Thunder Gone = World Coming To An End?

Lightnin here-

Just thought I'd tell my side of the past 6 months without Thunder....(not that any of you asked),

here goes:

Blizzard:

Thunder left Cincinnati somewhere around the 3rd of March of this year. Within 5 days we had a blizzard!!! I now have to shovel snow myself (Hey I had to do this last year too, remember the surgery?!) and then try to find someone who will keep it shoveled. I'm a Princess and we don't do this type of thing, remember? Meanwhile, Thunder is posting the first of many sunset photos.

Flood:

Okay, first encounter with Mother Nature alone...not so bad. I can do this! Sure I can!....9 days later it starts raining and melting all that snow! Yep! You guessed it....Floods! I had to leave work to go home to get clothing, feed the cat and get outta there! Couldn't get back to my house that day! Thanks God for STEB and Taco's hospitality, I have a safe, dry and warm place to stay.

Earthquake:

By April we are all missing Thunder and following his blogs feeling sorry for him "searching for a cheeseburger in Beijing", I'm getting ready to make my first trip over, when "WTFH?" a 5.2 earthquake? In Cincinnati? Sure thing, the morning I leave.

Hurricane:

Well, for some time now I've worried about our land in Florida with all of the hurricanes. Yep, you guessed it! Ike entered my life on Sunday afternoon around 1:00 PM and I am still without power at this moment on Tuesday afternoon! This is a little too creepy for me. But I have also learned to be more prepared in the future! Again, STEB and Taco gave me a place to stay since their power came back on late Monday afternoon. There were over 900,000 homes in Cincinnati without power on Sunday and as of today there are still over 500,000 still in the dark. I'm not expecting power back until later this week. But everyone is working together to make this as painless as possible. I'm going to say a prayer and just hope that fire and tornadoes don't get us in the next 6 months!

That just about covers all of the natural disasters doesn't it? Thunder, you need to get back here if you expect things to ever be the same!!!

Here are a few pictures from Sunday.

Yes, a Sunset Post Again!

This one is a bit different though. I posted a week or two ago with sunset and night time photos, but this time I'm talking about the movement of the sun.

Summer is obviously over here because the sun is now rising later and setting earlier. If you notice the position of the sun ion these photos, compared to my last post on the subject, you'll notice that the sun has moved significantly southward (to the left in my photos) because it is no longer setting behind the building just to the right of the sun.

You'll likely see more of these posts as I track the sun this fall and winter to find out where it's southern most point is!





Vivid colors


























Zoomed in

Reflection on one of the surrounding buildings

























Almost gone


At this point you can actually see it move right before your eyes!















Hey this next Monday morning I may be able to capture the sun rise!

Holiday Coming Up On Monday

I mentioned that we have a holiday coming up on Monday, but I didn't tell you what it is.


Monday we celebrate the Mooncake or Mid-Autumn Festival. It actually falls on Sunday this year, but the company s giving us Monday off. Yippee!

I'm not just excited about getting a three day weekend, although that is reason enough to celebrate, but I'm also excited because it's a Monday off during football season! You see with the time difference we're 12 hours ahead of the US right now and so to see a Sunday afternoon game you have to watch it in the wee hours of Monday morning. So Monday morning at about 1:00AM I am going to be at the Goose and Duck watching Football at the same time you guy's will be tuning in! This Monday I'm not going to be watching just any game though because my beloved Chief's are playing the Oakland Raiders and I'm going to get to watch!

OK enough about that, let's get back to the holiday! To quote the information provided by my apartment's management team: The Mooncake Festival falls on the 14th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar and according to Chinese tradition, the moon's fullness and brightness on this occasion is symbolic of an ideal time to celebrate the abundance of the summer harvest
(Hmmm, sounds a bit like Oktoberfest to me!)
To continue: There are many legends surrounding the origin of the Mid-Autumn Festival, most of them revolve around the "Lady of the moon" whom the Chinese refer to as Chang Er.
One such legend tells of how she was married to her lover Hou Yi who shot nine out of ten suns that were causing havoc. For his deed the Queen Mother of the West gave him the elixir of life (isn't that tequila?), but Chang Er stole her husband's potion of immortality, drank it and found herself floating to the moon (yep sounds like tequila to me!). There she lives out her days in the lonely moon palace with her furry rabbit for a companion. Because of this legend it is common to see images of Chang Er and her rabbit stamped on Mooncake boxes.





The management team here also provided a nice little gift!

A box of Mooncakes

























Here's one of them, packaged to last for decades much like a Twinkie, but I'll have to wait until Sunday to eat one and tell you what they're like!











Happy Mooncake Festival everyone!

A Great Day For a Ride

Sunday morning started out fairly bleak and gray...drizzle! Darn it, STEB and I were going to go riding today! Well, by about 10:00 AM the clouds disappeared and the sun came out. Let's roll!

We headed west into Indiana through Lawrenceburg and then made our first stop at a tiny little place at the intersection of 101 and 48. Looks like they still do business here, just not on Sunday!

