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Timberwolf

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  1. Timberwolf

    Special Birthday Gift

    By Timberwolf,

    This year for my birthday, Tracy decided to do something really special for me.  See, Tracy's work was having her go to Hong Kong for a work.  She would have to fly out on Monday the 14th, and she asked me if I wanted to fly out on that Thursday, my birthday.  I'd never been to Hong Kong, but it's one of those places I wanted to visit.  I was really excited about this. 
    After we had agreed on this, Tracy asked me if I would be OK if we decided to invite our friend, Stef, to go with me.  So Stef would fly out with me on Thursday night, and we would spend the rest of Thursday night together, and half of Friday, until Tracy finished work in the afternoon, then we would spend the rest of Friday together and all of Saturday and fly back together on Sunday.
    I was all for this, and excited, and Tracy told me she was also very excited about this, so we decided to bring this up to Stef.  When we brought this up to Stef, she was also very excited about it, which made it more exciting for us.
    So the big day arrives.  My birthday.  I finished work early, and headed home to do the last minute things I needed to do before I headed to the airport.  At about four o'clock, I head out for the airport.  On the way there, I met Stef, and we went to the airport together.  While we waiting for our flight, we had shared a couple of jogs of beer and she gave me a lovely birthday card.
    Next up was flight to Hong Kong.  It's not a long flight, only about two and a half hours.  Once we got going, I started watching the movie Papillon (2017).  It was a really good movie, but I didn't have time to watch the whole movie, but I got to watch the last part of it on the way back.
    We arrived in Hong Kong at about 10:30, and made it to the trains before they stopped running, we eventually made it to the area of our hotel, then we had to find our hotel.  LOL.  Quite an interesting journey at that time of night, but it was fun walking around Hong Kong at that time of night.
    When we got up on Friday morning, we headed out to find breakfast.  We walked around Hong Kong for a bit, enjoying the city for my first tie, taking some pictures of interesting things that I saw.  We finally found a place for breakfast and had a really good breakfast.  After breakfast, Stef and I decided to walk around Hong Kong some more so she could show me around Hong Kong as it was my first time.  We saw some really interesting shaped/styled buildings.  There was this one that looked like it would topple over if there was a strong wind.
    I also saw this building that looked like it was made of puzzle pieces, which was really cool.
     And next to this building was a gold building.
    In our wanderings, Stef took me to Hong Kong Park which has some really cool things.  In the outdoors bit, it had some ponds with waterfalls, but then they also had this conservatory in the park.  In side this conservatory, they had some really cool things and a few funny things.  They had a few different rooms areas.  One of the areas was the arid area, and they had these funny little statues in there, which I had to take pictures of, you can find those in the Hong Kong 2019 Gallery.  Outside, we got a closer look at the ponds and waterfalls, and they flowed from one pond to another.  At the lower ponds, they had koi fish and so many turtles.
    After we finished at the the Hong Kong Park, we wandered around Hong Kong a little bit, looking for a bank so I could change money from Thai Baht to Hong Kong Dollars.  All the banks we went to wouldn't exchange the money for me unless I had an account with them.  We did eventually find a currency exchange so I could change my money. 

    It was about this time that Tracy messaged us to let us know that she had finished work and that she was going to go to the hotel that her work had booked her in, check out and meet us at our hotel, so Stef and I hopped onto the tram and headed back to the hotel.  One of the cool things about the trams in Hong Kong is that they look so old.  It's like thrown back about 40 years or so.  Once we got back to the hotel and met up with Tracy, we brought her suitcase up to the room and headed out.
    There was a "Christmas" fair that was going on, but it had been extended to Chinese New Years, so it was still going on when we got there, so we decided to go and check it out.  The fair was situated near the ferris wheel that Hong Kong has which is like the London Eye, the only difference is, it isn't big enough for you to stand up in and you are supposed to remain seated for the whole ride.  I took quite a few pictures from the ferris wheel that you can find in the photo gallery for this blog post.
    After the ferris wheel ride, we decided that since we are at a fair, we needed to get hotdogs and beer, so we found a stand where we could get hotdogs and a different stand where we could get beer.  The bad thing was, we needed to buy tokens to get the beer and the hotdogs, so we went and bought tokens and had beer and hotdogs.  Well, Stef and I had beer, Tracy and a soda.  
    After this, we had some extra tokens so we wandered around looking for things to spend our tokens on.  We found one of the rides, I think it was called White Water Rafting or something like that.  Each boat had four (4) seats, which was perfect for us.  It was a lot of fun.  After that, we decided to head off to get dinner. 
    We decided to have dinner at this Brussels restaurant that mussels.  It was my first time having mussels.  I decided to go with a spicy one that had chorizo sausage, and they were delicious.  Then we headed back to the hotel.
    For Saturday, we decided that we wanted to head over to Kowloon.  To do that, we had to head across Victoria Harbor, so we decided to take the Star Ferry.  I don't know if you know the movie Chungking Express, but it's a movie about this place in Kowloon that is like this apartment complex, with everything you need just in there.  It's actually a really good movie, so it was pretty cool to see the real place.
    While we were in Kowloon, we wanted to check out a couple of sex shops.  I've been to a few in the States, and a few in the UK, so I thought it would be interesting to see what one was like in Hong Kong.  It was packed full of things, and not as spacious as the ones I've been to in the States or in the UK but it was pretty cool.  So many different things.
    After the first shop, we stopped and had lunch, then off to a stationary shop.  Can't pass up a good stationary shop and this was supposed to be one of the best in Hong Kong.  Wow!  Did that have some stuff.  Everything you can imagine stationary wise, for art, Legos, teaching, for learning, games, pens, you name it, it had it!  It was huge.  Like seven (7) floors.  Incredible!  I ended up buying Tracy her birthday gift there.  
    Next up, we decided to find what was a really highly rated shop in Hong Kong, but on the way I saw this, which has lots of rope and lots of bamboo, oh the things I could do with this!   Once we found the shop, it was in a little mall, but it wasn't really that great, but we did see another one, and that was a bit better.
    Once we were finished there, we hopped on the underground and headed back across the harbor to head up to the Peak and have dinner.  We had made a booking through the hotel so we needed to get back.  We hopped into a taxi and he took us up the Peak.  We were a little later than we wanted to be, so we didn't get to explore the Peak very much, but we the view of the night skyline of Hong Kong with the mountains overhead was just incredible!  Then we went to the Peak Restaurant.  I decided to have a steak sandwich that was delicious.  
    Another great day in Hong Kong, so after dinner, we headed back to the hotel for the night.
    Sadly, that was our last night in the hotel, and in the morning, we packed things up and headed for the subway to head to the airport.  For my first trip to Hong Kong, it was amazing and I have to thank both Tracy and Stef for an amazing birthday.
     
