Home

It's good to be home! Being away, especially in Taiwan, is not that hard for me since I really enjoy traveling and have a wonderful girlfriend in Taiwan. However, being away means being away from home and my family- which IS hard for me. So it's good to be home and to have my daughter with me again. I got in to San Diego around 1:00PM on Wednesday and jumped into life again- headed out and ran errands, including grocery shopping, and then picked my daughter up from school. After not seeing her for two weeks, it was awesome to have her come running off the playground screaming "DADDY, DADDY, DADDY!" Through my totally foggy, jetlagged haze, I was grinning from ear to ear. I forced myself to stay awake and got 3 loads of laundry done, hoping to reset my internal clock a bit, but I had a very hard time getting up yesterday. I spent the day at the office trying to get a little caught up and slightly out from behind the pile of papers and projects that built up while gone. Mostly I just fought to stay awake without my head crashing onto the keyboard... and mostly was successful.

Today, I am taking the day off so I can get back to my life here. I need to clean my apartment, open the mail, finish paying bills and hopefully go for a short ride to get back in the swing of things. While gone, I put back on 6 of the pounds I'd lost before leaving. I'm now back up to 210, but I'm confident it'll drop back off pretty quickly once I get back to riding and eating better. The best thing about taking the day off is that I get to go to a "play" at my daughter's school- this will be the first one I have been to in probably two years. Sad fact... but I'm looking to reverse that trend. I sometimes miss out on the small beauties of parenthood because of my work schedule, the travel and the fact that I am too much of a workaholic. Fortunately, my daughter doesn't yet see that I miss too many of these school functions... and I hope to stop missing too many of them. So today is largely dedicated to her and that makes me happy.

You can see many of the pictures I took while in Taiwan on my Facebook page in my Mobile Uploads and Taipei 2009 galleries. I have a bunch more photos to load to Facebook too, so the Taipei 2009 gallery is going to keep growing. The show itself was a great success and the following two days of factory and vendor visits were also very productive. I love the trips to Taiwan because it always feels like so much gets accomplished while there, as well as the time I get to spend with my girlfriend.

Last night, in another jetlagged haze, I recorded the 10th episode of the Masiguy Podcast... finally. It's another one of my trademarked ramblings. One of these days I'll get better organized and actually have a plan or script to follow when I record one of these things. For those of you who have been trying to download the podcast from iTunes, it IS actually on there now. I have no idea why it took so long to get it worked out, but you can now download my rambling nonsense onto your iPod and take me with you... frightening, I know. This most recent "show" is about 33 minutes long, so the suffering is relatively brief.

Unlike me, I forgot another little recent hallmark; March 4th was the 4th anniversary of this blog. It's been an amazing journey over the past 4 years, to say the least. So much of my life has been lived out on this blog and my life has changed because of it- good and bad. The best thing about the blog has been the community of people I have grown to know and love. Sincerely- it is a blessing in my life to have the friends that I do and to have met so many fantastic people via this blog and the other Social Media outlets that have become a part of my life since beginning this project 4 years ago. I can not thank you enough for being a part of my life and for being interested in the things I have published here. My life has benefitted from this experience and I hope to continue posting and sharing for at least another 4 years!

Alright, it's time to get going on chores so that I can have a little time to ride today as well.

Thank you and I'll be back soon.

Tim

Every Sunday should be like this...

Today was one of those great Sundays that I seem to get too few of; quiet, relaxing and filled with some great time with family. I wish they were all like this.

We started the day with some coffee fresh coffee.. well, I did anyway. I wish it was Kinetic Koffee, but I've long ago gone through all that I had (which means it is time to buy some)... but it was still good. Then I fired up the stove and cooked up some Lit'l Smokies and some pancakes. After that, we lazily shuffled through the morning. Around 1:00 when motivated ourselves enough to head out for bike ride.

It was a beautiful SoCal "autumn" day- sunny and clear, but with a steady wind. While out on the ride, we stopped to say hello to Masidaughter's mom and her brother, which was a treat for me as well.

Heading off for our ride!


Stopped for a little hello.


Me and the kids- how it should be!
The li'l punkin being her silly self- bless the little wingnut.

We ran some other errands and did some other things, but the highlight remained the ride. I wish all Sundays could be this good... sincerely.

Here's to hoping your Sunday was as good, if not better.

Tim

Taiwan time...

I'm debating whether or not to even go to bed tonight, since I have to get up for my flight around 3:00- 3:30 tomorrow morning. If I just stay up, then by the time I board the flight from San Francisco to Taipei, I'll be so exhausted I'll have to be able to sleep on the plane (I can barely ever get any sleep on a plane). It might help me to reset my internal clock as well so that the jetlag is not as bad. BUT... if it doesn't work and I still don't sleep, I'm going to be one whacked-out nutjob by the time I get to Taiwan. Plus... my eyes are already crossing because my insomnia was raging last night and I got almost no sleep. As I'm already in a sleep deficit, I don't want to send myself into a coma or some kind of walking narcoleptic episode.

Had a great day with my daughter today. Her school was still closed this week for holiday break. I took the day off to spend some more time with her before I head off for a week. We didn't do much, but we just hung out. Played some cards (she loves Go Fish), went to the YMCA (one last workout for the week), did a little shopping, had some lunch and then wrapped it up with dinner for two at a local Chinese restaurant... how ironic. It was a great day and I'm glad I wasn't able to find her a sitter for the day after all... it was the perfect way to get ready for a week away from home.

