Wow’s Visit

Things have finally began to settle down for us.  Actually, we might just now be starting to get used to the pace of the new semester beginning.  My first week of class is in the books and there have been a lot of new things for me that have kept things busy.  Jet has enjoyed the company of her friend Wow visiting from Salt Lake City.  Ben is just being himself.  He now weighs eighteen pounds, eight ounces!  What a big boy.  He is getting better at standing for a few seconds at a time, but has not seen the need to take a step yet.  All in due time, I’m sure.  Jet will be taking Wow back to Birmingham for her flight back to Utah tomorrow – how fast one week goes by.  I will be working on getting things ready for class next week, so there will be some things going on for the holiday weekend.  It stinks that we will not be able to attend the annual gathering at the cottage again this year.  Make sure to eat plenty of food for us … and Lou, be sure to have an extra piece of apple pie for me.

Birds of a Feather

Things have been very busy (again) around here the past few days.  Jet picked up her friend (“Wow”) visiting from Utah at the Birmingham airport on Saturday and they have had a good time catching up with each other.  I am glad that Wow is here visiting since I am spending much more time at school, she is able to help out with Ben and keep Jet company.  We traveled to Atlanta on Sunday for sightseeing and shopping.  First stop was Stone Mountain for several pictures, then onto the international highway (Buford highway) for grocery shopping and lunch.  After that, we spent time at the Perimeter mall, which rounded out our day.  On Monday evening, Jet, Ben, and Wow visited me at school at the President’s house for dinner and music with the rest of the school’s faculty and family.  With school starting tomorrow (Wednesday) things will keep on getting busier around here.

I saw the first flocks of Canadian geese passing through Oxford this morning.  I suppose it is getting that time of year again, but it just seems so soon.  Maybe they know something I don’t – is the weather going to be a bit cooler this fall in Wisconsin?  As for the weather around here, with the exception of 1/4 inch of rain last week, we are still bone dry.  The temperatures have come down the past few days as it has only been in the low 90’s.  I haven’t been outside much, except at Stone Mountain on Sunday morning, so I can’t really tell you how different the temperatures feel now from the 100’s we had for the two weeks prior.

I’m glad that Ben’s haircut is so well received by everyone – I like it as well.  Jet has confided in me, however, that she doesn’t like it so much and that she was in near agony as they trimmed his hair last week.  The reason she didn’t like it?  Jet now thinks he looks like a little boy instead of a baby.  I guess you can’t fault her for not wanting Ben to grow up.  I’m also glad to hear that the rain has stopped (for now) up in Wisconsin.  I cringed as I read Janette’s comment, but enjoyed the detail.  In fact, it was a real joy for us to read 4 whole posts after going through a feedback drought over the past few weeks.  You can’t believe how much we enjoy seeing when there is another comment posted on the blog.  It really does make our day.

Ben’s First Haircut

Ben got his first “official” haircut today.  I say official since he has had the occasional trim here and there.  It only took about 10 minutes when it was all said and done (as well as $8) but we were both pleased with the results.  Jet hopes Kristin is satisfied as well.

We had the exterminator arrive yesterday and he sprayed all around our house and put a type of gel inside where the ants were coming in.  He told Jet that it was a type of ant food that will kill them.  The exterminator also told Jet that he would likely have to come back in about 10 days for another application to take care of them for good.  That is $100 well spent to get rid of them.  He also told Jet that the pesticide that he was spraying would kill all black widow spiders we have been seeing (I have killed five outside the house this summer).  Again, $100 well spent.

 The temperature gauge reached 109 degrees on the way home from JSU this afternoon … so that makes it over two full weeks of temperatures of at least 100 degrees.  I also heard on the radio yesterday morning that because of the severe drought that we are in (over two feet … about 25 inches below normal), that the fall foilage will not be as nice.  Nuts.  Well, at least I have lots of pictures taken from last year. 

Ben’s First Word

Ben is now seven month’s old and he has said his first word – “baa”.  I am sure that this would be passed off as anonymous babble to anyone other than us, but “baa” is the Thai word for “crazy”.  Having been around Jet and I and seeing all of the tactics we use to put Ben asleep, keep him awake, feed him, entertain him, etc.  I am certain that he understands the true meaning of the word “baa”.