    Always Remember: If there is some place that you really want to see, make sure to make the time to it.  You won't regret it.
  2. 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!
  3. Timberwolf

    Polyamory

    By Timberwolf,

    Tracy and I have made some changes to our life and relationship over the past six months.  Well, I would say more in the past year.  Let me start from the beginning.
    About a year ago, Tracy and I decided to explore our kinky side a bit more.  In doing so, we joined a kinky community to get to know others that were already kinky.  We did some research and found out that there was what's called munch.  Basically, a munch is a place for people to meet up at a normal place, like a bar, pub or restaurant.  It's a place for people to feel comfortable and chat about things and get to know each other.  The community was very welcoming, and we met some really interesting people.  Not long after the event, Tracy and I went to England on holiday.  When we got back from England, we went to a couple more munches before we were invited to a party, which wasn't even a kink play party, it was a welcome back party for a friend of the community, at a house of one of the members of the community.  So we arrived, and we were welcome with open arms by the host.  Everybody was very friendly with us, and we made some really good friends that night.  One of those friends was somebody we reacquainted ourselves with, which was Stef.  Of all the people in the community, we started to develop a close friendship with Stef.
    Over the next 6 months, Tracy and I started talking about maybe opening up our marriage, or more to the point, inviting a woman, and try a threesome.  One of the most important things, for the both of us, was that the person we decided to try this with really needed to be attracted to the both, not just me, and not just Tracy, but both.  The one person that we thought would be good for us, if she liked us, was Stef, because we had already built a friendship with her.  During a birthday party at Stef's house, Stef approached me and let me know that if Tracy and I wanted to, she would like to play with us.  A little later in the night, Stef also talked to Tracy about.  She told us how she thought both Tracy and I were cool and how much she liked us.
    After the party, Tracy and I went home and we talked about it a little bit.  Both of us were quite excited by the idea, but we made sure not to make any decisions then, and went to bed and let things settle in our head.  The next day we talked about it off and on, and decided that would like to try it.  I contacted Stef, and we made a date.  The original plan was that we were going to have Stef come to our place, but we had some issues, and we moved the date to Stef's place.  We arrived, and Stef's, and had dinner just chatted for quite some time.  Don't worry, I'm not going to give you all the gory details or the play by play.  Let's just say that we had a really good night and if anything, it brought the three of us closer.  Over the next few days and weeks, we talked about it, and decided that we wanted to do it again, but this time, do a weekend thing.  This time, Stef came to our house.  We went to a restaurant near us and had a lovely dinner and talked a lot.  We went back to our place and chatted and got closer.  We spent Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday morning.
    About mid December, I found out that Tracy was going to Hong Kong for work during my birthday, and she asked me if I would like to go, and then a few days later, she asked if we should invite Stef, so when we went to a party at Stef's place, early in the night, we asked Stef if she would join us in the kitchen for a moment, and asked her if she would like to go to Hong Kong with us.  This was a big step for us for a few different reasons.  First, Tracy would already be in Hong Kong, so Stef and I would fly out together.  Second, Tracy would have to stay in the hotel her work paid for on the Thursday night and work on Friday, so Stef and I would spend the night together in the hotel together, alone and part of Friday together alone until Tracy could join us later in the evening.  Stef loved the idea agreed.
    Christmas was fast approaching, and Tracy and I wanted to spend it with Stef, so we asked her if she wanted to have Christmas with us, and she accepted, and we arranged another multi-day.  On Christmas Eve, we went to one of our favorite restaurants, Bourbon Street, which does a Cajun Style Buffet which is just delicious.  Sadly, they made a mistake and didn't have our table that we booked, but they made up for it by putting us in a private area, so it was just the three (3) of us, which was really nice.  After dinner, we got a taxi back to our place and opened gifts.  We spent Christmas Day together, just relaxing and played a really interesting game.  On the 26th, we had a nice breakfast and then Stef went home.
    Also, we weren't just getting together for dates.  If there was a munch or a party, or an art night or something, we would see Stef at these.  Stef also wanted us, and those close to her to meet her parents.  This was a big step for Stef, because although her parents knew she was polyamorous they hadn't met everybody together at one sitting.  We got to meet them and they met everybody and we had a lovely dinner and chatted and got to know them.
    The following Monday, Tracy was off to Hong Kong, and I had until Thursday to get to get things organized in my head to go to Hong Kong with Stef on the following Thursday.  I got approval from my school to leave after lunch on Thursday, so I could take care of any last second things, and at 4:00 pm, I headed off to Makasan Station to meet Stef, and we boarded the Airport Rail Link and headed to the airport together.  Once we were all checked in, we sat down for some snacks and beers and Stef gave me my birthday card with a lovely picture in it.  We boarded the plane and off to Hong Kong.  Once in Hong Kong, things were a bit hectic as we had to find the hotel, but it wasn't too bad, and we checked into the hotel, went to the room relaxed.  The following morning, Stef and I went out and about, and I won't go too much into the Hong Kong trip as you can read all about it in the blog post titled Special Birthday Gift.
    Next up was Stef's birthday, which we celebrated a two in one birthday on Tracy's birthday.  Stef booked a lovely dinner at the Sofitel Rooftop Restaurant where we had mussels for dinner and then we went back to Stef's place for a nice night together.  In February, we had quite a few dates.  First, as I said was Tracy's birthday, then we got together on the on the 8th, we had dinner together on the 14th, with Stef spending the night, and then we had another weekend date near the end of February after the Poly munch.  
    In March, five (5) of us went to Pattaya for a dive weekend.  It was our friend Colin and his girlfriend Emma, Tracy, Stef and I.  It was a lovely weekend and we really enjoyed it.  On March 8th, we had our 6th month anniversary, and we celebrated it together.  We also had a date on the 22nd, which was the Thai Election day, and we jokingly called Erection day.. .well, because obviously.
    When all this started out, we didn't think it would be where we are now.  I think the three (3) of us just thought it would be a night of sex, one time, maybe more if we all enjoyed it.  What we didn't expect was that the three of us would end up falling in love with each other.  It's been an amazing ride, and maybe I will right another post about it when we hit the one year mark.  I'm not sure yet.  We are just playing things by ear, and one of the most important things is that we don't want any of the three of us to change.
    Always Remember:  Always follow your heart, it will never lead you wrong. 
  4. 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.
  6. Timberwolf

    Mr. Davis (NSFW)

    By Timberwolf,

    Before you start reading this story, I do have to make somethings very clear.
     
    This post is very very NSFW Like my other stories, this work is pure fiction The characters in this story are both willing participants This story, in no way, shows that I think men are superior to women.  I fully believe that men and women are equal in all aspects of life and should be treated as such. As this story is NSFW and adult in nature, you read at your own risk, and as such, you cannot hold the writer responsible for your reactions. Feel free to comment and discuss after you have read.  
    While you’re in the other room changing in to your school girl outfit, I organize room to look like an office.
     

