Now that your family is expanding to include a son, if you could go anywhere in the world to raise him, where would it be?

I had to think about this for a while.  The whole thought/worry of being a good dad scares the crap out of me.  Where would I most like to raise my baby boy?  Well this place would have requirements.  It needs to have cultural institutions nearby.  I was lucky that my parents took me to plays, symphonies, and museums.  Obviously, schools need to be good.  We need to be somewhat near a major city/airport.  We need to be able to fly to see family in Utah and Thailand.  Need to have a neighborhood feel (house and trees, not apartments and traffic).  For right now, where we are is good with me, but wherever we go next will be similar…..maybe closer to Utah.

You seem to have a clumsy streak,  how do you think this developed, or was it hereditary?

The clumsy streak is hereditary, from my mom.  She has a famous story of tripping and falling when I was a baby and chipping both bones in both her elbows….and I didn’t even bother to wake up.  Now first I must list the recent clumsy things that had happened.

1. 2001-tore ligaments in my ankle basketball.  Good thing out of this was I wasn’t too mobile and ended up spending more time talking to my wife-to-be
2. 2003-smashed my head when setting up my total gym requiring I think 6 staples.  Not “good” result out of this except a good story.  I was alone when it happened and when I noticed I was bleeding profusely I grabbed a roll of toilet paper and applied pressure to my wound and drove myself to the hospital.  They had a good laugh at my expense at the hospital.
3. 2006-broken thumb playing tennis.  I managed to just trip over nothing and land just right to break my thumb.  I blame my out of shape body, it was the first tennis game of the year and my winter belly was pulling me forward.
4. 2007-”the mailbox”  I ran into a stationary object while commuting to work on my bike.  I was going fast and dodging a recycle bin as best I can recall.  Went down hard, destroyed my helmet but got back up and rode to work in a daze.
5. 2008-”the stop sign” OK this isn’t what you think, I didn’t hit it.  I was trying to balance at a stop sign as I waited for a car to drive by, but it turns out two cars were coming and I simply got to a point and said “Oh S#@T!” and fell over.  I had clipless pedals (which really means my shoes are clipped into the pedals-go figure)
6. Last week fell in the driveway on ice….OK not a real injury, but it was recent and my elbow still hurt.

As you can tell, most of these are sports related.  I think it is just a matter of time.  Everyone I know has had injuries, most of them more worse than mine.  It just seems that mine are odd and usually funny.   OK further proof this falling is hereditary, my brother.  He once “slipped on a carrot” and had to go to the hospital.  He once ended up at the bottom of a hill and his bike was in a tree at the top of the hill (still don’t understand the physics that were in action there.  There was no jump and his bike was 4-5 feet off the level ground hanging in the tree at the top of the slope).  He has also been injured enough that he has had to have surgery.  See, its just not me, I just tell better stories.

 Explain “mountain dew and milkshakes”

Mt. Dew and MilkShakes blog name arose out of me wanting a blog name that seemed like nonsense but when you knew me would make you think “hmm, that really fits”.  This name celebrates two of the great joys I find in life (maybe for you it is a fine wine or a special coffee).  First of all my only major addiction in life is Mt. Dew.  I have been drinking it since I started working for a living (primarily for it’s wonderful empty sugar calories).  It is more of a fixation than a true addiction.  You see I work in the cube world and life can be at times a combination of the movie “Office Space” and a Dilbert cartoon.   I am not a programmer who stares at code all day, I sit in a cube and rewrite the same reports again and again.  While this is not my total job it does drive me to drink….Mt. Dew at a alarming rate.  Mostly drives me to get up and do something other than stare at my computer and going to the fridge is a good alternative.  MilkShakes is also an ode to one of my great loves in life, a good milk shake.  When I was just out of college and could afford ice cream all the time I would have a homemade milkshake every night.  Favorite flavor is strawberry when it is the season, otherwise a vanilla shake works for me.

Sadly as I have approached and passed 30 and got married I can’t have my milkshake every night anymore without exacerbating an every expanding waste size.  It only takes your wife nicknaming you “pillow” and laughing at you saying “you have a muffin top, tee hee hee” to make me reduce milkshakes to a special occasion food.

I know you have made a list of 10 favorite movies, but that was a while ago, has that list changed any in the last 5 years.

