Horatio

I believe you are right!!!! Thank you for posting the information. I had totally forgotten about this topic.

Click on the image and it will appear much larger, in the size you posted. It appears in a small size to save space. Your post was hilarious!!!! I see you still have your phenomenal sense of humour!!! Seems like - Kat - had an enormous amount of blood... perhaps that is because she is a vampire? I cannot wait until she reads this!!!

Dear Glowurm, My apologies for missing your birthday, but I hope your 18th birthday was the greatest ever!!! We have missed seeing you and it was thrilling to see you pop in and visit. I am so embarrassed to have missed your special day, so here is the traditional song! HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY DEAR GLOWRUM, HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!! May you have many, many more happy special days to come!!! Horatio

GLOWURM!!!!!!!!!!! You have totally made my day!!!!!!!!! How are you???? Happy birthday to you!!!! Usually I get the birthday postings, but somehow I missed yours. I am so embarrassed. It would have be spectacular to have not missed your birthday and posted your greetings! Happy Birthday!!! Hopefully, the boards will always exist, at least while I have a little tiny bit of say. Glad to hear that your life is crazy and awesome!!!! Please if you stop in again, please do make this an occasional stop. We always love hearing from you.

Greetings from Osaka!!! I just came back from my absolute favourite coffee shop in the entire world... Shakers. Today I met the owner's of Shakers and they are wonderful!!! The lady who always welcomes me back was working and I was informed that she has been promoted to manager. She is fantastic and has the ability to remember everyone who enters. Will post pictures of my coffee later. After leaving Shakers, I headed for the most incredible grocery store... if you can call it that. This grocery shop is more like a food store comprised of vendor booths. I am a frequent customer at Peck's, a Milano, Italy vendor. Today I had shrimp in sort of guacamole type base and an apple, walnut, ziti, blue cheese type salad. Oh my, the apple combination was supreme. My taste buds were on overload. Anyway, I am headed out for a walk about town, so pictures of my coffee will have to wait.

Well, my schedule for December was just published. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! I leave for Narita on the 20th and spend Christmas traveling between Narita, Japan and Shenzhen, China. I get to the hotel late on Christmas night and then spend the next two days there. The bad news is that this hotel is where I experienced the worst food poisoning of my life... so I am not so anxious to eat anything there. I return home late on the night of the 27th and head back out on the morning of the 30th back to Narita. I spend New Year's Day traveling between Narita, Japan and Hong Kong and have a return flight on the 3rd of January. Oh well, I had hoped not to work all the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve, but oh well. C'est la vie. Tomorrrow I get to try and trip trade for a trip much earlier in the month, but I am certain that I am not the only one trying to get off Christmas. Let's see what happens. Wish me luck!!!

You are amazing, doing the editing of your father's book. I could not edit a children's book!!! By the way, you need to take a look at this children's book, "Snowy Valentine" by David Petersen. It is in bookstores now and you can run in and read it in a few minutes. The art is amazing and the story is so sweet. Originally it was written with a mouse and a red cardinal, but the publisher wanted it to be the same species, so he selected bunnies. David Petersen has a blog under his Mouse Guard site (not com but the other one), and he talks about how he writes and accomplishes the art. Take a look at it. Once you get to the site, look for the tab blog, then scroll back a through his blog until you get to the beginning of his talk about this book. Glad to know that you had a terrific Thanksgiving dinner!!! How is your grandmother? How is your mother handling things? The holiday always makes this a little more stressful, so I hope your mother and grandmother are doing well.

It sounds like you have thought this through and I know that you will make the right decision when the time comes.

So, we arrived home and it took me a few hours to get to sleep. So around 05H00 I finally nodded off, and woke up about 14H00. Then it was taking a nap on the living room sofa, waking having some coffee, napping again, more coffee, napping then finally aorund 03H00, I headed off to bed. At 07H00 I woke up feeling like I had slept for twenty hours straight, which of course, I had not, took a shower and headed out for breakfast. After stopping at Whole Foods and buying a couple things, I headed back home for another nap on the sofa. As it is night time, I am ready for more coffee and more naps. It is really hard to get back on a USA sleep schedule.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!!! How are things going with you?

Good, I am happy that you will be taking a break from communication. I was silghtly worried about him placing a burden on you, which it seemed as if he was, so you have made a very wise decision. Thank you for making such a terrific decision.

Very interesting. Sounds like you have truly, for lack of a better set of words, grown up. Perhaps this is something that would be good for you if you honestly give it some effort. As you know, all reltaionships take work. He sounds very promising. Keep us posted.

Yesterday evening we flew from Narita, Japan to Shanghai, China. Although I did not eat in the hotel, I took a look at the wonderful American style Thanksgiving dinner they presented in the hotel restaurant. If it would not have looked so tacky, I would have taken pictures. But I will say, the presentation was spectacular with way too many choices. Hope you all had a terrific day!