    Mr. Davis sat at his desk as he looked over reports on his computer when he heard a knock at the door.  He looked up to see Shelly Stevens, one of his seniors. She was troublesome. “Come in Shelly”, he said.  As she stepped into his office, his eyes travelled up and down her body, taking note of how tight her blouse was and how short her skirt was and he had to suppress his shiver of desire.  When she sat down in the chair in front of his desk, he could see quite far up her legs. Her cough brought him back to her senses. “Stand up Shelly.”
    “Yes sir,” she said as she stood up slowly, looking at him in the eyes.  Once she was fully standing, she lowered her eyes.
    Whew, that’s better, he thought.  “Shelly. I have had a number of complaints about you this term.  You know the rules, for each complaint that I read out, you will count by two.  That is how many cane strokes you will receive. Do you understand Shelly?” he said while his eyes traveled her body.
    She looked up at him and caught his eyes roaming her body and felt her excitement build, “Yes Mr. Davis, I understand,” she responded.
    Mr. Davis looked back to his computer, brings up the file on Shelly.  “You were late to Mr. Erickson’s English class,” he started.
    “But I forgot my books in….” she said as she tried to tried to plead as she looked up at him.
    Mr. Davis looked up with a fire in his eyes.  “Excuse me? I didn’t hear you count,” he said with an edge to his voice.
    Her heart started to race as her excitement built at the sound of his voice and the look in his eyes.  “I’m sorry,” she said as she slowly lowered her eyes. “Two Mr. Davis.”
    Mr. Davis looked back at the file, but not before his eyes traveled her body one more time.  “You skipped Mrs. Agloth’s gym class.”
    “Four Mr. Davis” she said with a slight tremor of excitement in her voice as she wondered how many of these he had.
    As they go through the list, Shelly counts as Mr. Davis lists each offense, both becoming excited at the prospect of what is to come.  Mr. Davis comes to his last item on the list. “Making phone calls during class.”
    Shelly opened her mouth to protest, but decided against it.  “Eighteen Mr. Davis”
    “That’s not good at all Shelly,” he said as he stands up with a bulge in his pants from his erection which drew Shelly’s eyes.  He slowly walked around to the front of the desk to stand in front of her. His eyes again move up and down her body, “This uniform is not to standard.  Your blouse looks too tight. And your skirt, well, it looks too short. Kneel here so we can check.”
    Shelly slowly kneeled down in front of Mr. Davis, bringing her closer to him, her eyes glued to the bulge in his pants which is now at her eye level.  “Your skirt is definitely too short Shelly. How many is that?”
    Shelly licked her lips as she slowly looked up at Mr. Davis before she answered.  “Twenty Mr. Davis” she responded with a horse whisper as she knew the punishment she was about to receive and was incredibly turned on by it.
    “Stand up Shelly and put your elbows on my desk,” Mr Davis said with an edge of excitement to his voice.
    Shelly stood up, slowly leaned over the desk and placed her elbows on.  As she did so, the back hem of her skirt raised up to just below the curve of her ass.  She looked over her shoulder at Mr. Davie, “Like this Mr. Davis?”
    “Exactly like that Shelly,” he said as he reached down, letting his fingers drag up the back of Shelly’s thigh as he moves his fingers up to the hem of Shelly’s skirt, lifting the hem of her skirt up over her ass. “Shelly.  That is very bad. You are not wearing the correct panties,” he said, grabbing hold of her thong and pulling it up, causing Shelly to gasp. He reaches over to his desk, grabbed a pair of scissors and roughly cut Shelly’s thong from her and tossed it aside.
    Using his hand between Shelly’s legs and forced her legs apart with his hands, bringing his hand up, he can feel her excitement already.  He reached over and grabbed the cane. “Count out the strokes Shelly. If you don’t count it, it doesn’t count.”
    “Yes, Mr. Davis”, she gets out before the first strike lands causing her to scream out.  
    Mr. Davis waits a few seconds, but doesn’t her Shelly say one.  “That one doesn’t count Shelly. I will have to do it again” he says and lets another strike land.
    “One Mr. Davis”, she said through clenched teeth.  Before Shelly has a chance to catch her breath, Mr. Davis lands another strike, causing Shelly to gasp.  “Two Mr. Davis”.
    Mr. Davis stroked his fingers over the welts that have started to rise on Shelly’s ass.  This caused a groan to escape Shelly’s lips as she pushed back a little against his fingers. Mr. Davis strokes the cane briefly, causing Shelly’s excitement to rise more.  With another quick strike on to Shelly’s ass, causing a third welt to rise up, Shelly bit her lip to prevent a scream from escaping her. “Three Mr. Davis”. Mr. Davis can feel himself starting to swell.  The fourth strike lands on Shelly’s ass and she pants a little from the intensity of the strike. “Four Mr. Davis.”
    He stroked Shelly’s ass again, he can feel each individual welt, pressing his fingers into them as they move over them causing Shelly to gasp and push against his hand. Mr Davis griped the welts on Shelly’s ass hard, which caused her to groan, which he followed with sliding his fingers up the inside of her thighs, running them along the wet folds of your pussy, which caused a moan to escape Shelly’s lips.
    Mr. Davis let another strike fall on Shelly’s ass, this one harder than the previous four, which caused Shelly to yelp.  “Five Mr. Davis”, which was followed by another strike, “Six Mr. Davis”, followed by another quick strike “Seven Mr. Davis”, followed by a fourth quick strike, “Eight Mr. Davis”, Shelly said with, shaky voice. He placed his palm on her hot ass and he could feel the welts rising from where he just struck her.  He drug his fingers over the welts causing Shelly’s whole body to shake. He reached down to stroke her pussy while he pressed his hard cock against her thigh though he pants. The stroking of his fingers and the pressing of his cock against her caused her body to move and twist with desire.
    Before he loses control, Mr. Davis moved away and removed his fingers from Shelly’s pussy.  With a quick snap of his wrist, he lets another strike land on Shelly welted ass. “Nine Mr. Davis” she said as she tried to control her breathing, another strike falls, “Ten Mr. Davis”, and another, “Eleven Mr. Davis”, and another “Twelve Mr. Davis” Shelly pants out.
    The welts and red stripes looked good to him, he needed to touch them again, stroking his fingers over welts, dragging his fingertips over them over them, pressing his fingers into them, pressing his throbbing cock against her thigh, he reaches down and strokes her hot lips, making her moan and grind against him.  He can’t help but to think how much he is going to enjoy feeling her wet lips wrapped around his cock soon.  
    Mr. Davis swings the cane again, connecting with Shelly’s “Thirteen Mr. Davis” striking again, “Fourteen Mr. Davis” striking one more time “Fifteen Mr. Davis” Shelly said as her voice breaks.
    Mr. Davis couldn’t control himself any more, pressing his hand into the small of Shelly’s back, he went to unbuckle his belt, but struggles with one hand and released Shelly to use both hands.  Shelly quickly turned around and kneeled before and undoes Mr. Davis’s pants and pulls them down with his underwear, grabs Mr. Davis cock and pops it into her mouth. “Oh damn, Shelly. That feels so good” he groaned and he started thrusting into her mouth.
    Before he got over excited, he pulled Shelly’s mouth off his cock, made her stand back up and bend over the desk, positioned the head of his cock against her wet pussy.  “I’m going to fuck you so hard” he growled at her and drove his cock deep into her causing her to scream out in pleasure. Each time he thrust into her, his hips smacked into her freshly caned ass, mixing Shelly’s pain in pleasure throwing her over the edge as wave after wave of orgasm crashed over her.  The intensity of Shelly’s orgasm spurred on Mr. Davis and he started thrusting faster and harder into her, as his orgasm built. Before long, he gripped her hips hard and thrust deep, cuming inside her.
     