Sleeping has gotten much better for us in the past week.  Did I say much, I meant to say a whole heck of a lot.  About a week ago, Ben would wake up nearly every hour on the hour for the simplist things, such as his pacifier falling out of his mouth.  On Wednesday, we decided to get tough and let him cry it out on his own.  Believe it or not, each day he has improved.  The first and second nights were tough on us because he would cry for about a half hour or so … but he would fall back to sleep on his own!  Now, it is only mere minutes that he will cry before he falls back asleep on his own – hardly enough time to even wake us up at night!  Hooray!  Sleep has returned!

On Saturday, Jet and Ben were invited to the 1 year old birthday party of one of Ben’s friends from the breast feeding support group.  It seemed like Ben had a good time and Jet told me that he ate a whole cupcake on his own.  Speaking of eating, now that Ben snacks on our food from the table as we eat, it is getting tougher and tougher for Jet to get him to eat baby food.  I don’t blame him – Jet cooks up much better food than the stuff in those cups.

I will be calling the bug exterminator today because we have found a few fire ants in the home over the weekend.  In fact, one made it in our bed and bit my neck a few times, which really stinks because I get an allergic reaction from them.  Funny how this year I have only gotten bit by a mosquito maybe once or twice, but by fire ants at least a dozen times.  I just hope that this is one thing we won’t have to worry about again for a while after the exterminator comes and treats our house.

This coming Saturday, one of Jet’s friends from Thailand, who currently goes to school in Utah, will visit her for about a week or so.  That should be a lot of fun for her and will likely have us traveling around Atlanta and Birmingham for shopping, eating, sightseeing, etc.  I am still working on the final preparations for the coming school semester, so I am still spending a bit of time at JSU.  Another busy week for sure.

Hot, Hot, Hot

It has been a busy few days down here as I get ready for the fall semester.  I am still finalizing what I will cover in one of my courses and getting all of the information (including videos of my presentations) online is consuming all of my energy.  Jet is still busy with the job hunt and with Ben while I am at school, so there is a lot of activity going on, just nothing to write home about.

The temperatures have been blazing down here for the past week, reaching 107 degrees on two separate days, and temperatures 100+ the other days.  They had forecasted today as being the hottest of them all, but I have been inside a large, air-conditioned building all day, so I can’t say if it is so.  Since I haven’t had to be outside much in this weather, it hasn’t bothered me at all.  Leaving from an air-conditioned office to an air-conditioned house really makes the heat seem ordinary.  If it were -10 degrees outside, on the other hand, I am not sure that I could claim the same.

Jet had Ben weighed again while at her support group today, and he did not gain any weight from last week – he is still 18 pounds.  Ben has been really difficult for us these past few nights, waking us up almost every hour for us to give him his pacifier that slipped out of his mouth.  We will try letting him cry it out now in the hopes that he will get back to sleeping through much of the night.  Keep your fingers crossed.  Ben is now almost 7 months old and he eats with us for lunch and dinner as Jet can feed him the food we eat (rice, chicken, etc.).  He still has no teeth, but Kristin informed us the other day that all of the boys were late in getting their teeth (over 1 year old), so we may have to wait a bit still.  Jet had to go out and buy “baby-proofing” materials because Ben is just a handful if left alone.  He crawls faster and faster every day and loves going to places that he shouldn’t be in, like Jet’s stamping and scrapping materials.  He also loves climbing up anything he can find, and after standing up, he likes letting one arm go so that he can swivel his body around to check out what’s going on.  I also think he likes to do that so that Ben can show off how he can balance himself while standing.  Speaking of balance, he now likes to let both hands go and just stand there for about two or three seconds before he falls back down on his behind.  I wonder how much longer till he wants to take his first steps.  He is also talking more and more and making sounds that resemble words, like “bah” and “dah”.  So much is happening in so little time.

This weekend we might go to Atlanta with the new neighbors from Wisconsin to do some eating and shopping.  We hung out with them on Sunday to eat brats and burgers and watch the replay of the Packers preseason game in Pittsburgh on the NFL network.  After speaking with Dan (I can’t remember his last name … but it begins with an “S”) a little more, he mentioned that he knew Aunt Sue.  We’ll see how things go this weekend.

