Xmas Party Planning ideas for dummies

              Christmas decorating and Party Planning ideas for Dummies

Instant decorations

The HR (Human Relations) dept. for the company I work for is always trying to find ways to be relevant to the employees.  This week someone from HR sent out an email reminding us all the typical cautions to take when decorating for the holidays.  This is the same list of dangers that we’ve known about since the days when we could still leave milk and cookies for Santa and he could smoke his pipe indoors. This list included tired old worries, like “don’t use frayed or damaged electrical power cords, don’t let your Christmas tree dry out, don’t use gasoline to clean the brick around your fireplace….blah, blah, blah.  Nothing but don’t, don’t, don’t. 

It seemed to me that we should be telling each other what we CAN do, instead of what NOT to do.  So I was inspired to create a list of decorating and party planning ideas that we CAN do, if we are dummies.  And, isn’t it really more fun to be a dummy than to be a boring, safe person?  Here is my list.  I welcome your additions. 

·       Putting up the outside Christmas decorations is always more fun and exciting after the Rum Punch is served.   The traditional Rum Punch recipe calls for one part rum for every part of punch.  The amount of rum punch you need depends on the thirst of the decorators, so have plenty available.  Don’t bother to tell the decorators that there is rum in the punch.  Just say this is Grandma’s special recipe.

·       Now that your decorators are well lubricated, it is time to put up the outdoor lighting and decorations.  For this you will need several ladders and plenty of extension cords.  It is part of the joy of Christmas to watch people dangle from the roof after their ladders have collapsed.  Don’t worry if the electrical cord is not rated for outdoor use.  Modern electrical breakers will probably trip if there is a circuit overload or a ground fault occurs.  Make sure your fire insurance policy is up to date.

·       Paper Origami candle holders in the shape of angels are a lightweight method to add candles to the branches of your Christmas tree.  Light them all at midnight to help Santa and the volunteer fire dept. locate your house.

·       Create an instant winter wonderland by scattering bags of asbestos powder all over the house and yard.  Don’t worry about the costs. This stuff is really cheap now that there is no legal way to use it like in the good old days.

·       Road flares lining your driveway will add a festive look to your landscape.  An added benefit is that when the party is over your guests will be able to see better as they to back out of your driveway, regardless of how intoxicated they are.

·       Use yards and yards of colored tissue paper around your fireplace to add a festive look near the flames.

·       Another decorating tip is to use depleted uranium powder from obsolete military ammo to flock your Xmas tree.  When you turn off the lights, the tree will continue to glow for 10,000 years. 

·       During your holiday party make sure to schedule time to play fun traditional games, like “Running with Scissors relay races”, “Bobbing for Cracklins”, or the ever popular “Toss the Elf” game.  But please, no wagering.

·       A wonderful way to add unique lighting to your holiday dinner table is to put several strings of lights in a fishbowl, fill it with water and plug them in.  Fish are optional.  If you do add the fish, you might as well have some tartar sauce on hand too.

·       For an extra-ordinary visual effect, go out into the woods and catch eight tiny wild reindeer.  Tie them together on the roof along with a sleigh and Uncle Bob, dressed in his Santa costume.  If the weather turns chilly you can throw Uncle Bob a blanket and a bottle of Grandma’s Rum Punch.

·       Holiday traditions are important.  One traditional drink is Egg Nog.  A simple recipe is to blend eggnog 50/50 with moonshine. This will help to create a festive party mood for you and your guests.   If your mother in law is also a guest you might want to eliminate the egg nog half for your own beverage and go with straight moonshine.  Then join Uncle Bob on the roof.

                                                  HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Don't eat the casserole

   Don't eat the casserole

You are probably asking yourself, “Where has he been?  Why has it been so long between Intrepid Traveler reports?”.   Well, thank you for your concern. If you were not concerned, I think you should be ashamed of yourself.  If you really were concerned, I think you need to get a hobby.

Here is the short answer to why no new reports from the edge of normal:   I have not been out of the USA since my China trip, and I have been too busy doing very uninteresting things, so there was nothing to write about.  But the worst thing that kept any new Intrepid Traveler reports from hitting the “E-Waves” was the fact that I had my laptop stolen from my vehicle.  The laptop that had all my past stories in it . The laptop that has accompanied me to most of the 30+ nations that I have been to.  I had thousands of photos on that hard drive and hundreds of irreplaceable files on it.  I also had a brand new, excellently written, fabulously witty story on it that I was ready to publish.  That story was about the odd foods that I have eaten or been offered during my years of travel overseas.  The title of the piece was “Bad food for thought”.    But it is lost forever since I did not have it saved in any other location.   Oh well.  I hope the thieves enjoyed reading it.

