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Timberwolf

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  1. Timberwolf

    15 Years

    By Timberwolf,


    Poems
    So, on October 9, @hirondelle and I celebrated our 15 year anniversary of being together.  On October 09, 2005, after 40+ hours of travel from Baltimore Washington International Airport (BWI) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (where I spent 8 hours) to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (where I spent 2 hours in the middle of the night) to Taiwan International Airport to Don Muang International Airport, which at the time, was the only international airport in Bangkok just to hold @hirondelle in my arms for the first time.  I'd never traveled so far in my life, let alone to fly internationally.  It was so worth it! 
     
    🥰😍😘💌💘💝💖💗💓💞💕💟❣️❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍🤟👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👩‍❤️‍👨👨‍❤️‍👨👩‍❤️‍👩♥️
     
    Yes, I know, that's a lot of hearts, but @hirondelle knows.   
     
    Anyway, for our 15 year anniversary, I decided I would write her a poem.  It was a bit last minute, but it was something that I wanted to do for her.  I have already given it to her, but I wanted to post it here as well.  I mean, this is one of the reasons I created a blog for, to share my writing.
     
    Oh yeah, before you read this, I made a mistake when I originally wrote it and something in my head told me it was 16 years.  
    I have since fixed it though.  
     
    15 Years
     
    Can you believe
    On this day
    15 years ago
    I stepped off
    Of the plane
    I couldn’t even
    Give you a hug
    Cuz of my bags
    So, I leaned in
    Oh, so close
    Just to be near
    To feel your body
    Next to mine
    You leaned up
    And kissed me
    Like I imagined
    1,000 times before
    We have had
    Some hard times
    We have had
    Some amazing times
    All based in love
    And now it’s been
    15 short years
    And I still have
    Not a regret
    I love you more
    Then I did before
    I love you
    My Darkness
    My Air
     
    ©October 8, 2020
    Domnick M. Dumais
     
    Always Remember: If you love somebody, tell them right now.  Don't hesitate.  
  2. Timberwolf

    2018 Year In Review

    By Timberwolf,

    So 2018 has been quite an interesting year to say the least.  It's been quite an interesting and eventful year to say the least.
    (Click Next Page to continue reading)
    January - 
    Early in the month, @hirondelle took me to one of her favorite restaurants from her early days in Thailand, a place called Suda.  She took a great picture of me having a beer


    Although hirondelle says the food wasn't as good as she remembers, it wasn't bad, and I enjoyed going to one of her old hangouts.  And just look at that hair!  You think that's bad?  Wait till you see it as the year goes along.   
     
    February -
    We had a special visiter for hockey here in Thailand, we had Coach Jeremy from How To Hockey and you can find his YouTube channel HERE. While he was here, the Siam Hockey League and the Flying Farangs put together a pick up game for him, which I got to play in.

    Also during this time, hirondelle and I started exploring kink a bit more and we attended our first shibari training class, where I started learning the Japanese art of tying people with rope.  We also started to explore with what is called impact play.  Impact play is like spanking, but sometimes using other objects other than your hands, which have found we liked a lot.
    March -
    March was a really big month for me, because I was asked to play with the Flying Farangs during the City Of Angels Old Timers tournament here in Bangkok.

    Although we didn't do so good in the tournament, it was so much fun to play with these guys.  One of the best things about this was that when they asked me what number I wanted, the first number that came to mind was my number from when I used to play hockey back in the 80s.  When I asked if that number was available, they said yes!
    April - 
    Lots of interesting things happened this month.  First, we went to our first munch in the kink community here in Bangkok.  This was a big step for us, because we didn't know (1) who was going to be at the munch, and (2) what if somebody we knew showed up at the munch.  As things would have it, there was somebody going that we knew, but he was so super cool about it and helped us ease into it.

    Right after the munch, hirondelle and I headed off to England.  It had been a few years since I'd been to the UK, and we wanted to make the best of it.  We spent a few nights in Hucknall, and while there, hirondelle took me to the hockey rink in Nottingham, where the Nottingham Panthers play.  One of the reasons she brought me to the rink is because they have a pro shop there, and I was looking for some new hockey equipment.  More specifically, I was looking for new shin pads, new gloves, shoulder pads and a new hockey bag.  To go with that, they had quite a bit of NHL stuff, so I got some Minnesota Wild stuff, pins and a hockey puck as well as a Nottingham Panthers T-shirt.  I didn't buy everything in Nottingham, hirondelle also took me to Sheffield, which also has a hockey team, the Sheffield Steelers, one of Nottinghams rivals.  They have a giant hockey equipment shop called Puckstop, which has just about everything you can think of when it comes to hockey gear.  Of course, as luck would have it, we didn't check the hours of the shop.  We arrived in Sheffield on Monday and thought they would be open and when we found the store, we found that they were closed on Mondays.   So we had to go there on Tuesday.  Oh well.  These things happen.  Between the two stores, I found what I was looking for, and it was pretty cool walking around Sheffield. 
    We weren't only in the UK for hockey equipment though.  One of the other reasons we were in the UK was so I could finally meet one of hirondelle's oldest friends, Sharron and Sharron's husband Doug.

    We spend the whole day in Lincoln, walking around and hanging out with them.  Lincoln is a pretty interesting city, with an amazing cathedral, and the high street is this really long hill that leads right down to the river that runs right through Lincoln.  It was pretty cool, and it was awesome finally meeting Sharron and Doug.
    One of the things we always do, especially when I'm with hirondelle, when we go to the UK is we meet Autumn and Jamie. 

    We love meeting up with them, and on this trip, we spent most of the day with them.  They took us to their tattooist and piercer and hirondelle got her nipples pierced.  So cool.  One of the things hirondelle and I talked about with meeting Jamie and Autumn was them taking us to their tattooist and piercer so hirondelle could get her nipples pierced. 
    After our time in Nottingham/Sheffield, we spent some time in London.  We love London for so many different reasons.  This year, we decided to go to some more kinky type shops, because we were looking to get some special things.  We picked up some pretty cool kinky toys that we just love.
    May - 
    May was a pretty busy month for me when it came to hockey.  First, I played in a 4-on-4 hockey tournament in Pattaya.

    This tournament was a lot of fun, though we lost our first game, we won our next 2 games to put us in the finals against the local favorite team, the Pattaya Destroyers.  This tournament had two (2) first for me.  First, the manager, Scott Murray put me in as a forward.  I don't remember playing as a forward since I was in mites, back when I was 5-6 years old.  Second, in the second game, Scott (my forward line mate) had me taking face-offs on my side of the ice.  Of course, when I first started, I did really shitty, and didn't win any face-offs, but then I won a couple face-offs, so that wasn't so bad..  The first time we played the Pattaya Destroyers we beat them, but then we had to play them again after a break ofd about an hour, and they beat us, so we ended up taking second place in this tournament, which wasn't too bad.
    After this, I had a tournament a tournament in Northern Bangkok, an hour by underground train, to help raise funds for one of the local, Thai ice hockey players that was in a motorcycle accident.  This was another 4-on-4 tournament, and we did really good in this tournament and eded up winning it, which was awesome.
    The last thing that happened in May was that I started playing in the Bangkok Ice Hockey League (BIHL) for a team called Bunteng Rengrom.

    The BIHL starts off their season with one (1) division, then after 4 games, they split into two (2) divisions, and after 4 more games they have the playoffs in three (3) divisions.  Last season, my team, Bunteng Rengrom, took 3rd place out of 4 teams in the 3rd division.  This year, we took 3rd place out of 3 teams in the second division, so we did better than we did last year.  I was one of three foreigners on my team, and almost half of my team were women, which was pretty cool.  We had a lot of fun, though in one game I got a little heated when we were playing in our second game against Greatest Ice.  One of their top players took a cheap shot at one of our players, so I defended our player and gave the guy a check in the back, nothing dirty, no elbows or anything like that, just a should, which sent him to the ice, which caused a bit of a scuffle in front of our net and I got sent to the box for 2 minutes.  Over all, I feel I didn't do too bad in my first season in the BIHL.  I got 2 points (assists) with 4 minutes in penalties.  I was asked to come back and play for them again next year, which I plan on doing.
    June - 
    June marked a few big things.  First, hirondelle and I went to our first kinky play party.  That was pretty exciting and fun. 
    I also played more hockey.  The BIHL went until August, so I was pretty busy with that, but I also got to travel with the Flying Farangs to the Philippines.

    This was the first time in about 5 years that the Flying Farangs have traveled outside of Thailand to play in a tournament, so I was pretty stoked to be asked to come along and play in this one.  This was also the first time I'd been to the Philippines, so that was exciting in and of itself.  Also, I got to meet a long time online friend for the first tie face to face while I was in the Philippines.

    Karen actually came to the rink for her first every hockey game.  It was awesome to meet her, and we had a lovely dinner together.  
    Another cool thing was we had to NHL hockey players and Stanley Cup winners, Johnny Oduya and Marcus Kruger visit Bangkok for a charity game.

    This was so awesome, and I did the score keeping and announcements for the game.  I also got to have dinner with them before the game.  The most exciting for me thought was the night before.  There was a game for those that weren't playing in the charity game to be able to play with Johnny Oduya and Marcus Kruger.

    This was awesome on so many levels, but the biggest thing for me was being a D-partner to Johnny Oduya!  Amazing!  Oh, and I got a penalty for "tripping" Marcus Kruger, but I still say he took a dive.
    The most important thing for me in June was that my baby girl, Bretney, graduated from high school!

    I talked to her for a few minutes before the ceremony and I got to watch the ceremony live through her schools website.  Totally awesome.  So proud of her.
    July - 
    Hockey wise, the BIHL is still going on and I'm playing in the weekly shinny for the Flying Farangs.  Also, when it comes to Shibari, I did my first suspension, which was of a friend of ours, and then a few weeks later, I suspended hirondelle for the first time.  That was a lot of fun.
    August - 
    Kink wise, August was pretty exciting for us.  One of the groups we are part of had what's called an Auction Party, which is what it says, but people are auctioned off with the money going to special organizations and groups.  First off, hirondelle went up on the auction block to do art for a scene for somebody.  Second, we both went up on the block as a couple to co-top somebody.  So that was really exciting for us, and a lot of fun.
    September - 
    So this was a good and bad month.  I got pulled over on my motorcycle on my way to where I eat lunch and they wanted to give me a ticket for my tax being out of date, but I showed them where my tax was and they were like, oh ok, but then when they looked at my driver's license, they told me that I needed a Thai driver's license.  This was a shock to me, because I'd been using my American driver's license whenever I rode a bike here in Thailand.  They didn't give me a fine the first time, but when they pulled me over a second time in the same week, they checked my tax and found out that it was out of date, I had made a mistake, and this was the second time in a week that I had been pulled over and didn't have a Thai driver's license, so I did get fined this time.
    The best thing that happened this month, well, let me go back to about May, before we went to our first kink party, we were invited to a welcome back party of somebody that was part of the group that wanted to meet us, so she got us invited.  The party was at another person's house, by the name of Stef.  Both hirondelle and I really hit it off with Stef.  We went to quite a few parties and events at Stef's house through out the year.  Well, Stef told hirondelle and I that if we ever wanted to try being with a third person, she really liked us and would be willing to be our third.  hirondelle and I had talked about this before, but that was about as far as we had gone with it, then Stef brought it up to us.  We went home that night and talked it, and we decided we would like to try it, so I messaged Stef and we made a date.  We had that date, and spent the night at Stef's and all three of us really enjoyed it.
    October - 
    More motorcycle news this month.  So we went to get our motorcycle it's tax updated and well, we found out that the bike needed to be inspected because it's older than five (5) years old, and then we went to get it insured and taxed.  That was a whole day affair.  Then I went to try to get my Thai driver's license, but found out that I could only do the eye test portion of my test and I had to head back there in November, so keep an eye out for that.
    One of the good things that happened, is we had a weekend date with Stef, and this time, she came to our house, and she spent the weekend with us and it was so great!  So chill and relaxed.
    November - 
    Motorcycle - Wow.  So I went and spent five (5) hours at the Land and Transport office watching videos and then I took the written test after, and I was told I had to come back on another day to do my driving test.  Talk about being angry, because I was told I could do both tests in the same day, and that just didn't happen.  That worst thing about this is I took a day off of work to take the test, and ended up having to take another day off of work to get this taken care of.  So I passed the written test, and I decided to come back the next day to do my driving test.  Which I did and I ended up passing it and getting my license.  

