I'll be home for Christmas

 We're coming home for Christmas!!!! *doing a little dance*  David just bought the tickets and we're set to go.  The flight arrives in Houston on December 12th (ma's birtday) and we will be leaving January 2nd.  So that's about three weeks of non-stop Texas fun.  Now we just need someone to pick us up from the airport!  Anybody? Oh, I just can't wait. 

GeoCache or Becoming a Tourist in Your Own Town

Pa Olden gave me his old GPS a couple years ago now.  When we moved to New Mexico, I made good use of it, and it saved me in some really sticky situations.  

One door it really opened was the Geocaching door.  The best part about getting into the office at 7am is getting out at 4pm.   With 3-4 hours of daylight to spend, you have plenty of time to do...well, 

whatever you want.  So I'd plug in coordinates and walk off in some random direction following the little arrow on my screen.  

Years have passed now, and sadly the old GPS is in storage.  I picked up a new one the other weekend, and today we went after our first cache.  I've been using the GPS on my mountain bike over the last couple weeks, but the only real valuable information it's provided is that Jag and we spend over 50% of our time BS-ing instead of riding!  

We went after a multi-cache today, which promised to take use all across the city.  Well, it did indeed, and even showed us a few things we've 

never found before.  Each location we found gave a new clue for the final cache.  When we finally found all the clues, we pieced together the clues and got our final coordinates.  It put us in a giant forest right in the middle of the city, and we must not have done our math right 'cause we were plum lost!  I knew it was in a forest, and with 50 metres to go I was standing at the perimeter fence looking at a 4 lanes of gridlock traffic.  

But with Geocaching nobody looses.  We found a great place for lunch, and we got out of the house.  I'll find that damn cache, but in the meantime I'm planning to place my own cache around the city!  It'll highlight all the best graffiti stencils I've found around town.  Sweet!

A Man and His Toys

We bought a new GPS last week (after David tried to convince me we really needed one for a month or so) and today we used it for the first time.  We use is mostly for geocaching, which is really fun if you like exploring and a bit of adventure. Check out www.geocaching.com for more info. 

Art For Grabs: Take II

Mark your calendars! Art for Grabs is coming up and since it was such a success last May, I have decided to sell my art work at this event once again. FUN FUN FUN!  Come visit and support your local artists! 

DATE: 26-27 September 

TIME: 11:00-19:00 

WHERE: The Annexe Gallery, behind Central Market, 3rd floor. (Look for lots of people)

Batik at Home

I recently discontinued my Batik classes with Sam but decided I still wanted to keep practicing this art form. I found all of the supplies I needed in a small art supply store tucked away in nearby Chinatown and last week I started with my experiment. I just started doodling with the wax and this is what came out!  I'm just thinking of all the things I can make, since all the designs are on fabric!  Bags, t-shirts, pillows..   Once we move back to Texas I'll have a Batik party and teach everyone how to do it!

Party Party Party

Sometimes you just gotta party.  With our go-live date in just a couple days, we were all feeling stir crazy and wanted to let loose.  A party was the natural remedy to this, so the good wife and I opened the house up.  

My only condition was that I didn't want to cook at the grill, and that worked out just fine!  Leave it to Malaysians to bring enough food to feed and army.  The guys rotated shifts on the grill every 20 or so seconds, so your burger or chicken wing was turned by at least 4 different people!  

After getting kicked out of the BBQ area, we made our way up to the apartment, where I made the fatal mistake of not hiding the congas!  Which somehow then ended out of the balcony with a predominantly male crowd gathered 'round.  Mike was leading the show, smacking the drums as hard as he could while screaming at the top of his lungs...not to disturb the neighbors, not to create any sort of music...I'm pretty sure he just wanted to make as much noise as possible!  Leave it to Mike to electrify the air!

Well the party raged on and then died off as they do.  The last stragglers

 played pictionary.  Instead of the normal subjects, we limited it to movies.  I was quite proud of myself for screaming out, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind!" before only an image of a sun was drawn.  But the best was when Mike drew a symbol of "half", then a symbol of "burning" and that was supposed to mean "The Happening".  Further proof that said movie was completely, and entirely, doomed from the beginning.  

Well at the end of the night all went home happy.  It was a good one I have to say.  I remember when we were in New Mexico and we had a BBQ 3 months into living there.  Only 1 person showed up that day (out of about 20 people invited).  It takes time to get comfortable with people; for people to get comfortable with you.

I'm happy to say it was a good party, because we have good friends here.  

Back Home!

We're back from our weekend on Ko Phi Phi Island!  If you're wondering how we spent our time, you'll just have to look at the picture of David in a hammock and it sums it all up.  Check out the rest of the photos here.