Bangkok Bound

We will be on our way to Thailand in just about 24 hours – boy time does go by in a hurry when you are not paying attention.  I have only been “subconsciously” packing to this point, but the real packing must get done today.  ”Subconsciously”?  That is, I have already packed away almost all of my clothes for the move to Milwaukee, with the exception of a few outfits to wear in Thailand (I plan to buy much of the clothes that I will wear in Bangkok).  I have also made a mental note of all of the electronics devices and everything else I will need to bring with me to Thailand.  Hopefully my mind will not let me down, I mean, that has never happened before.  Yeah, right.

Our house is about 80% packed for the move now, with only our bedroom set, couch, and large hanging pictures about the only items remaining.  Jet also hired someone to clean the house for us on Monday, which turned out to be a terrific decision as the woman did a great job and I don’t know where we would have found the time to do it.  We have a meeting with our real estate agent this afternoon to discuss how the first month went with our house on the market.  We have been so busy with other things that this has been something that we have just not been too concerned with.  We have only had one person look at the house in the last month, but I hope things will pick up as the weather is getting much better around here.

The weather has been fantastic lately, except for the extreme heat running a marathon (be sure to look at the “marathon man” post again – I have put up more pictures from the run!).  The temperatures have been in the upper 80’s and lower 90’s for the past week and there have been no more hints at severe weather.  Looks like summer is here to stay down here in Alabama, and just when we are leaving for Thailand.  Anyone from Wisconsin care to take a vacation and house-sit for us?

Ben is feeling better after his latest bout of the fever, which does give some relief to us as we hope it will be at least another month before it returns.  Well, we hope it never returns.  Olivia was over for most of the day yesterday (Tuesday) as we continued to pack and clean.  For some reason, Ben and Olivia are like water and oil – they just can’t get along well together.  Separately, they are just fine.  When together, Ben will do just about anything to get Olivia’s attention (e.g., take her water bottle, move the table she is sitting at, take one of her apple slices, sit in her car seat, etc.) and Olivia would just overreact (scream at a high pitch), which would just make Ben want to do it more.  I wonder if this was what Janette and I were like when we were younger.  At least both Olivia and Ben stayed busy throughout the day.

In the evening, we walked over a few houses to some of the newest neighbors (moved here in December) which have become great friends.  They are German and have two young children (about 4 and 2) and we have had dinner with them several times in the past few weeks.  The first time we had dinner with them, they grilled what appeared to be hot-dogs, but tasted like sausages.  When I asked them where they got the sausages (I suspected from some source in Germany) they shockingly stated, “Wal-Mart”.  Who knew.  They have also made (German) potato salad for us, which was not like Dad’s at all, but I guess there are quite a few ways to make German potato salad.  The next few times we were over we brought over the remaining brats that we had for grilling, which they really enjoyed.  Last night it was brats and Thai food (curry, chicken satay with peanut sauce, sticky rice) which they enjoyed very much.  Becoming good friends with them makes leaving here all the more difficult.

Donald and Linda have had some rough bouts of some sort of crud for the past few weeks, which is why we have spent time elsewhere in the neighborhood lately.  It appears that Linda may have turned the corner with her illness after having some anti-biotics earlier this week, which is good news.  I stopped by yesterday to give them a gift – a Web cam that I bought from Best Buy.  I installed the Web cam and Skype for them, then we tested it out by making a video call to and from each other at each of our houses.  This should be a nice (and free!) way to keep in touch with each other while we are in Thailand.  It was always difficult to reach Donald and Linda (and vice versa) by using a phone card.  If someone else would like to stay in touch this way while we are in Thailand, e-mail me and I can see if we can make it happen.  Getting back to Best Buy, when I was packing things two weeks ago, I came across my box of old cards (birthday, Christmas, graduation) which I have kept every one for over the past 10 years.  I came across a birthday card from Jenny from 8 years ago that had an unused Best Buy gift card in it.  Well, that is how I bought the Web cam yesterday – thanks Jenny!