Speaking of food…..

I was watching professional football this evening when hunger forced me to stop and find food.  Since I am a man and am at the top of the evolutionary food chain, I knew that I had the skills and intelligence to hunt and gather food from the refrigerator.  Using my well-honed survival instincts I found some leftover ham from last week  and some green bean casserole.  The casserole was in a Tupperware container, and, being a man, as mentioned before, I will eat pretty much anything that is found in Tupperware, regardless of how old it is. 

I scooped up a large portion of the green bean casserole to accompany my ham, heated it up and scarfed it down.  I resumed watching football.

An hour or so later, I started to feel very bloated, like I had eaten way more than I should have.  I felt extremely lethargic, my joints began to hurt and I was achy.  But since I pretty much feel like this all the time, I really didn’t think much of it.  I decided to go to bed early since I had a busy work week ahead of me.  I layed in bed and tried to read a book, but could not concentrate on it.   I finally decided that there really was something wrong with my stomach.  The longer I lay there the more I could feel my guts knot up.  I could feel it begin to bubble.  This was not good.

I got out of bed, and called to my wife that I was sick and warned her not to eat the casserole.  (I am always in a protective mode for the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler) I told her I was going to throw up.  She said she thought I said I was going to go out.  I walked in to the bathroom and calmly puked in the toilet.  Several times.  If any of you have ever drunk too much alcohol and gotten commode hugging drunk, as they say, you will appreciate the difference between vomiting when you are sober and when you are drunk.  Since I was sober, I found it much easier to coordinate the opening of my mouth at the proper moment for the vomit to spew out of it.  When drunk, (So I have been told) it is not always easy to coordinate the mouth in time, forcing some of the vomit to come out the nose.  Vomit being forced out of your nose is BY FAR the worst thing about puking.  The smell of it, the taste of it, and the chunks of it are now plugging up what is supposed to be your air intake system.  So, even if you are drunk you are assaulted by the remains of the vomit in your sinuses, and that is just plain gross.  But I digress.

Since I was not drunk, this puking session did not have any of that unpleasantness. I just vomited a few times and then felt much better.  I washed up and told my wife I was going back to bed.  She said she was going to sleep in the guest bedroom because she did not want to have me puke on her.  We have a modest sized bedroom and she sleeps on the side of the bed between my side and the bathroom.  I suppose she thought I would be too lazy to get out of bed and just do some projectile vomiting over her and have it land, artfully, into the toilet.    I told her I was done puking but she did not want to take any chances.

I was lying in bed, making sure my guts had stopped bubbling, and started to formulate this story in my head.  So, I grabbed my new laptop and began to write this story down.  It sounded a lot more interesting in my head than it is on paper.  I guess you will now, after reading this, be asking yourself: “when will he go away again?”

Olympics and other crazy events

Olympics and other crazy events

This has been an interesting week.  For those of you who may be reading this blog article a year or a decade from now, possibly after it has been awarded that elusive Pulitzer Prize for “Oddest writing style on the weakest topic”, this week is the first full week of the 2012 Summer Olympic games, being held in London, England.

The opening ceremonies of the 2012 games were highlighted, in my opinion, by Agent OO7 and the Queen of England parachuting in to the stadium during the opening of the games.  I really liked it when the Queen, upon safely landing, spiked her crown on the turf, then did a war whoop and a double back flip.  I think it scored a 9 out of 10.  It would have been better had Mr. Bond not immediately shot the Queen, suspecting she was an imposter.  That’s what she gets for stepping out of character. 

There have been the typical heartwarming tales about specific Olympic athletes.  A perfect example:   In the Kayak event, the New Zealand kayaker was disqualified by his mother, for brushing one of the poles in the race.  I bet she also sent him to bed without dinner and admonished him not to run with scissors or talk with his mouth full.  I also understand that she asked him if all the other Olympic athletes jumped off a cliff, would he too? Turns out she was a real judge in the event and had to score her son’s performance.  In the entire world there are not enough judges to keep this guy from having his mom penalize him? 

It was heartbreaking to hear that the Olympic swimmer from Mexico came in fourth in his event, and did not receive a medal.  This is surprising to me.  Some of you may remember that I wrote a blog entry decades ago (actually Sept of 2005) that said the wet-backstroke was the official Olympic swimming event in Mexico.   I guess all the best Mexican swimmers have already made it across the river to the U.S. 

