Simple America

Hurricane Ike looks like it shall come calling soon. We are bracing for the storm. Not going to run like we did for Hurricane Rita three years ago. This time the missus is here with us too. For Rita I sent the missus to her family in Toronto since she had been working in Detroit that week.

They have mandatory evacuation for the low lying areas. Folks beyond that area like my family have been asked to stay put. At least wait so those that have to leave can get out of the way first. I won’t move unless we lose power. If the power is lost it could be down as long as two months. The earliest that could happen to us is Saturday. The winds are supposed be reach up to 130 mph (200 kph), and this storm is huge extending 600 miles (1,000 km) from side to side. Really I am not too worried as I have faith in God. Nothing shall happen to me and mine unless it is his will.

The kids schools are closed tomorrow. They are both excited and treated this event like a vacation. My daughter wanted to go join her friends for a hurricane party. Much to her disappointment I won’t allow her to attend. If I decide to evacuate I am not going to have to worry about going to pick her up before leaving the area. A family should not separate at time of potential disaster. Enough worries if she is with us, I could not imagine the anxiety if we allowed her to go out in these conditions. She is not happy about it, but I don’t care. I’m not here to make her happy. My job is to be a father.

They suggest we keep our vehicle gas tanks full. I topped off my little truck’s gas tank this morning and when I picked up my son I stopped at the same station this evening and they were out of gas. Not a drop for sale. Went looking for D size batteries as they were completely sold out. Oh well. That is what I get for waiting until the last minute. We have lots of water and my daughter has her camp stove. Hope she has enough fuel.

If we evacuate I imagine we are going to Austin this time. Find a hotel or stay with the missus sister. No matter what we are going to be all right.

When I had Zara’s Mom here, I had her pronounce a lot of Malaysian words for me. Now I am smacking myself on the forehead. How could I forget to ask her how “Boleh” sounds? I feel really dumb for missing this word. How could I?

So who is gonna say “Boleh” for me? It is really bugging me now. Can one of you post it on your blog. I like to hear your voice too. So puh-leez help me with this small request. Can you?

I’m listening. Ear up against the speaker.

I just finished listening to Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican Convention. What a great lady. Mrs. Palin feels so down to Earth and she is a gutsy woman too.

Up to the point the election season has pretty much put me to sleep and I have been avoiding all of the political gobbledy goo. I never have been a fan of John McCain and I definitely don’t care for the Marxist, Barrack Obama. I finally found someone I can vote for and that is Sarah Palin. She has a good track record in Alaska and I hope she can focus that same spunk and drive in Washington DC.

I loved it when she asked, “Do you know the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom?”

The answer was, “Lipstick.”

Simple American wants to be a hockey dad. Put me down for sixteen years of Sarah Palin. That’s right. Eight years as VP and then eight as President of the United States. Lets give B O some deodorant and send him back to the do nothing Senate where he is qualified to do just that.

Yes. I am no longer a blog virgin. After three years (yes I missed my anniversary post) I have finally got to scratch and snif my first blogger. And as a bonus I got to meet a ssecond blogger (adding another blog to my list of comfortable places to visit).

So who did I meet? None other than Zara’s Mama and Mom2Ashley. Okay maybe there was not that much scratching or sniffing. Don’t want Zara’s Daddy to kick my butt or my missus either. But there was much laughing, eating, and cajoling. And a fair amount of traveling.

These ladies travelled from the opposite side of the world and ZM wanted to see state parks. Course I have a different understanding of what a state park is so it became a bit more adventurous than they intended. They also brought along some other colleagues from work. Three gentleman visiting from Hong Kong, Shang Hai, and Australia joined us on our merry trip. We travelled three hours west of Houston to San Antonio. This city is a good hub for checking out the Hill Country of Texas.

We stayed at the Marriott Northwest and that is where I made first contact with ZM. She arrived a few moments after we checked into our room. ZM asked if she could come down and meet us. And what a lovely ambush. *wink* I opened the door and she captured the magic moment with the digital eye as displayed on her blog. And there she was. Such a cute lady and in time for first huggies too. For a bonus she gave me some white coffee, teh tarik, and some excellent curry. I am going to be experiencing some Fatt Hao days now thanks to ZM. 

In the morning I met the rest of her mates at breakfast. From there we departed for Enchanted Rock. This was my first visit, but I had always wanted to travel there. There is a lot of history in this area and I like history in case you don’t know or might have forgotten, since I have been blogging so infrequently. I will let some photos tell the rest of the story.

