Moandays

Sitting on the Dock of the Bay

I find myself suddenly surrounded by world travelers. Sara left for Panama on Thursday. Nader is heading to London in a few weeks. Willy is visiting Peru (most likely) in a couple of months. Me? I think Des Moines is the furthest I've traveled this year. Wow, that suddenly seems really pathetic.

I got an e-mail from Mark on Monday. He sent me a couple of pictures from his recent trip to Vietnam.



Ha Long Bay



This is one of my favorite pictures of 2008.


Mark was in Vietnam putting on a workshop on teaching English. He also got to see some POW camps and Ho Chi Minh's grave. I'm trying not to be jealous of Mark, but it isn't working out so well.


Home is not where you live, but where they understand you...

I talked to Nate last night. I had long heard rumors that he was leaving the Tuscon area. His housemate had flaked out and it was time for him to move on. The rumor mill spat out three locations where Nate might be moving. There was Phoenix, there was Minneapolis, and there was Boone. I finally got a hold of Nate last night and it turns out that he chose the most beautiful and exotic of locales and will be returning to Boone as soon as his house in Tuscon gets rented. This might very well be a brief stop as he looks for lucrative employment in his chosen profession, (kicking ass and taking names in the kitchen) but it will be good to have him back in the area for at least a little while.


This is 10% luck, 20% skill; 15% concentrated power of will...

125 145 151
127 140 183
145 139 167
160 143 183

Those numbers represent my bowling scores from the last 4 weeks. I don't discuss my bowling league much. I don't take pride in my bowling. I'm probably in the bottom 10 of the bowlers in the league. However, those numbers are respectable by my standards. Yet, despite putting up decent numbers, I was in a horrible slump. I had not earned a single point against human competition since before Christmas.

Then last night I had a breakthrough. I was lined up against Matt Haub. I've known Matt for several years. We used to work together. So I felt a little bad that my breakthrough came against him, but I still need to celebrate that I swept him and my nearly two month long streak of futility has come to an end.

I defeated him by scores of:

160-136 (231-217 with handicap)
143-114 (214-195)
183-126 (254-207)

Maybe it was more a product of Matt having a bad night, but after 2 months of wandering in the desert, I'll take it.