And there’s the female javelin thrower from Paraguay.  She is beautiful, and readily admits she has no hopes of being competitive in her event.  She is there at the Olympics to promote her own modeling career.  At least she is honest and realistic.  She will earn more gold in that field than in Track and Field.

The crazy events of this week have not just limited to the Olympics.  I happen to be in Mexico City for a business conference.  I found out yesterday that my personal Yahoo email account was hacked.  Someone used it to send a message to everyone on my Contacts List that I had gone to London for an “unplanned vacation” (yeah, right, during the Olympics?) and there I got mugged.  The message said all my money and credit cards were taken, and I needed money.  The hacker gave a number to wire funds to.  In today’s 24 hour / Global culture, it is interesting that I first found out about this scam from a friend who is in India.  I later heard it from a friend in Buffalo New York.  I am still waiting to hear from my mother.  I think she is busy judging the Olympic kayak events.  Thank goodness she is not judging the Olympic blog writing event.  All my boyhood misbehaviors would come back to haunt me big time.

I quickly sent out a note to everyone in my Yahoo Contacts list that the message was a fake.  I had not been mugged, and it was a scam.  But if they wanted to, they could send me money anyway.  I was really touched that several people contacted me to make sure I was all right.  Even my Insurance Agent wanted to double check my safety.  She contacted the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler to find out about my condition.  (I must have some policies due for renewal soon).  One person, who I don’t know, but I had emailed a message to regarding a fence that separated our properties, used the opportunity to remind me, in a return message, to Trust in Jesus.   Gee,Thanks.  Trust him to wire me $?

My daughters knew instantly that this was not a message from me since there were no hidden jokes in it.  Or subliminal messages, like:   vote Republican, or buy your dad a new chainsaw for Christmas.   And I am sure my wife knew too, since she knows I live in dread of putting myself in a spot where she can say “I told you so”.  So, I appreciate all the concerned friends who contacted me and their messages telling me that my account had been hacked.

It is pathetic in today’s world that a stranger half way around the world would fabricate an attack on me to solicit a sympathetic reaction for money.  (That’s my job) Now I have to come up with another scam to tug at your heartstrings.  I will have to rely on my brains and intellect.  Damn.  Maybe this time someone will send money.  You still have a chance to prove that you are a caring, concerned Yahoo Contact person.  Just fill a manila envelope with large denomination bills for the “Hacked Victim Fund” and leave it under the mat.  Or, better yet, stuff the Queen’s crown with cash and drop it off.  I saw it rolling around on the ground and am pretty sure she no longer has a use for it.

Edible Pandies

Edible Pandies –

My first visit to China - part three

When you travel to a new country there typically is a language barrier.  For me, anywhere I travel there is a language barrier.  Sometimes just a slight difference in accent is enough for my ears not to understand what was just said.  Eight years ago my wife and I took the kids across Canada on a long vacation. On a few occasions my kids had to translate the Canadian accent to me.  They would look directly at me, hold my face in their hands and slowly repeat the English I had just heard from the English speaking Canadian.  I would nod my head like I understood, then shut up and go sit in the corner.   Verbal communication can be a challenge to me, yet I have somehow managed to stay employed for three decades by verbally communicating with people.  It is a good thing I have smart clients.  Or maybe there is a benefit to me being a manly hunk of eye candy.  OK, it must be the smart clients.

When I visit a new country it is common for me to have a meal with whom I am there to see. This trip was no different.  On my first day in China I ate a late lunch with the fellows that my company has partnered up with.   I was starving.  It was after 6pm and I had not eaten since breakfast.   The director of that company, Mr. Chen, could understand no English and, as mentioned above, rarely can I.  So Jack, our trusty interpreter, had a tough job.   Mr. Chen was doing his best to find common ground between us.  We spoke of our families and a few other topics.  I gathered from this that he was married to an automobile and has a son with two noses.  Or maybe not.

Mr. Chen told me a little about this region of China.  He babbled on for a moment or two.  Then jack explained what he said.  Part of it was this:

Mr. Chen:  “Near this city is the area which is famous for the Giant Pandas.  Do you like Pandas?”

Bill:  “Yes, I think they are delicious”

Mr. Chen did not seem to appreciate this comment.  Jack must have said something inappropriate.