Here is one person who will truly appreciate this Thanksgiving Day as he has a whole lot to be thankful for. Please keep us updated and do not let yourself get bogged down helping him. You have a lot of things going on and you need to focus on yourself. Give him your time when it works for you, but please do not redirect your life to accommodate him. He will have an enormous amount of adjusting to do and you cannot be his crutch. Enough said.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!!! I am truly happy for the people I have met through this board, my family and friends and the wonderful experiences I have had. May you all have a wonderful day. By the way... Thanksgiving in Shanghai, China... they had an American turkey dinner at the hotel.

I wish I had thought to take out my camera, you would have thought I had Photoshopped the image as there were zillions of these fuzzy tarantulas coming in to get relief from the heat.

Here I am in Narita, Japan and last night I woke up at 04H21 with the room shaking. I thought is was a dream but realized that it was an aftershock.

The best part of that whole situation was when my first officer made fun of me for being afraid of spiders. He is about 6 feet 4 inches and about 250 pounds. Not a little guy. Well, he went to move his bag and one of the tarantulas jumped. He jumped and made this kind of scream-like utterance. Now that was worth all the creepy crawlies!!!!! I will say that I had the feeling that one of them had hopped a ride and was going to be in the cockpit, but luckily that was not the case.

Great!!! The main jazz band will be an outstanding experience. You are going to have a fantastic time performing with this group. I think that the trumpet performance major sounds like a much happier life than a psychiatrist.

Lots of guests is good, but we need them to sign up.

WOW... one week. I cannot imagine how he feels to be out. Of course, he is now facing another struggle when it comes to getting a job, so I can only hope that he can find something. It makes me think how one mistake can change your life in ways you will never imagine. My thoughts are for you to still go with the coffee date guy and hope he says yes. Forget the "ex"... that is a thing of the past. You broke up for a reason and it was not the distance and lack of time, because people can make a relationship work with those blocks, there is something else that helped you make the decision. Forget the bad news and drama... you have enough good things in your life to have to make room for any negatives. Ask the guy to go for coffee. After all, it is only a cup of coffee.

This eating establishment rates high on the "entertainment" scale. The food was pretty tasty, but too much food served in one sitting for someone who is traveling.

Oh, and that is not a normal sized cup of coffee... it is about the size of a 7-eleven "big gulp". Monster sized cup!!! Because everything is so large, it looks normal. I should have brought a ruler to show you the actual size.

This has been a crazy two weeks. I started with the preparation for an estate sale. Monday and Tuesday were long days with lots of rearranging of furniture, unpacking and cleaning of dishes. Wednesday we headed up to Cape Girardeau, Missouri for scheduled maintenance on both bikes. Memphis was not cold and it seemed like when the sun peaked it's head over the horizon, it would be warming up nicely. WRONG!!!!! Whoa... about twenty miles into Arkansas, I could not feel my hands. The temperatures were low and the wind whipping across the farmland was more than I really cared to deal with. Plus, my bike has hand warmers and they were on full blast. It was really important that I exit at the next exit, where I might add, there was nothing as far as gas, food, etc., just to warm my hands up. My hands were devoid of feeling. I was surprised that I was able to stop the bike. It took a few minutes to get some feeling and then back on the road until the next place where I could get a cup of coffee and run my hands through warm water to defrost them. We stopped at a Burger King where I spent about ten minutes in the bathroom with my hands located under a steady stream of warm water, and then another ten minutes holding a steaming cup of coffee and we were ready to hit the road again. We stopped a couple more stops for hand warming sessions and then finally, we arrived at the BMW shop... about two hours later than scheduled. Well, the service manager advised me that we arrived a day late, we were "on his calendar for the day prior". AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!! If I had known this, I would have slept in and my hands would have never experienced the bone-chilling cold. Now that we were there, we needed an alternate plan which resulted in the a rental car and a drive back to Memphis. Back to work preparing for the estate sale, the estate sale on Saturday and Sunday, Monday clean-up and then back to Cape Girardeau on Tuesday. This time my bikes were ready, all maintenance completed, but I was driving up and riding back solo. One of my bikes is still up there. No help for the return trip. I made a stop on the way back at a place for lunch that served so much food that I could only eat about one-fifth of what was on my plate. It was really tasty, but way, way, way too much food. Just about everything on the menu costs $9.99, give or take a couple cents, but they all come with free sides. The waiters come around with these huge 'buckets' of: macaroni and tomato, fried okra... and a zillion other items, and they just ladle on the sides. Then if you want some hot rolls, the waiter comes out of the kitchen with a cart and about ten dozen or so rolls, and throws them to you. Of course, you need to catch it. That is the scary part... some people move their hands at the last minute and miss the roll. These roll throwers are so good, that wherever you put your hands at the time the roll is released, if you do not move, the roll will land in your hand. One lady would hold her hands in front of her face and then just as the roll was a nano-second away from being caught, she would move her hands. Twice the roll hit her in her face. Finally, the waiter did the unthinkable, he hand delivered two rolls to her. Now, you will look at the picture and think, that is not much food, but notice the roll is much larger than the monkey dish and realize that the roll is about the size of a softball plus. Because the picture is not three dimensional, you have no idea just how high the pork is piled. Believe me, it is about five pounds of pork. And, I had already eaten about one-fifth of it.

*beat-beat* *beat-beat* *gasp* *cough, cough* Yes, I am alive! Thank you for that jolt.