    So I am finally legal!
    Hockey - Well, I was asked to play for another Flying Farangs teams.

    We didn't do great in this tournament, we lost the first two (2) games, then we tied the third game, and we finally we won the last game and we won a trophy!  It was such a blast playing in this tournament, but I also worked this tournament, so I did some interviews for them, score keeping and stats entering. 
    Lastly, we had another weekend date with Stef, which was great.  We went to see one of our friends do improve, and they were really good.
    December - 
    Exciting times.  At the end of November, we went and looked at getting a Honda Rebel 500 and to get the financing done for it.

    We got approved and picked it up.  Super exciting!  It's so much fun to ride.  We really put it through its paces as well.  We did a road trip to finish off the year.  We went from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi, and spent the night there.

    That portion of the trip was 174 km (108 miles), which took about 3 hours.  From Kancanaburi, we went to Sangklaburi.

    Sangklaburi has the longest wooden bridge in Thailand, which you can walk across.  It's pretty amazing.  That portion of the trip was 201 km (125 miles) not counting our missed turn, and it took us about 4 hours to get there.  Was a portion of road that went through the mountains which was pretty cool.  We spent two (2) nights in Sangklaburi, and on the second day, we took a boot to the submerged temple and another temple near that.

    From Sangklaburi, we went to Sai Yok.

    This portion of the trip was 175 km (109 miles) which took about 3 hours.  The resort that we stayed was off the road and back north another 20 minutes, but it was nice and peaceful and right on the river.  Our last stop on our trip was Nakhon Pathom.

    This portion of the trip was 148 km (92 miles) and about 3 hours.  Our resort, this time, was about an hour away from the main road!  Very very quiet, like an 80s motel/resort horror movie kind of quiet.  There was even one point where we started hearing strange noises from the roof of our bungalow.  I guess we should have been watching Stranger Things before bed.  That last leg of our trip was back to Bangkok.

    This last leg of the trip was 78 km (49 miles) which ended being about an hour and a half.  I did miss a turn at one point, but there was a double U-turn, so I think that happens quite a lot, and I got us back on the right track.
    The other thing that was lovely was we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Stef.  We had dinner together on Christmas Eve and then spent the rest of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with us.
    All and all, it was an amazing year filled with mostly high points.
    Well, that's all for now.  I'll see you next time.
    Always Remember: Life is meant to be enjoyed, not dreaded, so get out and enjoy it.
  3. Timberwolf

    2020 Honda BR-V

    By Timberwolf,


    Life
    For years, Tracy has been trying to convince me to drive a car. She wants us to do some road trips in the UK and here in Thailand. We’ve done road trips on the bike, and as lovely as those are, I’ve never felt comfortable with taking one puppy, let alone two, on the bike. Since I’ve started my new job, I travel farther for work. I used to ride for about 20 minutes to get to work, now it’s just shy of an hour, and Tracy has been concerned about my safety, understandably. I was starting to come round to the idea of driving a car here in Thailand, and then one day, on my way to work, I got caught in the rain. That normally wouldn’t be such a problem, but then, on my way home from work, on the same day, I got caught in the rain again! At least on the way to school, I could pull over and put my rain gear on, but when it happened on my way home, I wasn’t in a place where I couldn’t do that, and was soaked. I got home and told Tracy I was ready for a car. 
     
    We talked about it, and I told her that I wanted to go out with a driving school instructor, if they had them in Thailand, and practice driving so I could see what it was like to drive a car on the wrong side of the road and be on the wrong side of the car. 
     
    Now, in the States, I can drive an automatic and a manual, but as I felt everything would be on the wrong side, decided I wanted to start with an automatic, and get used to that. The driving school instructor said that was a good, because she only had automatic. The day arrived and she took me to a deserted area of Bangkok and we switched sides of the car and off I went. She took me through some Bangkok traffic, a lot of Bangkok traffic actually, , then she took me to a parking garage at a mall to try parking, but it was full, so she took me out on to the express way and we drove out to the airport and back. Then through some more Bangkok traffic and back to our apartment. When I was finished, she said I was fine and could take my driving test any time I wanted.  
     
    Now, for cars. Tracy and I did a lot of talking about cars, should we go new, should we go used. We decided on used, and an SUV, so we looked at some of the used car dealerships here in Bangkok, and first we looked at a Mitsubishi Pajero Sport, but thought we wouldn’t be able to get it into the parking spot. Next, we looked at the Nissan Juke. Nice little SUV, but Tracy felt I was almost too big for it. After that, we looked at a Ford EcoSport. We almost got one of these, but in the end, we felt we couldn’t trust used car dealerships. 
     
    So, we decided to go for new. I did a ton of researched on car makes and models, and wanted the best we could get within the budget we had set, and still get an SUV if possible. Once we decided what we wanted, we contacted dealership and went in to talk with them about what we wanted. Interesting thing, in my experience, when getting a new car in the States, you start off with a barebones model and as you add options, your price goes up. Here in Thailand, at least for the car we chose, we chose the model and it was a certain price (not going to discus how much we paid), and that’s with all the options. If you wanted to pay less, they start removing options. This was great for us, because then we could get everything wanted and the price would remain the same. 
     
    So, we ended up going for a Honda BR-V. Here in Thailand, they have 2 versions of it. There is the V and the SV. The V is a 5 seater and the SV is a 7 seater. We decided on the V version because we wanted more room in the back for the puppies and for my hockey gear. 
     
    We picked up the car last night and it’s amazing! And there is so much more space in the back than we thought. We need to get more puppies.  
     
    Sorry about such a long post, but I’ve been holding this in for a few weeks. 
     
    Anyways, my positive of the day is getting a new car! 
     
    Always Remember: If there is something you want, it's never to late to get it.
  4. Timberwolf

    2020 Year In Review

    By Timberwolf,


    Life
    So 2020 has been one hell of a year.   I've seen lots of highs and lots of lows in this past year, as most of the world has seen and felt.
     
    I'll do my best to make this as coherent as possible, but I'm sure I will mix some thing up.  The good thing is, @hirondelle has put together a list for me to look at, so that will help keep my thoughts organized.  
     
    So, with out too much more preamble, let me get into it.
     
    To finish off 2019 and start off 2020, @hirondelle and I decided to go to Krabi and we asked Stef, our girlfriend, to join us.  There were some issues, but over all it was a pretty good holiday.  I wrote about it in the blog post titled Krabi 2019-2020.
     
     
     
    January was pretty good.  About the most exciting thing in January was planning for a hockey tournament that I will talk about soon.  I was having some pain in my knee, but I did take off of hockey for 3 weeks before the tournament to rest it.
     
    The hockey tournament was at the end of January beginning of February. They were having a 4-on-4 tournament at the rink up there.  The tournament was called The Northern Breakaway Tournament 2020.  They had two teams from Chiang Mai, a team from Hat Yai a team from Hong Kong and my team, Flying Farangs.  We had actually put together a pretty strong team for this tournament.  Below is a picture of my team.
     
    Back Row - Tom Price, Rob Taylor, Gabor Toth, Eddie McConnell
    Front Row - John Schachnovsky, Mike Nightingale, Dom Dumais, David Boere, Jesse Starosta  
    This tournament was a three day affair.  In the first day of games, on January 31st, we played Chiang Mai in the first game and Southern Wolf in the second game, in which we won both games.  We did lose David Boere to a broken hand in the first game and John Schachnovsky strained his groin in the second game, but David played a couple of shifts in the second game, and John continued to play throughout the tournament.  In the second day of games, we played Hong Kong Transformers, which we won, and I strained my knee in this game, but I continued to play in the rest of the tournament.  In our second game of game two, we played the Chiang Mai Jokers.  This team was arguably the best team in the tournament, although they were a very cheap team took some cheap shots.  We did give them a run for their money, though we didn't play all out.  This set us up to play them again in the championship game of this tournament on day 3.  Again, it was a really hard game, and we took less flack from them and they were still cheap, but we did eventually lose to them, and ended up taking second place in this tournament.  It was a lot of fun, not counting the cheapness from the Chiang Mai Jokers, but playing with this group of guys and being back in Chiang Mai was great.   After the tournament, I took two (2) weeks off from hockey to rest my knee again.
     
    Right before we went to Chiang Mai for the tournament, we started hearing about this flu coming out of China, which ended up being Covid 19.  It wasn't long after we got back to Bangkok that we started hearing about cases in Thailand.
     
    Also in February, I found out that the school I had been working for for ten (10) years decided that they weren't going to renew my contract.  I was a bit shocked at this as I had done everything they asked of me for those ten (10) years as well as helped them with a lot of things, but in hind sight, it was for the best really.  I hadn't been happy at the school for quite a few years, so that just spurred me on to find better work.  
     

    Dottie napping on the couch
    At the end of February, we also added a new member to our family here in Thailand.  On February 29th, that was when our little Dottie girl joined our family.  We weren't sure how Spike was going to take to her, because we didn't do a very good job of socializing Spike.  Now, when we first brought her home, Spike wasn't to sure what to think about her, but he didn't attack her or anything, which is good.  Then, a friend of ours, brought his puppy over, Ski, and Spike really wanted nothing to do with Ski.  Dottie and Ski were playing and Ski got a little bit rough, Ski is huge compared to Spike and Dottie, and Dottie yipped and Spike was right over there to find out what was going on.  A few days later, @hirondelle bought a couple of toys for Dottie, and Spike wanted to play with one of them, and they kind of bonded over that.  Now they get a long so well, it's like made Spike a young puppy again.  Spike who is 12 years old and Dottie who is now a year old, and they are getting along so well.  I love it!
     
    At the beginning of March, I was hired by an agency in the hopes that they would get me into a school.  On the 11th of March, they had me do a demo lesson at a school, and while I was sitting in a very small kid's chair waiting my turn to go do my demo lesson, I stood up and almost fell over.  I was in so much pain and I couldn't put any weight on my leg at all.  I tried walking around to make it feel better, but nothing was working.  I still had to do my demo lesson, and I informed them right away at the beginning of the lesson that I had done something to my knee so my lesson wasn't going to be the best.  Well, the school was happy with my lesson and ended up hiring me, which I will get into later.  After the demo lessons, they gave us a tour of the school they were building, and then we all went back to the agency office.  From there, I got on my bike and rode home.  Talk about being in pain.  When I finally got home, I laid down the couch to have a nap and rest my knee more.  After about an hour, it wasn't any better, so we decided to go the doctors.  The doctor was awesome and he examined my knee, and ordered an x-ray and an MRI for a later date.  After the MRI it was found out that I had strained three (3) ligaments in my knee, and there was some torn cartilage in my knee, and the doctor wanted to go in and clean up the cartilage, and then drill a few holds in the bone itself to cause it to bleed into the place where the cartilage was removed to create scar tissue to act like cartilage.  On the 27th of March, I went in for my surgery, and the doctor found out that the meniscus in my knee had torn, so he stitched that back in place as well as did the rest of the surgery he had told me about.  This put me on crutches for eight (8) weeks and out of hockey for nine (9) months.  
     