Pool Party

I traveled to Morris, Alabama yesterday (about 1 and 1/2 hours from Oxford, 1/2 hour north of Birmingham) to attend with Donald his old Lodge, which he actually still is a member at.  Since I was going to be gone for most of the evening, Jet decided to invite her friends from the Breastfeeding Support Group over to the house (and their kids) for some Thai cooking and a chance for the kids to get together and play.  Jet said that it was a lot of fun having everyone over, and from the pictures (see below) and video, it appears that everyone else had a good time too.  Considering that it was 102 degrees out at 5:00pm yesterday (same forecasted for today), it looked like all of the kids were keeping cool in our little pool.

Ben is getting more and more active by the day now.  He is getting much better at crawling, so much so that we really can’t let him sit on our bed for any period of time, and he enjoys using anything nearby that will help him stand up, like toys, furniture, as well as walls.  When he does stand up now, he likes to shimmie along as far as he can on his feet.  Ben really is getting much better at balancing himself.  With all of the time that he has spent standing this week, he has also learned a better way to fall down, that is, falling on his behind instead of laying out and hitting his head.  With all of the falls that he has had, Ben has also learned to get a much stronger grip on whatever he grabs.

Not much else is planned for this week.  I am still getting all of my classes ready for the fall, particularly the courses that I will be teaching purely online.  Jet is still searching for a job, so we are both keeping busy.  I guess with Ben around, we always will stay busy.

Angels Among Us

On Thursday last week we met our new neighbors from Wisconsin (Racine), Dan and Julie and their kids Branden (13) and Miranda (10), who were very nice, but in the midst of an awful move.  Their moving truck was supposed to arrive on Monday, but didn’t come until Tuesday, so they were running one day behind.  When they arrived at their house, their central air wasn’t working (a bug was stuck in their copper line), so they were painting their house in a furnace.  When they asked the builder to put in a faucet in the back of the house, the contractor that came to do the job put a hole in the brick and kept going through their special-order jacuzzi bath tub.  In their living room, they noticed several boards in their hardwood floor were warped near one wall, which turned out that when they put up the baseboard to the room, they put a nail into the water line without knowing, and about two weeks of water damage began to accumulate.  Finally, when the moving truck arrived on Saturday, they ended up having a long list of items damaged in the move because the movers tried to jam as much as they could into the truck, when there were several items that should not have been jammed.  What a welcome to Alabama!  Anyways, the good news (at least for me) was that Dan was getting the DirectTV NFL Ticket package and will get all of the Packer games this year, and said that I was welcome to come over and watch.  And I was just complaining that a bad part of living in Alabama was not getting to watch the Packers play.

I ran the 5k Alabama state championships on Saturday in Anniston, and finished with a 24:02, which was a little slower (9 seconds) than my last run, however, with the heat (it was up to 99 degrees Saturday) and two large hills in the last mile, I was satisfied with my time.  I ended up finishing fifth in my age group, a minute and a half from third place.  Well, this gives me something to shoot for.  It turns out that there are a few more 5k runs in Oxford and Jacksonville in the next few months, so I may do some more of those runs coming up.  I have made the commitment, however, to run the Birmingham marathon on February 10 and shoot for a time of 4 hours (average of 9:09 per mile).  I will keep you up-to-date on how I progress here.  There is a half-marathon in early December that I might run to help get me ready for the real thing.  I think I will need to get a new pair of shoes for all of the miles I’m going to getting in.

One Year Review

Well, we have officially resided in the great state of Alabama for one full year.  Wow.  Time does really fly by.  In honor of this momentous occasion, here is a brief re-cap of some of the good, the bad, and the ugly from our time here.