This is the safe side of Chinese women. If they cannot see you they cannot hurt you. This is walking along the trail below Enchanted Rock. ZM is on left, the missus in the middle and Mom2Ashley on the right.

Enchanted Rock. There is a lot of mysticism associated with this place, thus the name.

If you follow these signs you will reach the top. Really. Honest. Just follow ‘em.

Once you reach the top, you are permitted to dance around and act a fool. Then you may pass out from lack of oxygen from the walk up.

And from the top you can see Texas and more Texas.

All of that climbing around makes a soul hungry. We went to Fredericksburg for lunch. This town is originally a German settlement, so we tried a German restaurant and you can see my brat wurst with potato salad and red cabbage. I love the wurst but was not too wild about the rest of the meal.

After lunch and a bit of window shopping we headed to Perdanales Falls. This is a beautiful spot, I had visited once before. Wish you all could travel to this spot. WITH ME!!! 

We headed back to San Antonio and walked past the Alamo on the way to the Riverwalk.

We ate at Hooters and I think all of us were too tired to think of photographs. But the wings were scrumptious and the girls were delicious in their own way too. If you do not know what a Hooters girl is give it a google.

We regrouped at breakfast the following morning. The first objective was the Mercado or old Mexican market. This was a great place to find tourist souvenirs for folks back home.

We had lunch in the Mercado at La Margarita’s. The fajitas there were excellent and they had a lot of extra meat too which I enjoyed chomping upon. Sausage, chicken, and a stuffed pepper were quite tasty. Yum.

No one tried a Margarita, but the Pina Colada was a hit.

After lunch we bid San Antonio adios. Next stop was the outlet malls in San Marcos. They had made a trip here the previous weekend, but you can never get enough shopping in at these outlets. I followed ZM around like a puppy dog. I knew our time together was coming to an end soon and I wanted to enjoy her company as much as possible.

Once the shopping bug was cured (actually the stores closed), we left for Austin, the capital of Texas. And that is where we went. The capital building.

From there we had our final huggies for the trip. They returned to the north of Houston, while I headed to the southwest. Truly a wonderful trip in which I made four new friends and solidified ZM as a good friend. The memory banks in my mind are over-flowing in a good way. Thanks for letting me be your tour guide and hope we all meet again.

The hardest part of marketing is pushing myself out on to the world. I am naturally shy and happy to hide behind numbers all day. Problem is when you are self-employed, you have to find someone else’s numbers to hide behind. If you limit yourself to your own numbers, your grocery shopping shall be limited to peanut butter crackers.

I now have to consider marketing to be a part of everything I do. Finding prospects. Introducing them to my services. Convincing the client  that I can improve their business. Making these folks aware that I have helped them as promised and hopefully more. I must constantly find new ways to help them. And get them to share me with others. Everyone I meet could be my next hot lead. I can ill afford to be caught off guard or act a fool in public.

Awareness is the key to my future. I must make others aware of my offerings. I need to know how I am doing this as well as where and when. I must continually maintain this effort. Marketing is a constant and can fail in the instant you slacken from the task. I must believe in the importance of marketing me, therefore I must believe in me. Beliefs become behavior and I must behave well.

Now I should reflect upon my hospitality background. The professors taught service is paramount. Service means the guest is satisfied. Well now I deal with clients and they too must be satisfied. Every effort must be geared toward their satisfaction. Anything less is failure. I must know the client’s needs, anticipate them, and fulfill them. No matter how tired I may become in these pursuits I must find the energy to carry on and persevere.

Ultimately, the toughest client is me. I too must be satisfied. There is no room for failure. Losing the marketing war is not even a consideration.

My goal is not to be rich or live a Fatt Hao life. The goal is to satisfy each and every client and know I have done the best I can do when I lay my head down to sleep each night.

Changing subjects. Shifting gears.

A little proud of my daughter. She has become a volunteer at the Lighthouse of the Blind in Houston. Last night she went to the orientation and is preparing to help with an Outreach camp this summer. This camp helps High School graduates make the transition from school to University or the job market. Girl can still make me proud between bouts of scaring the hell out of me. 

I’m told there was a month of March and April. Turned fifty years of age in March and there was ice cream cake so I must have aged. I definitely fattened up. Can you say soo-ey pig?

Miss writing here everyday as I used to do and reading the words of others. Looking at pictures, smiling at children’s antics, drooling over food, dropping my jaw, crossing my legs, and scratching my head.