Probably won't hear from me again until I get to Taiwan- unless I can get a decent wireless signal in the airport for a change. I promise I'll do my best to get good pictures, a bit of video and do some podcasting and whatnot. Promise.

Tim

Good music...

The Princess and I did what we usually do; had dinner and listened to music (she's as much of a music nut as I am) and then played cards and continued listening to music. She's a big, big fan of Pinback and The White Stripes, among others. She prefers "rocken roll", but will tolerate my bouts with classical jazz (Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, Art Blakey, etc). She has a soft spot for a bit of classical, preferring Tchaikovsky (just like me). Mostly I just plug the iPod in to the stereo and we just listen to it do its magical shuffling. It's such a joy to me to watch her suddenly break into a wiggle because she can not ignore a rhythm. To quote a song from years ago, "the rhythm is the master and I'm just a slave to the rhythm". If there is any one thing I hope that the two of us can share, I hope that music will always be it (though she is becoming quite the writer already at 6 years old).

My favorite memory of her and music is from when she was less than two years old and I was a full-time stay home dad (I stayed home when she was 1 until she was 2). We were driving to the YMCA and the then-new White Stripes song Seven Nation Army came on the radio. That really great bass line was playing and I happened to look in the rear view mirror in time to see her bobbing her head in perfect sync with the beat. I asked her, with a half giggle, "you rocking out baby?" In her tiny voice, without missing a beat (or the rhythm) she said, "yeah daddy, I'm rocking out!" She still calls that song her "rocken roll" song. Smiling at the memory of it now...

Anyway, one of my all-time favorite Elvis Costello songs played while we were in the midst of a heated round of Go Fish. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror, from the Spike album. She didn't understand the lyrics, obviously, as she just smiled while I sang (poorly) along. She said that it made her feel happy- bless her heart.

Just for your clarification, here are the lyrics;

One day you're going to have to face
A deep dark truthful mirror
And it's going to tell you things that I still love you too much to say
The sky was just a purple bruise, the ground was iron
And you fell all around the town until you looked the same
Chorus:
The same eyes, the same lips, the same lie from
your tongue trips
Deep dark, deep dark truthful mirror
Deep dark, deep dark truthful mirror
Now the flagstone streets where the newspaper shouts ring to the boots of roustabouts
But you're never in any doubt, there's something happening somewhere
You chase down the road 'til your fingers bleed
On a fiberglass tumbleweed
You can blow around the town, but it all shuts down the same
Chorus
So you bay for the boy in the tiger-skin trunks
They set him up, set him up on the stool
He falls down, falls down like a drunk
And you drink 'til you drool
And it's his story you'll flatter
You'll stretch him out like a saint
But the canvas that he splattered will be the
picture that you never paint
Chorus
A stripping puppet on a liquid stick gets into it pretty thick
A butterfly drinks a turtle's tears, but how do you know he really needs it?
'Cos a butterfly feeds on a dead monkey's hand,
Jesus wept he felt abandoned
You're spellbound baby there's no doubting that
Did you ever see a stare like a Persian cat?

Not exactly cheery, but still an awesome song. "One day you're going to have to face a deep dark truthful mirror and it's going to tell you things that I still love you too much to say"... one of the very best lines of lyric ever penned!

Hope you all spend your weekends "rocken out"!

Tim

Saturday is Princess Day

Tim

Yeah, that's right

Today has been one of those beautiful and warm SoCal autumn days- 72 degrees and sunny... though we did get a little morning fog from the bay that kept the air a cooler 68. Burrrrr......

Since it is mid-October, Katie did spend a little time decorating her Halloween punkin'.

She's already asked if we can make pumpkin pie out of it (thought you'd wanna know, Donna).

Once done with the punkin', we headed off to the beach to hunt in the water's edge for sand dollars- one of our shared favorite past times.

The hunting wasn't so great, so we only found a few broken ones. But the weather was great and the beach beauty was happy as could be in her natural element.

Afterwards, on the way to the car, we stopped and she spent a little time being 6 years old.

It was a good day.


Tim

The reason why;

Yep...

Tim

Memorial (Daddy) Day

Today was a special day for me, not just because I had the day off on a Monday (yippee), but because I got to go for a ride with my daughter. The Princess really likes riding in the trailer with me- though she's not far from being too tall to ride in it for much longer. (Next will be a Trail-a-Bike for her, I guess.)

Here we are getting ready to head down the street.

You can see she has enough headroom, but not by too much. This might be her last year in the trailer.

Here, she's making sure Daddy remembered to put her snacks and water bottle in the side pocket where she can get to them easily while Daddy suffers to drag her around.

It's like a Daily Drive... only you can't actually see her.

She's in there, beneath the vinyl windscreen- she got cold because Daddy was going "too fast"... her words, not mine.
First with the eyes closed...

... then with the her eyes open. Notice Rainbow Bear clutched under her arm. He/ she/ it goes everywhere with her... even on bike rides with Daddy. Ever since she was just a year old, Rainbow has been on every ride in the trailer she's ever been on.

I know the bike isn't quite her size, but she does like Daddy's bikes. Notice the aircraft carrier in the background. It is one of the many stationed here in San Diego. The men and women on these ships have helped to keep it possible for me to ride my bike freely with my daughter. I never lose sight of that reality. Thank you, to all who have served- especially those who have paid the ultimate price. To them and their families, I say thank you.


Katie took this one- not bad for her first ever picture. Note- I have one of those cameras that adds 20... no, 50 pounds.
In spite of towing 45 lbs of daughter and another 40+ lbs of trailer and goodies, Daddy had a damned good time (as well as one of helluva workout).

Tim