     
    April saw Thailand go into a lock down, which was good for me as I couldn't really go out anywhere.  I stayed home and watched Netflix and got fatter.  Also, @hirondelle got tired of me watching Netflix so much, so she bought me and Xbox 1X and some games.  Talk about exciting.  I bought a number of games, with Assassin's Creed being quite a few of them.  I bought Assassin's Creed The Ezio Collection, Assassin's Creed III, Assassin's Creed Unity (comes after Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag), Assassin's Creed Origins, Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Forza Horizon 4.  While in lock down and recovering, I completed Assassin's Creed Unity as Assassin's Creed Origin's, as well as Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag on the Nintendo Switch, but I didn't complete this 100%.  I will eventually go back and do my best to attempt that, but I'm in no rush.
     
    May didn't see much of anything from me other than playing lots of Assassin's Creed. 
     
    At the end of June, I started at my new school.  We started prepping for the students to come back on July 1st, and I had to teach a teach the teachers class, which was fun.  I had to co-teach that class with the other English teacher that was hired.  This school hired two (2) English teachers to teach English, two (2) Filipino teachers, one (1) for math and one (1) for sciences and one (1) Vietnamese teacher to teach Chinese.  One of the things I loved right away about this school was that I got to see all my students every day in class.  This is something I've been asking for since I started teaching fifteen (15) years ago.  This is awesome! 
     
    In March of last year, I wrote a blog post about being polyamorous. 
     
     
    @hirondelle and I had been in a relationship with this lady named Stef, and we were together for almost two (2) years.  Since before the end of the year, @hirondelle and I had been talking about ending things with Stef.  It wasn't anything that Stef had been doing or not doing, it was just that @hirondelle felt that she was pulling herself away from me, and both @hirondelle and I had always said from the beginning that our relationship is #1.  We always put each other first.  When we went away together for the New Year, it seemed kind of like things might be a bit different, but it wasn't long and @hirondelle was still feeling the same.  Over the lockdown period, we didn't see Stef as much, but then we started seeing each other again, and things just weren't the same, so at the end of July, we decided to end things with Stef.  We still care about her, but not at the cost of our relationship.  It was difficult, but after a bit of time, the three (3) of us are friends and have seen each other.  
     
    August didn't see much from me other than helping out a guy that was new to teaching, but that help didn't help him very much, because he didn't follow my suggestions or advice.
     
    Come September, things got really interesting.  First, @hirondelle and I had been talking about getting a car, especially since starting at my new school.  She didn't like me riding my bike that far every day.  See, on the bike, in the morning, it takes me about forty-five (45) minutes to get to school, and after school, on the bike, it takes me about an hour to get home.  Personally, other than getting caught in the rain a few times, it wasn't that bad.  I'll be honest though, there was one day, I was on my way to school and I got caught in the rain.  That same day, I was on my way home from school and I got caught in the rain.  Now, on the way to school, I could stop and put on my rain gear, but on the way home, there wasn't any place for me to stop, which sucked!  That's was convinced me it was time to buy a car. 
     
    When we first started looking, we decided that we wanted to go for some type of SUV.  The first car we decided on was a Nissan Juke.  It's a nice car with some interesting styling.  One of the things that I really liked about it were the bubble lights on the front end of the car.  Also, the look of the Nissan Juke reminded me of some of the hot wheels car from the 80s.  We also decided that we would look at second hand cars, instead of going new.  we found a Nissan Juke and went and looked at it.  It's smaller than I expected, but not too bad.  I got in the front seat, driver's side, and I couldn't get in.  I had to move the seat all the way back and tilt the steering wheel all the way up to get in, but once I got in, I could adjust the steering wheel down, but the seat had to stay as far back as it could go.  @hirondelle said I looked like I was a bit cramped.  It wasn't bad, but I could have gone for a little bit more room.
     
    After this, we decided to go for something a little bit bigger.  We decided to go for a For EcoSport.  Not a bad little SUV.  The EcoSport was launched outside of the US in 2012, but wasn't available in USA until 2018, and it wasn't a big seller.  I guess American's don't like small SUVs, lol.  I don't know.  Any way, we looked around for the EcoSports, and we found a few, so we narrowed things down to only buy from a dealership in the hopes of getting some type of warranty.  We found a dealership that had a couple, and we went and looked, and kind of liked how it looked, and it had more room in the front for me.  One of the things both @hirondelle and I liked about the EcoSport was they had the spare tire on the back (pictured to the right).  Something that we don't see on SUVs in Thailand any more.  Any way, so we talked to the dealership about the used EcoSport.  Wasn't that just a nightmare in a half!  First, I asked if we could get financing for the EcoSport.  They salesperson asked their finance person, who called their finance company and told them that I wanted a Ford eco car.  No, they don't do financing for Ford eco cars.  I said no, I don't want an eco car, I want the SUV Ford EcoSport.  This went back and forth for a few minutes and I got so frustrated because they weren't listening to what I was saying and @hirondelle and I started to walk away.  They chased us down and had us come back.  I explained the problem and the salesperson called another salesperson over who explained to our salesperson that yes, the EcoSport is a model of Ford and that it isn't an eco car.  So they called the finance company and said we could get approval.  @hirondelle and I went home and talked about it.  Then I decided to message them and ask about oil changes and whatnot, and the salesperson told me "No.  We don't don't oil changes or service and no warranty.  Needless to say, I was a bit shocked by this, so @hirondelle and I decided that no, we would do something else.  
     
    After some talk, and lots of research on my part, we decided we would go with a Honda BR-V.  This is even bigger than the Ford EcoSport.  One of the things we liked is we could get the version with seven (7) seats or the version with five (5) seats.  We decided we would go with the five (5) seat version because we wanted room in the back to put a cage for the Spike and Dottie.  Also, this game me room to put my hockey gear in as well.  To be honest, this was my first ever new car, and going to buy a new car was really fun.  One thing that I noticed was different for buying a new car in Thailand compared to buying a new car in USA (from what I have heard).  One thing is in the US, you go into the car dealership, and you decide on the make and model you want, then you start deciding on the options you want.  Each option adds a little bit more to your price.  Now, this is based off of what I've heard for buying new cars in the States.  In Thailand, they quote you a price, and this is what you pay for everything.  If you want to pay less, you start taking off the different options until you get to a price you want.  This was great, because there were certain options that @hirondelle wanted and certain options that I wanted.  For example, one of the options that @hirondelle wanted was she wanted roof rails on the top of the car.  For me, I wanted bluetooth in the car as well as a reverse camera.  So having these come with the price quoted, that was awesome.  There were things that we could have gotten if we had decided to go for a seven (7) seater that we didn't get with a five (5) seater, but one of those was fog lights, and well, living in Thailand, we don't get fog, so those were really not needed, so for me, that was really no big loss.  
     
     
    Another thing that was pretty major for me, was something that happened at my school.  My co-worker, that I started at this school with, well, he has never taught before.  I mean he did these drama courses, but he has never taught in a school before.  I did my best to give him some advice, and things just weren't working for him.  Then he lost his partner, which was sad, but he didn't really give himself a chance to recover from that.  To go with this, he was struggling with getting all his documents for his visa, and he didn't know how to control his classes.  Well, he had a really bad day and pushed two different students to the floor in front of Thai teachers, then he stormed out the class and went over to the kindergarten school to teach his classes over there.  Needless to say, he was sent home, then when they watched the video from the class, and they saw what he did, he was terminated, not only from the school but also from the agency.  That was scary, especially like a week after this, another school was on the news for a teacher hitting kids and it was a big thing for that school and all over Thailand. 
     
    Lots happening in September!  
     
    Now here we are, in October.  October was another very exciting month for me.  First, this was something big.  October 05, 2020 marked fifteen (15) amazing years for @hirondelle and I.  It's been an amazing journey.  Thank you my love.  I love you.
     
     
    Next, after about three (3) years away, I decided to go back to karate.  This was good and bad.  Good, because I've really been missing karate, and have been wanting to get back into martial arts of some sort.  Bad for me, because I hadn't practiced in years, and forgot all my katas, I had gotten fat, and my old Sensei had moved back to Japan.  Well, I did some research, and found out where my dojo had moved to, and I found their facebook page and I reached out to them.  I wanted to know if they still had adult classes, and what days they had classes.  They were happy to hear from me and told me that they now only teach combined classes.  They no longer have payment packages, just have to pay for every class I attend.  This was my positive of the day #275, which was on October 22nd.  
     
     
    Another thing that was exciting wast that I started to go back to hockey.  On October 30th, 2020, I stepped back on the ice for my first shinny since my knee surgery.  I was a bit anxious at first, but I did OK.  It felt amazing to be back on the ice.  I loved it.  My goal was to attend about four (4) shinnies to start to get back in shape for the hockey tournament that was coming up at the end of November, but I ended up only being in two (2) different shinnies, but that's OK.  It was worth it.
     
    In November, I played in my first hockey tournament since February.  My buddy, Ralf, set up a team to play in this tournament.  What was fun, is we had some skaters that I had never played in games with before, but I had been wanting to.  Our first day of games, we didn't do so well.  We lost our first game to Warriors B 5-0.  In our second game, against Chiang Mai, we did manage to score two goals, but we lost 9-2.  Our third game was against my BIHL team, Lion State, and we started coming together as a team, but we did lose this one 7-5.  To be honest, although we lost these games, the first and third game of the day was a lot of fun to play in.  Our game against Chiang Mai had shades of our game in February against the Chain Mai Jokers, which half the team from Chiang Mai were from the Chiang Mai Jokers.  Oh well.  Our second day of hockey was a lot better.  In our first game, we played Souther Wolf and we won this one 2-1.  Felt good to finally get a win.  In our second game, against a teamed called Old Timers, which the oldest player on this team was about 25, and the average age was about 17, this was another close one, and we won this one 1-0.  This gave us the recreational division championship, which was pretty awesome!  We were pretty stoked about that.  
      
    https://flyingfarang.com/samrong-ice-hockey-challenge-2020/
     
    Back row: Toni, Mark, Gary, Janne, Ralf, Alasdair, Matt, Dom
    Front row: Top, Lance, Luc, Bruno, Ono  
    For November, we had our normal Thanksgiving Dinner at a place called Bourbon Street which does this amazing Cajun style Thanksgiving buffet.  Sadly, this year, because of Covid, they really trimmed down what they were offering because they thought there wouldn't be that many people that would come.  They had a lot of people show up.  The food was still good.  Some friends, a couple, joined us, and we ended up sitting next to another friend of ours, so that was cool.
     
    In December, we started hearing about more cases of Covid in Thailand again, which sucked.  Also, my school decided, that since the school year was messed up because of the first wave of Covid, they would modify the schedule, which means were were scheduled to work through Christmas Day, and then have off December 31st and January 1st.  Thanks to the second wave of Covid, I had off Christmas, but sadly, with the cases climbing again, they gave us off for the whole month of January as well.
     
    Wow!  That's a lot.  Sorry about that.  I hope it wasn't too boring for you all.  That's all for now.
     
    Always Remember:  Keep the ones you love close to you, and tell them you love them often.
  5. Timberwolf
    Well, the past few days have kind of been hard couple of days. It all started on Saturday.


    Something happened while I was at work, and I had such a strong desire, want, need, craving for a smoke! I almost walked out of work, walked down to the local 7-11 and bought a pack. It was so strong, I couldn't believe it. I'd yet to be hit so hard with such a craving for a smoke since we've quit. It was rough. But I didn't go out and buy any cigarettes. I grit my teeth and worked through it, but damn it was hard on Saturday!


    Sunday...? Well, Sunday was fine, lol. I didn't have any issues on Sunday and didn't have any cravings for a smoke, so I thought I was safe. And to make things even nicer, lol, @hirondelle and I went for our weekly foot massage. OMG! If you haven't had a foot massage by somebody who is really good at them, you have just got to try and find yourself some place that does them! Freaking hell! We get them once a week and they just wash away the weeks stress and worries. And they usually knock me out for about 30 minutes for the hour that we get them. They are awesome!


