#014 Thailand Update: Weddings, Cruises and the Atomic Bomb

As I sit in this van leaving the Nichada Thani area, I can’t help but think “We did a lot this weekend… where do I start?” The weekend was very busy, but I guess that’s a good thing because it means we are doing our best to maximize our time here. This update is a reflection of that. It’s a bit long this time, grab a cup of coffee, get yourself into a good reading position, and read on.

Where do I start? How about with a question I have heard a few times: What is your address?

Address in Thailand
Many of you have asked me to give you our address in Thailand. You’ve either lost track of it, or forgot where you left it. Well, I decided it would make better sense putting it in this update, rather than continually sending it to people over and over again. Here you go:

Address:

Roger and Livonia Winkles
Danicha Gardens Condominium
39/291, Soi Nichada Thani,
Samakee Road, Amphur Pakkret,
Tambol Bangtalard, Nonthaburi 11120.
Thailand.

Boy, that’s sure a mouthful, huh? Maybe by the time you’ve actually addressed your first letterhead, we will have already returned home. Please use this to send us cards and updates from your end. We like mail. We also like responses to the update (hint, hint).

Game Time
On Friday night, we went over to Mathew’s house (my boss in Thailand for those who don’t know Mathew) to have dinner and play board games. It was nice to do something that seemed more like home. Kind of reminds me of that gameshow “10,000 Pyramid,” or “Family Feud” where the topic is “things you should have done with your friends in America but never did because you didn’t have the time, but then will reflect on as an American pastime when you’re in another country.” Do you ever remember that category? I’m sure it’s been asked before.

We played a game called Scattegories. I’m almost positive many of you reading this update have played this game before. Friday night was a first for me. I think Scattegories is a game you play when your ego needs to get knocked down a couple of notches. The basic premise of the game is that you roll a die that contains a whole host of letters. The letter that shows up is the letter you will use to name something beginning with that letter. You have twelve categories to jot things down with, and none of your answers can match another players. That seemed relatively easy, and then we played the first round. Oh, did I forget to mention you’re on a timer? Nothing like trying to think when you have the ticking time bomb of a timer to remind you that need to be thinking faster, and you’ve only answered two of the twelve questions. I mean, when the timer is going, who can possibly think of a toiletry item beginning with the letter “H” that nobody else will pick? Ugh! Talk about frustrating. Having read my update on ISB and the Pre-K Olympics, you no doubt are fully aware of my need to compete, so this was simply not a good situation for me to be in. However, we did have a good time, and the kids really enjoyed themselves. For the rest of the weekend, Christian kept asking me “Dad, when are we going to go back to Mr. Bunker’s house again?”

My First Thai Wedding
Four years ago, I made my first trip to Thailand. During this trip, I had a distinct opportunity to attend a Thai wedding... but didn’t make it. Why? The friend who was picking me up to go this wedding came late, so we ended up only making the reception, and we were late to that as well. The person who picked me up was my friend Lumyai, and Saturday was her wedding. There were a series of events that happened that day involving the wedding. First, the actual wedding ceremony that was done at the Monk Hospital, lunch at a nice Thai restaurant, and the reception at Rama Garden hotel.

The Monk Hospital
I hear from my driver that getting to the Monk Hospital from my apartment will take a considerable amount of time. We need to plan at least an hour ahead. We needed to arrive at 10AM.

I don’t like to be late. I actually hate being late, so I told Livonia we needed to leave the house by 8:30AM. I figured the earlier, the better. We head out, and end up getting to the monk hospital just after 9AM. Okay, as much as I detest getting somewhere late, getting there exceptionally early is no picnic either. That’s when the fun began.

Something we learned that morning is that the “Monk Hospital” is actually several buildings. All we knew was that the ceremony was at the “Monk Hospital.” Our driver asked one of the security guards there for some information on the wedding, and he looked as confused as we did.

Perfect.

We continue the game of “I’ll look at you with a blank face, and then you look back at me with the same blank face” for quite some time, and then another person came up, apparently wanting to play the game as well.

Yep. He’s playing the game now.

Since I wasn’t looking forward to playing with more people, I gave Lumyai a call. She answers the phone and tells me in her nice, sweet voice “P’Roger, you know I’m getting married today?”