Well, I think I will wrap things up with a story about Ben.  There are just so many that happen and that I hear about from Jet, but I simply forget to write about them and I fear that I will forget them.  Maybe I will make it a regular feature to these blog posts to end with a story about Ben from now on.  Here it goes … Jet was making a sandwich for herself the other day and as Ben saw Jet reach for the bread and pull a slice out he shouted “No Mae [Mommy]!”.  She looked at him a bit puzzled and when she continued Ben said, “No Mae … For Duckies.”  Jet then told me that she brought some old bread with her to the park with Ben last week, which she let him give to the ducks.

Marathon Man

The marathon weekend kicked off on Friday with the start of Sup and my “carb” load.  For lunch, I made a large bowl of tortolini and noodles while Jet’s Thai friend (Jensen’s grandmother) brought over a large bowl of Pud See Eww for us to eat.  We had quite a bit left over, so I stuffed a plastic container of each for us to bring with us to Nashville for our dinner.  I had Jet snap a couple of pictures of me in my racing garb before we headed out for posterity.

We left for Nashville at around 12:00pm noon and it was a pretty quick drive to Nashville (about 3.5 hours) with no major traffic.  Sup was amazed when we passed the Talladega speedway just a few miles from the house as it is race weekend and there were about 30,000+ people camping and in campers sprawled across the grounds outside the track.  It is always an amazing sight to see.  As we reached Birmingham a short time later, the temperatures reached the 90’s and it stayed there all the way to Nashville, ultimately reaching a high of 92.  That was not good news as we knew it would be a tough, hot race on Saturday on the asphalt roadways.

When we arrived in Nashville, we needed to pick up our registration packets at the convention center in the downtown area.  There were thousands of people picking up their packets at the same time, and with no parking nearby, we just parked a little over a mile away (free street parking) and walked to the convention center.  It was hot and also concerning to us, it was very windy.  We had heard the weather forecast that there would also be wind on Saturday – thankfully there was not much wind during the race or it really would have been a long day.  After picking up our packets, we walked around downtown for a little bit and walked over to LP field (where the Tennessee Titans play) to walk the children’s marathon taking place.  I am not sure why they called it the children’s “marathon” because it seemed that they only ran somewhere between 1 mile and 5k – we did not see the whole route that they ran but the kids did not seem that exhausted when they finished.  Sup and I stood by the finish line and watched the kids pass through (they had multiple runnings by gender and by grade level) and were greeted by Titans head coach Jeff Fisher.

By around 6:30pm – 7:00pm, we moved my car to the LP field parking lot which is where we would spend the night and leave from right after completing the marathon.  We pulled out the packed pasta and Pud See Eww and they were just delicious and they really hit the spot.  We relaxed for the next couple of hours, Sup sleeping and me doing some reading for my classes in Thailand, and then walked over to a 24 hour gas station to wash up for the night.  Even though it was past 9:00pm, the temperatures were still in the 80’s and it was a very pleasant evening.  When we returned back to the car, I rolled down the windows a crack, Sup went to sleep in the passenger seat and I laid down in the back seat of the car.  Sup was recovering from a cold/allergies, so every couple of minutes he would cough and/or sneeze very loud.  This happened for much of the night so I did not get much sleep, maybe two hours at most.

At 4:00am we walked back over to the 24 hour gas station to wash up before taking the shuttle from LP field to the starting line at Centennial Park.  We got into our shuttle, which was a chartered bus, at 4:30am and on the way out of the parking lot, we saw an army (at least 50) of city buses and other chartered buses lined up waiting to bring people to the starting line.  By 5:00am we were sitting down by a water station and waited there for an hour and a half until we started to move towards the starting point.  I remember thinking to myself, “Why can’t we start the race now?” as it was cool out and about a half hour before the sunrise.  While waiting, we saw quite a few people of all types getting ready for the run.  There were large teams of runners with matching shirts and small groups of people with matching outfits.  There were runners dressed in costumes (e.g., Hawaiian theme, chicken outfit, etc.) and others with shirts with sayings on them – the one I liked best was “Why could’t Pheidippides die at mile 20?”