    Then Monday hit. Monday wasn't too bad. But for some reason, I was just having minor cravings for a smoke. I don't know why, but time to time throughout the day, I just kind of wanted a smoke. But don't worry sports fans; I didn't have one on Monday. They weren't that bad.


    Tuesday and damn did Tuesday freaking hit! I was at work, and having a good day, getting a lot of work done on the curriculum they are having me re-write. I originally wrote the curriculum for the kid's classes with one course book covering 100 hours, which gives myself and my fellow teachers plenty of time to get through the course book, prepare the kids for up and coming tests, for the teachers to work with the kids doing portfolios and the like. Well, my bosses felt that it would be better if we went through two course books in 100 hours. Now this cuts down a lot on what the teachers can do, they just have to quickly teach the book, which is OK, but it doesn't really give the teacher a lot of time to really focus on what the students need other than making sure the know enough to move on to the next section of the book. Then after running this curriculum as they wanted it for about 6 months, they decided to change their mind and go back to what I had said they should do, which was run one course book over 100 hours, and they also want to introduce story time for the little, little kids, and reading time for the older kids, which I think is a great idea. Also, before the end of the year, I wrote the curriculum for a camp that we were running for the beginning of the year, which I'm sure you will remember, Around The World In 10 Days. It was a great camp, and I had a lot of fun, and I taught the majority of the classes for the two weeks that it was running. After I was about 75% done with the curriculum, they decided that what I had done was to mature for the kids, so I had to pare down what I had and get a lot of other activities and put a lot of different things together, so it took me a lot long than it should have to write this curriculum, and now is where the problems start. I got my pay here yesterday, Tuesday, and one of my bosses, Dang, said that I don't get paid for curriculum work (1) because I taught the class and (2) because I was claiming too many hours for writing it. Talk about setting me over the edge. I kept my cool, but damn did I really want a cigarette after that. They still haven't paid me for this time, but we were supposed to have a meeting about it on Thursday, because I normally teach on Monday and Wednesdays.


    Now it's Wednesday, and I was supposed to go to a class about 2 hours out from center Bangkok so I didn't have to go into the office, but the class canceled today, so I went into the office. I went into the office at 12 like I do when I'm not teaching. And the owner of the company didn't come in until about 30 minutes before I left, and she didn't even come in and say hi to me or anything. And my other boss, Dang, didn't even come in today. So we didn't have the meeting today about it. And the owner told me that she couldn't have the meeting tomorrow because she is busy, but we can have the meeting on Friday. This is fine by me. Last night, Tuesday, I made a decision, and this morning when I woke up, I felt so much better about things.


    No matter what they decide, I come out for the better. See, when we moved back to Bangkok, I really wanted to work for this company, because they were always good to me when I worked for them before. I knew I would probably be making less then I could probably earn, but working for a good company it's sometimes worth it. So the decision that I made, with @hirondelle's support, is simply this. They can give me a pay raise and I won't add any curriculum work or placement testing or any non-teaching work to my pay claim, and if I work more than 70 hours in a month, they will pay me the regular teaching hour pay for anything over those 70 hours. Or, I can go back to being a part time teacher, and not worry about any curriculum or anything like that, and they can just pay me by the hour for my teaching, and I can look around at other schools and get my own private students and make more in the end. So I'm not too worried.


    And the good news is a two parter, lol.


    Over this whole time and no matter how much I wanted a cigarette, I didn't have one, which makes me feel good.  I didn't have any cravings at all today!


    Oh, and when I was in today, I finished the Starter, Movers, Flyers curriculum that they asked for, and only worked on it for about 15 hours total, which should make them happy, lol. And, I was a nice guy and emailed it to them, so they have it no matter what decision they make on Friday.


    Thanks for listening to me ramble along.


    Always Remember:  If you always follow what your heart says, you can never go down the wrong path.
  6. Timberwolf
    When we lived in Chiang Mai, Thailand, we bought our first motorcycles.  We bought two bikes, a Honda Wave 100cc (left) for @hirondelle and a Honda Phantom 200cc (right).
    Before we got these bikes though, we had to rent a bike.  We needed helmets, so we went to a local helmet shop and bought helmets.  I didn't want anything fancy, and something that would just work and wasn't pink.  I felt that would be the best thing.  I got a really simple black helmet with white stripes that looked similar to the helmet here pictured to the right. 
    When we got our bikes, I felt this helmet wasn't cool for a cruising bike, so I decided to get myself a new helmet.  I wanted something that didn't make me look too much like a dork, but I wanted a helmet, because you need a helmet when you ride.  I decided to go with a "leather" covered half helmet similar to the helmet to the left.
    Here are the things I liked about having a half helmet.
    I liked feeling the wind on my face. It was easy to wear sunglasses My peripherals weren't restricted when riding. My hearing wasn't restricted when riding. After I lost @hirondelle's awesome Union Jack half helmet.  Sadly, I don't have any pictures of this.  When I went to buy her a new helmet, I saw a full face helmet, tried it on and it felt OK, so I bought it.  There were two things that I noticed about it right away:
    It greatly reduced my peripherals. It greatly reduced my hearing. I didn't think this would be much of a problem, and that I would adapt to it, but on more than one occasion, I scared @hirondelle because I didn't see and/or hear either a car or a motorcycle that was coming up behind me.  We discussed it and decided that a full face helmet wasn't the thing for me because of these two reason, so I switched back to a half helmet.
    When I went back to the big helmet shop, where I got my last two (2) helmets, I found a helmet that I thought looked interesting that was a half helmet, which looked similar to the helmet on the left.  Yes, I know it was a German Nazi style war helmet, but I didn't know that at the time, I just honestly liked the styling of it.
    This helmet was great for riding around town.  It didn't reduce my peripherals at all, and it didn't reducing the sounds I heard around me.  The only problem I had with this, was when I got up to 65 km/hr (40 mph), the helmet would start to lift off of my head.  That bothered me, but it wasn't often that I would be going that fast, only on road trips.  
    This helmet went with us, when we moved back to Bangkok from Chiang Mai, so that I wouldn't need to wear the small helmets that motorcycle taxi drivers carried for their passengers.
    When we moved from the house we were renting in Ari to the place we lived at in Sukhumvit 47, @hirondelle made a mistake and gave my helmet to our old cleaner.  She meant to give the cleaner her helmet, but it ended up being my helmet instead.  That sad thing about this, was that this cleaner was like my arch nemesis.  It was like WTF, but eh, it was probably better that I didn't have it any more as it did lift off of my head.
    After this, because I was riding motorcycle taxis a lot, a friend of mine, her boyfriend had a helmet that he didn't use, so they gave it to me.  
    I used this even when I got my next bike, which was another Honda Phantom 200cc.  It was another Fire Edition, but instead of the smoke grey, this was the normal red flame one.  I wore this half helmet, on the left, the whole time I had this bike.  One of the problems with this helmet was that when I would get up to about 80 km/hr (50 mph), it would slide off the back of my head.  Another problem with this was that the chin strap wouldn't stay in place.  Every time I would put my helmet on and take it off, it would loosen a little bit.
    When I got my next, a Honda Rebel 500, I still wore this helmet at first.  then, with Talking with @hirondelle about helmet, she convinced that it would be better to get a safer helmet.  This of course, Stef was all for, so I went to one of the helmet shops over near Saphan Kwai. 
    I tried on a few different helmets, and this is where I started to notice what some helmet said were larges, were too tight in spots, and other helmets that said they were large felt just too large.  I did finally find a helmet that fit well.  I decided to go with a face shield this time as well, so I got a bubble that snapped to the front of the helmet that fit me.
    I wore this helmet for almost a year.  One of the great things about it was that it didn't reduce my hearing, and it didn't reduce my field of view in the peripherals.  One of the problems though were that once I got up to about 70 km/hr (45 mph) it got really loud under the helmet, and also, when it rained, there is a gap at the top front where the bubble snaps to the helmet that water would just run through, and this would run right down onto my face.  A little annoying as I got the bubble to prevent water from running over my face, but I could live with it.
    Now, things got really interesting.  Now I know @hirondelle has been wanting me to be a bit safer on the bike.  Not really riding safer, but being safer in general on the bike, with gear.  An example of this was convincing me to get a better helmet than the half helmet I was wearing.  Well, roughly a week ago, Stef had come over to our place to see us as she had been out of the country for a couple of weeks and she missed us, and we missed her.
    We sat outside talking, and at just after midnight, Stef brought up that she felt, since I am riding more and longer, I should be more safe.  I needed a better helmet and I should have some type of jacket.  To be honest, I rebelled a bit, as I felt my 3/4 helmet was loads safer than my half helmet, and it was too hot in Thailand to wear a jacket.  
    Now, the reason the time is so important to me, is because this marked the anniversary of my mother's death.  I felt that this was my mother wanting me to be safe, and using the two women that I love to help me be safe.  To go with this, @hirondelle found a great video review on mesh jackets on YouTube done by RevZilla.
    So I did some research on the jackets listed in this video.  I also started doing some research on helmets.  Stef recommended a modular helmet, and a friend of mine, Ralf, used a modular helmet, so I asked him about his. 
    A modular helmet is a helmet where the visor and chin bar flip up.  One of the problems that some modular helmets is that they have a lot of noise, so I asked him about this.  He said his helmet didn't have any noise until about 140 km/hr (87 mph).  His helmet is a Schuberth C3 helmet, and I liked how it looked, and when he said he had no noise, that made me even happier.  Ralf let me try his helmet on, and I liked how it felt, so I figured I had found the helmet I wanted.  
    I asked Ralf about his helmet, and I did a lot of research about helmets and modular helmets, and Ralf sent me to place here in Bangkok, Thailand called Panda Rider, which has quite a lot of good quality riding gear.  This isn't your local little shop with no name helmets and gloves in there.  They carry licensed gear from places like Schuberth, Shoei and Rev'It, just to name a few.
    So, on Saturday, @hirondelle and I headed out to Ladprao to try find Panda Rider.  We arrived there with just a little less than an hour left of business.  The people at Rider Panda were great.  They didn't give us any funny looks for being there with less than an hour before closing, happily answered any questions I had, made suggestions for sizes.  They never rushed me, which was great.  Lastly, while we were waiting for my helmet to come from the warehouse, the sales associate helped me search for hard case removable saddle bags for my bike, (they didn't have any) and also talked to me about a communication system for helmets, so if @hirondelle and I wanted to talk, we could.
    First thing I looked at were the modular helmets, and I asked the sales associate for some help.  He had me try on a medium, and it was just too small.  Really pressed against my forehead.  So the associate had me try a large, and that fit perfect!  So we talked about what color I wanted, and he had his assistant head out to the warehouse to get the color I wanted.
    Next up, was a jacket.  I knew I wanted the Rev'It Airwave 2.  I didn't want anything heavy, but I wanted protection in the elbows and shoulders.  The Rev'It Airwave 2 is a mesh jacket with armor in the elbow and in the shoulders as well as a pouch for armor in the back if wanted.  The first jacket he had me try one was a large.  It was too tight in the upper arms, in the chest and in the stomach.  I couldn't even get it zipped up.  So he had me try an XXL, and that fit just right.
    Once we got everything organized and ready to go, they sales associate that his shop was having a sale next month, but because it wasn't next month yet, we could do a lucky draw and get between 10% and 30% off of the helmet.  The jacket was already on sale, which was awesome!  After everything was all said and done, the final price that we had to pay was actually less than the full price of the helmet. If I would have purchased the communication unit that night, I would have gotten 20% off, but I decided I would wait, when I come back, he said he would give 10% off when I come back.
    All in all, it was a pretty awesome time at Panda Rider. 
    As you can see from the picture on the right, I got all kitted up to head home.  The helmet was great. It didn't feel too heavy, and it didn't fog up, which was great, and the jacket, I could feel the air through it when I was moving down the road, which was great as it gets hot here in Thailand.
    Well, that's all for now.  I hope I didn't bore you all too much.
    Always Remember: There is nothing like traveling down the open road, be it 10 minutes of 10 hours, so get our there and do it!
  8. Timberwolf
    Welcome family and friends. Today I start my new blog. A few days ago, we all started a new home here at The Northlands. And just a couple of hours ago, I started a new life.