One thing I love about Lumyai is that she understands sarcasm. My sarcasm is sometimes wasted on the Thais, so it’s always good to have a Thai friend who knows and appreciates sarcasm. However, as well as Lumyai understands it, she also dishes it out.

I tell her that we are at the Monk Hospital, and she wonders why we are there so early when she told me it didn’t start until 10AM. I’m starting to wonder myself, since no one seems to know what we need to do. I hand the phone to my driver, and she starts up a conversation with him. After awhile, he starts talking to the security guard, the guard talks to my driver, he talks to Lumyai, etc., etc., etc. This continues for a few minutes, then he hangs up the phone. They point to the building we have been standing in front of for the past 10 minutes. Ah, I love it. We've been standing in front of the right building. If we would have just walked in, we would have been there, instead of standing outside in a suit sweating and looking confused.

We go inside and see a whole bunch of people milling around. One of them comes up and greets us with a smile and shows us to a seat. Luckily for me, the only people I have ever met that will be at this wedding are Lumyai and two of her sisters. I see none of these people. We continue just stand there, waiting and looking around. On the other side of the room, I spot a couple that are sharply dressed and have three dots on their forehead. I deduce from the attention they are getting that they are a recently married couple. I also come to the conclusion that they are not the couple we came to see. I start getting a little nervous that we are in the wrong place, so I decide to take action and figure things out. How?

I continue to stand in place.

Someone who knows me will come and tell me what to do. I am hanging on to that hope. So my wife and I stand… and stand… and stand. Nothing. Something I do notice however, is that we are very much over-dressed for this event. We see people dressed quite casually, and I’m wearing a suit. Livonia is wearing traditional Thai formal wear as well. Okay, I see people moving around; I might as well do the same. We wander outside and take a look around. Oh look, another building. Let’s see what’s in there. We go inside and still don’t notice anyone familiar. We do however notice many people going downstairs. Maybe the wedding is downstairs? We head downstairs and notice a man showing us the way, guiding us into the room. I peer inside the room full of people. Hmm… no Lumyai in there either. It is then that I determine that crashing a Thai wedding will not be difficult in the future. People are so friendly to invite you in. I'm sure they must be thinking "who has an American friend?" but none of them will insult me by telling me to leave. I think I'll test this theory one of these weekends. Who knows? Maybe we'll make some new friends.

We go back upstairs and head outside. Once outside, Lumyai’s brother “Pear” comes over to greet us. I’ve never met Pear, but I’ve seen him in pictures. He introduces himself and then invites us to go back inside. We get inside and notice a bunch of different people now, including the groom. Okay! We are definitely in the right place now. Good for us.

We now walk around and greet many of the guests. As we are greeting them, the troop of Dominic’s English friends arrive and we spend some time getting to know them. They were a very nice group of people, and yet another reminder of how horrible my English is. We met the best man Mark and his date “Becks” (which I believe is short for Becky), Andy, Lee and his girlfriend of nearly 10 years Kirsty (who I kept calling “Cassidy” until I found out), Dominic’s 14 year old brother Jonathan, and his “Mum.” Why do I tell you all this if you can’t associate any of these names to faces? Well, at some point I’m going to need to remember everyone, so I write this for my own memory. Years from now when I’ve forgotten, I can look back this and say “Oh right, now I remember.” Plus, I still have the option of posting a picture you can use to identify them with. If I ever get home at a decent hour, I'll do that.

Moving On…

A Thai wedding was definitely something I haven’t seen before. It starts out with about 10 monks who come out and get onto a U-shaped stage. They sit down and then start chanting. I took a small video of the chanting because I know I could never describe it to anyone. Unfortunately, I can’t host video on my blogging site, so you will have to just trust me when I say it was unique. Lumyai and Dominic went back and forth to the monks, delivering food and other items while the chanting continued. While they were chanting, you had to hold your hands together in a prayer position. Not understanding exactly what to do now, I started playing with my fingers. Here’s a question for you: with your hands in a prayer position, can you push your index fingers to the left and your middle finger to the right, at the same time? My brain doesn’t think like that. I tried it several times and then just relinquished myself to believing that it is an impossibility of the brain to send the signals to my hands to do the task properly. Later, “ Becks” did it the first time, indicating that I have a less than optimal performance in the finger bending arena. But, I digress.

