Happy Christmas!!

Hello,

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas!

The trip to the airport to come back to Las Vegas was interesting enough for me. With me refusing to take a 20 dollar bus ride (and cursing the no change given rule), freezing my face enough to slur my words, and finally being picked up by a bus that shouldn’t have stopped, paying the right price, and the bonus of having my pockets full of gummy bears and beef jerky (had to make change for the 20).

It has been another good Christmas with the Mom and brother. I am eternally grateful for the London Christmas with my Mom in 2002. I think it has set the right example of the meaning of Christmas in my mind at least. One of the best things was seeing my friends, with the wish that someday all of these people could live in one place again, and the reminder that it will probably never happen. It is always a battle for me of enjoying the seasons of having certain people in your life and then being able to let go when it is time to move on.

I’m looking forward to going back to the snowy Seattle. I’ve got a few ideas of sledding that I need to give a try. It looks like it might be rain for the moment, but I hope the snow makes another appearance. Although, 40 degrees does sound pretty good compared to the dang 20s it was when I left. But I do love the nonsound that the snow makes when it is falling, if that makes any sense at all.

My goal of meeting all of my neighbors has been extended one month. I’ll be getting my new professional mixer in the mail soon so I can properly deliver goods to all the organic, healthy eaters in the neighborhood. How could I tell them the cinnamon rolls came from a can, when I know some of them probably have not stepped foot into a Safeway for a few years on the chance they might buy something that isn’t pesticide free, free range, or grown by farmers that put their first names on the packaging. I can’t do that to them. So we wait for the copper Kitchen-Aid Professional 620 Mixer. I don’t know how big six quarts is but I’m guessing I can make a lot with it.

So, two goals/new things for January. 1. Bring proper goods to neighbors. 2. Start the Argentine Tango dance class with Jamie. I don’t feel like I’m going to far out on a limb to say I am not the best dancer. And so far, word on the street is that Tango isn’t the easiest thing to do. Also, I’m not exactly sure how many different kinds of Tango are out there. I am hoping Argentine is the most fun kind.

have a good day
your friend
chad.

store bought cinnamon rolls

hello,

finally, one week later, the jet lag has been conquered. In a way it has been nice getting rid of the desire to go to bed at 4pm, but I think I will miss the feeling of wanting pasta first thing in the morning. although that might not have been so much of a jet lag issue, but more of a carbohydrate addiction issue.

now, the only flight plan for the rest of the year is going home for christmas. looking forward to family time and ryan's annual christmas gathering. not many other plans beyond that.

my goal for december is to meet all of my neighbors. its been four months now but i have either been away on a trip or preparing for the next one. i was hoping to make everyone cinnamon rolls with a new kitchen aide professional mixer but instead used the miles for my flight home for christmas. next up will be the mixer, but for now the neighbors will have to be ok with not perfect cinnamon rolls.

its time to dive into another winter round of making hot chocolates that will likely make me sick. the body can only take so much heavy whipping cream. it will pay off eventually and the reward of a perfect hot chocolate will be glorious.

italian dinner night with brian and allison! i'm going against everything in my body to not make pasta. going to try the risotto this time.

have a good day
your friend
chad

do not walk on the black marble

Ciao from italia!

its been good fun in the italia the last week. we just got back from going to Martina's graduation. I didn't really understand a whole lot of what was going on (not too keen on the law words), but apparently the thesis presentation was a success, so she is on to the graduate school part. last night was watching their salsa dancing class and some very very good bruschetta.

the places so far:
venezia: walk, walk, walk, walking. bridges and churches and squares. we found a great place for lunch that was right off the main street and not made or priced for the tourists. and the indiana jones church, which is no longer a library but is currently housing the ever touring da vinci machine exhibition-i saw it about three years ago with my mom somewhere else in italy. very nearly falling into a canal; if it wasn't for a small piece of rope attached to the side of a wall, it would have been all over, with camera number four gone in a year. lesson learned, do not walk on the black marble. it is slippery.