    A five(5) months ago, our home crashed, burned and died. For whatever reason, our hosts server crashed. And for about two(2) months they answered my emails. About three(3) months they updated their main page, and stopped answering my emails. With their server down, I couldn't access any of the information to move our home. So, Tracy ( @hirondelle) and I decided to start fresh. We got a new board, some new skins, and some old skins and here we are. Welcome to ours and your new home.


    My new blog. I don't remember the name of my old blog on the old Northlands, but I decided to give blogging a try again. I will try to at least make some type of post a week. If I don't do it, feel free to give me a nudge, lol.


    Tracy ( @hirondelle) and I became husband and wife today at 12:30 p.m. Thailand time. It's an amazing feeling. I'm so happy!


    Our next step is to have the marriage documents translated into English (as we are in Thailand, they are in Thai).


    After that is to get Tracy ( @hirondelle) a visa so she can live in the States.


    One of the things we have been wanting to do is to buy a house in northern Minnesota. Either in Roseau, MN or in Warroad, MN. But we are having some issues. The biggest issue is getting a mortgage for a house. So far the one bank we have talked want us to wait until we get to Minnesota and come in and talk to them. Now this would be kind of hard for us. Why? Because while we are waiting on a mortgage, where are we going to keep our things? We have the furniture we want to bring with us, the electronics, the clothes and more importantly our pets, Lily, Roso and Spike. Now I am still talking to them via email and I will try to explain our predicament.


    But all and all, life is great! I'm incredibly happy to be married to The Goddess, and starting our new life together.


    Keep an eye out for us.
  9. Timberwolf

    A New Start

    By Timberwolf,

    So it really has been a long time since I've written anything of substance.  At least, I haven't written any stories or poems.  If you look at NL Archive, the last blog post I've written was on August 15, 2016, and that was about American football, titled NFL Competition.
    That's not to say that I haven't been busy creating things.  I've also been podcasting, which you can find at my Dom Dumais website, thought it's been ages since I've done a podcast as well.  I've also done a lot of work with a local hockey league called the Siam Hockey League, and I've recently rebuilt their website, and I've been asked to build a demo site for another possible job.
    My goal in restarting Rambling In The Woods, and creating a new character in @Kethlia's thread titled Pristov Eli Isles, as well as starting The Woods and being Wolf, which is always fun, but I digress.  My goal in restarting Rambling In The Woods is to sprak my creative juices and start writing poems and stories again.
    This first post, I'm going to keep short, because, well, I'm having so much fun posting on NL 4.0.   
    Always Remember: You should treat everybody better than you expect to be treated.
  10. Timberwolf
    I plan on making this post a bit of internal exploration. Now at times, I may wonder off track, but bare with me.


    About 2 years ago, @hirondelle I and moved from Bangkok, Thailand to Chiang Mai, Thailand. When we first got here, we rented a Honda Click (what a Click looks like) for a month until we bought bikes of our own. First we got a Honda Wave 100 cc (what a Wave looks like) for @hirondelle, and ordered a Honda Phantom 200 cc for me. When my bike arrived, we returned the Click, and used my bike to go every where. @hirondelle tried learning how to drive her Wave, but at that point in time, it just didn't work out, so we sold it.


    When we first moved here, I didn't find a job right away. I was unemployed from September to about February, when I was hired by a company called CEC, where they sent me out to this private school to teach English to Korean exchange students, which was pretty cool. The students were nice, and we seemed to get along. I was also covering on the weekend for teachers that were off for their kids classes at their main office, which didn't go very well, because they were one of the most unorganized and unhelpful places I've ever worked. I asked to many questions, and after a short period of time, they let me go, which was no big deal. I had already had an interview with another company called NES (New Zealand English Services), and things looked really promising.


    I talked with the owner (Paul) and the head teacher of all the centers (Ryan), and they were looking for a teacher with my enthusiasm and experience to be the head teacher at one of the three offices they have here in Chiang Mai. So, I signed on with them as a temp teacher so we could feel each other out. To start, I was teaching English to the staff at a new hotel in the area. Things were going really well, and on the first weekend, Ryan called me to pick up some kids classes, which I did, because I needed as many hours as I could get because they were only paying me 200 baht an hour. A huge difference from the 450 baht an hour I was making to start in Bangkok. Before long, things were going really good, and I had adult classes at one of their centers (the one I was to become the full time teacher at) and kids classes at their other two centers. When teaching at the hotel finished, they were feeding me all kinds of hours, and they offered me a full time contract making 250 baht an hour for 20 hours a week. If I worked over the 20 hours a week, I would have an additional percentage per hour. I would receive the over time pay every three months. Things were going really good for awhile, and I had dinner with Paul and Ryan and talked about things we could do to update the center and make it more modern. I was supposed to help them put wireless in all three centers, and put English onto their website. Also, I was helping them to write summer courses. Everything was going great! I would have done anything for Paul and Ryan. I was picking up extra classes, and I was covering classes for teachers that were off at their request. All was good.


    It stared when one week, I didn't complete the 20 hours a week, but I had already worked a number of overtime hours in previous weeks. When I got my paycheck, it was short on the hours. I was pretty upset about this, and Paul heard about it and confronted me about it, and we discussed it. We came to solution that we both liked, and he cut me another check to make up for what I felt I was shorted. I just had to make up the hours, which with the summer courses coming up, wouldn't be a problem at all. At this same time, I was in my center all day, working on things for the office and placement testing potential students, which I wasn't being paid for. Things started to look a bit better again.


    I was asked to re-write a kids course that somebody else had already done that Paul wasn't happy with. They gave me a whole stack of books for me to set up this course. I kept the books, kind of a lean to make sure I would get the money they owed me in case something happened with my pay again.


    I was offered a position with the British Council to teach classes at a college, making almost double what I was making at NES. I accepted this position, but I had to put off starting until I finished the classes I had with NES. I informed Ryan what was going on, and Ryan totally understood and told me to let Paul know, so I went back to the main office to talk to Paul about it. He seemed fine with it.


    A few days later, I got a call from Paul's wife Tann (the co-owner) informing me that I needed to return the books that were lent to me. I told Tann that I would return the books when I was paid everything that was owed to me. She got very upset about this, and told the accountant that she wasn't to give me my paycheck until I return the books. The accountant and I had a bit of a discussion about it, and I was upset, and I kept apologizing to her about it and saying that it wasn't her fault. That I didn't mean to take it out on her. I had a few more conversations with Tann... or I should say a few more arguments on the phone with her about the books and my pay. In the end, Paul called me and told me that I had until such and such time to return the books or he would call the police and tell them that I stole the books. I went to my classroom, packed up all my stuff, and apologized to my students that I wouldn't be teaching their class, and that I was no longer with the company. I went home, collected the books while telling @hirondelle what was going on.


    @hirondelle wouldn't let me go to the main office by myself, so she went with me. She didn't want me doing something stupid, like hitting Paul, which I'm sure that if @hirondelle wasn't with me, I probably would have done. When we got to the office, I walked up to the desk. Paul was in his office and refused to even look at me, let alone talk to me. The two front desk girls came up to me and said that they were sorry, but wouldn't say more. I told them that I wanted to talk to Paul or Tann to return the books. They went into the office to let them know that I was there. Paul went outside and Tann came over to talk to me. I returned the books to her, and told her that i wanted to talk to Paul. She went outside for a few minutes and came back in and told me that she didn't know what was going on, but I was asked to leave. So @hirondelle and I started to leave.


    When we got outside, Paul was out there laughing and joking with a couple of police officers. I put my shoes on, and walked over to Paul to tell him that it was an experience to work for him. I actually offered to shake his hand, but he refused. He said that the he refused to talk to somebody that treated the girl at the other office so badly (her name was Peung). That he didn't understand how us foreigners could treat the girls here so badly, when we don't treat the women in our own country so badly. I tried to tell him that I didn't treat Peung badly in any way, but he refused to listen to me. So @hirondelle and I got back on the bike and left. Thinking of ways we could really screw him over, which we never did, but we were pretty angry over the whole situation, me more than @hirondelle.


    A few days later was the start of the Songkrahn Festival here in Thailand. On the first day, we saw Peung and stopped to talk to her. I wanted to apologize to her if I treated her badly in any way. She told me that I didn't, and that she understood why I was so upset. We talked about it for awhile, but she keep telling me not to worry about it. We spent the next two days celebrating Songkrahn with Peung, her boyfriend and a few of the students, and had a lot of fun.


    A few days after the Songkrahn Festival, I turned in all my paperwork showing exactly how much I was owed (keeping a copy for myself), which was a large chunk of money. When it came time to pick up the pay checks, it was only for a normal weeks pay. When I tried to ask when I could expect to receive the rest of what was owed to me, Peung said she would get Tann for me. But instead, she sent another member of staff over, and at first, she said she didn't understand. Finally when she did "understand" me, she said she didn't know. So I said I would be back the following payday.


    During the week, I received an email from Tann, saying that I owed NES them money for quitting and not finishing my classes. I emailed her back stating that I didn't quit, I was fired, and that they still owed me the money. That was the last email I received from NES.


    When all this happened, Ryan, whom I thought was my friend, didn't even call me to see how I was doing. This really hurt.


    This whole thing really cut me hard, and I thought I had let it go. But as time here in Chiang Mai goes by, I seem to get angrier and angrier about things here. I've always blamed it on how stupidly they drive here. And something else, that I never noticed before, I was generalizing Thai people. I don't feel good about admitting this, but I also know that in order for me to heal myself, it's something that I need to admit.


    The healing process started this morning while @hirondelle and I went to breakfast with a friend of ours, and had a great time just talking and relaxing. At breakfast, we talked a bit about some of the problems we seem to be having here. And as per my usual, I was complaining about Thai drivers, but @hirondelle said that she thinks that maybe my bitterness goes deeper than that. And it started to dawn on me that it does. It goes back to this whole experience with Paul, Tann and NES. I started thinking about it more and more on the way home. And I started to notice a few things.


    The both times we were in Bangkok, I didn't have this bitterness, but as soon as we got back to Chiang Mai, the bitterness was back.


    I hadn't really let this whole thing with Paul, Tann and NES go.

    The reason I am writing this blog post, is in the hopes of helping me release this anger and bitterness that has been building in me for almost two years, that I didn't realize were building.


    In writing this, I have felt as if a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders.


    Thank you for sharing your time with me.
  11. Timberwolf
    For the last 2 weeks, I've been teaching a special class. Well, what my work calls a camp actually. It was a lot fun. I had a class of twelve 5 year olds. Every day of the class they learned a little bit about a different countries.
     
    Day 1: Orientation, Make passports, Make photo albums Day 2: Went to United Kingdom Day 3: Went to New Zealand Day 4: Went to Australia Day 5: Went to United States Day 6: Went to Canada Day 7: Went to China Day 8: Went to South Korea Day 9: Went to Japan Day 10: Back to Thailand

    It was a lot of fun! The kids were great. On the last day, we gave them certificates for completing the camp (see photos).


    For the first week, I started each day, doing 3 hours every morning with the kids, then they would go to lunch, and I would work on things for the teacher in the afternoon and the afternoons later in the week. then off to my normal classes to teach in the evening.