Ok, so if you would like to be interviewed by me please

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

It was ice, all of it.  I got one foot down and my body just followed.  Computer bag sliding, oranges rolling.  It was so slippery I couldn’t even get back up.  I crawled back to the back steps and went back in.  I hit my elbow pretty bad.  It would have been funny with out the elbow.  The worst part was I then had to go out and scrap ice from the freezing off the car windows.

Today is Monday.

.

Apparently it is my wife!!  She is listening to these songs and loving it.  She has come in two days this week happily singing Christmas songs.  Oh well. What can I do about that right!

I have begun to forget my life doesn’t work like a DVR.  I actually thought today, wait I’ll just hit the rewind button when I found myself spaced out and not listening to what someone was talking to me.  On the ride home I though, oh wait I want to rewind and listen to that news story again.

Anyway, one week ago someone in another office sent out a mass email to my business group (only about 50+ people, thank god) saying that all the administrative assistants would be in training for an hour.  At the bottom of her email in the spirit of the election joy that has just ended she wrote “my name is Kelli and I approve this message”.  I thought that was very funny so I hit reply and typed out several versions, a couple of nasty ones.  I ended up sending an innocuous reply.  But when hit send I looked is electronically disappeared and realized I “Reply to all…….oh @%#!”.  The real issue is the group includes my boss, and every Project manager I work for.  I received about 15 mocking emails back and my ego received a severe hit.

And, like a good friend this is the time one of my friends decided to strike.  Later in the same day I wrote a very angry email after a coworker did something particular bothersome.  My friend often encourage me to write these email because the gain so much enjoyment.  I think it is because I hold in my anger so long and when I snap it can be severe.  Well I hit send and was fairly certain I only added my friends.  And I hit send, and heard the you’ve got mail chime on my cube neighbors computer speakers.

Seconds later my FORMER FRIEND James laughed and then (in a worried tone) he says “oh crap, you replied to all”.  I rotated on my chair looked over at him.  “No I didn’t” (short pause) “DID I!”  for the next 10 seconds I just sat there frozen, thinking “what have I done, not twice in the same day.  I’m not a bad person, I was just mad, surely they will understand”.  I think the regret and fear in my eyes (plus the the green color my face I turned as I became sick to my stomach) made James crack and I realized he was full of crap and just messing with me.  Wow, who needs enemies when you have friends like these.

This joke has me affected still.  I think I need to be a nicer person…….well at least in emails.  Always check the address line at the top!

James, I will get even!

Now it should be know that I hate the checkout process at the grocery store because I get too involved in judging or reading things into people’s lives by what they are buying.  Some person who is soooo big enough that they barely fit down the aisle is only buying candy, ice cream, frozen french fries and beer, and not one healthy thing, yeah snide remark. Or I will be behind some old lady who bought 10 cans of green beans and that is it. First, I do feel bad if that is all she can afford, but in this particular example all the canned veggies were on the same sale, so why 10 cans of on type? Now that we have self check lines that helps some (helps, means I can avoid contact with stupid humans), but if there is a back up and some woman is trying to self check $300 worth of groceries (that made me develop a facial tick as the vein in my forhead was about to explode).  My wife and I can self check as fast as an average checker (that counts looking up the fresh veggies and fruit). On a similar note, we had a checker ask us what both garlic and green beans, and mushrooms were?  I think to be a checker you should have to walk through the produce section and at least learn the names of common stuff.

Well I digress from my original story, at the checkout this week I read a Slim Jim label, the wife wanted one for about 30 seconds. First ingredient was beef, and then the second was “mechanically separated chicken water”?????  WTF is that!!  I started laughing out loud (which is somewhat rare for me in public).  I looked 5 times and did find a comma, so it was actually “mechanically separated chicken, water”, but still, what is mechanically separated chicken.  Well anyway we didn’t buy a Slim Jim, and I probably never will now.

We sat down when our drunk neighbors were getting their leftovers boxed up and we managed to eat our whole dinner and pay the bill and ended up leaving at the same time as drunk b-day girl.  We have our own issues. We managed to eat super fast.  Why would we do this on one of our rare nights out.  We had to get home to watch New Adventures of Old Christine, J’s favorite show (she is actually quite a lot like Old Christine) when we forgot to program the DVR.  I also really didn’t like my meal. It is now barely 9 pm, J is asleep and ready to go to bed myself, married life huh.