At 6:30am we started walking the short distance to our “corral”, which were broken-up into groups (of 1,000, perhaps) based on the projected finish time we stated when we registered for the marathon.  This way, we wouldn’t have too much of a problem having to run past slow runners for the first few miles.  The groups or corrals (at least 32) were simply separated by two people holding a rope.  Both Sup and I put as our projected finish time at 4 hours, which we felt was practical, but we knew was impossible given the high temperatures forecasted for the day.  We figured that if we finished under 5 hours that we would be happy with our run.  By our corral (number 10 or the first two digits of our race number) was a row of about 20 port-a-poties with a line of about 50 people deep at each one.  We decided to use them one last time, which took about 30 minutes to get to the start of the line.  I have never smelt port-a-poties any worse than those or any of the ones set-up along the race route.  These smelt so bad that I would run to the other side of the road during the race to avoid the terrible stench.

The race began at 7:00am and they let each corral go in about 1 minute intervals.  While waiting, Sup suggested that we go to the back of our corral so that we could start off at a slower pace with no one behind us.  Somehow that made sense to me at that point, so that is what we did.  At this point I brought out my iPod and was devastated to find out that there were no battery left in it.  This is the iPod I bought for my birthday but accidentally put it in the wash within the first week – it has run fine, but has trouble turning it off.  I charged the iPod before we left Alabama, but must have never turned it off.  When I told Sup what had happened, an older woman standing in front of us overhead me, grabbed my arm, and told me how bad she felt for me.  It was a disappointment for sure, but at least this was the “Country Music Marathon” and there were at least one live band playing at every mile.  Besides, not using my iPod allowed me hear all of the crowd along the way.

We inched up closer and closer to the starting point, and at about 7:15am, we were off.  We started off at the very back right of our grouping, and as I passed the starting line, I was watching the crowd right next to me, cheering us all on.  About a few feet from the starting line, I noticed former Tennessee Senator Bill Frist.  That was neat.  Just getting going it was amazing to see the huge mass of people already ahead of us and the even bigger mass of people waiting to get started behind us.  The first mile was slow because we started at the back of our corral and we had a lot of slow people to get passed.  In fact, that is how the first couple miles were.  I just wished that there was some universal way to have slow running people move to the side.  Not that I am the fastest – far from it.  It is just that there were small packs of slow people running together (all of them not running in the right corral as they had numbers higher than “10″ at the start of race number).  

Despite dodging people left and right, I was happy with my 9 minute per mile pace at the 5K (3.1 mile) mark.  It was a pretty neat part of the course here because we started to run through Music Row and heard quite a few acts with some of the biggest crowds along the way.  By this point, I caught up with the 4 hour pace group, which is a person running with a “4:00″ sign indicating that they will be running at a pace that would finish at 4 hours.  Within the next mile, I passed that group and felt in good shape.  Something that Sup and I did not account for in our training for the run by JSU were all of the hills we had to cover over the run.  Sup had said that there was 1 hill to cover in Milwaukee’s marathon, while here in Nashville, there were well over a dozen.  It was at this point that I started taking in water as I passed the first water station (looking back, that was a mistake) and when I also started to notice the heat.  There was not much shade anywhere on the course and I remembered a sensation that I was running nearby a warm grill, only to look around and see no grill in sight.  It was going to be a warm day.

By the time I got to the 10K (6.2 mile) mark, my pace started to slow down as the heat and hills were getting to me.  At this point, the 4 hour pace group had passed me and I was able to keep pace for another half mile, but they were just too fast for me so I slowed back down.  At this slow jogging pace, Sup had caught up to me and passed me without trouble.  Sup and I had run side-by-side for the first mile, but I ended up being better to “dodge” traffic and was able to put some distance on him.  At this point Sup asked if I wanted to cut the marathon short and just do the half marathon (13.1 miles instead of 26.2 miles) to which I replied “no way”.  We trained for three months to run a marathon, we slept in a parking lot overnight to run a marathon – I was going to run the marathon.  I told Sup that I didn’t care if I had to walk the last half of the marathon, but that I was going to finish.   Sup kept going at the same pace while I still ran at the same slow jogging pace.  I actually caught back up to the 4 hour pace group, which got me upset.  I suspect the person holding the sign actually was going too fast for the 4 hour pace and had to slow back down.  I didn’t know whether to be happy to be back with this group or to be upset for trying to stay at a faster pace earlier on.  This was at about the 9 or 10 mile mark or at the point where the half-marathoner’s split off towards the finish.  That was also the point where I noticed the heat really starting to get to me.