We keep going on through some small towns by the names of Manchester, Kyle and Napoleon. This puts us in Osgood where we decide it's just chilly enough to put on jackets. As we make our way through the small town we see a bank that says it's 71 degrees. Ah, no wonder we wanted jackets! We are heading to our destination of Versailles. We make a quick stop to grab something to drink. No, not a beer just good 'ol Vernors original and a diet coke. We pack these in the tour pack and head to the Versailles State Park. As we find a nice shelterhouse to have our drinks we spot a trail. Let's do it! As we walk the trail there next to the lake we see Herons swooping the water looking for their lunch! If you look at the picture closely you may see him fishing in the weeds on the far side of the lake. We also saw a spider with a beautiful web but, Thunder and FC, you know I didn't stick around long enough to catch a shot!

Deciding we'd had enough excercise for today we climb back on the bike and head out again. Indiana has some beautiful covered bridges. Over 90 in the state! We discovered one yesterday. Sorry if they look a little out of focus but I tried to do the best I could on a moving bike, with STEB's help by slowing down and ducking to stay out of the shot! Just as we start to drive through so I can get one more picture....dead battery! Oh well!

We do stop long enough after a little while to replace the batteries and start making our way back. This last photo is just outside of Dillsboro coming down the hill back to Lawrenceburg.

At last we are are almost back home when we decide that it's time to grab a bite. There's a new LaRosa's close to my house that neither of us had tried. Well not technically, they have delivered to us before but we'd never dined in. Really nice place and they had the game on the big screen. STEB looked up and started laughing. He pointed out a sign on the wall that stated "Our food is better than what you are watching". Boy, was that an understatement! Thunder's and my beloved Chiefs and STEBS Bengals lost yesterday! 17-10 Both teams!!! Back to his house to put the bike away with just enough time for me to say hey to Taco and head on home.

It was a great day for a ride after all! Thanks STEB....Let's try this again in two weeks when Thunder is along for the ride! Maybe we can find hats for both of you, LOL!

Chinese Passion Fruit

FC's passion for the fruit inspired me to show what is called passion fruit on this side of the earth. It looks quite a bit different in my opinion, but it does share some of the same characteristics by being a bit bland while just a little sweet. It does have a very sweet aroma though something sort of like honeysuckle + cotton candy!
Here's a couple of photos so you can see our version:

And yes that's a US dime I used for scale, I found one in my drawer just the other day and set it out so that I could use it if the need ever arose. I guess this was the time! ;-)

Where is this?

Lightnin here (Again)

Seems everyone else is just too busy to post these days. Thought I'd show a couple of pictures taken from the airplane window on one of my recent trips to China. Sorry I don't remember which is which but these are two shots of the Arctic Ocean and Siberia. Hope you enjoy!

Clear Air, Mountains, Sunsets, and City Lights

I know, I know Sunsets, sunsets, sunsets, but hey these things are gorgeous here and specially right now since the air has been cleaned up for the Olympics! So I decided to share a few of my recent photos of just how beautiful this city can be!

I hope you enjoy!

Check out the mountains in the distance (about 30-40km away)

The city can be so beautiful at night too!

The Olympics Have Passed (Thank Goodness!) My Parting Thoughts

Although the Olympics have passed, the Para-Olympics are now in progress. As a result the crowds have thinned a bit, but not completely. Yesterday I asked one of my coworkers, a true Beijinger, if it was wrong of me to ask: "When are all of these foreigners going to leave so we can get back to normal?" He merely laughed and said"Yes!" Seriously though it has been a pain. Traffic has been redirected, taxi's are easy to come by, the subway is even more crowded, I'm required to carry all of my official paperwork wit me where ever I go, and the prices of everything including groceries has almost doubled (my per Diem however has stayed the same)!

We were able to witness the motorcade of one of the visiting countries officials which demonstrates the disruption that has been taking place. Keep in mind that 204 countries were represented, so that's quite a few disruptions that take place over the course of a few weeks:






Notice the stopped traffic



























The lead car passes































The payload























Hey wait a minute, how did this guy get in there?

























Traffic resumes! It really only took about 2 minutes for the whole thing to pass, but repeat that about 200 times a day across the city and see what it does for your daily commute!














Also here's the real reason to watch Sand Volleyball:

Honestly I feel very fortunate and also very lucky to have been living in the host city during the Olympic Games! It was a unique opportunity to observe and meet people from all over the world, and to experience the ultimate in sports competition!

Olympic Fever!

IIII'mm baaack!

After a brief struggle with my Internet connection I'm finally able to get back on!
Ok, ok so I also took some time off to travel to Malaysia and visit with Lightnin and SPC Dude while they were here, but I'm back none the less!
























This past couple of weeks I've been lucky enough to view several of the Olympic venues! Lightnin, SPC Dude, and I were able to catch the Beach Volleyball competition and see the China Women's team kick some butt against Switzerland.





















































What's wrong with this picture?

