A Great Thanksgiving Turkey

Happy Birthday to my Nephew Al!!!

To everyone else, HAPPY THANKSGIVING..... we're off to bed!

Pictures tomorrow!

Happy Thanksgiving

Things I'm Thankful For - Version 2008

1. Sarah - the most incredible person I've ever known..... and the most beautiful fiance that I could have ever dreamed about
2. The fact that Sarah said "yes".... mainly to the idea of moving to Taiwan with me, but the marriage proposal was also pretty cool to hear that response to
3. My family - for their health and support through all my weird endeavors
4. My friends who continue to make me feel at home despite being half way around the world from them
   
5. The lady at Chipotle Headquarters who said she wishes she could send me my burrito to cure my cravings but unfortunately they can't export food very easily
6. My kick ass neighbor in Taiwan for letting us use her BIG kitchen for our Thanksgiving dinner while she enjoys a Chipotle Burrito in the US
7. My Fantasy Football team that has me at 9-3... now if I would only quit benching the wrong quarterback week after week!! A win this week puts me in a 3-way tie for first!
8. Facebook which keeps me in contact with random people from my past. Plus allows me to make my smart ass comments for the world to see while only taking 10-20 seconds to type them!
9. An Obama victory this past month - and all the people who voted for him hoping he can help lead the fix our country needs.... badly.
10. The opportunity to see and appreciate a foreign culture.... and a big city... two things that were important to my maturing process in life.
11. The fact that in 2 months I'll be on the white beaches and blue ocean of Bali while it's probably -10 or -20 degrees in Minnesota. Don't worry, I'll remind everyone of that again later.
12. My Great Grandmother Nettie who turns 100 years old next week!!! Seriously!
13. My nephews, especially Al who turns 6 years old on Thursday!
14. My pretty much complete healing from my surgeries this summer. Never fun but the right move. Screw Mayo and their lack of effort to get me better!!!
15. The fact that some people still read my blog, even though I've been horrible about updating it day to day.
16. My turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin bars, and veggies that my kick ass fiance is making for me on Thanksgiving
17. Slingbox that will allow me to watch NFL Football games Friday morning from here....
18. The Airplane that will take us back to the US for Christmas, even if it's only for a week.
19. And Finally - that God has blessed me so many times in my life. No matter where I go or what I do, He always is there with me!!
    

Trip to the Zoo

There is a new picture album online to the right. There are a lot of pictures of Chai that only a few people currently visiting Seattle will be interested in every single one;) But then you'll get to our zoo pictures.... then some more pictures of Chai and her BFF ChaCha who literally lives next door. We'll open the doors and let the two dogs chase each other back and forth to wear each other out. ChaCha also wears a lot of outfits, so expect some more pictures of him now that we are taking our camera on evening walks.

Oh yeah - we also caught a rat that our neighbor has been trying to catch for a while. Peanut butter did the trick. Yes, I killed it against PETA objections. We haven't had any repeat visitors since!!!

Saturday was one of the more beautiful days we've had in Taiwan. About 80 degrees and a nice breeze to keep us cool. Sunny, very low humidity.... you get the picture;) Much better than the snow flurries back in the US. We decided a trip to the Zoo was a good way to enjoy the weather. It is only about a 30 minute train ride from our house... and only 2 bucks to get in!!! It's costin' ya NOT to go......

It's actually a pretty amazing zoo. Split up by geography in the world of course like most zoos. We started in the section of the Taiwan native animals which does include bears and monkeys. In the bathrooms of that section, they have things to read as you do your business that answer all the questions about bear poop, smelly poop, life size poop.... what better time to read up on animal poop then while you're doing your "doodie" before heading back out???

Koala bear house, more monkeys, an Asian Elephant (much smaller than the African Elephants) then the TIGERS! At first, one tiger was napping, the mama tiger was pacing in the back near the service door, eager to get some food. As we continued on, I saw a gate that only those of us that are 2 meters tall can see over. You'll see some pictures of the tiger only 10 feet away from me!!! Sarah wasn't as brave as I was.

Emu (not the same as an ostrich), and the Giraffes (which were probably my favorite). Then we saw a family of lions with a fairly young lion cub who was ready to play. He "attacked" dad only to get brushed off and sent to his mother. It was at this time that Sarah started singing songs from The Lion King. The penguin house was a little bit of a let down considering all the penguins were just standing there waiting to be fed... none of them were in the mood to swim. Back past the African Elephants (the female peed for the crowd and dumped about 5 gallons of fluid in doing so).

So that was our day at the zoo. For those who are taking off extra days this week, happy early Thanksgiving!!!