I took in a lot of water at the next station, which were spread out at about every 2 miles along the course.  I ended up walking the next mile, jogging for another two miles, then walking for the next 4 miles.  My heart rate was through the roof.  I was getting dizzy.  I was so very thirsty, but didn’t want to drink too much and just throw it back up.  And there were plenty of people throwing up along the way at this point – all men.  There were also a few people passed out, laying down on the side of the road getting medical help – almost all of them appearing to be in much better physical shape than me despite their current condition.  If they were suffering, it surely would not take much for me to be in a similar position.  And the worst of it was seeing all of the guys throw up tons of water along the side of the road because with every hoarse “bleach” I heard, I felt I was getting closer and closer to joining them.  It got to the point where I had to close my eyes and cover my ears as I walked briskly past.  I thought to myself at that point that it was a real mistake doing the marathon and that I would never run one again.  My main concern at this point, however, was that I had a 4 hour drive back to Alabama right after the run and I really did not want to put myself in a position where I could not do that.  Therefore, I was just fine taking it easy the rest of the way.

One thing that was fun about the marathon at this point were the spectators.  They were there all along the route cheering you on.  Many runners that belonged to different running groups/teams had their names printed on them.  If you noticed the shirt I wore, I wrote “Jet & Ben” on it.  Through the first couple of miles, people kept shouting to me “Go Jet!” or “Go Ben”.  It was a lot of fun and always brought a smile to my face.  Past the halfway point, however, I had dumped several glasses of water over myself and ran through half a dozen sprinklers so the “Jet & Ben” had started to blur and the “&” part nearly faded away all together.  Consequently, for the rest of the run, people we no longer cheering for “Jet” or “Ben”, they kept cheering “Go Jet-Ben” all the way to the finish line.  That really was a lot of fun.

So after walking for about 4 miles, I reached mile 19 or 20 and felt a lot better, so I figured that I start jogging again.  For some reason, the post that Neil Hanlon (former Milwaukee Bomber teammate) put on facebook before I left, “run your own race”, came to mind.  It was great advice because I did just that – I ran my own race.  I kept I nice, steady pace and something surprising happened – I was passing all of the people that were passing me 8 miles earlier.  When I had slowed down and was walking, I thought that I was going to come in last place.  I did not see anyone else slowing down (except for the people having real problems on the side of the road) and I figured that the run was a lost cause.  Passing everyone really did give me a big boost of momentum, and although I did stop to walk a little bit more at each water station, I basically jogged the rest of the way to the finish line.

While I was finishing those last 6 miles – the ending miles that everyone seemed to dread, I actually felt great and I enjoyed my run to the end.  I was quite a feeling and a wonderful experience.  Passing people left and right again.  The crowd cheering “Jet-Ben” on to the finish, and then something amazing happened.  With just over 1 mile to go, I caught up with Sup who was walking his way to the finish line.  I gave him a big hug, looked at him in the eyes, and told him “let’s jog it in”.  And that is how it happened.  We ended up running the first mile of the marathon together and we ended up running the last mile of the marathon together, passing the finish line at 5 hours, 24 minutes, and 26 seconds.  Not a great time by any means and much longer than I thought I would have been happy with before the run, but I was content and I felt good.  I believed that I could have run under 5 hours had I pushed myself a little harder (e.g., not walked as much), but I felt fine at the end of the run and was ready for the drive back home.  

If the weather had been a little cooler (it was 91 degrees at the end of the race at 12:30pm), if there hadn’t been as many hills, if my iPod had been working, or if I hadn’t had to drive back home right after the run (that’s a lot of “if’s”), perhaps I would have made that 4 hour “projected” time.  At least I feel comfortable having finished the marathon and think that I could do another one someday – perhaps in Milwaukee this time.  Maybe I could convince Sandy, Stephanie, Maggie, or someone else to join me.  Maybe not.