    We had one teacher that did Monday and Tuesday afternoon, and the kids loved him, and he loves the kids, but his normal teaching work took him away for the rest of the week, so they hired another teacher to cover him the rest of the course. Well, as it worked out, he is a shit teacher with kids. What he wants is to teach University Students. Oh, and he would prefer to only teach the University students that are girls. Funny how that is. But hey, at least the kids knew he was a shit teacher. The only problem with this, is that then I had to teach the second week in the afternoons on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. So on Tuesday, I taught from 9am to 3pm, then I had to hightail it to my evening class and teach them 4pm to 6pm, and I had to do that again on Thursday. I was freaking beat! But like I said, I loved it.
  12. Timberwolf
    So yesterday I finished another class. The class was at a place called Aurecon. Aurecon is a company the has engineers and drafters for buildings and such.


    The class was Pre-Intermediate level. Now the book we used, wasn't actually the correct book to use in my opinion. We used a book called Market Leader, which is a great book for people in marketing. And not really what these students needed. Now don't get me wrong, the students learned from the book and they did get something out of it, but that book is more for students of marketing, lol, not engineers. In my opinion, they book that would have worked better is a book called English 365, just because it combines the different aspects of Business English and General English. Meh, lol, it wasn't my decision, lol.


    Any way, the class was great. The students were a lot of fun. And it was about the class size that I love teaching. When all the students were there, which never happened, there were 17 students. The least amount of students that I had was about 10. So over all it was great! I'm not a big fan of the smaller class sizes, but those are the kinds of classes that my company like to use, but it's no big deal. I can teach all sizes of classes and ages, lol.


    Well as you can see from the pictures that are attached to this blog post, they were a great group. Unfortunately, not everybody was there on the last day so I could get a picture of everybody. Here is the class list of the ones that came to class, at least part of the time, lol.


    Aon, Amnuay, Donut, Ton, Nart, Kee, Jue, Pong, Took, Sao, Sit, Thong, Piak(2), Gigx, Art , Piak(1).


    They were a such a great class, that on the last day, they got a cake for us! Talk about awesome!!


    Well, I'll stop boring you with my teaching, lol.


    Always remember: Always listen to your heart. Not anybody else's. Their heart doesn't know you!
  13. Timberwolf
    As most of you know by now, Tracy and I have moved back to Bangkok. Well, it's been like forever since I've written in here, so I figured this would be a great way to get back into it.


    Well, let's see. About 3-4 weeks ago, Tracy and I had our stuff packed up, said some sad good byes, packed up Roso, Lily, and Spike and climbed into a van for a long drive down to Bangkok. The driver, Tony, was great and stopped whenever we asked him to so we could let Spike get out and run around. I felt bad for Roso and Lily thought, because we couldn't take them out of their crates. I was afraid that if we did that, they might pee and poop all over the van. The trip down took about 10 hours. Overall it was a nice relaxing ride.


    A few days later, the moving company showed up with our stuff. It was nice to get our things and start setting up the house. We have a nice 3 bedroom house. It's two stories with a running area all the way around the house for Spike to run around.


    The front gate also has a walkway gate for us to enter and exit with out having to open up the whole gate. Also the gate goes almost the whole way to the ground with about an inch or two open at the bottom, so we don't have to worry about Spike slipping under the gate and escaping, so we can let him run about outside when we are out or have to work. He seems to like that a lot. We got some nice outside furniture with the house, and he has taken over the two seater as his own and lays on there when he's outside. I think he likes it, because he can see from there out through the gate, so he can see what's going on on our road. Spike has also made friends with out landlady, Parn, and her dog Nam Tan (more on that later).


    Roso and Lily seemed to take to the house right away. They have the run of pretty much the whole house. We just don't let them into the kitchen, because (1) the windows don't have any screens, (2) the two doors that go outside don't actually have a catch, they have sliding locks, when our cleaning lady comes, she leaves the doors open, and in the morning while Tracy and I are having our coffee before she leaves for work, we like to sit outside, so I leave the kitchen door open. They both just love the house.


    We have a great place to put our bookshelves that better display all of our books, which is really nice, and it makes it easier to look for a book. We have a huge master bedroom with the upstairs bathroom just off of it. We have turned the back spare bedroom into our den (office) and I have put up the pictures I've received from my students up, finally, and it looks really nice. The front spare bedroom will be our guest bedroom for when we have visitors... if we have visitors, lol.


    Tracy only had a few days off of work before she had to start back at work, but we knew that coming down here. I had off for about a week and a half to 2 weeks to do things around the house. I emailed the company that I used to work for, Elite Training Institute, and couldn't wait for me to come in for an interview and talk about what both of us wanted. I told them that I wanted full time and the told me that they would like somebody to kind of take control of the Young Learners section, and we agreed on a starting salary, which was OK. It's great to be back with them. They always treated me well when I was with them. They are the company that I did my CELTA (Certified English Language Teacher to Adult) with them, and they hired me right off the CELTA. After a little while, I told them that I wanted more hours, so they gave me more hours. Then I told them that I wanted to teach kids, so they gave me some kids classes. I told them I wanted to teach in a school, so they put me into a school. I wanted management, so they gave me management. I wanted out of management so they took me out of management, lol. So, everything seems to be heading down those same lines, which makes me happy. I don't have a lot of hours right now, but they will give me 70 hours + a month of actual teaching time. Plus I have to do placement testing of all the kids, I've been rewriting their kids courses for a new book, and I will be organizing some special weekend activities for the kids. Plus, I will also be teaching some adults, university students and special courses, but I will be mainly focused on the kids courses. There are only two bad things in all this. One, right now, I only have one day off a week, which is Sunday, and two, Tracy's days off are Monday and Tuesday, so we don't have the same days off. But, the plan is for me to eventually have off Sunday and Monday, but I will have to work towards that. Overall, I really excited about being back there and I'm enjoying it.


    Well, I guess that's all for now. Again, I'm going to try and write more here, but we will see how it goes, lol.
  14. Timberwolf

    Changes

    By Timberwolf,


    Music
    Let me start off by saying that I've been a Black Sabbath and Ozzy fan for quite a long time.  Now that doesn't mean I have or had listened to everything they put out.  There is a lot of music there, and as much as I like Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, they weren't and aren't my favorite artist.  
     
    So, in 2003, I saw Ozzy Osbourne on some talk show, I don't remember which one it is now, and he was on with his daughter, Kelly, and they did this song.
     
     
    It just blew me away and I immediately fell in love with this song.  I have since done some research on this song.  This piano was by Tony Iommi and the lyrics were by Geezer Butler and was inspired by  Bill Ward's breakup with his first wife.   Black Sabbath did this song in their album Vol. 4 which was released in 1972.  This is Black Sabbath's version of this amazing song which is so heartbreaking.
     
     
    In 2010, one of my favorite rap artists, Eminem, sampled Changes for his song Going Through Changes for his album Recovery.  He talks about his problems with drugs and losing one of his closest friends Proof.  How he fought through his struggles for his daughters and for himself.  This song, for me, is also heartbreaking, but very inspiring as he has fought through his difficulties.
     
     
     
    The final version of this song, which I happened to stumble upon just a few weeks ago, just tears my heart out.  This version is by Charles Bradley, which he sung after losing his mother, which really hits home for me.
     
     
    Some of you may know this, I'm a huge music lover.  I love a lot of different genres of music.  These are different versions of the same song and inspire some different feelings in me.  I love when a song sung by different people can do that.
     
    Always Remember:  Keep an open mind because you will never know what new thing you will end up loving.
  15. Timberwolf
    Last week I posted about some issues that I have been having while here in Chiang Mai, that started when I was leaving the company NES. And I've noticed something really great since I've written.


    When I'm driving, I no longer get angry or bitter. I mean, some of the things they do, still make me a bit upset, but the good thing is, when that happens, I usually either laugh about it or I just growl and let it go. Where as before, I would get angry, hold on to it, and then somebody would do something and I would get more angry, and then it would happen again and I would get more angry and it would just build and build until I was just seething and ready to explode. So this is a very good thing!


    Another thing, is all my life, I've been a bit of a hoarder of books. I've always found it very hard to let a book go, either giving it away or selling it. Once I have read it, or got it for myself, I tend to keep it close. Now, I can easily buy a book for a friend. I have not had any problems at all with that. I've bought many books over the years for friends and family, and I really enjoy that.


    Now as I think I mentioned in my last post here, we have been having some great breakfasts with somebody who has started to become a really good friend. We've been talking about a lot of things. One thing she told me to think about is imagine all the love I've put into that book from reading it, and passing it on to somebody that I think would enjoy it as much as I did.


    And it really just kind of slapped me in the face. So I'm going to try it. We have a book that both @hirondelle and I just love, well, I think I'm going to try sending it to my dad. The book is called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's an incredible book. Now if any of you decide to read this incredible book, note that it is a little bit about Zen, a little bit about motorcycle maintenance and a lot about one mans journey though some hard things in his life, and seeing the US with his son on a motorcycle. I recommend that everybody read it with an open mind.


    Well, that's all for now. Thank you following my journey.
  16. Timberwolf

    Cotsy

    By Timberwolf,

    After I was re-introduced to hockey, you know, when I watched a BIHL game with @hirondelle, I was contacted by a guy about becoming a podcaster for his up and coming league, which sounded pretty cool.  What they wanted me to do was come to come to a few games and interview the player of the game for the SHL news.  So in the first interview after the first game, I interviewed Adrian Meyers, who gave credit to Jason "Cotsy" Cotsmire for helping them win the game.  At the time, I thought that was nice of Adrian.  As I became more involved with the hockey community, the more people talked about how great a guy Cotsy was.
    When I started playing hockey, I got to meet Cotsy myself, and we immediately struck up a fast friendship.  Cotsy suffered a knee injury that had prevented him from playing for awhile. and when he came back to hockey, he talked to me about his GoPro camera and this casing he bought for it that he could attach it to the net.  I told him to bring the casing and his camera and we would get it set up.  He brought out his camera, and we set it up.  He got some really great footage from those shinnies where he had his camera set up (see photo to the left).  It was a lot of fun.  I never actually got to play in a proper hockey game with Cotsy. only in shinny, but I got to watch him play quite a few times.
     
    Cotsy also helped out with the Flying Farangs websited, so when I took over running the it, I met up him Scott Murray at Cotsy's place so we could talk about what I had planned for the new site and also for Cotsy to transfer all the files over to me.  We spent a coupe of hours hanging out, eating pizza and chatting about the site and about hockey.  He showed me his goalie helmet collections.  He had somebody who would personalize all his helmets, and they were pretty cool.  He also showed me his hockey DVD collection, which was pretty impressive, and then he showed me his roof top balcony.  He had an awesome place really.  
    Last year, in one of the SHL games Cotsy subbed in the net, on December 13, 2018. He played for TRUE hockey, which was his first game back in competitive hockey.  TRUE did lose to Aware 4-1 that night, but Cotsy stopped 35 of 39 shots, which earned him the player of the game award for that game.
     