  7. 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

    Krabi 2019-2020

    By Timberwolf,

    This year, for New Years, we decided to do something special.  @hirondelle, Stef and I decided to spend the turning of the decade at one of @hirondelle and mine favorite places.  We wanted to go down to Krabi to Railay.  One of the nice things about Railay is that it is on a peninsula where you can walk from the east side to the west side in about 5-10 minutes, so you can get amazing sunrises in the morning, hang out at some awesome beaches and then get an incredible sunset.
    @hirondelle and I have been to Railay two other occasions.  The first time was when @hirondelle took me there 14 years ago before I started working in a school for the first time.  We went there in May, which is the end of the season, so there were very few people.  We stayed at Railay Bay Resort & Spa.  The first time we stayed there, it was so basic.  They had like 3 or rows of cottages/bungalows and a row of multi-level suites.  There was a dirt path that ran down to the beach.  The beach was amazing, and on our second day, we found this lovely little coffee shop that made fresh coffee.  You could hang out there, and if you didn't have something to read, they had a shelf full of books for you to take a look at.  The second time we went, it was in October, which was the end of high season, and we stayed at the same resort, Railay Bay Resort & Spa, but everything changed so much.  the villas were much nicer, and most of the villas had their own private out door jacuzzi.  It was still really nice.  
    This time, when we decided to go, we looked at Railay Bay Resort & Spa, but it was so expensive, we decided to stay at a resort just north of Railay Bay & Spa at a place called Railay Phutawan Resort, which is in the mountains a little bit, which was cool.  They also had a lovely little cliff/mountain that people could learn to climb on, which was pretty cool.  I took a great nighttime photo of it.
    One of the lovely things about staying at Railay, is you can't drive to it.  You have to fly into Krabi town, go to the shore, and get a boat to Railay.  So we arrived at Railay Bay East, and climbed into a trailer attached to a tractor and drove us up to the resort.  When we got up there, our room wasn't quite ready yet, so they had us go up to the bar area, which kind of over looks all of Railay East and West.  Beautiful view.  We sat there for a bit and had a drink and relaxed.
    Our first day in Krabi, we spent just unwinding and recovering from getting up so early for our flight to Krabi.  It was nice though. 
    Our second day, Stef took us to this beach that previously could reach by taking a sea kayak to.  Apparently, they made a walk way from Railay Bay East to this beach just south of Railay Bay East and West.  All I can say, is this is the most packed I've ever seen this beach to be.  I couldn't believe it.  I've not seen this many people on a beach since I'd been to Misquamicut Beach in Rhode Island back in the early 90's.  We did eventually find a nice place under some trees back up from the beach.  Stef and I did have a quick swim in the sea, but Stef was being stung by jellyfish larvae, so we decided to get out. 
    After a bit, we decided to go have some pizza at a place Stef knew about on the East Bay.  We some pizza for lunch and some beers and relaxed.  I got some some great pictures of Stef and @hirondelle while we were at the pizza place.  I tell you, I'm one of the luckiest men in the world.
    After we finished our pizza, Stef wanted to take me to this massage place that she went to the last time she was in Krabi, but it was closed, so we wandered back up East Bay and found another place.  We both got oil massages and they were really good.  After our massages, Stef and I headed back to the hotel to get @hirondelle to go have dinner.  Stef fancied a burger, so we found a place on Walking Street that did burgers with a guy that playing guitar, so we decided to eat there.  The music was decent, but the burgers were kind of shit.  First, they didn't have cheese, and then when we got them, they were really small.  At least I had some great company.  ❤️ 
    The next day, we hung out around the resort mostly, but then in the evening, we decided we wanted to go have pizza at the pizza place again for dinner.  The reason why we decided on the east side, was because there were some Muay Thai fights going on at one of the local bars, and we wanted to go see them.  Once we finished dinner, that's where we went.  We saw a few fights, and they were pretty good.  No knockouts that we saw, but still really good.
    For our fourth day, we walked around a bit, but we had decided to have dinner at Railay Bay Resort & Spa.  When @hirondelle and I stayed here before, it was one of our favorite places to eat, because they had the best food really. and they usually have a great seafood spread.  Sadly, they didn't have have seafood, but we ordered some good food, and I got some great sunset pictures.
    The next day, was our final day.  It was New Years Eve, and our resort said we could book a table at their New Years Eve dinner, so we decided to have dinner at the resort, but I also wanted to try the kra paow burger at our coffee place, so we decided to go there for lunch.  That burger was awesome!  That night, we had dinner at our resort.  The food was really good and after dinner they had a fire show.  The fire show was cool, but the show was done with like teenagers.  Was still cool to watch.
    After that, we worked our way down to the beach to watch the New Years fireworks display.  The three of us hung out and chatted while we waited.  The fireworks were awesome!  I loved them.  Once the firewoks were done, we headed back up to the room.
    The next morning we caught our boat and headed back to Krabi to catch our flight back to Bangkok.
  9. Timberwolf

    Knee Surgery

    By Timberwolf,

    **WARNING – THERE WILL BE SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES OF THE INSIDE OF MY KNEE—WARNING**
     
    So, to start things off, I want to give a bit of a history.  I’ve led a pretty active lifestyle.  I learned how to skate when I was 2 and started playing hockey when I was 4 and I played until I was 18.  I also played soccer for a year, baseball for about 4 years, softball off and on throughout the years, American football for 3 years, professional wrestling for about 3 years, and martial arts off and on since I was 6 years old.  Also, I just started playing hockey again when I was 46 and played regularly for the last 3 years.
     
    To say that I’ve had injuries in my life is a bit of an understatement.  I’ve had sprained ankles, torn ligaments in my fingers and strained knees, just to name a few things.
     
    The first time I had any serious issues was when I was in the Navy.  This would be back in about 1991 or 1992.  I started having some pain in my left knee, and then I noticed that I had a lump on the side of my knee.  I went to the corpsman on base to have it checked out.  At first, they told me it was just strained ligaments and gave me some ibuprofen.  That went on for a few weeks, but it didn’t help anything.  I remember looking in their medical book and seeing something the describe all the symptoms that I was having, so I questioned him.  He didn’t like that very much, but I ended up being right.  They eventually did send me for an MRI and found out that I had a cyst on my knee.  The civilian doctor they sent me to decided that he wanted to go in and look into my knee to see what was causing the cyst.  Come to find out, part of my meniscus was deteriorating, which was causing the cyst, so he removed that part of the meniscus and the cyst ended up going away.  Now, I wasn’t a very good patient, and that night, I was at the pool hall on base and was shooting pool, walking around the pool table.  Not good for healing, but things worked out OK.  
     
    Now, it’s been 29 years since that surgery, and I’ve played softball, practiced and taught yoga, studied Tai chi, studied Muay Thai, went back to karate and earned my Shodan (first degree black belt), gone back to ice hockey and played ball hockey.  All of which I’ve enjoyed.  I’ve had some bumps and bruises along the way, but nothing major.
     
    As a matter of fact, the worst injury that I had (until recently) was when I strained a ligament in my finger, which I did during a karate class.  Was actually kind of funny.  I thought I had dislocated my finger, so I kept trying to pop it back into join, but nothing was happening.  It didn’t hurt at that moment, so I kept trying.  I showed my Sensei, and he said I should go to the doctors, which I did the next day.  Strained ligament in my finger, which cause the end to drop.  
     
    After that, I had tendonitis in my shoulder, but that’s wasn’t too bad, they just had me do rehab and they gave me a shot, and some exercises to do.
     
    About a year and a half ago, I was playing in an ice hockey tournament here in Bangkok, in one of the games, I clashed skates with another player and when down on my knees hard and popped my left knee out of joint, but when I stood back up, it went right back in.  I didn’t think much about it as this isn’t the first time that’s happened.  It happens when it pops out, while it’s out and when it goes back in, then it feels fine.  It was sore after the game, but nothing bad.  I finished up playing in the tournament and playing in the Bangkok Ice Hockey League (BIHL) and playing shinny every week for the Flying Farangs.  Some days, it was sorer than others and it would pop out of joint more often than before.  It was popping out of joint at least once a day.  That was a horrible feeling.  Sometimes, I would be sitting at my desk at work and pull my foot in under my chair, and my knee would pop out of joint.  I would have to slowly push my foot back out, sometimes with my other foot, just to get it to pop back into joint.  
     
    Then, this past February (2020), I was asked to put together a team for an ice hockey tournament in Chiang Mai.  This was the first time I had put together a team for a tournament, so it was pretty exciting.  I decided to take a couple of weeks off from hockey to rest my knee before the tournament.  After the first game, my knee felt pretty good.  During the second game, I did something to my knee, I don’t know what, but it was sore after the game. It was progressively sorer after each game.  When we got back to Bangkok, I decided to take a month off hockey to rest it.
     
    After I was feeling up to it again, there was an open shinny night for the SHL, so I decided to sign up for it and play.  After the game, I was feeling great.  I didn’t take any bad falls or twists or anything like, and my knee felt really good.  The next day, I felt great as well.  No pain or any issues.  This SHL shinny was on a Sunday.
     
    That Wednesday, I had a demo lesson with a new school.  I was in a separate room, with some other teachers, waiting my turn to put on my demo lesson, sitting in a little chair made for kindergarten students.  I stood up to walk around and was suddenly in so much pain.  There was definitely something wrong with my knee.  I couldn’t put any weight on my leg because my knee felt so bad.  I tried walking it off, but nothing helped.  When it was my turn to do the demo lesson, I apologized to the school and let them know that I had hurt my knee somehow, but I still did the demo lesson.  After that, I got back on my bike and had to ride 45 minutes home.  When I got home, I relaxed and laid down a bit, in hopes that the pain would go away.  After about an hour, the pain didn’t go away.  I was starting to worry that I had done something to the ligaments in my knee.  Tore my ACL or MCL or something.  We decided to go to the hospital to see a doctor.
     