The monks continued to chant and we continued to sit there. I found out later that their chanting isn't even understandable by Thais. Man, who knows what they could be saying?!? Maybe this is similar to someone speaking in tongues. I don't know, but these are things I think about when I'm sitting in one place for too long. After awhile, I got a little bored of just sitting there, so decided to take a few pictures. Don’t worry, don’t worry, I asked Lumyai ahead of time if it would be improper to take pictures during the ceremony, and she said it was fine. I am still doing my part to remove the “ugly American” stigma wherever I can.

After the chanting, the bride and groom, which I believe were now married, served the monks lunch. We were all going to eat lunch later, but all of us were starving. Many of us helped to serve the monks, which didn’t make our hunger pangs any easier. It was interesting serving the monks as well. You could not hand the food directly to them, nor could you just “put it on the table.” You had to put it on a cloth that they had in front of them, and then they would slide it in front of them and put it onto the table.

After watching them eat, we all headed over to another area of the room. The bride and groom kneeled down over a bench with their hands in a prayer position, and bowed their heads. The guests all came by and took a seashell with water in it and poured it between their hands. The water flowed through their hands and into a pot of flowers below. Why? Actually, I forgot to ask. Oh well, I’ll figure it out later.

By now, we are all quite hungry, so we try to organize lunch plans.

Boonchan, Please Join Us for Lunch
A very nice lunch was waiting for us at another destination. We climb into my van with the people from England (my van actually holds 9-10 people, not including the driver) and we head out for lunch.

When we arrive, Lumyai asks me if it’s okay to invite my driver Boonchan to lunch. Up until she did that, I never thought to ask. So we ask him, and he joins us. I’ll have to remember to invite him with us next time. We've invited him to church. I think he may go one of these times. He likes us. He was actually asked by his company to take another job that would pay him twice as much, but he turned them down so he could stay with us. I think we'll adopt him.

We sat with Dominic’s English friends for lunch and a great time talking with them. They are a neat group of people. They were all very friendly, and had lots of great stories to tell. It seemed as though most of them were pretty well traveled, especially Mark, the best man. He is the rather adventurous one that ate a chicken embryo recently with Dominic in Cambodia. Mmm, tasty.

After lunch, I ask Lumyai what we need to wear to the reception, since we obviously did not dress correctly for the wedding. Lumyai said to just dress casual and to wear whatever is comfortable to the reception. Good to know. You find out later that this was not the best advice.

Getting a Wedding Card
We decide to drop Dominic’s friends off (who are fast becoming friends of ours) at their hotel. As a matter of fact, I think I will refer to them as our friends from here on out. Along the way, we realize that many of us are in the same position and have not gotten a card for the newly married couple. We decide to stop off along the way and pick one up. They send me into the store to get one that I think will work. I take Boonchan with me, in the event the cards are all in Thai.

I go into the store and find a ton of cards in English. Just as I’m about to send Boonchan back to the van, I notice something funny about the wedding card section. The first card I see is a sympathy card. Hmm… maybe only slightly inappropriate for a wedding, but who knows? I look at the card behind that one and notice it says “Happy Birthday.” Behind that one is a card used to congratulate someone on a new promotion. I look around and notice that none of the cards have any rhyme or reason to them. They are just put as they are received onto the many shelves for the cards. I get the impression that the Thais working at the store do not read English, and therefore have no way to associate cards into categories. It becomes very obvious to me now that this is going to take some time.

I start sifting through all the cards, trying to find a wedding card.

After about 10 minutes, I have only managed to locate Anniversary cards. I pick a couple that I can modify to turn into wedding cards, and then look toward the section of cards that are blank inside. I find several cards there. A couple of cards have the traditional Thai dancers, and other cards have elephants. This is where Boonchan will come in handy.

I ask him, “elephants are good luck, right?” He acknowledges me. I pick up two cards, one with a single-headed elephant and one with a multi-headed elephant. He points to the multi-headed elephant and says it is much better luck. I pick that one. Now, we look at the Thai dancers. Many of them have masks covering their faces. He points to the one with the green mask and says it’s also good luck. I pick that one as well. Now I have four cards. This should be enough for us to do something with. I return to the van and try to explain the trials I had that caused the card selection to take so long. I give the good luck cards to our new English friends, and I take one of the Anniversary cards for Livonia and I. We get dropped off at our apartment and get ready for the reception.