    Cotsy gave a great interview.  Even though TRUE lost, he was nothing but smiles.  This is the way I will remember Cotsy, always smiling and with a kind word for everybody.  No matter where I saw him, he was always smiling and happy.
    On December 1st this year, Cotsy was asked to sub again, this time for Aware against Hertz.  The first period wasn't so good for Aware, but they started making a come back in the second period.  With about 2 minutes left in the second period, Aomsin, one of the refs, came up to me and asked me if there was another goalie available because a goalie was hurt.  I quickly looked at both goalies and both seemed OK, so I asked who was hurt, and he told me Cotsy was hurt.  I went over to John, to find out if there were any other goalies.  He said no as the other two goalies from the earlier game had already left.  The end of the period sounded, and I called over the Jeremy, and John, Jeremy and I talked about it and came to a conclusion.  I could see Cotsy was on his knees.  We called Scotty over and explained what was going on.  He knew that Cotsy was hurt, and we explained his options, and he asked if they could go with 6 skaters instead of dressing somebody in goalie equipment, which was fine, so he went and explained it to his team, Aware.  While we were talking to Scotty, Aomsin assisted Cotsy to the Hertz bench.  Aomsin then came over to us and explained that Cotsy was having chest pains.  I got Brad, who is trained as a first responder and told him, then I told the rink staff to call the hospital.  I'm not going to go into all the details, but this is the most helpless I've felt in my life.  I didn't like this feeling.  Cotsy was rushed to the hospital with Scotty and John going with him.
    I got home that night with a bad feeling, but I spoke to Wolf and asked him to take care of Cotsy and his family.  I found out about 12:30 a.m. that Cotsy didn't make it. He had suffered a heart attack and died at the hospital.  I was floored.  @hirondelle held me while I cried.  I'm so glad she was there, I don't know what I would have done without her.  I decided to go to work the next day, but I wasn't worth a shit.  Thai funeral services last a week and often groups of friends or family will take on the role of host on certain days.  The SHL the Flying Farangs asked for a day and were given Tuesday and so on that day, all the hockey players to come in either wearing something dark SHL or Flying Farangs.  He was so loved, we had so many hockey players come to services.  I think his family appreciative that we came, and could feel the love we had for him. 
    I had shinny on Thursday, which was my first time back to the rink since Cotsy passed away.  That was really hard just walking into the rink.  I'm so glad that @hirondelle came with me.  There was such a subdued feeling in the rink. People were really down, but we all knew it needed to be done, and we knew that Cotsy would want us to get together to play the game he loved.  We started with a moment of silence to show respect to Cotsy and then we started the game.  As the game went on, people seemed to feel a little better.  It was very healing for our hearts.  There was more talk in the locker room after, not the normal amount of talk, but more than before the game.  
    Cotsy, you were loved, and we will miss you.  Get a shutout for me in that rink in the sky.
    Always Remember:  Live and love for today for we don't know what tomorrow will bring.
  17. Timberwolf
    Well, yesterday was pretty good. Only had a few times where I really craved a cigarette, was a little sore from working out the day before with my buddy, and I got a lot of work done on the new thing for The Northlands.


    Today I go back to work. But how am I doing?  Well, I feel good about getting things done with the new thing for The Northlands, I'm feeling a little bit more sore from working out, lol. It usually takes two days. But I feel frustrated and full of anxiety. Everything our cleaning lady does, seems to drive me up a wall. I mean, from the beginning, she wasn't like one of my favorite people, but today it just seems a lot worse than normal. Now, I know this has to do with quitting smoking. I haven't snapped at her or anything, and I'm trying to be good, but sometimes it's really hard. To give an example, I was looking for some scissors so I could cut open the packaging of the patch I'm using to help me stop smoking, but the scissors weren't where they were supposed to be, and they weren't where they have been. so I got a little upset about it, and made a really snide cutting comment about not wanting to wear the patch anyway, thinking she had moved the scissors, she tends to move things, and here @hirondelle had actually moved them. Now I feel bad about making the comment, not only because it was @hirondelle who moved the scissors, but also because I know it's the way I'm feeling because of quitting smoking. It's nobody's fault I'm all wound up tighter than shit on the inside. I just need to find a way to release it some how without picking up another cigarette.


    Hopefully it will start getting easier again, lol.
  18. Timberwolf
    Well, let's see. I would have to day that day 3 has been the worst so far. Yesterday started off really good, and the whole day was good. It was some thing that happened at night that really kind of drove me crazy, but I soon mellowed back out.


    Now for today? I've been great so far. Yes, I'm still using my patch, and I have 2 more patches left, but I'm feeling really good about it. I haven't had any issues or anxiety attacks at all today. As of right now, I'm feeling really strong about quitting smoking. Now I will check in again in 3 days, lol, and let you know how it's going.


    And now I can keep you all updated with what's going on with @hirondelle also. She has gone 2 days now with out a patch or the nicotine gum. I'm really proud of her! She is amazing.


    Now I just have to remember as time goes on that I just can't think, "Oh, I can have just this one", or, "Eh, we're on holiday/vacation, I can just have a pack and stop again when the holiday/vacation is over." That's kind of what happened the last time and well.... It just doesn't work that way. It's just like any other drug, when you stop, you have to stop. If you start again, even for just a taste, you get hooked again.


    This time, I'm done for good! Or at least that's my plan.


    Thanks for listening to my rambling on.
  19. Timberwolf
    Well, what do you know. It's been 9 days, and I'm feeling really good! It's also been 3 days with out using the patch. I haven't had any anxiety attacks at all. The only problems I'm having about now is that one, I'm starting to feel like I can't get enough breath sometimes, because my lungs are starting to heal back up, sometimes it takes me forever to get to sleep, and I have so much energy. There are times that I feel like I'm just bouncing off the walls. Like right now, I'm sitting here, it's 4:15 in the after noon, @hirondelle is on her way home from work, and I'm seriously bouncing in my chair. It's not like I'm nervous or anything. It actually feels like when I was in school (way before I started smoking) and I had all this energy I just had to do something, so I usually just bounced my foot or shook my leg or something. Would drive the people around me crazy, lol, but I can't help it. I don't know why it was like that then, and I don't know why it is like it is now, lol. But I do know I'm feeling much better, and when I do finally sleep, lol, I feel like I sleep more sound. And as for the feeling a bit short of breath, I just have to make sure to breathe deeper then I used to when I was smoking, which is actually a good thing, because it puts more oxygen into my system, lol, but it does make me bounce around a bit more, lol.


    So the update is that It's been 9 days and no smoking and 3 days with no patch, so I'm feeling great!! I won't update you as much now, lol, as I have been, but I will try to update you about this about once a week until I get bored with writing about not smoking, but I will try to start writing more blog posts (again).


    Thank you all for reading. I know there are a number of you, and you don't make comments, but that's OK. Thank you for reading.
  20. Timberwolf
    As most people do, I have a bucket list.  Things in my bucket list are things like, go to Japan, go to Okinawa, go sky diving, learn to surf, and go scuba diving.  Over the weekend of March 1st, 2019, I got a chance to cross something off of my bucket list.  This was to go scuba diving.
    Back in January, I was talking to a friend of mine, Colin, a fellow American living here in Bangkok.  We were talking, and he told me how go goes scuba diving.  I mentioned that it scuba diving was one of the things I've always wanted to try.  Colin looked at me and said I should try what's called a Try Dive.  What that is, is you a dive instructor teaches you some of the very very basics of diving, then you go out and you do one shallow dive, and one dive a little bit deeper.  This sounded really go to me, but I said I would think about it.  A few weeks later, and I had heard that Colin was really excited to go diving with me, which got me excited about it.  I started to think about it seriously.  So after discussing it with Tracy, we decided we would do it.  Tracy would sit on the boat with Colin's girlfriend and Colin, Stef and I would all go out.
    About two (2) weeks before we went, I was contacted by a guy named Alex that does dive training.  He asked me a few questions, which were pretty easy.  After talking to him for a few minutes on the phone, he told me that I will have to fill out a questionnaire, which was no big deal.  Alex also explained a little bit about the dive to me, it's called Discover Scuba Diving.  He gave me the option doing the basics on the boat and in the sea, or I could meet him at his place, and we could go over the basics and go in the pool for clearing my regulator and my mask.  I chose to go to his place before the dive so it would be one less thing I had to think about before the dive.
    So I arrived at my dive instructor's, Chris, condo.  He came down and got me and brought me up to his place.  The first thing he showed me was called a Buoyancy Control Device (BCD).  Basically, the BCD is a vest for diving.  There are straps on the back of the BCD to hold the air tank in place, there are also areas on the vest to clip pouches/lights/cameras or whatever you want to connect there.  There is also a high pressure hose connector to connect your air tank to your vest for the air bladders (buoyancy), and lots of emergency release valves.  When diving, you want to keep your BCD deflated, and not really use it to control your buoyancy, you want to use your breath to control your buoyancy.  When you're on the surface, you use your BCD to keep you on the surface. 
    The next thing I learned about was the regulator.  The different parts of the regulator are:
    First Stage - Which you connect to your air tank Console - Which you use to tell how much air you have in your tank and your depth Low Pressure Hose- which you connect to your BCD so you can fill it with air when needed. Regulator - Which is what you use to breath Octopus - Which is your second breather, which is usually yellow. Chris then explained to me how to clear my regulator when in the water, which is, you put the regulator back in your mouth and then blow out through it with a longish exhale, which will force any water out of it.  
    Next up was the diving fins, which he explained how to easily put on and how to take off before getting out of the water.
    The last thing he showed me was the diving mask.  With this, Chris showed me how to check the fit of the mask.  To do that, you place the mask against your face and inhale with your nose, which will create a suction, and the mask should stick to your face for a couple of seconds, if it fits properly.  Then Chris explained to me how to clear water from the mask, because sometimes, masks get water in them.  What you do, is take a deep breath from your regulator, hold the top of the mask against your face, and blow out through your nose.  This causes your mask to fill with air, and it wants to escape from the top, but since it can't, it pushes down, forcing the water out the bottom of the mask.  
    Once we did all this, Chris took me out to his condo's pool so I could show him clearing my mask and also clearing my regulator, using a snorkel instead.  Down at the pool Chris explained things to me again, and about how to make it so your mask doesn't fog up, you could use anti-fog, you could use spit, or you could use baby shampoo.  Baby shampoo??  I know right, but he said it works great, which I will explain later.
    After this, he explained to me how to jump into the water with the tank on my back, you are standing on the diving platform at the back of the boat, and you take a big step out away from the boat.  It has to be a big step, because you need to clear the tank from the diving platform.  Once in the water, Chris explained to me what some of the main hand signals are. 
    OK - touch the index finger to the thumb in a circle and the rest of the fingers pointed up Ascend - thumb pointing up Descend - thumb pointing down Something wrong - hand horizontal flat and rock thumb to pinky and back and then point to what is wrong. Direction - use your whole hand to point in the direction, fingers first Buddy up - put index fingers together side by side Split up - split side by side index finger apart Shark - make a fin with your hand and place on your head Trigger fish - make a gun with your hand Turtle - place one hand on the other hand, palm to back of hand and lace your fingers together Chris then showed me how to let water into my mask and then clear it, and had me repeat it, then filled the mask full of water and then cleared it, he demoed and I followed.  We did these a couple of time, until I could do it consistently.
    After this, Chris showed me how to clear my regulator, replacing the regulator with the snorkel.  This reminded me of when I was a kit and I tried using a snorkel.  I never really like them because they always seemed to fill with water on me or they seemed so hard to breath through.  I hoped that breathing through the regulator would be easier.
    The last thing Chris wanted me to do for the day was to show re-pressurizing my ears, so we went down the toe bottom of the pool and I pinched my nose and gave a slight blow to re-pressurize my ears.  Sorted, all ready for Saturday!
    Come Friday night, we met Stef at her condo and then we met up with Colin and Emma and we all climbed into the SUV with our bags and headed out to Pattaya, which we arrived at roughly about 2 a.m., checked into our crazy room (really should have taken some pictures of it as it was really cool and interesting.  They had a stage and pole for pole dancing right in the room, and tub with a jacuzzi in it, dancing lights, karaoke machine, three (3) TVs in the room, one with regular porn on it, one with ladyboy porn and the last one was turned off.  We actually didn't waste a lot of time as we had to be up in a few hours to meet the Divemaster, Dave, and my instructor, Chris.  We were all up and heading to the cafe at about eight, where we all got some coffee and something to eat.  I had a blueberry danish, one of my favorite things.  Chris and Dave met us at the cafe.  After we all ate, we headed off to the boat.  Once the rest of the other party showed up, we got underway.  
    On our way to the dive site, I talked to Chris and he we went over again the things I needed to know, clearing my regulator, clearing my mask, and then we set up my dive equipment.  Chris showed me how to choose a tank that has been filled, and then I had to show Chris that I remember how to do all of this.  Then he had me inflate my BCD to show me that you can't over fill it, there are safety releases that will automatically release any extra air.  Once my BCD and regulator were all set up on the tank, he showed me how to see if my regulator was OK and see if there were any smells coming from the air in the tank, and everything was ok.  After that, I went back up onto the top deck to be with the rest of my group.
    The water was really choppy this day, and for the first time in my life, I started to feel a bit sick.  I controlled it with my breathing pretty well.  When we got to our dive site, I met Chris down at the prepping area and started to get ready, putting my wetsuit on and my diving gear.  Once I was all set, I stood there, talking to Chris about some last second things, and sadly, I just couldn't hold my breakfast down, and I got sick over the side of the boat.  I felt horrible, but everybody kept telling me that I will feel much better once I'm in the water, so once I rinsed my mouth out, I walked over to the dive deck, Chris jumped in, I put my flippers on and I jumped in.
    Once in the water, it was a lot better on the surface, but it was still quite rough, but no where near as bad as on the boat.  Once in the water, we defogged our masks, cleared our regulators and checked in the water.  One of the bad things, is there were a lot of sea urchins on the bed, so we had to swim around on the surface a bit to find a place that didn't have as many urchins.  Once we found a place, we put our masks on, our regulators in and released all the air from our BCDs, and started sinking.  I only went a little way under the water, so Chris had to add more weight to my weight belt, and then we sank down to the sea bed.  I think at that part, we were at about three (3) or four (4) meters deep.  Once there, I showed that I could clear my mask, took me 2 times, but actually not a problem.  After that, I had to clear my regulator, which is, so I took a deep breath, pulled my regulator out of my mouth, help the nozzle up so all the air came out, then put the regulator back in my mouth and exhaled.  Easy.  Next he had me find my regulator, which is I had to take a deep breath, take my regulator our, put it behind me and release it.  Then I had to swing my right arm around, slowly backwards in windmill motion and hook the regulator with my arm and bring my arm all the way around so the regulator is in front of my body, then grab the regulator and clear the regulator.  Pretty simple stuff.  Then I had to make my body horizontal, and breathe in and out normal and try balance my body in the water, then breathe in to raise my body, and out to lower my body.
    Once I got this down, we started swimming around.  Talk about an amazing feeling!  We swam over some coral, saw quite a few urchins, some some interesting fish, and then saw this really really amazingly blue fish, which I think is called a Blue Damsel.  It kind of looked like the fish off to the right of this paragraph.  I was shocked by how blue it was.  While were were swimming around, we saw a squirt gun, some rope, and only one little pice of trash, which Chris picked up.
    We spent about forty (40) minutes under water, when Chris signaled that we should start heading for the surface.  At this point, he inflated his safety sausage, and then headed up to the first holding point, which is about 5m, and sat there for a few minutes, then we headed to the surface and inflated our BCD.  The water seemed to have gotten rougher, but that could have just been in comparison to what it was like under the surface.  Also, Stef, Colin and their group had surfaced as well.  We all swam to the lifesaver ring on the rope and started working our way to the boat.  We had to wait for the waves to settle a bit for each person before we climbed out.  Once out of the water, I worked my way over to tank rack and dropped off my my tank, took off my BCD, then my mask.  
    All in all, it was an amazing dive, and I found out that I had gone down to about seven (7) meters.  Shortly after being back on the boat, they served lunch, but I started feeling sick again, so I decided not to eat.  While I was talking to Dave on the top deck, I felt like I was going to get sick again, so I worked my way down to the lower deck to hang out the window, just in case.  Although I didn't get sick, I didn't feel much better by the time we reached the next dive site, and I didn't feel well enough to get back in the water.  I did eventually take one of the sea sickness pills, but it didn't take effect soon enough for me to get in the water.  I ended up laying down on one of the chairs on the top deck and taking a nap, which I felt loads better after I work up.  
    After this, I really want to do my Open Water Certification, which means I can go down to eighteen (18) meters and my Advanced Open Water Certification, which means I can go deeper, thirty (30) meters and other options.  I absolutely loved it.
     
