Feeling The Cold

It's times like this when I miss living in Southern California. It's the middle of winter, and it's still 75 degrees in Los Angeles.

Here in Austin, it's about 28 degrees, and tonight it will drop down to 14 F (-10 C).

That is freaking cold. Ok, ok, I realize that in other parts of the country, it's even colder than that. I read somewhere that North Dakota was going to have a low of -50F at one point. Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that something like instant death once you step outside???

My point is, being a Southern Californian, I've never experienced a winter this cold in my entire life. Never. It didn't get this cold in Taiwan, either.

We just got our electricity bill today, and it was $116. For us, that's a lot. Our normal electric bill is around $50, so now it's double because we have the heat on constantly. I was a little shocked at the bill.

"If our electricity bill is $116 for this apartment, imagine what it's going to be once we are living in a house." I told Christy. $200? $300? Oh, I just can't wait for all the little financial surprises that are going to come my way once we move into our house.

Luckily for Austin, there isn't any rain in the forecast over the next few arctic days, so we won't see any snow out of this. Although I would love to actually see some snow here, I think it would be chaos on the roads.

So, it looks like this weekend will be spent mostly indoors, trying to keep warm, like most of the country is trying to do.....except Los Angeles...you lucky bastards!

New Years Resolutions 2010

It's that time of year once again where I try to make some resolutions for the new year and hope to stick to them. Last year I did pretty well. Getting the family into a bigger apartment, and getting out to see my mom were at the top of my list, and we did both. I also predicted that by early 2010, we'd be going back to Taiwan for Chinese New Year. Ain't gonna happen.

This month we're moving into our new house, and the money we would have spent on going to Taiwan went toward our down-payment on the house. So all I can say is...we may go to Taiwan for Chinese New Year 2011. David's girlfriend Pi Chi told us that they're planning to get married this year (after 5 years of dating!), so I'd like to be able to go back for that, but I may not be able to. I still keep trying to get David and Pi Chi, and Christy's parents to come out to see us, instead of us going there. I know David and Pi Chi have a lot more disposable cash than we do.

As for my resolutions, first off, I do want to have a decent vacation this year, but not an expensive one. A local, US vacation, where we can just drive somewhere for a few days or a week. We've thought about two different ideas: a trip to Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park, or a trip to Disney World in Florida. Both have advantages and disadvantages. The Yellowstone/Rushmore trip would be cheaper, but the kids not might enjoy it as much as Disney World. Disney World might be more fun for them, but it would be more expensive and we'd have to drive through states I don't really want to drive through to get there. I haven't been to any of these places before, so I'm hoping to make at least one of them a reality this year.

I also need to let go of the anger I've had toward my brother and sister last year. Those of you who read my blog regularly probably know about how my sister stood us up in Dallas last year and how it really pissed me off. And there is still the ongoing feud I have with my brother over him sticking my mom in a nursing home after she bought him a house. While that will always be a sore spot for me, the only way I'm ever going to have total peace in my life is just to accept what happened and move on. I don't see any warm family reunions happening in the near future, so for now it's probably best to just not think about them for awhile.

Christy will probably request that I talk about our personal life less on this blog, and stick more to impersonal topics. There's a pretty major crisis going on with her family right now and one of the first things she said to me was "Don't talk about this on your blog!" So...I'm abiding by her wishes....although it is a good story.

Looking Back on 2009

I was thinking about not doing a "Looking Back..." blog this year, but then I talked to my friend David (in Taiwan). I hadn't talked to David (on the phone) for nearly a year, so we talked for around 3 hours about pretty much everything. He told me I should do a "year end" blog. By his logic, everyone does a year-end blog, so why shouldn't I? I told him that a year end blog is basically just a re-cap of everything I've already talked about over the last year, so why repeat myself? So...I'll try to do one with as little repetition as possible.

Both 2008 and 2009 were years of big changes for Christy and I. We left Taiwan in 2008, and we bought a house in 2009. So what happens next? Where do we go from here? Do we just fall into a routine, normal life for the next 20 years? Do we just settle down and raise the kids until they're ready to move out?

I started reading up on the city of Manor recently. Since this is the place I'm going to be living for awhile, I wanted to know what I'm getting myself into. Manor is a city that is trying to be more modern and hip, but it will take a lot of work. The city has a website (http://www.manorlabs.org/) that welcomes suggestions from residents. My biggest suggestion right now is trying to lure a major grocery store to open there. As of now, I have to drive about 10 miles to get to the nearest HEB. Manor has a nice golf course....but...how about a freakin' grocery store! Well, at least with the website, it shows they're trying. The population of the city is up to 5800 now, so getting a decent grocery store shouldn't be that hard.

In 2010, I'd like to become a little more actively involved in the community I live in. I really don't want to be writing about how much Manor sucks over the next year.

I've surprised myself that I've kept this blog going for so long. I wrote my first blog entry in March of 2008. Nearly 2 years of blogging! Can I keep it up for another year? I don't know. Maybe. As long as I have something to talk about. If I find myself blogging about the next door neighbors dog barking too much, it's time to throw in the towel.

Christmas 2009

Another Christmas goes by. Thankfully, this will be our last one living in a cramped apartment. Next year should be even better.

Sara came into our bedroom around 7:30 this morning shouting, "Can we open presents now??" So much for sleeping in. Oh well, I used to do the exact same thing to my parents when I was a kid too. Payback, I guess. hehe

Kyle is obsessed with Thomas the train, so most of his gifts were Thomas related. He got a small Thomas train, a large one that moves an talks and sings, and a Thomas book. Sara is into princess toys, so she got another princess doll, as well as a couple of "Leap Frog" books. She just points her special pen to the Leap Frog book and the book will read itself to her. Pretty cool.