The Reception
I look through my closet for something to wear to the reception. Since I get to dress casual, now I have to determine how casual can casual be? Is it corporate casual, or really casual? I mean can I show up in Bermuda shorts and a tank top, or do I still need slacks a polo? Sometimes it makes more sense to just dress formal. Maybe that’s why I always wear a tie to work. It’s too complicated to know just how casual to be. Once again, I digress.

I finally decide to just be as casual as casual can be. I pick out a flashy Hawaiian shirt, some slacks, and my Tevas. My wife (thank you) reminds me that we are going to a nice hotel. The Tevas are exchanged for loafers, and the flashy Hawaiian is replaced by a short-sleeved silk shirt. Casual, but still a little bit dressy. Why oh why did I just I spend all this time writing about my wardrobe is beyond me. Oh wait a minute. There is a point to this. Let’s move on, shall we?

I’m panicking again because we need to get there at 6PM and we didn’t leave the apartment until 5:45PM. As I wrote earlier, I hate to be late to anything, and as the clock ticks onward past 5:30PM, I see each minute as another minute we will be late. I am also worried because this is a dinner, and in my mind I’m thinking it starts at 6PM. Livonia reminded me later that no wedding reception starts on time. Of course, you cannot tell this to someone who worries about being late.

We arrive at about 6:10PM (Ugh! Late again…) and head to the reception. As we enter the receiving area, I notice something that makes me a little concerned. The people around me are dressed like they are about to meet the Prime Minister. All of them are head to toe formal wear. The people we were with earlier also had formal wear on. I didn’t see a single man without a tie or a single woman without a dress or fancy suit.

Lovely.

So now I am once again the outcast. I felt like that thing on Sesame Street. Do you remember when they had four things on the TV and were chanting “One of these things is not like the other?” That was me; the other thing. But, we are here, so we might as well enjoy ourselves.

The reception was very nice. The Thais are very big on Karaoke, so many of them sang music during the quiet parts of the evening. Most of the music was American music sang by a Thai person. It made me miss my wife’s singing.

A lot.

Just like anything else we’ve been to, they served up a HUGE amount of food. I honestly do not understand how Thais can stay so slim. To start off the meal, we ate jellyfish, egg yolks, and cold chicken (chopped up with the bone and skin still on). The egg yolks looked like slices of cheese, and were hard like cheese. However, when you ate them, you definitely knew it wasn’t cheese. Let’s see, what other strange foods did we eat? There was so much. I think we had about six different courses. Which one stuck out? Ah, the duck with chestnuts. They serve it as a “stuffed duck, so you get to see the entire duck, head and all. You peel away the skin and get to see all the nice stuff inside. It kind of resembled dog food, but it actually tasted pretty good.

The kids were most impressed with the shark soup. I think Christian liked it because he got to eat a shark. He likes sharks. I think he likes them even more now, since he got to eat one. I think he and Nathan must have had about 5-6 bowls of that soup. I didn’t eat any. I was still recovering from some of the other foods.

They also served shrimp with black pepper. Actually, I should say they served black pepper and threw little bits of shrimp on it for flavoring. Lots of pepper.

The thing that never really sat well with me was the jellyfish. I'm sorry to be returning to this, but I think it's worth a second mention. Jellyfish is a hard food to eat. It kind of reminds me of eating bone cartilage. It's just as crunchy, but it’s also a little slimy, and is shaped like a thick noodle. The combination of crunchy and slimy are two items that don’t make a good combination in my mouth. The good part was that it was little spicy. I’m actually starting to understand more about Thai spice. You put a few chilis on anything and it will taste better. Whenever the jellyfish didn’t taste right, I would throw another chili in my mouth. After awhile, the heat of the chili had numbed my senses to the point that all I could do is chew and swallow. I could have been eating cement and not known the difference anymore. It was at that point that I decided to stop eating and regain my senses. I ended up not eating much more after that. Ah, so that’s how the Thais stay so skinny. There may be a lot food, but there just not eating much of it.

The night ended good. We stayed up as late as we could, but we had church the next morning. We cut out a little early and headed for home.

Livonia’s first day at church
I think Livonia likes our new "temporary" church home. I say temporary because our church in Chandler will always be considered our home. It's where we really started to go in the direction of understanding what it means to know God. But anyway, I'm talking about the new church now.