Business was fair this tax season. It was my best ever, which is good, but I need more if I am going to survive. But considering I had only word of mouth marketing I cannot complain. Currently I am mailing out postcards to businesses that I selected from the Houston Business Journal’s Book of Lists. I also learned how to access the County’s database, which allows me to see businesses that register in Fort Bend county. Learned how to mail merge and soon I hope to be answering phone calls and emails. Otherwise the missus wants me to get back in the work force and earn a paycheck instead of spending her money on marketing materials. Cannot blame her. But I have no intention of kowtowing to a boss again.

My kids are winding down their school year.

My girl is looking at colleges to send applications to. Going to visit some universities here in Texas, Colorado, and maybe New York. Though the only way she can go to Cornel is if she gets a scholarship and I think she goofed off to much to be considered for a material gift. She has such a wonderful mind, but I think she has allowed herself to be distracted from the mark. And she sticks things in her ears, where her piercing is. Scared she shall have a permanent gouge or get infected as she puts all kinds of stuff there. Pencils, eyehooks, and plastic are just a few of the things I have seen. Really bugs the missus and me, and anything spoken on this subject goes in one ear and out the other. Bit frightened of what she may become. Even her scout leader told her that he would not hire a person with piercings and gougings. All I know is the first tattoo she gets or additional piercing and she can pay for her own college. I am not supporting that lifestyle.

My son is getting ready to graduate Middle School. Well I hope he can graduate Middle School. He simply does not do his assignments. This stems from a combination of inattentiveness and laziness. And once again teenage angst abounds when you try to talk sense to him (just like his sister). If he does graduate, he has been accepted at St Thomas High School in Houston. It is a probationary acceptqnce, but I am so glad that he is attending one of the better college prep schools. First he has to graduate from St Frances De Sales. I feel like I am going to crack the whip on him every day for the next four years. At least until he attains a decent study habit. Too much like me at that age. But no one was spending five figures in US dollars on me for education. Somedays I just want to spank his lazy ass, but he can look me in the eye almost. He might spank my ass instead.

Enough of the scarey urchins. They are good kids when they are asleep after all. And both are striving to advance in their scouting programs, which pleases me. Plus the girl is going to do some service projects for the Lighthouse For the Blind soon too. I can still get a little happiness from the wee bairns. And she is going to spend a week this summer at University of Texas, attending a girl’s only introduction to computer science.

The missus is working as hard as ever. I don’t know how she makes it without me though. Brewing coffee in the morning. Making sure she eats lunch and gets snacks. She starts working early and does not seem to stop until late in the evening. Chinese work ethic is damn scarey somedays. But appreciated.

My game publishing company is driving on and up too. We opened an internet shop to sell our books. Today I made some moves to open up some more markets too. We want to become the one stop shop for horror fans. Movies, posters, and books from that genre for example. I think it is exciting and there is a lot of potential. Might be enough to fall back on if the firm does not work out. We’ll  have to wait and see.

So what have you been up to. I miss you. Yes you!  And you too. Big hugs to everyone. It cheers me up to see you folks come by. Faceback is a nice place to gather and get poked, slapped, tickled and have a giggle. But the blog is where the heart is. Can you hear my heart beat? Breathe in. Breathe out. I can smell you near.

The Marriott Downtown Orlando is in quite a nice location. If you are a fan of the NBA this is conveniently located across the street from the Amway Arena where the Orlando Magic play. They played the Washington Bullets the night we arrived, but I was too tired to think about looking into tickets. There is a civic cinter of some sort also located across the street where a local ballet production of The Nutcracker is playing.

Amway Arena as seen from my room on the 15th floor.

A look at our room and all of our baggage. No light travelling here.

Rugrats watching the cartoon channel. The hotel also had a lovely breakfast buffet. We pigged out the two mornings we stayed there.

For the first day we went to EPCOT. I always have enjoyed this park. When we went to pay for the tickets we learned that you can add on to your tickets within two weeks of the purchase. This is nice as it provides the visitor a lot of flexibility. And as you add more days the price is much cheaper. Once you get beyond four days the addtional days only cost two bucks a day. Another thing to do when purchasing tickets is make sure they know if you have a special celebration. Our anniversary is near and they gave the missus and I both button to wear announcing our celebration. This has been nice as the staff often greets us with a congratulations. When we visited the American area in the Nations area of EPCOT they actually gave us a certificate to commemorate the day. They also had us call a special number where Mickey and the gang wished us a happy anniversary too. Really was a cute gretting. And then we were given premium seating for the show.