    The doctor was pretty cool.  His name is Cholawish Chanlalit.  He listened to everything I said, gave my knee a thorough check, twisting it and turning it, which hurt like a sombitch, and then send me for an x-ray.  As is usual with things like this, the x-ray didn’t show much, and he put an order in for an MRI.  He also put in for me to see a physio therapist one time and got me some crutches to use.  After my MRI, they doctor told me that there was some cartilage damage in my knee, and he wanted to go in and clean out the damaged cartilage as well as perform microfracture surgery, which is where they drill small holes into the bone to get the marrow blood to bleed into the space where the cartilage has been removed.  What this does is it creates a cushion like cartilage from the blood, but the blood must set, so you can’t walk on that leg for a couple of weeks.
     
    What the MRI didn’t show was that my meniscus was torn.  So, when he was inside my knee, he cleaned up the cartilage, drilled the holes in the bone and then stitched the torn piece of meniscus back in place.  
     
    Because of this, I couldn’t walk for 7 weeks.  From not walking on my left leg for 7 weeks, I had to then rebuild all the muscle in my left leg and around my left knee.  This felt like such a long healing process to me, and the healing process had just begun.  
     
    So, I was on crutches for 7 weeks, and the good thing about this is that it was during our lockdown period, so I couldn’t really go anywhere anyway.  Once I got the go ahead to start walking, I started walking as much as possible.  Walking with a heavy limp, but still walking.  Going up and down stairs and damn did it hurt, but I kept doing it.  I also started seeing a physiotherapist to help rebuild the strength in my leg the correct way.  This was so difficult for me, because I’ve always had fairly strong legs, and I felt so weak in my left leg.  Just doing body weight squats was really difficult for me, but I kept working on it.  I did lots of walking, sometimes maybe a little bit too much walking, but it felt good.  I still wasn’t allowed to skate yet, which sucked.  The doctor told me that maybe by I will be able to skate and play hockey in October.
     
    So, after about 13 weeks of physiotherapy, my doctor said I could start skating and rollerblading again, because it is a non-impact on the knee joint.  I waited about 2 weeks, and then I tried to go rollerblading, but I was told to stop, because they didn’t allow rollerblading in the park we were at.  Then, a week later, I went with some friends to one of the local ice rinks to take them skating for the first time.  I didn’t go fast, and I didn’t go hard into turns or stopping or anything, I just took it easy.  It felt so good to be back on the ice.
     
    These last few weeks, the strength in my left knee seems to be almost as strong as the strength in my right knee, which is great. This is all to how hard my physiotherapist has worked me.  There have been so many times, especially lately, after our sessions, my legs have felt so weak, but that’s good.  It’s nice to feel the strength and mobility returning to my knee.
     
    Well, sorry for being such a long post, I hope it wasn’t too boring, but I had a lot to say.
     
    Always remember: No matter what bad things happen in your life, if you want it bad enough, you can fight through it.
     
  10. Timberwolf

    Feel The Love (Repost from 17/06/2009

    By Timberwolf,


    The Northlands
    Over the last few days, while I've been working on The Northlands, I've noticed something special. It always amazes me every time I notice it. And it all started back in 2004.

    I was at FE and posting mostly in The Woods and for one reason or another, the board got nuked. While we were waiting for the FE to come back, which it would for a bit and something would happen and it would go away again and come back. Somebody made a post about how stupid it was that the admin couldn't keep the board up and running, and the admin flipped out and shut all of FE down.

    A number of us went over to PI to post and I started talking to some people and found that they were tired with the way some of the things were run, just like I was.

    So I talked to a friend of mine and decided to open my own board. That was Northlands Fantasy. A number of people joined us there and started setting up what I thought was a good community. It actually inspired other members to set up their own communities, and I helped them with that.

    In about 2005, something happened and I decided to totally walk away from all the online communities. I was away for about 2 years.

    During that 2 year period, I would pop in and take a look at Northlands Fantasy, and I noticed that for whatever reason, it just wouldn't die. People would come back and make a post here and a post there and just keep it ticking over with just enough to keep people, like myself, checking to see what was going on. Thank you Moonhawk.

    Well, one day, Tracy ( @hirondelle ) and I decided to give it kick in the pants, change the name and change the look. This was in late 2006 early 2007.

    The Northlands was born!

    But we felt that wasn't enough for those people who stuck it out and who came back and the new members, as The Northlands started to become a family. So we purchase a board with all the bells and whistles and set it up. And everybody loved it! Some people left, but for some reason, most people found it hard to stay away. Including myself.

    Then we lost the board

    And we waited, and people offered to help us with getting the board back and with getting a new board. We decided to wait and ended up waiting about 5 months but the old board never came back. We finally got tired of waiting and decided to purchase a board with all the bells and whistles again. And again a number of the family offered to help.

    Once we got the board up and working and invited you all here, you flooded the place with your happiness and love, and showed us how much you loved The Northlands! And some of the family members who never went to the Original Northlands came back to this one.

    At least once a day I hear from a member how much they love The Northlands, or how much they love us.

    We decide to create a donate button for those people who wanted to help out The Northlands and before we had it finished we had donations. We couldn't believe it! And then just today, I had new member of the family tell me that all the good members of FE came here. That's why this place is great. I would have to agree with that member.

    Thank you all.

    Thank you all. You all mean so much to us!
  11. 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.
  12. Timberwolf
    Tracy ( @hirondelle) and I have been doing a lot of talking about when we move to the States, and things are just messed up to say the least. First, we are having an issue with getting a mortgage, which I touched on before in a previous blog post. We can't get a mortgage until I've moved to Minnesota and I've got a job. I can't get a job until I move to Minnesota. Our contracts aren't up until September. We can't move until our contracts are up, as we don't want to break the contract because the British Council will pay for the move, or at least a good chunk of it, including flights. So that's just kind of funky right now and more on that later.

    Just last week, we had some really messed up issues at work, and policies need changed, but they won't be changed, and this guy was really kind of a little kid about the whole thing, and just made it worse for himself, and decided to take off for the weekend, so I had to pick up an extra class, which is good for the money, but hard on a Saturday as I already teach 6 hours of kids that day, so it ended up being 8 hours.

    While this is going on, Tracy ( @hirondelle)comes to a conclusion about the whole move thing. I should move out early, get a job, get THE house, and she will ship everything out to me. That really kind of threw me for a bit of a loop, and I was kind of upset about it. I don't want to leave her for a month. Hell, the two weeks she would take to go to England were hard enough. This will be at least a month. Well, the more I thought about it, the more I've come to realize, it's actually better that way. But, it's still stressful.

    25 June 2009

    Today we find out that it looks like I will have to leave around August - September time and Tracy ( @hirondelle)won't be able to come out until after Christmas, because of the processing for her visa and everything. One of the nice things though, is that it looks like she will be able to work when she does come out.

    And on top of all that, I didn't think about doing my taxes, as I haven't been living in the U.S., so I didn't really think about. I knew that I had to do it, but I figured I could just get it taken care of once we move back. Well, I have to have it done before I leave. So, that's about 4 years of back taxes. The nice thing is that I don't make a lot, and the earned income tax credit for living over seas, if I read it correctly is over $87,000.00, and I am no where even close to that. Oh well. I will be going to a tax lawyer on Monday to check it out.
  13. Timberwolf
    Well, we are slowly getting things done in real life and I am getting things done here at NL.


    IN REAL LIFE


    I have filled my taxes for 2008, even though they are a little bit late, you get an automatic 2 month extension when you live out of the country, and I don't owe any late fees.


    We've made an appointment to go talk with an U.S. Immigration lawyer in Bangkok on July 20th, so we can find out our options. We had a bit of a scare concerning immigration just the past week. We contacted an immigration lawyer that was supposed to be here in Chiang Mai, they have an office here, but the lawyer doesn't come up here, and she told us that it will take about a year and I will have to make almost 4 times what I do now . But we are talking to the original lawyer and we are going in to talk to them and find out what he has to say.


    Also when we go to Bangkok, I will be able to talk to my former employer and hopefully get something saying about how much I made a month from them, so I can file my past taxes, and get that taken care of.


    ON THE NORTHLANDS


    I have finally finished something I've been working on here for a special foxy friend and I can start working on Original NL Skin, Wolf & Goddess Skin and the 18+ Skin, which I'm excited to be working on.