When we got there, she was greeted by many people, a couple of whom she’s only met on the phone. She felt immediately at home, and I ended up losing her in the crowd again. Ah, just like church back home. The true test would be after church. Back home, Livonia would talk to conceivably every member of the church congregation. She just loves people that much. I don’t see myself as a people lover; more of a people liker. I enjoy the company of friends. I like meeting new people. However, after about 10 minutes I’m ready for something else. Livonia, on the other hand, can meet a complete stranger and talk for hours. It is definitely a gift she has. It doesn't hurt that she is not hard to talk to.

The church opens up singing a brand new song called “Rock of Ages.” For those that attend a Christian Church in the US, you know this is not a new song. However, it was new to this church. People are getting involved, but the energy is a little low. The vocal team leader asks the congregation why the spirit is low, and what can be done to pick up spirits. Livonia starts clapping and he points to her and smiles, acknowledging that she did the right thing. She’s beaming now. I think she likes the church.

I bought my kids Bibles on Sunday. I bought them because we left theirs at home, and it’s good for them to have. I also bought them because the church has a little game they play with the kids. What? A contest? Every time you attend, you get a coin. You get a coin for completing projects, and a 2-3 coins if you remember to bring your Bible every Sunday. At the end of the month, the coins can be used to buy things from the church. So, of course my kids need Bibles. How else are they gonna win?

After church, I picked up the kids from Sunday and went to find my wife. I lost her again. I found her again talking to a bunch of people. Yep. Just like back home.

Next Saturday is a church potluck. Two weeks ago, I signed Livonia up to bring a dessert. She found that out Sunday. We really want to go, but if we do it will mean three weeks in Thailand without seeing a beach. Livonia really wants to see a beach, so I think the potluck will lose to Hua-Hin. We’ll see.

The Atomic Bomb
Esaiah had to write a speech this weekend on the bombing of Hiroshima, based on an article he read. It was interesting reading his perspective. Although not in the article, he decided to add a little of his own spin to the speech. It went something like this: “Do you know why we bombed Hiroshima? We bombed Hiroshima because you bombed us first so we needed to bomb you back.”

I asked Esaiah why he wrote that, and he said “that’s why I thought it happened.” I told him to do some more research. I also told him to consider his surroundings. He’s not in an American school anymore, so that type of commentary will not be taken the same way. In the US, the teacher may just correct his misunderstanding, but at ISB, he may actually make some enemies. Two of his new friends are from Japan, so I asked him how they may feel if they learn this is the way he feels about the bombing. I’m sure they have a much different point of view on the bomb that killed 140,000 men, women and children, and an additional 2,000 more over the next few years. And that was just Hiroshima.

He rewrote his speech. It was MUCH better the second time around.

And we Shop, AND Shop, AND SHOP
After church, we met our friend Wanphen at Makro. Makro is the Costco of Thailand. We didn’t actually go in. Wanphen just loaned us her Makro card so we could use it while in Thailand. Wasn’t that nice of her? Instead, she takes us to a place called Impact.

Okay, now Impact is huge. It is an expo center that sells pretty much anything. We only managed to look at one section: women’s clothing. I cannot tell you how much I love to spend an afternoon looking at women’s clothing. It is amazing looking at all the blouses, tank tops, halter tops, cute little numbers, and other associated things. I swear, I could have spent hours going “Uh, yeah. I like that one too.”

Don’t get me wrong. I love it when Livonia shops for herself, since she rarely does it. I just don’t want to be around when it happens. Give me the Cliff Notes. Tell me how much fun you had and how many clothes you bought. You can leave out the "I saved this much money, because in the end it's all relative." Just tell me how much fun you had.

Christian and I ended up wandering away from the clothes and into the DVDs, VCDs, and other electronic “stuff.” They had DVD movies on sale there for 79 Baht (2 bucks) and VCDs that I could have bought for 9 Baht (about 20 cents). So how many did I buy? Zero. It was so packed in that little store that I finally got tired of squeezing through it and just left.

We also picked up a few snacks along the way. There were many things to eat there. They had something that looked like jerky, but it was made from pork. When I bit into it, it tasted kinda like the bacon bits you sprinkle over a salad. I could eat this. We buy a bag. We keep going through this food court and Wanphen has us trying many different things. Livonia found something that tasted like popcorn, but looked like some type of caramelized cotton candy. I didn’t eat any of that. It looked waaay to sweet. Wanphen also bought some pork balls for herself, but Christian ended up eating most of those. I still wonder what constitutes a “pork ball.” I was worried it was what I thought it was, so I didn’t have any. Last night, I was eating dinner and happened to notice Livonia had sprinkled them into the noodles we were eating. I noticed this after I had already eaten one. Lord, please let it be something other than what I think it is.