Chicken-I am glad to be home with my wife.  We were going to go out to dinner tonight.  I had no desire to go out, as I have been on the road for almost a month, so I am ready just to be home.  J didn’t want to cook (I don’t blame her) so I said we could go out to our favorite Thai/sushi place (I get Thai my wife gets sushi).  Well we go in and there is a 20 minute wait.  Not that bad I know but J is STARVING so 20 mins won’t cut it.  We are deciding where to do when we spot a KFC nearby (the one fast food joint).  We both get meals but J says she needs more food, so she orders an extra leg (I did ask “really, you need another piece of chicken”).  Well we order our food and they don’t have enough chicken to get and extra piece to J (6 mins they tell us.  I could go on a rant here about how I have bad luck and this isn’t even close to the first time I have been told at KFC that “we are out of chicken”).  I say fine we will eat there and wait.  So we go eat our chicken and when we are almost done I go get the extra leg, I bring it to the table.  J looks at the chicken, looks at me, looks at the chicken, looks at me.  She smiles an says “Want to split it?” I shake my head and she says “ooo, maybe you should just eat the whole thing.  I had to laugh.  We split it.

Overshare – we have a very cute grocery store near our house (a CO-OP) and the people who work there are from the neighborhood  and the checkers are all older ladies and a lot of the customers are old people from the neighborhood.  Well we are waiting to check out an 80 year old man is having a discussion about coronary disease, blocked arteries……of whatever, and now picture this, the checkout lady is a 70 year old lady wearing a white 1980′s fat aerobics headband (no idea why she had a headband, she wasn’t holing back hair).  Well I walk over to the community bulletin board.  Well my wife walks out and says “did you hear that…..the checkout lady was talking about the fact she had a perforated colon, and then she looked at me and smiled”.  Now there are a lot of things I don’t want to know about my checkout personnel, and the status or recent damage/repair of their colon is probably near the top of the list because of what that means.  Now I am going to think every time I see this lady “I hope her colon holds up”.

None of the is particularly funny but it is to me because I am home laughing with my wife.  We laugh together a lot about just regular stuff and I miss that when I am on the road.  Good to be home!

Well I am stuck in Jersey still. Job is going OK, actually had a big VP say I was doing a good job. The problem with being good is they don’t want me to go back home. Probably one more week.

I am staying in a Holiday Inn in a town named Swedesboro. As you may have guessed, the town was founded by people from Sweden. How would I know this, well they have giant billboard as you drive into town that actually says “Swedesboro, founded by the Swedes” 1623!!!! 1623, seriously, that is amazing. I was driving down the “Kings Highway” at the time so it has been around a while. They also noted that the a Swedish prince came to town in 1936 and the King came in 1976…..seriously. This would be like a king coming to Brigham City, Utah, or a King coming to Woodland, CA. Swedesboro is just a small town. I did find a good restaurant last night. Too big of portions but close to the Hotel (relatively).

I actually got in a argument with a senior guy with our company at lunch about how far was to far for me to drive for dinner down here. Now first if you remember in my last post I get lost a lot down here. I was trying to explain that the fact I start work at 630 am and end at 630-730 PM right now, and then I need to go to the hotel (I actually typed home first and had to delete it. It does feel that way after 3 days sometimes) and get cleaned up. After that it will be about 8 or 830. So would I then want to drive 30-45 mins to search for a restaurant in a strange town, or even worse in Philadelphia? Then order, eat and drive back. I mean if I eat at the hotel I don’t get in. Ugh, guy wouldn’t listen. He is one of those people who waits to talk and is always right. What an A$$!

I have another coworker complaint but I will let it go. I am not mad, just whining. Saved a turtle last week. Took him to a safe spot away from the construction. I named him Gus.

I didn’t say he was big. He was just a baby. There are actually big ones too.
He is red belly turtle. Bet you can’t guess why??

J’s b-day is coming up. She wants to go to NYC and see our first Broadway musical. I think now is as good a time as any. I will probably be able to take a day off so that will be fun. Keep your fingers crossed that we can go and for some other stuff.

Until Later!

So after Chiang Rai we stayed in Chiang Mail, one of the major cities of Thailand.
Here we are waiting for some Rotee, a fried bread that is covered with a little sugar and condensed milk and rolled up into a handy snack.

