Timberwolf

Pounces, hugs and licks Great to have you back @Redly! Missed you!

Pounces, hugs and licks So glad you made it back. We've miss you as well.

Pounces hugs and licks Welcome back brother!

LOL, you don't happen to have the old emotes? LOL

So, as some of you may know, I love hockey. I've actually recently started playing shinny (pick up) hockey here in Bangkok. We also have 2 leagues here. One of which I do that Admin for, the Siam Hockey League (SHL), and the other, I hope to play for next year, the Bangkok Ice Hockey League (BIHL). When it comes to the NHL, I have three (3) teams that I like: Minnesota Wild Winnipeg Jets New York Rangers I also have two (2) teams that I just hate. One stems from an old NHL rivalry, and the other, is just well, if you know anything about the NHL, you might understand. Chicago Blackhawks - old rivalry Dallas Stars - moved from Minnesota to Dallas and kept our name. What about you? Let me know.

Yes, we sure as hell did miss it. A few people followed us over to the Northlands Blog, but I was never really happy with it, and the forum on it was terrible, and I just didn't like posting in there. There was just something about this place. @hirondelleand I loved it so much. I'll write a blog post about it sometime. Love you all!

You know what to do...... 1

Is my Air

Welcome back home. We're so glad that you decided to come back. We have missed you something fierce. If you're new here, that's awesome! We're so happy to have you here! Feel free to post here and let us know if you've changed your name, who you are, where you're from, all the interesting little bits you want to share. I'll start..... I'm Timberwolf, T-wolf, Wolf, Dom. I'm originally from Minnesota, but I've lived all over the U.S., I've lived in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and right now, I'm living in Bangkok, Thailand with my Air, The Goddess, @hirondelle. We are looking forward to hearing all about you and spending time with you.

I remember this fondly. Where did you find it???

Pounces, hugs and licks Long time no chat! I've missed you! Things are going good. I'm working full time, I do admin duties for a local hockey league, a whole of things to go with that, lol, I'm podcasting, I do video news for the local hockey league, I just started taichi again, and really enjoyed it, and I've started playing hockey again (after 28 years!!). What's up with you??

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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.

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!

So @hirondelle told me around Christmastime that she wanted to buy my next tattoo for me for my birthday. So I finally got some free time, and put together an image that I was very happy with. When you look the gallery pictures for this blog post, it will be the one titled original. They are great! The lady that did the samurai on my right arm is the same lady that did my new tattoo. Her name is Poo. Her husband, Leck New York, does the big back and body pieces. They both are amazing artists. Now we went in on Tuesday to our tattoo shop by the name of Sak Lai Tattoo Studio. Poo too the image and said she was going to turn the outer circle more into a brush stroke, because she new the idea I was going for. I think she did a great job with that. Now to describe my tattoo. The outer circle is called a Zen Circle. It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To me it represents that nothing is perfect. Which to me is life. You just do the best you can, which again is life. The inner image, you all know, it's a Yin and Yang. To me this represents the two sides to everything. You have to look at both sides, listen to both sides and you can't have one with out the other... in my opinion. Well, that's about it. Hope you all like it.

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.

Hey all, I'd just like to keep you posted on what's going on with The Northlands. I will continue to post an update in the Forum News area, but I will also post in here. To start with, I've updated the blogs. The software for the blogs is supposed to be more streamlined and runs smoother and fit better with IP.Boards 3.1.4. If I see anything that is totally amazing going on with the blogs, I will let you know. Also, I tested out a thing that put the Active User list (who's online) over on the side tab. It didn't really look right there. Everything looked all crammed in, and it really looked strange looking at the bottom of the page and not seeing the Active User list down there. So, I just removed it. Now, About a month ago or so, I added a facebook like button to the bottom of threads. I told you about that before in the Forum News area, and we had some issues with the image that was being sent to facebook. Well, I've gotten that sorted out, and I've added another button to the bottom of the page (see image below): On the left hand side, you see the facebook like button, and now on the right, you will see the tweet button so know you can tweet a thread if you like it. There is still the one thing I talked about before, that I'm still working on, that will make things smother for signing in from the main page. We're adding what's called IP.Content, which is like what we have now, but it's fully integrated with the board, so we won't have the issue of people trying to sign in like they did before. And everything will be linked, and it will pull information right from the board and things like that. That's going to take a lot of work, but I'm really looking for to working with it. There is also a lot of things I'm looking at from the Invision Power Community, but you will just have to wait and see what's coming with that.