milano: a communist union party rally and, later in the same square, TRL (mtv's total request live) Italia. the great duomo and some quick thinking to get onto the roof (you can't tell us its closed). the last supper; way bigger than i thought. and whoever thought it would be genius to put in a giant door into the last supper wall, didn't put a lot of thought into it. it really is unbelievable. The city is quite the land of fashion and i was finally able to buy the european jacket that i've had in my mind. next up a backpack (invicta to be specific for the italian fans), but it is a strange thing. every single person has one, but they are not sold anywhere. seriously, nowhere. looks like it will have to be www.ebay.it for me.




verona: be the first into the arena, don't trust the city maps, and buy the day passes for all the sights. juilette's balcony was actually kind of cool. for some reason nobody goes into any of the places, so it felt bad standing out on juilette's balcony while every else was trying to take a picture from the ground. they obviously did not purchase the day pass. the most impressive for me was the castle. i like to imagine the places i go as how they were when they were made. with things like the gladiator arena it takes more imagination on my part and is probably not very close to how things really were. but the castle made it easy to see things from long ago. something about walking the castle walls at night with all of the bow and arrow slots. the imagination didn't have to work very hard. we also tried climbing the hill to a castle that over looks the city. it was a good walk up, but by the time we got to the top we were engulfed in cloud, so not much to see.




it's great seeing Mattia's home and family and friends. they are all good people. the chocolate is perfect. i am determined to purchase a proper hot chocolate machine. i think that is the only way to go.

have a good day
your friend
chad

Ladas still exist?

Hello,

Man, with this hour change it gets dark way to fast. and it always makes you realize how many clocks you have. right now i'm running at about 40% changed to the correct time.

The work travels have been good. Guatemala was good, but not enough time in Antigua. I think I could eat that Limoncello icecream thing every night of life. I was most excited about Ecuador. I only went to Guayaquil this time. As a city, not so much going on. But the people were a it-would-have-been-creepy-if-it-had-been-somewhere-else kind of good. Nearly every single person I met, wanted to know what I was doing there, how long was I in town for (not just to ask a question, but they were trying to figure out their schedules to see we could hang out), did i speak spanish, what did i think of the place, when was i coming back again (again, to schedule time to hang out), and more and more questions. I could understand running into a slightly strange person every once in a while that would ask these kind of questions. But this was everybody. Hotel people, store people, icecream people, water people, juice people, other water people (by the afternoon i realized i don't think i could live on the equator every day of the year), the lady that made my lunch, the guy picking up the finished lunch tray. everyone i met really.

i always wanted to hire a cab for awhile and go to a few places, so it was fun to give that a try. the car was a barely staying together russian lada. the seat belt might as well been a rope tying me to the seat. but Felix seemed like a good guy so he drove me around all over the place, swung around to the hotel to pick up my bag and then off to the airport. all for ten bucks. the lada didn't go very fast and nearly every car was passing us wherever we went, but for ten bucks, well worth it.

so i'm taking a break from the work travels and going to italy on wednesday with jamie. no plans at all. just hanging out with Mattia and his family near Milan (although i think he has quite the itinerary planned). borrowing Brian and Alison's camera so i am praying the camera curse for this year does not continue. real hot chocolates, scooters and the greatest country in the world, here we come!

have a good day
your friend
chad

wheel of fortune winner

hello,

i nearly forgot how to log in on this thing! that's not a good sign. just constantly trying to battle balancing all of the times. friend time, work time, home time, jamie time, God time, sleep time, and all the other ones. sometimes it feels like i am doing all of these just right, and then other times it feels like i am not giving a single one of these justice. its weird, but staying awake longer doesn't make more time.

so i won't have any photos to add for a bit, since some guy thought it would be a good idea to break into my house and take my cameras, leave an envelope of cash (my hot chocolate fund), but empty out my jar of pennies. i take him for someone that would be on wheel of fortune. not nearly smart enough for jeopardy, but ends up with way more money than a jeopardy winner for just picking a few letters at random.

work has brought me to mexico again so i came down early and visited zacatecas. i have a list of cities on a post-it note on my computer of places that i have never heard of but have been recommended by some locals. next up taxco. the last trip was san miguel de allende which was pretty good but i didn't really have much interactions with people, except for old retired white guys from america. quite the opposite with zacatecas. it was only a few days but it felt good again to meet random people from all over, each on their different paths. and i felt ok with my path. apparently i didn't do any of the things i was supposed to do while i was there. did you go to the mines? no. did you go to the ruins? no. did you go to any of the mask museums? the what museums?