The waitress brought out several bowls of steaming dishes to the table.  I followed my host’s lead, and un-wrapped my chop sticks.  I have used chop sticks before and to me it just seems silly for a culture to keep using these things after knives and forks were invented.  Western eating utensils, in my humble opinion, expedite the food - to - mouth process more efficiently than using tapered sticks. 

I tried to use the chopsticks to grab bits of food from the nearest serving bowl.  I had no idea what it was but my growling stomach told me to eat it.  They watched in amusement as I repeatedly chased that portion of food around in the dish with no success.  This went on for several, long, awkward moments.  Now I know why Asians are slender.  There are only 24 hours in a day and this method of eating could consume most of that time and still not give me enough nourishment to fuel a game of tic-tac-toe.

By the end of the week, however, my host remarked that I had become much more proficient at using chopsticks.  He wanted to know how I learned so fast.  I told him it was simple.  Starvation is a great motivator.

There are two things that really don’t set well with me with this culture’s dining behavior. The first is that they use their chopsticks to grab food out of the communal bowl, then put the food directly in to their mouth.  Then they repeat the process over and over again.  I began to fixate on them sticking the chopsticks in their mouths then putting them back in to the food dish.  I tried to remember the spot where I had seen them grab food from and avoid it when it was my turn to pick from the serving bowl.  But that was a losing battle.   I could not stop obsessing about the germs leaping from their mouths to the sticks, then to the serving bowl.  I felt like I was eating out of a giant petrie dish of contamination.  

The second cultural meal time trait which I found irritating was the tiny size of their napkins.  Since I was eating with tapered sticks instead of a fork, the food tended to get away from me during the transit from the bowl to my mouth.  I had to rapidly stuff the food pieces in to my mouth before it has a chance to escape my grasp.  I ended up with as much food on my face as in my mouth.  So using these postage stamp size napkins was a bit frustrating.  I had to use a whole handful of them in order to stay tidy. 

So, that was pretty much my first day in China.  Pretty riveting stuff, I know.  And it will make my wife happy to read this.  She is always afraid I will inadvertently cause some international incident and she will see me on CNN standing in front of a firing squad.  Why would the Chinese want to do that to me?  I love their favorite animal.  I hear they are delicious.

China culture clash

China culture clash, My first trip to China - part two

I am here in China for technical negotiations with a client on a large project.  I have been assigned an interpreter, named Jack, who is a bright, energetic young man.  He is very intent on telling me how nurturing the Chinese people are.  Jack says in China, the people will go out of their way to serve guests and make sure we are cared for.  Jack used the example that they took me to dinner and made sure I was served first.  He knows that in America, we would be nice to visitors, but would let them fend for themselves for dinner.  I am amazed he knows what happens in America, especially since he has never been there.  In China, there is an internet block on all social media so he would not be able to communicate with Americans casually.  He can’t use Facebook or go to my Intrepid Traveler blog. (very sad).  Yet he knows how we are.  He is only 23 and is excellent with languages, but he does not even know what he pays in taxes, so I really can’t expect him to know much about us.  How many others, like him, don’t know Jack about the U.S.?  This is something to consider when we are dealing with other nations.

I am doing my best to absorb the Chinese culture.  I am trying to fit in.  But I find it difficult to handle a cup of coffee with chop sticks.  Perhaps if I attached suction cups to the end of each stick.  I may be on to something.  I could patent it.  But someone here would just copy it and cheat me out of the profits.  I am trying to get familiar with what is happening here.  I am curious about stuff like where they stash their Political Dissidents, and who gets their stuff when the government imprisons them.  Also, I’ve asked the locals for the best place to buy tainted dog food.  I know that they are always sending tainted dog food to the U.S., so it must be a very popular item here.  And I’ve asked where I could pick up the bestselling Chinese cookbook:  “101 ways to Wok your dog”, but I just got a blank stare.  When I ask these questions I don’t really get the warm, caring responses that I was led to believe I would get from these Chinese.  Hmmm.

One thing that the Chinese are doing well is land transportation.  In this city, and other cities too, the roads and highways are very wide.  In the downtown, area where I have been taking walks the street intersections flair out to make room for turning lanes.  The pedestrian crosswalks are back away from the intersections and away from the turn lanes, which makes them safer to use.  And ALL of the thousands of motorcycles that I have seen are battery powered.  They are completely silent as they coast by.  All you hear is the tire noise.  It is eerie.  And the busses that I have seen run on CNG. (Compressed Natural Gas) and there seems to be thousands of them too.  They travel in caravans throughout the city, like unconnected train cars.  This makes much more sense than hard rail lines that are fixed in one location.  If the demand for bus service shifts, they just add or take away a bus from the route. 