    Sorry everybody, there isn't a lot in this post, but I just wanted to give an update, lol. Enjoy
  14. Timberwolf
    Well, as I had said in my last blog post, things are starting to move forward. I found a lot of the images for one of the skins we used to have at the old New The Northlands, so now, because of that, I'm almost finished with another skin. We have an appointment with an immigration lawyer for the 20th of July, and we received an email from the U.S. immigration offices saying that I really shouldn't leave until after Tracy ( @hirondelle)has her visa. It will make it easier for the interviews and such.


    Also, one of the things we will need right away when we get there is a vehicle of some sort. And Avia and Paladin have really been helping us out a lot with that, and have found us some really nice cars in the price range we have been looking for. They have also offered to put the car title and insurance in their name until we get to the States and then switch it over to my name. One Suzuki and one Subaru, both really nice and about the same price. We have pretty much decided on which one we would like, but we don't want to rush to any decisions about which one to get if it is even either of those until we have some type of time frame for when we will be moving to the States. And hopefully, one of both will still be available when it comes time for us to buy a car.


    Well, that's all for now. Enjoy!
  15. Timberwolf
    On Saturday, Tracy ( @hirondelle)and I flew down to Bangkok from Chiang Mai. We wanted some time away from Chiang Mai and we also had an appointment with an immigration lawyer on Monday (Today).


    Yesterday, we went shopping for a camera for Tracy ( @hirondelle)(she has been wanting and SLR camera) and we looked at a number of places, but nobody had the model she was looking for. Hell, most places didn't have have the brand she wanted. We settled on a really nice camera which she really loved. I told her that we weren't leaving Bangkok with out getting her a camera as that was one of the reasons I wanted to come to Bangkok. We also got some movies and some great books!


    Today we had an appointment with the immigration lawyer at 11. We arrived a little early, and he wasn't there. He was at the embassy for some things. Tracy ( @hirondelle) got a little worried at first because she hadn't confirmed the appointment before we left to come to Bangkok. I told her not to worry and I was pretty sure that he wouldn't forget, especially with all the correspondence those two had had. At about 11, he walked in to the offices and walked up to Tracy ( @hirondelle) and said hi to her, knowing her name, and came over to me and introduced himself to me. He asked for a minute to put his brief case away and to get our file, then invited us into the conference room. He took a couple of minutes to talk to us and get to know us and to tell us a bit about himself. And then refreshed himself on our case and asked us some questions taking notes.


    He had a great demeanor, and was very personable. We spent about 2 hours in his office going over what was going to be done, and about how long it would take. He asked for our passport photos, and Tracy's ( @hirondelle) were the wrong size. They were the size for British passports, not American passport, so his secretary took Tracy ( @hirondelle) out to get her picture taken again for the right size. While Tracy ( @hirondelle) and her were out we talked and he told me more about himself, and asked me questions about Tracy ( @hirondelle). When we finished with the meeting, he asked how long we would be in Bangkok, because he would have some of the beginning documents drawn up so we could sign them. We told him we were going to be in the area, because I had to go and talk to my old boss about getting my pay information for my back taxes, and he said that would be great.


    We headed out and stopped at the 7-11 so I could buy my boss a bottle of whiskey (scotch) as a kind of gift to and to help ease the process of getting my old pay information. After buying the whiskey we crossed the street to head to the office and here he was, heading down the street, I think he was on his way to lunch. We talked for a minute and I told him I had something for him. On the way back to his office, we talked for a bit and told him that we were planning on moving to the States and that we were here talking to a lawyer to help with the immigration process for Tracy ( @hirondelle) . He asked when we would be moving and we told him it would be about 6 months, give or take a few weeks, according to our lawyer. He asked what we would be doing for the next 6 months. He has always had hopes that I would come back to Bangkok and work for him again. He is a really nice guy and was a great boss.


    We got back to the office and found out that they are moving buildings by about the end of the year also. We talked for a bit and told him why I needed the pay information, and he was totally understanding. I then pulled out the bottle of whiskey for him, and he was very appreciative but said he couldn't take it as he is allergic to alcohol, and said I should keep it. And that he would really like to keep in touch with us and find out how we are doing in the States and everything.


    After we finished talking to my old boss, we went for coffee to wait for 3 o'clock to head back to the lawyer's office. We got back to his office and he was in a meeting and they told us it would be about 10 minutes, we were early again. When he was finished with the meeting, he came out and said hi, and he had to get the documents. He checked them over, but needed some fixing, but he would talk us through everything and fix it later.


    He explained what everything was for and why we had to sign this document and that document and why he had was having us sign so many copies, the USCIS and the Embassy have a tendency to loose paper work, and he wanted back up copies, lol. Over all, we are very pleased with him and glad we chose him for this.


    Once we get the last of the documentation and information that we need, he will submit our paper work to USCIS and get everything going for us.


    One of the good things is that there is a really good chance that Tracy ( @hirondelle)and I won't have to be separated at all during this process like the other lawyer had told us. And it should only take about 6 months, where the other lawyer also told us it would take about a year.


    So all and all, everything is looking really good. Also, with the Visa Tracy ( @hirondelle)will be getting, she will become a permanent resident the day she gets off the plane and will be able to start working when she wants. And she will be a permanent resident for about 3 years and then she can become a U.S. Citizen if she wants.


    We are very excited and very happy with him. All is looking good for us now.


    After that, we went and got me a new pair of sandals had died and were killing my feet. I got a really nice pair, and we also bought more BOOKS, lol.


    Will keep you all updated as we know more.


    Thanks
  16. Timberwolf

    Going Back To Karate

    By Timberwolf,


    Karate
    As most of you know, back in March, I had knee surgery, which I wrote a blog post about back on September 14th, 2020.  Since before that, I've thought about going back to martial arts.  There is a place near me that teacher Brazilian Jiujitsu (BJJ), but to I have a few issues with going to that place, which I won't get into here.  To go along with that, I really wanted to go back to karate. 
     
    There are basically two (2) different disciplines in karate.  There is Japanese karate and Okinawan karate.  Here is a one of my favorite youtube people for martial arts, Jesse Enkamp, talking about 10 differences between Okinawan karate and Japanese karate.
     
     
    Now, there isn't anything wrong with Japanese karate or Okinawan karate, it's just that Okinawan karate was where I got my start when I still lived in the States.
     
    Now, in Thailand, I studied Japanese karate.  To be more specific, I studied JKS Shotokan Karate, which I really do enjoy.  I studied for about 3 years.  You can see my belt tests here with these videos:
     
    10th kyu (White belt) to 8th kyu (Orange belt) test:
     
    8th kyu (Orange belt) to 5th kyu (1st purple belt) test:
     
    5th kyu (1st purple belt) to 4th kyu (2nd purple belt) test:
     
    4th kyu (2nd purple belt) to 2nd kyu (2nd brown belt) test:
     
    2nd kyu (2nd brown belt) to 1st kyu (3rd brown belt) test:
     
    1st kyu (3rd brown belt) to Shodan (1st black belt) test:
     
    I felt so honored when I achieved my Shodan belt.  The problem was, my life got busy, and I moved away from karate for a bit, and when I did come back, I didn't agree with some of the things that I saw happening at the dojo, and I had a really hard time with that and I ended up walking away from the dojo.  I came back a year or so later, and it was pretty much the same, just fewer students.  
     
    Fast forward to November 2020, and I feel like I'm ready to go back to karate, actually, I'm kind of craving it.  So I went back to karate on October 22nd:
     
    https://www.facebook.com/Timberwolf1771/posts/10157352946052676 <=== My FB post about it.
     