Mmm, makes me hungry thinking about it. This was my post Thai food breakfast.

flowered floats, similar to Rose parade floats. It was a flower festival in Chiang Mai. Yeah they really like flowers up here.

Cool Bonsai Trees

A woman selling birds in little wicker baskets. I thought they were pets, but you are supposed to let them go for good luck.

J, her mom and little sister.

We went to a hill tribe village on a mountain outside of Chiang Mai.
Here is a typical house.

And a Hill Tribe girl…..oh wait I recognize her.

Yeah that is J. They rented the costume for photos. It’s an Asian thing.

Beautiful hand died cloth.

Little sister gets a turn.

And with Mom

and some actual Hill Tribe girls who were our guides.

Nearby was Doi Suthep temple built on a 5,250 ft peak next to the city of Chiang Mai, 304 steps to get up from the road. This is the crew that chose to climb the stairs. There was a elevator/tram to get the “old folks” up there.

J couldn’t help herself and had to ring the bells. When I asked why she said “I just like making noise”. Only about 3 of 5 sound OK there are a lot of dud sounding ones.

A huge gong that had an amazing deep tone.

Temple roof line.

Where is J, oh yeah, she found more bells.

Chiang Mai below.

Giant head in the arms length shot.

Us at the bottom of the stairs.

And we then went to another palace with more Gardens

J’s sister

and the sisters together

Kratong floating paper lantern.

Sitting down for a Kan Toke dinner, a traditional feast in Chiang Mai. Yes we sat on the floor, but you can’t tell there is a hidden pocket to hang your western legs in if you prefer.

The feast. Bowl closest is Red Curry. Moving clockwise from there is fried tofu, very hot green chilli paste dip (kind hidden), fried chicken, red chilli pase dip and sweet and crispy fried noodles. Veggies in the middle. I loved the curry and fried chicken + veggies. Dips were to hot. Lips numb in 2 seconds.

The dinner had a show with traditional dancing from around Thailand

War drummers

Fish girl dancing/swimming

Monkey and fish girl falling in love.

Oh they spotted the tall white guy with the Thai folks. Take a photo with the Monkey (and give him a tip). J’s sister didn’t know she was being photographed.

Oh fish girl too, I am special. I was the only person out of the 300-400 that were there that had both fish girl and monkey man come see me.

flying lantern being launched (kind of a paper hot air balloon thing)

And we then went to an elephant show the next day.

Yes, they did hold tails during the parade.

Cute Guy. They have 77 elephants at this training/rescue camp with ages from 1 year to 65 years old.

Putting the hat on the trainer.

And then the real show started. They brought out paints. And the elephants start work.

The trainer dips the brush and the elephants take it in their trunk and paint. I am sure they are trained to paint one thing. It was amazing to see. Note the trainer is just down by the paint.

In progress….I wonder what it will be? You can see a spare brush tucked in the trainer’s belt.

And yes this is it. I was shocked. Amazing does not begin to describe it.

And they then started lining them up. Each one was getting more amazing.

And yes they carried off their paints.

And the whole troops paintings. No they are not all painters, and each one who is probably only paints one type of picture they were trained to do….but really it is amazing. I couldn’t hope to do half as good. The sold these ones and others to help support the camp. The elephants eat tons of food.

Here is an elephant giving his trainer a massage.

No, do massage with your feet!!!! No he didn’t really.

And the elephants showed off their lumber hauling skills. Elephants are not used for this work anymore (about 15 years since it became illegal).

You could buy bananas and sugar cane treats to feed them.

Yeah they are strong, he almost pulled me over and he is only 3 years old.

J couldn’t believe how coarse the hair was. This guy was 2 years old.

And yes I had to take a ride. This is how the seat looks from the back. This one was really angry. I was lucky and got a lazy/bored elephant.

And we did climb up and down hills and terrain (not just on some streets). Here are some other tourists.

And here we are. Our elephant was a female named Mae Noy, she is 35 years old (a teenager the trainer said)

Do I look heavy? Lots of elephant poo. It was a little frightening when you climb seep parts and it was 15-20 feet to the bottom of the hill.

And me, looking very happy. Picture in the background is the King. Hope you enjoyed.