Chai The Taiwanese Wonder Dog

As our wonderful neighbors are visiting the United States of New Hope for the next week, Sarah and I have a new task while living in Taiwan. We are the temporary parents for Chai. No, not a Taiwanese baby, but a Taiwanese Dog!!! Chai is all black and is referred to as a Taiwanese breed. So we are spending our time at Chai's apartment across the street where she has more space to run around in the living room alone than Sarah and I do in our entire apartment. She also has more toys than I thought was possible.

Chai's a very good dog. She loves waiting to see if we will give her human food (a common trait among all dogs - both American and Taiwanese).... which we don't of course. She loves playing tug of war with her blanket/towel.... and her boyfriend Cha-Cha lives right next door.

So our life has been altered till after Thanksgiving with our new friend Chai. It also gives us a bigger and more capable Kitchen to make our Thanksgiving Dinner with. Currently our menu includes the 13 pound turkey we just purchased (it's the smallest one they had and you really don't want to know what we paid for it)..... Greenbeans and Broccoli (not sure yet how we're going to combine them), garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin bars or something for desert. Yum!!

Not sure how many people are working this week - I have to work all week as the US Holiday of Thanksgiving is not recognized here in Taiwan. Neither was July 4th.... hmmm, I think I'm getting screwed for holidays this year!!!!

Pictures of Chai:

A Random Monday

I was given a mission by Pitzen as I came over to Taiwan. A tough mission that I seriously thought was impossible. He challenged me to find one item over the 18 months of living here that read "Made in the USA". Well I have been looking off and on, but I never realized that one of my first purchases when moving from the hotel to the apartment indeed is made from Home. My towels!!! Here's proof and no, I did not bring these over with me from the US.



Sarah and I went and did some shopping this weekend here in town. There are some high class places near us that we thought would be fun to window shop in. Problem was we were there at the same time of an annual sale so EVERYBODY was there. This is the first time I've ever seen workers directing traffic of PEOPLE on and off the escalators. You would have thought it was free admission at Disney World!!




We've found our Thanksgiving Turkey. Sarah and I will be using a neighbor's oven to make our meal - so far we're looking at Turkey, stuffing, potatoes.... who knows what else we can find over here. We have another week or so before we have to worry about that. The only bad thing about Thanksgiving in Taiwan is that the tradition of eating a lot, then falling asleep while watching football in the afternoon will now become eating a lot, then going to bed for the night. Then work again on Friday:(

Have a good week!

Another Birthday

Happy Birthday to my Big Brother! I may be physically bigger, but he'll always be my "big" brother. That's what happens when you're 5+ years difference in age, you're pretty much at the mercy for most of your childhood of doing what "big brother" wants. It was far easier to just go along with his ideas, then to turn him into mom and experience the wrath for a long time when mom's not around. Younger brothers everywhere will know exactly what I mean. But Happy Birthday to my favorite brother - always has been.

It's been yet another busy week in Taiwan. Weather is still "fall" ish (50-60 degrees) but with a lot more rain than I would like. I still travel around with a short sleeve shirt and jeans. The rain makes it hard to go around with shorts on. We do have our Bali trip planned and tickets booked for Chinese New Year 2009! A week of (hopefully) sun and white beaches, blue ocean..... Hoping to have the same thing in a couple of weeks here in Taiwan.

Sarah's ankle is healing well. Thanks to all for the suggestions/tips/prayers over the past week. She's still using the crutches to be safe, the swelling has gone down a lot, and the bruise will hopefully heal by this weekend. We are attending a fund raiser for an animal shelter on Saturday night, otherwise another weekend of healing.

I was running on the treadmill at California Fitness the other morning and since my battery died on me 3 minutes in, I was forced to find other ways of passing the time. Luckily I met a new friend who was on the treadmill 2 over from me - turns out he's a DJ on the only English Radio station here that plays some really good music actually. "Rick Monday" is the guy - real nice guy that I'm sure I will see more of in the mornings at the club. He said he's glad he's no longer the biggest guy in the club in the mornings and gladly gives that title to me. I usually hate talking while I run, but it was a great person to meet here in Taiwan.

Have a good Thursday!

A Shitty Twist

Thursday night, Sarah and I were on our way to the bank then dinner. As she stepped off of the curb, she stepped on a nasty crack in the street and sprained her ankle pretty bad. We were about 4 blocks from home, but after some blackouts, a fall backwards from the sitting position, and carrying her across the street to get a cab, we got her home. Spent the evening icing her head and ankle and hoping that it wouldn't get any worse. The doctor visit Friday morning showed no fractures in either her ankle or her head. So we spent the weekend laying very low and trying not to go out unless we absolutely had to. She's on crutches but making great progress. The swelling is going down, but it will probably be a slow week this week and hopefully she's back to walking a little more normal by this weekend.

It was ok as a cold front came through this weekend and it was a wet and rather cool weekend. The first time it has truly felt like Fall here. I went to the store on Saturday in shorts and tshirt while everyone else was wearing a winter coat acting like it was 30 degrees out! It was probably in the upper 50s at a minimum. The rain was kind of annoying though.