Getting Ready For Christmas

This past weekend we went to the annual "Festival of Lights" at Zilker Park (in Downtown Austin). This year, due to the economy, the festival was free. After going to the Christmas light show at Schlitterbahn last year, this one wasn't that impressive. But then again, Schlitterbahn was $15 to get in, and this was free, so you can't really complain.

For the first time ever, Sara didn't run away in fear of Santa Claus. This time she ran to Santa and hugged him as if he were Mickey Mouse.

This year I'm not working on the holidays. I have a week off from work so it will be nice to spend some time with the family. I'm not travelling back to California this year, having spent an enormous chunk of our savings on a down-payment for our new house (and it's not like my brother is inviting me to visit, anyway). Our home loan was finally approved last week, so now our finances are pretty tight. We might go back to visit next year, though. I'm happy that this will be our final Christmas in an apartment.

(Pictures: 1. Sara and Kyle at the Christmas party in San Marcos. 2. Meeting Santa in Zilker Park. 3 Santa's House. 4. Humpty Dumpty at the Festival of Lights. 5. Christmas bears)

KTV

KTV (a place where you sing karaoke, for those unfamiliar) is very popular in Taiwan. I don't think I ever wrote about KTV's on my Taiwan blog because I rarely went to them. KTV's are everywhere in Taiwan, even in the small, farm towns where my in-laws live. The Taiwanese love, love, love to sing!

I remember going to a KTV once when I lived in Taiwan. Christy's friends paid for it. It was at this very lavish building that looked like a hotel. We had our own room for about an hour or so. Everyone would take turns singing some Chinese song while all the lyrics were displayed on a giant TV screen. I didn't sing because I didn't know any of the songs they were playing, and the lyrics were all in Chinese anyway. It did look fun, though.

That was an example of expensive KTV. In the smaller towns, you'll just see someone sitting on a small stool, singing into an amplifier that's turned up WAY too loud, looking at a small screen TV in a small garage. It's usually so loud that the song, and the person singing, sounds so distorted that it's painful to listen to.

I never really thought that karaoke was that popular in the states, but it seems to have been reborn with the new video game franchise called "Rock Band." As an early Christmas present, I was given "Rock Band 2" and it's actually pretty fun. Not only can you sing, karaoke style, to your favorite rock songs, you can also play along with drums and a (fake) guitar.

"The Beatles: Rock Band" has become a new favorite in our house. Here's a video I just took, with Kyle (on vocals), Sara (on guitar), and Christy (on drums) playing "Here Comes the Sun."

The Decade From Hell

I just finished reading an article in Time that said the 2000's was the "Decade From Hell." It listed a lot of events to back up its claim: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan, Iraq, the economic meltdown. Of course, I can sum up my displeasure for the decade with a single letter...."W." Referring, of course, to George W. Bush. (my conservative Republican readers might want to skip the next few paragraphs, but I promise it won't be a long rant.)

I remember very vividly when Bush "won" the election in 2000. I was married to my first wife, Amber, at the time. I remember she cried and cried and cried for what seemed like hours when she heard the news that Al Gore had conceded the race. Although I didn't cry, I felt a sense of dread. I knew Bush was going to be a dimwitted, "cowboy" president who would probably lead the country into a war. I thought it might be a nuclear war, but luckily I was wrong in that regard.

It was primarily because of Bush that I wanted to leave America and live in Taiwan. Bush had turned the country into something I could no longer respect. After 9/11 and Bush's invasion of Iraq, we were hated by almost the entire world. To be an American in a foreign country meant to live with a target attached to your forehead. When I traveled abroad, I rarely revealed where I was from, and when I did, I would often tell them I was from Canada. Thankfully, Taiwanese people still loved Americans.

When Bush was re-elected in 2004, I vowed not to come back to the United States until a democrat was back in office. For the most part, I kept my vow. By the time I returned in 2008, I was pretty confident that either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would be the next president. The American people had finally come around to their senses and realized what a disaster the previous administration had caused to this country.

Since I spent half the decade in another country, I don't really consider this the "Decade From Hell" for me personally. It didn't start off well, since I got divorced from my first wife in 2003, but things started to improve dramatically once I left for Taiwan.

I met my wife Christy in April of 2004, and by November of that same year we were married. Sara was born in March of 2005, and then Kyle in April of 2007. I don't really know why everything happened so fast. It just did. I have no regrets, though. Although these kids can be monsters sometimes, I really adore them. They've definitely made my life a lot more richer and meaningful. For me, they're the highlights of this decade.

Once we came back to America in May of 2008, we had a few setbacks. The great job that was promised Christy did not turn out the way it was supposed to. We lived in hotels while we looked for work, wondering if we'd have to just turn around and go back to Taiwan. Thankfully, when we were just days away from driving back to California, Christy found a job. Then, a month later, I found a job too. We were saved from the brink of failure.

Now as we end the decade, we are getting ready to move into our own house. It feels great to know that we arrived here with virtually nothing, with our few possessions in the trunk of my mom's old car, to having a house, a new car, and some semblance of the "American Dream." Who knows what will happen in the next decade. Maybe we'll lose it all and I'll have to move in with my in-laws in Taiwan and teach English in Nantou. Maybe things will get even better. Who knows? Although I'm hoping for the latter...