for enrolling the girls at HK ICS. We are all looking forward to the move, although life in a high-rise apartment will be MUCH different that what we have experienced as a family.

We are going to miss living in Chiang Mai. We love it here and will miss our friends a bunch.

Top Ten Reasons

I subscribe to Plaxo and they just sent this out as:

The Top Ten Reasons I Didn't Send Out Christmas Cards Last Year

Winter has finally arrived

Well, not here in Thailand, anyway. I have this list of cities on "My Yahoo" weather center and I was amazed to see that Vinita, OK, was colder than Fairbanks, AK, or Lhasa, Tibet (but not Ulan Bator, Mongolia!). Looks mighty cold. Ah, for a little of that here.

Chistmas lights fiasco

OH MY GOODNESS!!! I never thought that a little "exterior illumination" would be so difficult to maintain! First, on Monday, my little "gazebo" lighting display decides to have some sort of short, triggering the GFI for the entire house. No matter which cord I unplug, it flips the breaker. I still haven't gotten that taken care of. Then, last evening, it started raining and it flipped the GFI AGAIN!!! Bummer.

Just call me Clark W. Griswold.

Sally and I celebrated our wedding anniversary by dining at the "Le Coq d'Or" (the Golden Rooster) this evening. It was quite possibly the nicest restaurant I have ever had the opportunity to dine in. It was beautiful, elegant, romantic, delicious, and quite expensive. But worth it once a year! I had french onion soup, Sally had Shitake mushroom soup; I had Caesar salad. Sally had a very nice steak Dianne; I had pan fried snow fish. We then finished with a spectacular crepes suzette, with coffee (for me) and tea. What a wonderful evening!

I love you, Sally.

Sooners Are San Diego-Bound

Holiday Bowl, December 29, Oklahoma vs Oregon.

Not bad for such a horrible season!

Boomer Sooner, forever.

Happy Anniversary

I married the love of my life 13 years ago today. I would do it all over again. I love you.

Quake jolts three districts in Chiang Mai

Bangkok Post Monday 05 December 2005 - Quake jolts three districts in Chiang Mai

It was a 4.1 on the Richter Scale with an epicenter in Hang Dong, about 19 miles from my house!

EARTHQUAKE!

At about 4:30 pm local time, we had a small earthquake here in Chiang Mai. It scared the kids (and me) but didn't do any damage. We did run outside where we saw our two large fish ponds still sloshing the water back and forth. That was kind of cool, I guess. Anyway, there were three "hard punches" with three loud "bangs". It almost sounded like an explosion. Sally even thought it might have been a plane that crashed near the airport.

I called a friend up in extreme northern Thailand, to see if he felt it, too, but he had been driving on a bumpy mountain road at the time and didn't feel anything. I tried to call a friend in Bangkok, but her phone was on "voice mail".

At this point, I can't find any "real" information about it; scale, epicenter, damage, etc. As soon as I find out something, I'll let you know.

Santa's list

We were discussing the fact that the kids ought to be getting their letters to Santa in the mail pretty quick. Sally mentioned to the kids that, when they write their list, they need to remember that Santa usually is only able to provide "locally available toys".

I thought this was pretty funny and something that parent's in the States don't have to say. It is an "overseas parenting problem". You see, the kids know what is here, what is at Toys R Us in Hong Kong and Singapore, and what is back at Wal-Mart! The problem is, there is no Wal-Mart or Toys R Us in Chiang Mai, so, some of the things that they may ask for would be IMPOSSIBLE for "Santa" to bring! Egads!

Christmas lights

I'm pretty happy tonight! We came home from a dinner party and found that our next door neighbor has decorated his house for Christmas! It looked really nice and and he did a really good job in his trees. It compliments my lights and he has even done it in the same style.

(now I think I might need a few more lights in my trees.)

Working Late

Well, after having worked hard all day, I came back to the office after supper. It is now 10 pm and I am finally caught up! YEA!!!

It feels good. Really, really good to be this caught up!