At the finish line we got our finisher medals placed around our necks and we were given an ice-cold soaked sponge, which absolutely felt great.  From there Sup and I walked back to my car and I quickly got changed into a separate/dry set of clothes.  I took off my running shoes and threw them away.  I had been jogging in those shoes for about two years now and they were soaking wet and very smelly after this run.  A fitting finish for such fine shoes.  I then drove Sup to a nearby Hertz rental-car location which closed at 2:00pm (we arrived at 1:30pm) where he rented a car and drove to Chicago to be with his aunt and uncle, while I drove back home to Oxford, Alabama.  And that was that.

I got home at around 5:30pm and met up with Jet and Ben.  Although Ben was going through another one of his “fever” stints again, Jet had off from work and it felt great to be back home after finishing a marathon.  Can I say that I have “run” a marathon even though I walked a big part of it?  My legs were a little stiff and the inside of my left knee was a little sore, but other than that, I feel just fine.  I got a call from Sup this morning (Sunday) and he told me that he arrived in Chicago last night at around 10:00pm to some bad rain, but he also did not feel too bad.  Even today, my legs are just a little stiff, but it is likely nothing that will slow me down at all in the coming days as we finish packing for Thailand.

Here are some final statistics:

Bib: 10135; Name: Andrew Ciganek; Age: 32; Time: 5:24:26; Place: 2931/3961

Bib: 10136; Name: Suprasith Jarupathirun; Age: 36; Time: 5:24:26; Place: 2932/3961

 

Before Marathon

Shirt After Marathon

Catching Up

Just wanted to catch-up on things as I have not been posting much lately.  Things have been going well down here, but it sure has been busy.  The rummage on Friday and Saturday last weekend went great as we took in about $850 for a bunch of things that we did not want to move with us to Milwaukee.  We had a neighborhood gathering brunch just after the rummage ended on Saturday which went well, but unfortunately there were no ‘new’ neighbors that attended.  Oh well.  In what has become a weekly ritual, starting at 5:00pm on Sunday, there was nothing but sirens and watching James Spann report on the approaching severe weather.  It appeared that the worst had passed by 9:00pm, so I turned off the TV and was getting ready for bed.  By 10:00pm, however, the sirens went off again and kept going off.  I figured that I should check the TV again just to see what was going on, and James Spann reported that an apparent tornado was  a few minutes away and it looked like it was heading right for us!  Jet was working on preparing for her class in Thailand during all of this and we were discussing whether we should go to our “safe” spot or not, when only a minute later James Spann said that it was indeed heading towards Oxford and those living on “Friendship Drive” should seek shelter immediately.  We live just off Friendship drive (only 2 or 3 blocks away), so I woke Sup up, picked up a sleeping Ben, and we all cuddled into our hall closet for about 15-20 minutes.  It came and passed thankfully without much fanfare except a bit of lightning, rain, and wind.  Julie, our neighbor across the street, reported some damage to the gutters to her house, but I did not hear much else about damage in the area.  We’ll see what’s in store this week.

Only one week left until we leave for Thailand.  Our flight leaves at 1:00pm (Atlanta time) on Thursday (April 30) so we have asked our neighbor Dan to take us at around 8:00am.  Things will still be busy around here before then, though.  I will leave for Nashville with Sup on Friday for the marathon on Saturday and then plan returning back home afterwards.  We didn’t plan on getting a hotel, so we will likely sleep overnight in my car at LP Field (where the Titans play), which is the finishing point of the run and where shuttles are available to take you to the starting point early Saturday morning.  Sup was planning on flying to Chicago early next week so that he could spend time with his aunt and uncle before returning back to Thailand also on Thursday next week.  It now looks like Sup might just rent a car in Nashville and drive to Chicago after the marathon.  I hope this plan works out well because both Sup and myself might be in poor shape to drive long distances shortly after running the marathon.  I also hope that the temperatures stay cool in the morning during the run as it is supposed to get into the 80’s in Nashville on Saturday.

