I'm pretty excited that I'm going to buy a bunch of household goods like plates, and fans, and a hamper, and a motorbike. I'm getting a good deal from a couple guys I know leaving Chiang Mai. They'll be able to store it all there until we get there. That's kind of a relief to know that we won't immediately have to go out and buy drinking glasses and track down pots and pans.

I'm also pretty glad that the bike is not a scooter. It's an underbone (just google it) which is basically a really small displacement bike with the engine in the conventional place (not on the swingarm like a scooter). It is also not fully automatic shifting like a scooter which also makes me happy, Lisa less so.

Chiang Mai diary

I’m sitting in Starbucks while the van is in the shop in an attempt to get the vibrating tire sorted. I should not have gone with the cheapest Wal Mart tires! But it has 175,000 miles on it and I thought they would see it out to its eventual demise. But the van keeps chugging right along while the tires wobble about.

The reason that this has to get done is that we are now only about 6 months out from moving to Chiang Mai and I’m going to have to sell the van, which of course needs to be vibration fee in order for someone to plunk down money for it.

Six months!!! That is not a lot of time and the checklist is long. This was the only task ready to accomplish today however so here I sit.

We’ve all started learning Thai. Lisa and I are using Rosetta Stone and podcasts and other free tools we found. The girls are starting on the Thai equivalent of Dick and Jane. We found the Manee (that would be the name of Thai Jane) books online with vocab, pronunciation, audio, and other lessons. They apparently used these books in school for many, many years. It’s a pretty interesting script with 44 consonants and nearly as many vowels (which incidentally are placed to the left, right, above, and below the consonants). It’s a bit of slow going for the kids but we’re all making progress. The big thing is to at least be able to read signs, know some basic vocab and have a foundation for learning once we get there.

Lisa is back at the house sorting through odds and ends. She rightly noted that every single thing that we own has to be sorted. Every bit of furniture, article of clothing, electronic device, right down to pencils and crayons have to have a decision made about them: Sell it, throw it away, give it away, donate it, store it, take it.

Every. single. thing! Most will be sold, given away or donated. We hope to store very little (and only what the folks are willing to take) and take only what will fit in normal luggage that won’t get us extra bag fees. Not much is going.

So this Christmas comes with just a bit of trepidation. We don’t really want any stuff, because it most likely will have to be gone five months after Christmas. Just like us.

http://anthemarchive.bandcamp.com/album/ex-umbra

One of the benefits to being a musician is getting to make music with great musicians! And one of the benefits to being a studio rat is that you get to record you performances, mix them, and put them out there for others to hear and hopefully enjoy.

So here are recordings of my band +The Anthem Archive from last month that I just posted to our bandcamp site today. Everything is free to stream and free to download. There are six collections of songs. Everything was recorded live in service at Summit Church, Orlando FL

I only just made a page here on G+ so if you want more music you'll have to get it directly from our Bandcamp page

Ex Umbra

Recorded live in service October/November 2011, Summit Church – Waterford campus, Orlando FL

16 mile run done. Off to the Cape to see the mars rocket launch

Another month, another pair of shoes. Second orange pair in a row. What's up with that?

http://vimeo.com/32397612

Address Is Approximate

Google Street View stop motion animation short made as a personal project by director Tom Jenkins. <