    I have since done a total of 4 classes, with last night being my 4th class.  Now, I can't do as deep of stances as I used to, not yet anyway, and I can't quite move the way I used to, but I will get there.  It's just going to take some time, and I need to be patient.  Katas are slowly starting to come back, and I'm seeing different layers of the katas again which is nice.  Also last night, we were recorded doing the kata teki-shodan.  
     

    teki-shodan.mp4  
    I'm really happy to be back doing karate, and I'm looking forward to doing more.  I'm really looking forward to doing more karate.  I don't know if I will do any more tests, but I will keep learning and finding more and more layers to the katas.
     
    Always Remember:  You should do the things you love, even if you don't get the chance to do so in the autumn of your life.  Still do it, because you love it.
     
  17. Timberwolf
    Well, things have been a bit busy for me around here. As you all know, I've recently finished a number of skins, which I am very happy with. Just after finishing my latest skin, and just before heading to Bangkok, our desk top computer crashed. Well, the C-Drive crashed. Now that wouldn't be so bad if it was just the software, because then we could have gotten all the information off of the drive. But nope, the actual hard disk itself crashed. Which means we lost everything on that drive! All our pictures were on that drive. Everything saved in our network is gone as that was also on that drive. Now the good thing about that is this, the hard disk was guaranteed for 5 years, so we get a new 320 Gb hard disk for free. And we wanted to get a 1 Tb hard disk. So what happened is we now have a 1Tb hard disk and a 320 Gb hard disk, plus we will have a 320 Gb external hard disk. All our music and the movies we had on the other hard disk are fine. We actually have almost 200Gb of music, so that made me happy.


    Now, on to other computer things. I have recently been working on a new main page, history page and friends page. The new main page and history page are finished and they look pretty good. We are very happy with them. I'm still working on the new Friends page, and that is looking great. I'm just waiting on a few things from a few people to put the finishing touches on it. Once that's done, I will upload all the new pages.


    Now, onto non-computer things, lol. Our paper work is coming together really well. We just have a few more things to take care of, mainly my back taxes, but I got the paperwork from the company I worked for for 2006-2007 saying what I was making and I've contacted the CPA for American taxes to get those taken care of. Now I'm just waiting on him to get back to me.
  18. Timberwolf
    I have to give you some back story for this before I get to far into this.


    Since the start of the Swine Flu scare, I've been kind of taking the piss out of it. Someone coughs and "OH NO, IT'S SWINE FLU! SWINE FLU, SWINE FLU!" That type of thing. At work we were told that if a child coughs a lot, sneeze s a lot or has a runny nose we should ask their parents to take them home. So I would joke cough and say I've got swine flu, can I go home. And things like that. I was also scoffing at people wearing masks, because it's a virus and the mask is totally useless for this. They are to help prevent dust inhalation.


    Well, this past Friday, I was at work, planning my lesson, and feeling worse and worse as the day went on. I started getting body aches and feeling hot and having a head ache. We sat down to watch a movie and eat dinner, and all I could eat were my mashed potatoes and I barely finished those. You have to remember that I love pizza, and we order pizza on Thursday, I eat half on Thursday and eat the other half on Friday, so me not wanting to eat pizza is kind of scary in itself. I decided at about 8 that I would go to sleep and hope that I felt better in the morning as I had to teach kids all day Saturday and Sunday. Well, about 9 I got my first bout of diarrhea and about every 1 hour or less I was back in the bathroom. At about 11 I told @hirondelle that there wasn't any way I would be able to make it to work to teach for Saturday, and she should text our boss and the most senior full time teacher in the morning to let them know that I wouldn't be in. At about 2 we decided that I would go to the hospital and get checked out, and I started thinking that this was it. I got it. After all this time taking the piss out of Swine Flu, I got it.


    Stupid me didn't think about it until about 5 in the morning that I should get some water to drink, so I stumbled down the stairs to get some water, and stumble back up stairs to bed, taking drinks of the water every time I woke up.


    I finally stopped rushing to the toilet at about 6 am and @hirondelle woke me up about 9 to see when I wanted to go to the hospital. She also wanted to get some food for me to eat since I was probably going to be quarantined to the house. I told her to go do her shopping and I would just sleep some more until she got back. I was beat, my whole body ached, my head was pounding, every time I moved my eyes to look some where, they hurt, and my bum hurt from going so much. She got back I showered and we went to the hospital to see the doctor. I got checked into the hospital and they directed us to place to take my vitals. I felt like shit to say the least, lol. She checked my temp, which was high, checked my blood pressure, which was high, which isn't normal for me, and my heart rate was high, again, which wasn't normal for me. I shuffled back out into the hall and waited for the doctor to see me.


    I went in to see the doctor, and this is when he informed me about my vitals, and said I looked really weak. Asked me a few questions and asked me to get up onto his table. He felt my belly and told me he was going to admit me at least over night. He told me I was dehydrated and he wanted to get fluids back into me. So I went back out into the hall with the nurses help to let @hirondelle know what was going on, and wait for a room.


    They brought me a wheel chair, which is the first time I've ever been given a wheel chair in a hospital. We waited around for a bit and then they took us up to my room. They also told @hirondelle that she can stay in the room with me, that there weren't visiting hours. They gave me some scrubs to change into because it would be easier for them to put the IV in me and such. So I changed, and they started getting things ready for me. One nurse came in and wanted to know what I wanted to eat for lunch and gave me an ice pack for my head ache and the other nurse started preparing the IV and the needle.


    The only problem was the bed was a little small for me, lol, but that's OK, because as you can see in the picture, I had pretty nurses to take care of me.


    I spent most of the day sleeping, waking up every time somebody came into the room. @hirondelle called Fon to ask her if she could take Spike since I would be spending at least a night in the hospital. After I got settled in, @hirondelle decided to head to the house to get a few things, like a book for me and clothes and such, and some things for herself, love the cats and to let everybody know what was going on, my family here at the NL and my family back in the States.


    After about 3 hours I had to use the toilet again, so I shuffled my way to the toilet and was doing my business. While I was in there, one of the nurses came in to the room, so I coughed to let her know I was in the bathroom. This is our conversation


    Nurse: Oh you are in the toilet? Pee pee?
    Me: Yes
    Nurse: Poo poo?
    Me: Yes
    Nurse: Remember sample. Call us when you are finished.
    Me: OK.


    The nurses were coming into the room at the most every hour to check my temp, blood pressure and heart rate. For lunch, I ordered a ham and cheese omelet, and it was the nastiest omelet and bacon I've ever had. For dinner I ordered a BLT sandwich. Before my dinner came, the doctor came to see me to let me know what my blood tests showed. I got a bacterial infection, which is from food, which is why I was running such a high fever and had so much diarrhea. And he asked how I was feeling.


    When my sandwich arrived, I found that I didn't get a BLT, I just got a bacon sandwich with this nasty sweet Thai mayonnaise. @hirondelle, the Goddess that she is, took all the bacon off of my sandwich and put it onto the toast that they gave me, then forced me to eat half of it, lol.


    In the morning, the doctor came in again to see me and to tell me that my blood pressure had gone back to normal, my temp was back to normal and so was my heart rate. I still had to take the last bag of fluid, but I looked better. I told him that I was also feeling better.


    @hirondelle decided to run home and get herself a change of clothes (she forgot to bring some for herself) and to check up with everybody online. While she was at home, the doctor came in again to see me and to see how I was doing. And asked if I wanted to go home today. I said yes, and he said OK. You can go home this after noon, but no fruit or vegetables for a few days and drink lots of fluids, and relax and that he was going to send some anti-biotics home with me.


    So we came home and I napped for a bit, and @hirondelle made me the best chicken noodle soup I've ever had. I'm feeling much better. Still have a bit of a head ache and a sore belly, but I feel good.


    And the best thing of all........


    I DON'T HAVE SWINE FLU!!


    Though it was confirmed at work that that was what I had.


    And a very strong reminder to me never to get anything from the T-Zone at work ever again.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. Timberwolf
    Some of you may know this, but @hirondelle recently "retired" from her position as Academic Manager at the British Council, and she really needed to relax, so we had decided to take a trip to Pai, Thailand for a few days. Everybody here has talked about how great Pai is, and neither of us has been there, so we decided why not.