Ben has been pretty wild lately – but when has he not been.  Last week Thursday, Ben fell, hit his head, and got a big lump on his left forehead, then at the rummage on Saturday, he was running around and tripped, hitting his head and getting a big lump on his right forehead.  Ben is also picking up a lot of words lately, but has been very close to Jet as every night she has put him to bed and stays with him until he does go to sleep.  Every morning in the past week at about 3:00am, Ben has come into our room and has slept the rest of the night off with us.  Oh well.  I guess we have been lazy about correcting this because in another week his sleep patterns will change dramatically again.

Happy (Thai) New Year

What a busy time of year for us.  It is the end of the semester, there is a lot of preparation for the courses I will be teaching in Thailand, at some point we will have to start packing for Thailand as it is about three weeks away, there is the Thai New Year (Sonkran) celebration in Atlanta all day tomorrow, there is the neighborhood gathering one week from today, there is the Nashville marathon two weeks away, and … we are in the process of selling our house/packing/rummaging stuff we don’t want to move.  Other than that, it is just your typical week.  Yeah right.  For about three hours yesterday (from around 4:30pm – 7:30pm) sirens were blaring for tornadoes that were just to the north of us (by JSU) and just to the south of us (by Talladega).  Just your usual, lazy week.

We will be moving back to Wisconsin sometime this summer as I have accepted a position at UW-Whitewater.  There were not many positions out there that I would have considered leaving JSU for – in fact, this was the only position that I had applied to since I had arrived at JSU nearly three years ago.  This is a dream opportunity, however, as it is a very good school and back close to family and friends in Milwaukee.  It was a very difficult decision to leave JSU, but I am leaving on very good terms as I have been fortunate enough to have played a role in shaping the future directions of my department.  It will also be very difficult leaving the many friends and great neighbors we have – some that have been as close as family.  We just hope that by leaving that we do not lose touch with them.  It will also be hard leaving the nice, warm weather that Alabama has for about 11 months of the year, but I guess it won’t take long to get used to the Wisconsin weather again.  Well, I hope so.

This week we picked a real estate agent to work for us.  We might have just tried to sell the house ourselves, but since we are spending the next two months in Thailand, this is likely the best move for us.  Besides, actually signing the contract with the real estate agent has allowed us to really get into the moving mode.  Before signing with the agent, it almost seemed like we were half-hearted into the move.  I guess putting the pen to the paper has really put a fire into us (especially Jet) as we are going to have another big rummage on Friday and Saturday.  We have also rented a 10×10x10 storage unit so that we can pack most everything in the house and put it into storage before we leave for Thailand.  We figure that it will help for selling the house if it wasn’t full of clutter.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Time is ticking down for the Nashville marathon to arrive – just two weeks away!  I like to think that I am a smart man and like to think of all of the details in advance of any pursuit I take on, but one oversight I had was not realizing how much time it took to prepare for a marathon.  I was ready to put in the effort to run long distances, running 15+ miles two or three times a week, as I was fully prepared for that commitment.  But it never came to mind that it would take 2.5 – 3 hours each run.  With everything else going on right now and the lack of time in my schedule otherwise, it really is tough to commit up to 10 hours of daylight each week to running.  With the training that I have been doing with Sup, we have been running at a 9 minute pace which should put us at finishing in about 4 hours or so, but you can never tell until we actually start running.  Right now we run alone on a flat surface in ideal running conditions – and we haven’t run over 16 miles at a time (yet).  I have no idea of what to expect when we get to Nashville.  And we plan on driving back home afterwards.  I hope that does not turn out to be a dumb decision.  Well, if I end up finishing in under 5 hours I think I will be happy.  My race number for the marathon is 10135, so if you check out the Nashville Marathon Website in two weeks, they will post live results at the 5K, 10K, 10 mile, 13.1 mile, and 20 mile points so you can track my progress through the course.