The Good

• Ben!  That pretty much supersedes anything else that has happened in the past year. What a joy Ben has been for us, now seventeen pounds, twelve ounces as of yesterday (six and a half months old). Probably the best thing we can share with all of you is the pictures we take of him and the stories we can tell. It is just fun for Jet and I to look back at all of the pictures of Ben that we posted so far this year and see how much he has changed and continues to change.
• Weather. Well, I should note at this point that these comments are of my own opinion and may or may not be shared by Jet. This is a good example in which Jet would disagree with me. After all of those winters in Wisconsin, I finally got to taste winter how the other half lives with seventy degree weather.  Sure, we did get frost from time to time as temperatures dipped into the twenties at times, however, I got to miss out on an entire month (February) of weather in Milwaukee where the temperatures were sub-zero! Ask me again how much I like the weather down here and I will answer you with a big smile! Sure, Jet misses the fun that a big snowstorm brings and she really doesn’t like the consistent ninety degree days during the summer, but from my point of view, this has been a real treat to enjoy.
• People. This of all things was the most pleasant surprise for us living here. Coming to Alabama, this was one of our concerns – what would the people be like in the “deep south”? The answer, as nice as you will ever meet. It started out with our neighbors, namely Donald and Linda, who have claimed us as their own children, but easily extends everywhere else where people always seem willing to strike up a conversation (for example, during my 5K runs when absolute strangers approach me to talk) or are ready to wave hello to any and everyone (I have commented earlier on the stark differences here in contrast to Milwaukee). Service always seems friendlier anytime we go out to eat, people are generally in a friendly mood, and you are always greeted with a “yes, sir” or “yes, ma’am”, which really does make it a special place to live.

The Bad

• Food. Well, this is not entirely “bad”, but it certainly doesn’t belong with the above listed items. Let’s start off with the good – BBQ. There are just so many places to eat BBQ down here I would have never believed it if someone had told me prior to moving here. And there are more BBQ places popping up too! One great thing about the plethora of BBQ locations is that each BBQ place has its own distinct taste to their food – and mostly for the good. Yesterday we finally had the chance to have a sit-down dinner at the Golden Rule and we weren’t disappointed. As we waited for our food, our server brought out mini-corn bread muffins that had a sugary taste to them, and were absolutely delicious. Although the BBQ pork sandwich was nothing to write home about, the BBQ chicken sandwich Jet had was great and the collard greens they served with it were the best Jet has ever tried. Wow. I was just talking about corn bread and collard greens. One year down here and look how much changes. Moving off BBQ, although there are a lot of other places to eat around here (lots of Mexican, Chinese, steak, American, buffets, and now Italian restaurants), there is no replacement for the Noodle House and Oakland Gyros, among others. Those restaurants had become staples of our diet back in Milwaukee and we really have not found a suitable replacement for them.
• “Southernized”. This is something that has concerned Jet for some time now. First, when she realized that Ben was going to be born in “Alabama” and seeing how all of the kids around (even the real young ones) have a thick southern drawl.  It got worse when Jet would notice me saying things like “ya’ll” and “fixin” more and more.  It is now at the point of “bad” when both Jet and my friends from Milwaukee hear us speaking “Southern” unintentionally, and they have a good time picking up on that.  After living down here for a year now, I guess it’s like Linda said of me – that I’m “half Southern” now.  I wonder how much longer we would have to live down here for me to become a full-fledged “Southerner” and no longer a “Yankee”.  I suppose never … right?

The Ugly

• Sports. The horror.  The only time we get to see the Packers is when they play nationally televised games, which are getting fewer and fewer now.  And the Brewers?  Forget about it.  Last night I was able to catch an inning of the Brewers playing on ESPN, a game in which they lost, of course.  And although we really don’t get a chance to see the Badgers play here, the University of Alabama is also red and white and football is much, much more passionate down here for this college sport than up in Wisconsin.  No debate.  The fact that Alabama is as storied a college football program (in terms of history, legendary coach, and National championships) as the Packers are for professional football (withstanding the fact that Bart Starr and Don Hudson are alums of Alabama), really doesn’t make it hard to root for them.  The fact that their arch-rivals, Auburn, has Chicago Bear-like team colors makes it easy not to like them.  Still, no Packers on TV is no Packers on TV.
• Job. Although I have had a great experience with my job here at Jacksonville State University, the experience for Jet has been the opposite.  She did enjoy the people she worked with at Colonial Bank before Ben was born, but it was a fairly long drive away and over an hour from JSU.  The experience for her now, however, has been much worse as Jet has been actively looking for a job over the past month, but with no success.  That has become a very frustrating experience as there are multiple opportunities about in Alabama, but are an hour away in Birmingham.

So there you have it. Just a few items to sum up the past year living in Alabama, though certainly not exhaustive. I did leave out all of the nice places to sight-see around here, Talladega speedway, the Atlanta international grocery markets, playing Aussie Rules with the Atlanta club, becoming a mason, and a few others.  I don’t want to chat about them all, however, else what would I get to talk about in the annual year-in-review Christmas letter?