Mom, I Have To Go To The Bathroom
Not too long after Christian and I decided to check out the DVDs, Livonia comes by and says “Did Nathan come with you?” Tell me that doesn’t raise your heart rate just a bit. No, he’s not with me, and I respond with the phrase I’m sure Livonia didn’t want to hear. “I thought he was with you.”

Panic setting in.

When I mentioned Impact was HUGE, what I didn’t mention is that it was also completely full of people. I look around at this sea of people, and Nathan is nowhere to be found.

Before we started walking, Wanphen wrote down my phone number in Thai on the back of my business cards and gave one to both kids. That way, if they ever got lost, they use the card. Do you think Nathan would think to use the card? I didn’t think so either. Also, even if he did use the card, she wrote down MY number. So now, if a Thai calls to tell me he found my son, neither of us will be able to understand each other.

Panic fully set in.

We all split up and try to find him. I walk through the entire Expo and find no one, so I decide to call my wife for an update. Great. She’s not answering her phone. I call Wanphen, who tells me they found Nathan. He was heading for the bathroom. Thanks for the heart failure kid. That’s a few less beats I’ll have to get me through my silver years.

Riverside Cruise
The recently married couple decided to take a river cruise with their English and American friends. We all head out at around 6PM to make the boat by 8PM. The cruise won’t end until midnight, so the boys had to unfortunately stay behind. Along the way to the cruise, it started to rain, so we were confined to the lower levels for dining. However, the top of the boat was still open for sight seeing.

I wish I could have reflected in pictures what we saw last night. The temples at night breathtaking, but anyone who has taken a picture at night knows two limitations: flash and motion. A flash will only reach about 15ft in front of you, and when you setup for a night shot, your camera has to be completely motionless. Have you ever tried to setup a motionless shot on a boat? When you figure it out, let me know. The pictures that came out were a little less than optimal. They make work as a form of modern art though. Maybe I’ll put one in this post so you can see what I mean.

Dinner was again an interesting treat. I was telling the story of how I ate an incredibly salty egg while I was on a trip to Hong Kong. The white part of the egg tasted like I took table salt and poured it down my throat. Mmm… sodium. One of the appetizer plates we had delivered had an egg similar to this one. One of our English friends (Mark) took this salty egg and ate it. He returned with the same sentiment, affirming that it is indeed like table salt. We found out later that you normally do not eat the white part; only the egg yolk. I think I’ll do best to just avoid that in the future.

We were also fortunate enough to have someone order Palay, or snake head fish. I believe this is actually a large eel. I say fortunate because I actually tried this fish, and it was very good. I mean, once you get past the snake head eyeballing you, it’s rather tasty. I would encourage anyone to try this if they see on a menu in the future.

Dancing on the Cruise
I like to dance. When I was younger, I spent a lot of time in the clubs. I like to think that I know how to dance as well. Where am I going with this? One of the reasons we didn’t want to be confined to downstairs portion of the cruise is because it contains a disco. The music is quite deafening, and all the lights flashing all over can be rather distracting. Wow, that sounded old. "Hey, turn down that dang-blasted music!" After awhile though, the beats got me wanting to dance, so Livonia and I went dancing. We were joined by several small children, and later by a couple of our friends. It felt good to dance again, but did not feel good realizing that my knees are not the same knees I had when I was 19. If I felt that way then, I cannot imagine how I’m going to feel 10 years from now. Ah, the wonders of the human body.

The cruise singer was quite interesting. Imagine, if you will, an incredibly tall Thai. I believe he was about 6’2”. Now put extremely long reddish orange hair into the mix, slap on some jet black wrap-around glasses, and silver lounge suit. Now you have the singer in your mind. This is what we saw. It was so amazing, I had to take a picture. I’ll post it on the site. I want that suit!

We finished the cruise at around midnight and got to bed possibly an hour later. We woke up the next morning at about 4:45am, groggy, but still very happy and thankful for the nice weekend.

Seeing as how it took me two days to type all this out, and the document is now over 9 pages single-spaced in Word, I think I should take a break. Hope you enjoyed this update. More to follow.

Until next time…