Jet took Ben to the local carnival that was set up in the mall parking lot (see pictures below) earlier in the week and they both had a great time.  We took Ben to the same event last year and he was more scared than excited.  Jet said that Ben was all full of wonder this year and was just a bundle of amazement.  I wish I was there to have seen that.  At least she did get a few good pictures.  We picked up a Boston Butt BBQ earlier in the week that was sold by one of the neighbor kids (Brandon) as a fundraiser for his school soccer team.  It is delicious.  In two weeks when the Talladega race happens, the lodge nearby the race track will also sell Boston Butts.  I sure will miss the BBQ down here – there is really nothing like it up in Wisconsin.

Wheeling and Dealing

Linda organized a neighborhood rummage sale yesterday morning which Jet has been slowly accumulating items for sale (e.g., old clothes, toys, Thai jewelry, etc.) all week long in our garage.  I woke up early, made waffles and coffee for her, and by 7:00am, we had set up shop for some sales.  After a few quick sales we started thinking what else we could sell.  It wasn’t long after that Sup helped me bring out the coffee table, which quickly sold.  When someone else walked up literally one minute later upset that she just missed out on the coffee table, we sold her our patio furniture set in the back.  Not to be outdone, that same women then bought our dining room table set.  Now things were really cooking.  I started to bring about every odd thing laying around the house outside to see what would go, but by then it was already 10:30am and things had slowed down quite a bit.  Just a little too late as no more major sales were made the rest of the morning.  It is no wonder that Jet is such a great salesperson, however, as she had talked just about everyone that stopped by into buying something.  She even sold a box of old clothes of mine that didn’t sell during the last rummage sale we had in the fall and I had planned on donating.  Well, sold to everyone except the woman that drove up in her Mercedes-Benz and complained for five minutes about the prices Jet was charging for her Thai jewelry (everything was under $5) who stormed off shouting, “this is supposed to be a rummage sale!”  I guess you can’t please everybody.  After all was said and done, we are $500 richer but have a gaping whole in our dinning room.

One Month To Go

In only one month we will be back in Thailand for the summer.  Man time does fly fast.  I spent much of the past weekend preparing for the MBA classes that I will be teaching.  Last summer I taught an MBA class that lasted four months and an executive MBA class that lasted two months.  This summer I will be teaching two classes that will last one month each – one in May and one in June.  Jet has also been spending a lot of time preparing for the MBA class that she will be teaching during the month of June.  It has been several years (since UW-Milwaukee) since Jet has taught a class, so she is both excited and nervous; excited about the opportunity to teach again, but nervous because she fears that she might be a bit “rusty”.  She spends time each night before going to bed (the only time she has without having to worry about Ben) reading, taking notes, and preparing for her class.  I know that she will do very well and that this will be a good experience for her.

We woke up at 1:20am this morning to the sound of the emergency sirens going off.  I rushed to turn on the TV to see what was going on and was both relieved and upset.  I was relieved because it was only for a severe thunderstorm that was approaching, upset because Calhoun county (our county) is one of the few that set the siren off for any kind of warning.  I was up for the next two hours trying to get back to sleep.  The temperatures got back into the 80’s again today, so Jet, Ben, and I took a walk outside after I got home from work.  It has been about two weeks since we last had the time to take a walk outside.  We had planned to take two laps around the whole neighborhood, but that changed quickly as every neighbor seemed to be outside or driving past along the way and wanted to stop and talk for a few minutes.  That’s what you get living in the South – lots of great people to talk to leaving less time for walking.

It will be a busy day for me tomorrow as I have classes to teach and I will be giving a presentation to the JSU community related to the work that I have done over the past year with international partnerships.  After that presentation, I will rush back home to meet up with Donald and head over to Tallapoosa, Georgia (just across the Alabama border, about 40 minutes from Oxford) to see a masonic degree done, which I am told will be something special.  Although we had a little severe weather early this morning which just ended up being some heavy rain that lasted a few minutes, we are expected to get some ‘real’ severe weather tomorrow – likely bringing the chance for tornadoes again.  Hopefully that will all pass and will be an uneventful day as I do have big plans for tomorrow.