    Now we've both heard all kinds of things about Pai. One was how relaxing and beautiful it is, and another was how openly people smoke weed there, so we kind of figured we would see people walking down the street or sitting in the coffee shop/restaurants smoking. Much to our surprise, we never saw it. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me start from the beginning.


    We decided that since Friday (today) was a public holiday and @hirondelle didn't have to work at all this week, we would leave Chiang Mai on Sunday and drive to Pai and stay there until Thursday. On Sunday morning, we go and have breakfast, come back home and finish up the packing and load up the bike. We got started at about 12 noon. We turn onto Highway 107 and it's a fairly straight road once you get out of the city and just start cruising along. It's a nice stretch of road once you get outside the city. No sharp turns, just straight road with nice sweeping bends so I can open the bike up a bit, which I love doing when I can. After about an hour, I turn onto our next road, which is the road that leads to Pai. We stop to have a bit of a break, because the road looks a little twisty and it goes through the mountains, so we stop at this little shop and relax a bit before we continue on.


    To say that the road looks a bit twisty is like a huge understatement! From Chiang Mai to Pai, they say there are 762 bends and curves in the road. All this with going up and down mountains. After about an hour we had to take a break again, because it was kind of getting to us. So we stopped and had some coffee. When we continued on, we had to stop again after about an hour because not only was the road twisting and turning, Thai drivers like to try to pass you on the bends and if another car/truck is coming, they tend to move over, so you either get pushed off the road or have to fall back quickly! The place we stopped had a great view, so that was nice and we relaxed some more and calmed down a bit. Also, on the way to this stop, there was this couple that pulled out in front of us and after little while, they started weaving all over the road and looking over their shoulder at us. As I got closer, I could see huge smiles on their faces, but the way they were driving, I thought it best we pass them at the next passing point. As we are passing, they start waving at us and asking where we are from. I yell back that I'm from America and they yell back ... "I love America!!" which was really cool. When we stopped at the next place with the great view, they rode by on their bike and waved. When we were back on the road again, we saw that they had stopped and were taking a break and we beeped and waved at them. When we stopped just out side of Pai one last time, they passed up and beeped and waved again. It was a lot of fun.


    We found Spa Exotic Home, a place that a friend of ours recommended to us. They have a round bathtub with hot water from a local hot spring, so the first thing we did was have a bath together. It was really nice. But, the place looked like it had seen better days. The porch outside our front door, the wood looked rotted to the point where I might fall through by just walking on it. The screens didn't quite seem to fit the windows, and there was no AC. There was just a fan the blew straight down on the bed. The driveway looked like it used to be really nice, with nice brick work, but it hadn't been maintained, and it was all muddy. Our friend told us that it had a nice restaurant and the Lonely Planet also said it had a nice restaurant. When we checked in, I asked what time they started serving dinner, and they said the they didn't have a restaurant any more. So we had to head into town to get something to eat, which was OK.


    When we rode into town, it had just got dark, which is normally no big deal, but there were no street lights, the road wasn't very wide and in poor condition with a lot of curves and hills, and we were a good distance from town. When we did finally get into town, we found this great little Italian restaurant that made great little personal sized pizzas. After dinner, we decided to walk around and look for a place that served fresh coffee. While walking up the road, we ran into two of my old students (a mother and daughter) and they introduced us to the husband and brother. That was really nice. We found a really nice coffee shop on a corner, and there were a few parade like things going on, so we got to see them. We decided to buy some shorts, because we figured we might decide to wade in one of the many hot springs in the area. The ride back to Spa Exotic Home was a long dark ride. We decided that we would try to find a place closer to town in the morning.


    The next morning, we had an OK breakfast, and bad instant coffee. We headed out to find a place that looked like it might serve at least decent coffee. We found a place named Pai Best Friend's Coffee [sic]. The coffee there was really good. And right across the road was a really nice place to stay, called Pai Baan Thai Resort, so we decided that after coffee we would walk over and see if they had any rooms available. As luck would have it, they did, and we booked a room for the remainder of the time we would be in Pai. And the nice thing, the town was right down the road, not far at all. We headed back to Spa Exotic Home and checked out, and I explained that we decided to stay closer to town, and the lady at the desk was OK with that.


    After putting our things in the new room, we decided to relax some, and play some cards. After awhile, we headed into town to try and find a place that gave foot massages, and scout a place for dinner. We found a decent place and got a foot massage and then walked around town for a bit. We found a place for dinner for later that night, and decided to walk on and find a place to have coffee. We found this great place called Cake Go "O" that served great coffee and had the most amazing cakes!! While sitting there enjoying our coffee and cake, I saw one of our Teaching Assistants coming down the road on the back of a bike with this really shocked look on her face. She didn't see us though, and the look on her face was so funny. Her and her friend continued on down the road, and we finished our cakes and coffee. After we finished, we walked back to the bike and headed back to the room and play more cards until it was time for dinner. We had dinner at this nice little middle eastern restaurant, and as we were finishing our dinner, the Teaching Assistant the we saw earlier (New New) saw us from across the road and ran over to say hi and see how we were doing. We talked a bit and then walked around town again. Pai is a great town to just walk around, mainly, because the town is small and there are so many strange and interesting different characters. We found this place that looked like it would have decent coffee, so we stopped and had coffee, which ended up being really bad, because they put sugar in my coffee and didn't tell me. It was nasty!!


    The next day, we had breakfast and went across the road to have coffee at Pai Best Friend's Coffee, but they didn't have any power because there was work being done on the power lines down the road. So we decided to head into town for coffee and had some OK coffee at a nice little place. After our coffee, we decided that we were going to ride around and look for this massage place called Pai Traditional Thai Massage (PTTM), that the Lonely Planet raved about, which is also a traditional Thai massage school. We found it and decided to have a traditional Thai full body massage which was for two hours. OMG, it was amazing! And they worked out a knot that @hirondelle had that she didn't realize she had from when her back was hurting. It was incredible. We felt so relaxed afterwords! We decided that we should have Thai food one night, so we ate at the resort and they made the Thai food Thai style, which I love! I hate when they Westernize Thai food, because they take out all the chillies. God it was so good. After dinner, we went back into town and decided to walk around and find @hirondelle a necklace. We found a little place that had some hand made necklaces and we got one for @hirondelle and one for a friend of ours. They are beautiful necklaces.


    The next day, we decided to find the gas station, so we knew where it was for when we were ready to leave and I can fill up the bike. @hirondelle wanted another Thai massage, and I decided I wanted an herbal massage. I'd been hearing rave reviews about how good the herbal massages were, so I figured I would get one at PTTM. Another great massage! After our massages, we wanted coffee again, so we went back to Cake Go "O" (one of our favorite coffee places in Pai) and we saw more people from work, so we walked over and said hi. That night we had dinner at Amido's (the great little Italian restaurant) again. They ave really great pizza! We walked around town again, and we found some T-shirts for me and one for our cleaning lady, and finished the night off with coffee at that nice little corner coffee shop again.


    Thursday was time to head back home, so we had breakfast, packed up the bike and went to Cake Go "O" for our final coffee in Pai. Fueled up the bike and headed back to Chiang Mai. Lots and lots of curves, with Thai drivers passing going through the mountains again. We stopped at the nice look out place again, and stopped at the nice little coffee shop and then at the little road side shop for a final stop before we got back onto 107 and back to Chiang Mai.


    Once we got back onto 107, I got the bike upto 110 km/h and was cruising down the highway when this guy on a little bike decided he was going to meander across the road and wobble from one lane to the other, giving us a fright. From that point on, I kept the bike at about 100 km/h and played passing tag with a sungtao with the back full of westerners smiling and waving at us.


    All in all, it was a great and relaxing trip, but it was nice to come home and have Fon, our cleaning lady, drop off Spike, so the family could be home together again for the first night back.
  23. 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.
  24. Timberwolf
    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.
  25. 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.

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