I have a lot to say and I will try to break this up into sections for you, lol. Please enjoy the read. My birthday Well, let's see. Today is my birthday and I got some lovely well wishes for so many people today. I feel truly loved. In my 40 years on this earth, I have met so many amazing people. Some have just traveled in and out of it, some have traveled in and out and back in again, some have even stuck around awhile. Some of you I have met in real life first and have gotten back into touch again through the wonders of the internet. Some I've met online and have had the wonderful opportunity to meet in real life. And other still, I've met online and hope to one day meet in real life. And there are those of you that are my real life family that I talk to on the phone or skype or emails or facebook. I consider each and everyone of you a member of my family. You all mean so much to me and I hope to keep all in my life in one way or another. I love you all! Thank you so much for being apart of my life and enriching it in ways you could never know. And thank you all for your birthday wishes. Non Smoking Well, it's now been 17 days with no cigarette and 11 days with no patch. I'm feeling great. I no longer feel like I'm dying when I walk up a lot of steps, I have more energy then I've had in a very long time, and I'm sleeping so much better then I did when I was smoking. One of the nice things about not smoking is the fact that when I go to bed at night, I can now sleep on my back. I love sleeping on my back. When I was smoking, I couldn't lay on my back to go to sleep. If I tried that, I started to get sick to my stomach like I was on one of those spinning rides (which I happen to love). But now that I've stopped smoking, I can fall asleep on my back again and I love it! I also love the fact that when I wake up in the morning, I don't feel the need to have a smoke just to get going. It's so nice! And, as of right now, it's to the point that when I smell a cigarette, I don't have those bad cravings for them. And there are times that when I smell somebody after they've had a smoke, they smell of stale smoke just kind of hangs on them, and I feel kind of bad knowing that I used to smell like that. I don't ever want to smoke again. Life This is only partially really considered life. The gift @hirondelle is giving me for my birthday this year is she is buying me a tattoo. I've put a lot of thought into this tattoo and the type of image that I want. It's a combined zen circle and ying & yang. I'm really excited to have it done. I can't wait! When I have it done, I will make sure to have pictures taken of it and post them here. More things to deal with life: In February, we are going up to Chiang Mai for a few days. I will be relaxing for these days while my love will have to work. Sorry love, but I'm looking forward to the time off. Also, in the beginning of March, I will be making a visa run (I hate these) but I will be going back onto a dependents visa which is a good thing. And the final thing for the life section of this post, we are headed to the States for the first 2 weeks of April. @hirondelle is going to finally be able to meet my kids! I'm really excited for this to happen. Also, we will be driving to New York, so she can meet my father, one of my sister and my nephew. Then we will be driving to Minnesota so she can meet the rest of my family. That's going to be so awesome! I'm really looking forward to that. Teaching A teacher. How I love it! Right now, I'm working like a buffalo teaching a lot. In the mornings right now, I'm teaching 15 five year olds for 3 hours. We are running a special camp called Around The World in 10 days where we teach them a little bit about 9 different countries. They have a little passport that they made up, and a photo album to put the pictures they will cut out for the places "they have visited". They love it so far, and I've really enjoyed teaching them. This past Friday, I taught them for 5 hours. 3 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon. I will be doing this again tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. I will also be teaching my normal classes, lol, so I'm teaching a hell of a lot right now and honestly, I'm kind of beat, so I'm looking forward to my time off in February. But don't get me wrong. I love teaching. Just a little tired about now. Well, I think that's about all for right now. As things come up, I will try to keep you all posted. Thanks for reading. Stay safe and enjoy life! And most of all, try not to worry about how somebody else is thinking about you. It will just cause you head and heart ache. Worry about making yourself happy! hugs and licks to all

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.

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.

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.

Well, as some of you have read, @hirondelle and I have decided on a few things for New Years. First and foremost, is that we plan on quitting smoking. I would also like to get back into shape, bring my weight back down to what I think it should be, and also start studying martial arts again. I'm going to try and keep a bit of a travel log of how things go here. As of today, we have quit smoking. I always forget how hard the first day is. So what I'm trying to do is keep my mind busy by doing a few different things. I'm listening to some good music, working on some new things for The Northlands, and a friend of ours is coming down and he would like to go to this open park and work out a little bit. So this here is the start of things. Wish us luck.

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.