the world is full of museums and lots of things are ruined. but i did see a bit of a creepy french, cirque de' sole show at the cathedral kicking off some festival for something. nobody asks about that. or hiking up a hill when my body was in no mood to do so. up to the very top where oddly enough the wind smelled like alcohol, which was the very same reason why my body did not want to hike up the hill in the first place. and spent time with people. that's what i need to do more of (not so much the creepy french show, but the other things with people).

i'm happy to be going to antigua tomorrow. it grows on me more and more. the buses there make me smile. hey, i actually have a photo of one!:


That's were all the school buses go! (they can get more chromed out with flames)

have a good day
your friend
chad.

air cakes and bicycles

hello,

it was decided that an adventure day was needed. i planned this one, but for some reason i feel like it has been my turn the last few adventure days in a row. definitely not a complaint; there is a lot to discover out there.

jamie met me at my apartment where we made sandwiches and prepared for the day. this is where jamie usually tries to guess what we are going to do (and where i plant extra preparations that have nothing to do with adventure day, like bringing along the seattle hike book. it helps add to the confusion of things).

we g0t a little lost in the first portion of the drive since i wasn't entirely familiar with the area. it was ok though because i made an adventure day soundtrack mix tape so at there was at least some good music. thank you KEXP. first stop was the fauntleroy ferry to vashon island.

one of the odd things about my job is that i go on work trips with japanese business men. the common thing for them is to give some kind of gift that usually comes in the form of a box (kind of see's candy shaped) and is usually filled with very mysterious desserts and/or crackers which have the physical consistency of something between a rice crispy and air. the fun trick of all this is getting that gift back in through american customs. "Do you have any food to declare?" ".....yes..." "And what is it?" "....japanese sponge cake....?" I have actually yet to guess right. Maybe it is because i always guess japanese sponge cake and have yet to actually receive it as a gift. But the customs officers don't seem to mind or care (or wonder why i am bringing back japanese pastries from a Guatemala flight). i had just returned from guatemala/mexico with a fairly large box of something japanese. so while waiting for the ferry, we each had a mixed bag of some kind of crackers. my most interesting piece was kind of like a cheese puff. but instead of cheese, it was A1 steak sauce.

the ferry ride to vashon island was pretty short but long enough to freeze standing at the front of the boat. it is the best part of a boat ride.

vashon island is home to about 10,000 people with a lot more people and boats coming in at the summer months. with february not being a summer month, things were pretty low-key.

about halfway into the island there is a park and ride parking lot for the bus. across the street is a closed cafe and some trees, the forrest/park type. not far into the trees a small path that takes you to this:

a small bicycle in a tree. they say that years ago the bike was next to the tree and over the years it grew around it. Berkley Breathed used to live on Vashon Island and has a bike eating tree in his book, Red Ranger Came Calling. Now the bike is about 7 feet off of the ground. In 1994 it won a contest put on by Washington Mutual for the most unusual place in Washington/Oregon.

We went and had our sandwiches at a small harbor and watched state employees doing some kind of diving survey and picking strange sea creatures out of this weird kind of seaweed. apparently Vashon Island closes pretty early on a Saturday afternoon during the winter, so after lunch there was not anything else left open. and we headed back.

a pretty laid-back, 1994 award winning adventure day.

your friend,
chad.

muscle groups

hello,

i've decided that for every random physical activity that one can possibly do, a completely different muscle group is used. muscles that will solely be used only for that activity and nothing else. for example, a pickup game of dodgeball at a community center will make the muscles surrounding your ribcage have that after a coughing sickness feeling (that it-hurts-to-laugh feeling).

since i haven't found the dodgeball machine at the gym yet, i don't know if there is any way to prepare for it. other than go every monday at 7pm.



This was the only picture where i wasn't blurry from all the dodging. i'm the one in the middle. apparently the guy next to me wasn't dodging at the moment either. we must have been doing well at the time.


have a good day
your friend
chad.