    Always Remember: If you have a bucket list, you should start doing the things on your bucket list now!
  21. Timberwolf
    COVID-19, when it first comes to Thailand. When it was first talked about, Wolf and Goddess were going to Chiang Mai for Wolf to play in an ice hockey tournament. They talk about how people were reacting and what they did while in Chiang Mai. They also talk about coming back to Bangkok and what it was like back in Bangkok. Goddess expresses her fears for when Wolf had to have knee surgery right before there was a lock down in Thailand. They talk about a funny experience that Wolf had during the lockdown. Goddess expresses the fears she still had (at the time of recording this episode) and Wolf reassures her that they will be together.
     
     
  24. Timberwolf
    Hey all. I know I've kind of missed a little on keeping up with my writing, but I have been a bit distracted.


    One of the small distractions has been my own Visa for Thailand. It's become a bit of a rig-a-maroll. Before, all I needed was a letter from the British Consulate, but things have recently changed. As I am an American working for the British Council, I now need to go to the American Consulate and get a letter from them stating that I am working for the British Council. Now the American Consulate understandably doesn't want anything to do with this, and thinks that they should be removed from the circle, but the Thai Immigration doesn't agree. So the first letter I got, my boss's, boss's boss (John) who is friends with the American Consulate General, got the letter for me. But John isn't there any more. He has been transferred as his 4 years in a position are up, and he needed to move to another country. For my second letter, I needed to go to the American Consulate and get the letter myself. The American Consulate General was on vacation and didn't inform anybody about this letter I was supposed to be getting, so I didn't get the letter the first time I went, that's when the American Consulate informed me that they didn't know what the letter was about, and didn't want to do the letter. Now @hirondelle contacted John, and the American Consulate to let them all know what was going on. The American Consulate informed me that they wanted me to come back in to get a notarized affidavit instead of the letter. This affidavit, I would have to fill out myself, and swear that it was all true and correct, which is no big deal. But I didn't know I was supposed to put on the affidavit a request to extend my Visa. Nobody told me this and Thai Immigration decided that my letter wouldn't do. So I had to do another Visa trip to Malaysia, with out @hirondelle again.


    The second distraction has been that I got a new xbox and have been playing a lot of Smackdown vs. Raw, lol. I've created a wrestler called Mr. Destroyer that has his own entrance music (Destroyer by Twisted Sister) and I have won the U.S. Title, the Intercontinental Title, the ECW title, The World Tag Team Titles, the WWE Heavy Weight Title, and the WWE World Title (my favorite as Ric Flair held it for such a long time!).


    I will try to get back to writing here again.


    Talk to you soon.
  25. Timberwolf
    This has been an interesting and exciting year for me.. Things started off with my birthday, where @hirondelle did something really nice for me, and brought me to Hong Kong for the first time, and you can read all about it in Special Birthday Gift.  The next thing was I got to partially fulfill something on my bucket list, and that was to go scuba diving and you can read about that in my Discover Scuba Diving blog post.
    The next big thing this year was that it was discussed, with my daughter, my ex-wife and with @hirondelle, that my daughter was supposed to move out here for a year.  This was quite a task, because we needed to get money for her flight, we needed to get her passport, we needed to get her on her first long haul flight with multiple stops.
    My oldest sister, Danelle, helped us out a lot along the way.  The first thing she did was set up a go fund me account for our family to donate funds for a plane ticket for my daughter, and together, we raised enough money for her plane ticket.
    Before Bretney got her passport, Danelle convinced Dena, my other sister, to join them in coming to Bangkok.
    The next step was to get my daughter to get her passport, which proved to be a little more difficult as her rides to the place to do the paperwork for her passport.  Eventually, Danelle flew from Minnesota to Pennsylvania to help Bretney get her passport.
    A few weeks later, Bretney sent me a message letting me know that she got her passport.  Everybody was exciting about this.  It wasn't long after this, that Bretney sent me a message asking me if it was ok that she only spent two (2) weeks here, for which I told her it was more than OK, that she could stay as long as she wanted, be it two (2) weeks, two (2) months, six (6) months or a year, doesn't matter.
    To make things even more exciting, I was asked to play for the Flying Farangs in an old timers tournament here at the same time they were arriving.  The good thing is, the timing of their flight arriving lined up really well with my games.  After I finished my first game on Thursday, March 28th, and @hirondelle and I headed off to the airport to meet everybody.  I was so excited and happy when I saw them coming towards us.  Danelle was the first one to give me a big hug, then Dena, and they Bretney.  I couldn't believe it, they were finally here!  Friday night, they got to come see me play in the tournament, and we won, but in our semifinal math-up on Saturday morning, we lost out, oh well.  Next time.  Friday afternoon, I took Bretney to my hair stylist so she could get the haircut that she wanted.  
    Danelle and Gen immediately headed out to Phuket, Vietnam and Cambodia for five (5) days, and after the tournament, @hirondelle and I took Dena and Bretney to Koh Samet.  I had arranged for a car to pick us up at 9:00 in the morning on Sunday.  We all piled in the car and headed off to Pattaya four (4) hours later, we arrived at the pier to get a speedboat to take us to our resort on Koh Samat.  As far as I know, this was a fist for Bretney, and she really seemed to enjoy the boat trip over.
    Our first day there, Bretney and I took a walk up the beach and just chatted.  We found a shop and bought some water, and decided to walk back up the road, but changed our mind and walked back up the beach..  After relaxing a bit, we had a lovely dinner on the beach.  For our second day, we got up relatively early and decided to go swimming.  Bretney didn't join us the first day, because she forgot to bring her swimsuit, but @hirondelle, Dena and I went swimming.  Afterwards, we wandered up the beach and found a place for Dena and I to get a foot massage on the beach.  That was really nice.  We hung out at this portion of beach for a bit while we all chatted and relaxed.  All in all, we had a great time at the beach.
    Coming back from the beach was quite interesting to say the least.  We caught the boat back to the mainland, and we had to wait, which wasn't bad.  Once the driver arrived, we piled into his car, which happened to be smaller than the car we went out in, but it's OK, we all fit with our bags.  The problem came in, when we got close to home, the driver missed our exit.  We were like five (5) minutes from our house.  then he took an exit to get us turned around and missed again, and turned around again, and missed again.  He finally got to a place, and I had to take over giving directions.  It was kind of funny, but frustrating all at the same time.
    The next night, we met Danelle and her friend Gen for dinner at one of our favorite local places called Flow Run.  Amazing food, we love it.  We had a great dinner, and we planned our next adventure.  Our plan was to go to the summer palace, which is on the way to Ayutthaya, which is a city in Thailand that has these amazing temple ruins, finished off with a boat ride back to Bangkok, with them providing a late lunch/early dinner.  At one of the temples in Ayutthaya, I was blessed by monk, which I always do when we do this trip.  It feels good to have it done.  I actually went into two temples to get blessed.  In the second temple, the monk there is a little bit crazy, and he hit me in the top of the head when giving me my blessing.  I guess it was to make the blessing stick or something.  LOL. 
    On another day, we went to Chatuchack Weekend Market.  This was a lot of fun, and we did some souvenir shopping for everybody.  This is a great place for that.  The bad thing about it is that it's about 90% outside, so you can get really hot really fast.  We decided to have lunch inside J.J. Mall, which is a mall right next door to Chatuchack market.  Once we finished eating, Danelle, Dena, Bretney and I all went to get foot massages in the basement of the mall at one of my favorite places. 
    All in all, my family was here for roughly two (2) weeks.  It was awesome having them here.  It was the second time for my one sister, Danelle, to be here, and the first time for my other sister, Dena, and my daughter, Bretney to be here in Thailand.  
    Well, that's all for now.  
    Always Remember: Love your family as they are the only ones you've got.

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