Here is the cert they gave us. Made us feel really special.

On Sunday we visited Universal Studios’ City Streets. The missus wanted to meet a pair of her work mates from IBM. We had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. The food was fair, but I loved the atmosphere and all of the rock and roll items on display. After lunch we moved to the Hilton Grand Vacations Club resort on International Drive.

This resort provides us a lovely suite. The kids loved the extra space and the opportunity to not hear my snores at night.

The dining room table is a lovely place to have breakfast and dinner. Behind it there is a full kitchen with the utensils we need for cooking. And they have Starbucks coffee for us as well. I like this place.

Beyond this door lay the bedroom for the missus and I. The kids had a sofa bed to rest upon.

There was a huge tub with whirl pool and a walk in shower that allowed me to stretch my arms out fully without touching the sides. I enjoy this bathroom a great deal.

And there are two sinks to speed things up in the morning. Quite nice marble upon these counters here.

The kids discovered they could hook up the X-Box here. After spending a bit too much time at lunch with out excellent companies we decided to chill out in the room rather than go to MGM Studios. Later in the evening we visted Disney Downtown. There are many shops located here. They have the best Disney store located here. If you should come this way, you really owe it to yourself to visit the Disney Downtown. There is no fee to enter this area and you should not miss it.

Promise you all that Thanksgiving food pictures shall be posted soon. Have not had the time yet. Hope I can get the time to visit you all soon too.

Thanksgiving was a relaxing day. The missus and girl combined efforts in the kitchen with some help from sil #4. They did not go all out cooking so many dishes as in the past. Put what they prepared was excellent and yummy. We had turkey of course and you shall see the other dishes in that future post I mentioned. I promise this post is gonna happen.

The sales ads did not show a lot of super duper bargains as in the past. Since there was no stop the world deals, i woke up on Friday morning at the crack of eight. I moved out quickly and visited Best Buy in Rosenberg, followed by Circuit City and Best Buy in Sugar Land. Mission accomplished, no Grinch this year. Cannot discuss my purchases as the wee bairns are smart enough to read my blog and discover what their Christmas presents are. The best part of shopping was returning home before 10:30.

The holiday was nice family time. I got to visit with two of my nieces, the missus’ brother #3 and sister #4. Though I have to admit that I missed seeing sil #5 who is in Hong Kong helping my parent-in-laws with a project. She always livens up a party. All of the kids played a lot of Guitar Hero 3 and I even squeezed in a few songs of rocking.

Monday came too quick. Six days is not enough. Can I take another six? Oh well there is a nice break coming at Christmas. Then the family and I shall head east to Florida.

I would encourage those of you that blog from the free sites to consider looking for your own home. Find the domain that you name and your readers recognize as you. For a new starting blog you need a blog hosting solution. And I encourage you to find someone that provides wordpress hosting. Wordpress is an excellent tool for bloggers as so many of us have discovered. An alternative platform bloggers might consider using is Moveable Type hosting.

Once you leave the world of free blogging, blog hosting is extremely important. A stable host keeps your site up for visitors. Nothing is more frustrating than attempting to leave a comment on someone’s blog and the words are dumped into the nether by an unstable host. Take the time to shop as many blog hosting choices that you can identify. Look at the blogs you enjoy the most and give you little trouble as a reader. Ask the blog owner who they use. This could help you pick a winning host.

If you choose wordpress hosting find a company that will load wordpress for you. My host does and I find this so convenient. I never have to worry about upgrades. Any patches or updates happen seamlessly without me knowing about it. Blogging bliss. Let me tell ya.

The missus had wanted to go to Hong Kong in the next couple years to visit her family. Then she saw that China is having the Olympics next year, so no way are we visiting with demand driving up travel and tour prices.

I told her why not go the other way? She looked at me funny and I said lets go to Europe. How about Spain? I know somebody there and they have some lovely cities with a lot of history.

I would love to visit the Cathedral of Barcelona. When I lived in Europe I had the habit of walking into churches and looking around at the construction and art exhibited on the grounds. I like to look in every nook and cranny. I guess to find an accommodation we’ll have to look for Hoteles en Barcelona to find a place to stay.

Madrid is definitely a must see as well. I have read about so much history in this city. Heck it is the capital right? Of course there will be interesting things to see from old Spain all the way to the modern world. I know I will walk all over town so I am going to need to find some good choices for Hotels in Madrid too. Will need a comfy room and maybe a Jacuzzi at the end of the day.