Then the following day Dude and I scored some free tickets to boxing, unfortunately we had to say good bye to Lightnin as she headed back to the US so she wasn't able to join us. We were troopers though and managed to enjoy the boxing anyway. ;-)








The next night SPC Dude and I were able to see the China women win against Greece with my friend from the Netherlands (Mischa), but this was a much closer match up and very exciting. The heavens let loose on us right at the end of that match and we were soaked to the bone. It didn't drown our spirits though as we headed for the beer tent and sat it out. There we met some local college students who were able to come to the games and we had some great conversation and made some new friends! "One World One Dream" was definitely the spirit we had!



Sunday night I was able to attend the Athletics (Track and Field) venue at the "Birds Nest". This was awesome because as many of you know I was a runner in high school and college. I ran the 5k, 10k, and the 3,000m steeple chase, among other things. I was able to witness a new world record in the women's 3,000m steeple chase and an Olympics record in the men's 10k. I think the only thing that could have been better is if it had been me that had set a record, but as my dad told me it was probably a lot more fun being at the Olympics as a spectator! These are truly time I will never forget!















Well, that's about all I've got at this time. it's getting late and I have to work again tomorrow.
I'll try to get some more stuff out there in the next few days!

Picking Up The Slack (Again)

It won't be a long post, but just wanted to share a photo or two with you. We were able to attend the 2008 Olympics in Beijing! Watching the opening ceremonies while in Beijing is a once in a lifetime opportunity. When the fireworks were going off we would step out on to the balcony and hear them and see the reflections off of tall building, totally awesome! Thunder, Spc Dude and I went to see sand vollyball the first day. Then they were able to go again on Sunday for a boxing event and again sand volleyball. Thunder still has two venues to take in and I know he is stoked about it! Especially the track and field event having run track in high school and college. So I'll see if I can get a picture posted, enjoy! Hopefully Thunder will post more after Spc Dude leaves and he has some down time!

Lightnin

It's Rough But Somebody Has To Do It

Well it's me, Lightnin again....Thunder is slacking but when you see the pictures I'm posting , you'll understand why I'm not really complaing!

We are in Kuantan, Malayasia for this week. The first day in was my birthday. Thunder waited just until my feelings were starting to get hurt, before wishing me a Happy Birthday. He's sometimes like that. Then he told me he had to go to work but had a surprise for me when he got back. Okay, so now I have the day by myself and a surprise coming. Which by the way I hate surprises! Grab a book and head to the pool. We are only 3 degrees from the equator and let me tell ya it is hot, Hot, HOT! You can get burned in the time it takes to drink one beer even while using SPF 30! Trust me this is fact! I have some very good water proof sunscreen which is also good since I have to dip into the pool about every 5-10 minutes! So I spent the afternoon taking it easy and then back to get ready for my "surprise".

Thunder had made arrangements before coming here for the romatic dinner on the beach as my gift! He couldn't have done anything better! We had our own wait staff that seated us and started off with a bottle of champagne. Then came the carpaccio salad! Delicious. This is one of our favorites and have had it all over the world, but none compared to this.

Then it was a lobster bisque with prawns and parsley cream. We really should have quit right here, but no...it's a four course meal so let's move on! Now Thunder has picked out a bottle of Merlot to go along with the main course. Our main course was Tiger Prawns, a lamb chop and a chicken breast chop. This came with a baked potato and sauteed corn in a red wine sauce. At this point I knew we needed to-go boxes because I was already stuffed.

The dessert was one of David's favorites a Tiramisu served with chocolate wafers, passion fruit, kiwi and blueberries. I'm not a sweets eater but had to try it all. I think I'm hooked on passion fruit now! So now I thought we were done...wrong! The staff comes down to the beach to sing Happy Birthday to me and with them they have a heartshaped fresh mango cheescake that says "Happy Birthday For Mrs. Wise"candles and all, and a bouquet of fresh roses and other exotic flowers. Okay, so I cracked at this point. I felt more like a Princess than ever. This was truly the best birthday ever and there have been quite a few. Back at the room we finish the evening...now stop thinking that! There was an envelope with birthday wishes from SPC Dude that he had called into our hotel! What a great memory to have as long as the dementia stays at bay!

There are other fun things here also...creepy little monkeys everywhere and last night one visited our balcony that wasn't so little. There is also a creature described to us as "cat/wolf" that roams around! I'm pretty sure I heard one early this morning. There was loud bang as if someone knocked over a chair and then a horrible cat sound that would even put our cat to shame! These things are called masang so Thunder and I googled it....We really don't want to see one these guys! Thunder has been working very hard this week. He even did a double shift one day. But ya'll know Thunder he still managed to sing with a guy last night at a typical Malaysian resturant. It was a little too lounge-lizzardy for me but he still sounded great! Well tomorrow it's back to the Jing where hopfully we meet up with SPC Dude. We are all three going to make it to one of the Olympic events...Sand Volleyball! So there will be more post coming later this week. Hope I haven't bored you too much but we feel a lot like traveling food host, so eat your heart out Anthony Bourdain!