Anyways - hope everyone's had a good weekend despite yet another loss by the Cyclones.

Change of Mood

Despite my optimism from yesterday with all that is going well while living here, there is still a list of things that are starting to annoy me about living in Taiwan:

1. The damn construction in my building that has not stopped for about 4 months. It's currently at its worst since they are jack hammering on the roof for who knows why. Sarah deals with it every day all day, but I get to "enjoy" this on the weekends (both Saturday and Sunday) and on a day like today where I take all my phone calls from home. Ahhhh, I look forward to leaving apartment living behind me. I miss having one neighbor non-existant, and my other neigbor in bed by 9pm.
2. Lack of Chipotle. I emailed them today to see if there were any options of overnighting a burrito or opening a Chipotle in place of one of the 100,000 Starbucks that nobody uses here.
3. The commercials they take during movies. We have an international HBO and Cinemax, but the Movie Channel is kind of like a TNT where they have commercials (in Chinese of course) and they take them at the WORST time in the movie. For example, I'm watching Miracle and there's a commercial taken about 15 seconds before the US makes the go-ahead goal against the Soviets. This happens often in the middle of scenes that shouldn't be split up like that.
4. The heat - was in the 90s again today, with some humidity. We have a lot of periods of Fall, but I don't like temperatures over 85 as they have been for the past 6 months. Plus the fact that it's so hot but the sun still sets by 5pm. Very weird.....
   
5. Missing the ISU tailgating season. The good ol' days of tailgating and not going to the game because you know you'll lose - that was most of my college years!! Ah, the signs of a true ISU fan!
6. The fact that between 3pm and 7pm, there is nobody online outside of work to talk to. Sarah goes to work at 3, the early birds get online by 7pm Taiwan time.
7. When we realize a day in advance that there's a birthday coming, we can only send a card and realize it takes 7-10 days to get there.

That's it for today....

Christmas Comes Early

October 28th - I get:


October 31st - Sarah finds me:


November 3rd - My kick ass neighbors find and bring me:


And if that wasn't enough - On November 4th (actually on November 5th here):


You know what????
LIFE IS GOOD!!!

Go Obama Go!!!

No Daylight Savings Here....

As you all in the US deal with daylight savings changing, we have no such thing here! It's actually kind of nice not to have to readjust to a new level of light outside when you wake up or go home from work. So for the record, Taiwan is +13 hours from Eastern Time and now +14 hours from Central Time. So when you are at work at 9am on Monday morning, I'm hopefully on my way to bed at 11pm here in Taipei. Never works out that easily though.

A successful Halloween in Taiwan. It's rather hard to find costumes here, but Sarah did a pretty good job. You'll see I added a bunch of new photo albums on the right side. Sarah's Bday and Halloween thrown together. She went as a bottle of ketchup (and did a very nice job on the costume) and I just wore a spider hat because I ran all out of creative juices after all the excitement the past couple of weeks. There is no trick or treating here, nor do people appreciate horror flicks, scary houses, corn mazes.... Glad I can appreciate Halloween back in the US next year!

Sunday was our first open water dive for scuba training and we had an absolutely perfect day to go to Keelung on the NE side of Taiwan. We were as far NE as you can go, basically looking out over the Pacific Ocean and across the water towards Japan:



We had some rain at 7am when we were out there, but by the time we were ready to dive around 8am, the sun was popping out. The waves were kind of high, so we decided to only do one tank's worth of diving for the day. In the hour that we were under water, it was absolutely incredible! We had about 3 meters of visibility down below, and made it to about 10 meters deep and explored along the bottom of the ocean - but the experience far exceeded our expectations. We saw many clown fish (Think of Finding Nemo) and the very bright blue fish all over. Even saw some baby clown fish that were maybe a day old. Lots of plant life under there, a star fish, and my favorite - the BLOWFISH. Our instructor even tried to piss one off to get it to blow up in defense but was unable. Guess we're not threatening enough.

Pictures on the right of Keelung coastal area. It was about 80 degrees with a nice breeze off the water. One of the most beautiful days I've experienced since I arrived here 7 months ago. We're planning a separate weekend trip to Kenting just for Scuba Diving later this month. Should be an awesome opportunity since the visibility there is more like 10 meters. Then another trip to Green Island off the SE coast of Taiwan where the visibility can be 30 meters!!! Now to find an underwater camera to take with us.....

The election is coming - and seriously, the whole world is talking about it. Everyone here is considering Tuesday/Wednesday as very important days and everyone will ask, "did you vote"? Of course I voted!!! And I hope all of you vote, no matter who you vote for. If you don't vote, then you have no right to complain is the rule I go by. That's why you see me complain about the past 8 years of hell we've endured. I at least tried to change it....

Have a good Monday....