I am not sure about the one child policy that we, in the west, hear of.  One of my hosts here has two kids and I think is expecting another child.  (Not him, his wife.  China has not that advanced yet).  As I walk thru the city, I am the only “westerner” that I see.  It seems like everyone is smiling at me.  Maybe I have food left on my face from my last chopsticks meal.  Or is it they know the U.S. has joined China on the dark side when we elected President Obama?

There is a lot that the Eastern and Western cultures could learn from the other.  Like the importance of freedom.  The Chinese don’t remember it and many in the U.S. we take it for granted.  The U.S. population has the right to bear arms.  The Chinese do not.   So, which of these two nations has free and regular elections?  Which nation has successfully eliminated diseases, like Polio, from humanity?  Which country has given the world Pee-Wee Herman and Vice-President Joe Binden?  Hint:  It wasn’t China.  But if they want Joe Biden, I think he will be available after the Nov. elections.  

Dumbest Man Alive – follow up.

In the mirror

Dumbest Man Alive – follow up

This is a follow-up to my column written May 13 where I wrote that I must be the dumbest man alive.

In response to what I wrote, I must have received thousands, or hundreds....OK,  two very kind notes from readers that told me I couldn’t be the dumbest man in the world, but could easily be number two.

Actually, both my daughters wrote loving notes to me telling me how smart I always made them feel.  I know the notes were from them because they were addressed, as usual, to “Dear Sir or Madam”.  I read their kind remarks many times so as not to miss any nuances to what they wrote.  I did not want to make the same mistake I did with one reader’s letter.  I thought it was an invitation when it was, in reality, a restraining order. 

That blog post that I wrote where I questioned my own intelligence was inspired by my frustration from trying to get my lawn tractor fixed.  My wife, the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler, and I live in a rural area and we have lots of acreage around our house.  I purchased a riding lawn tractor in order to mow the grass quickly.  The drive belt kept slipping off of the mower deck and it eventually broke.  I do not have an owner’s manual because I bought this mower second hand, naturally, to save money.  So being a modern, tech savvy guy, I went to the Toro Lawnmower website to look up the part and find out where to buy it.  I could not find any numbers on the website that matched the serial number or model number of my mower.  I was getting angrier the longer I searched. 

I even wrote to the “Contact Us” address on the Toro website for some help, although I knew it would be days before I would get a response.  I told my wife of my dilemma, and that I could not find ANYTHING that remotely matched my mower on the Toro website.  “Toro?  Why are you looking on the Toro website?” she said in a perplexed voice.  “You have a Troy-Bilt” mower”.   Duh.  I had just wasted hours on this wild goose chase and worse yet, I knew that the Toro guys were gonna put my email up on the bulletin board as their dumbest question ever submitted. 

And the second stupid thing I did was to forget to include the Toro story in the very blog post which was inspired by that incident.  Had I included it, perhaps not even my daughters would have been able to overlook my folly.  No wonder both were so eager to get married and change their last names.

Again, thanks for the warm words of encouragement that I am sure you readers are thinking, but apparently are not sending.  I enjoyed reading all of the ones I did get, except one.  I definitely could have done without the note from the Director of Rusk State Mental Hospital, who sent me an Admissions Form.

Lost in Space, My first trip to China - part one

There is an entire family of Chinese living in my pants.

Lost in Space, My first trip to China - part one

Even though I am Your Intrepid Traveler, it does not mean I am eager to go to every country on the planet in order to experience new cultures and ethnicities.  Hardly.  I couldn’t care less about most cultures.  I don’t even understand my own culture.  I still don’t know why we need to set a table with salad and dinner forks.  Isn’t one enough?  And why two sizes of fork?  Our mouths don’t change size during the meal, so why does the fork need to change?

China is one of those countries that, as far as I am concerned, can keep its culture and its 5,000 year old history to itself.  I can’t be bothered.  I am very busy being ignorant.  Believe me, that is a full time job.  However, an overseas company approached me with a multi-million dollar project financed by the Chinese National Petroleum Corp, (CNPC).  We began a series of discussions which all led up to me going to Chengdu, China for face to face meetings with the decision makers of this massive project.  Suddenly, visiting China didn’t seem so bad.

It was a rushed trip and I barely had time to get a visa for China. I had to leave the Friday of Memorial Day weekend and would be gone eight days.  It is a long way to China, as you may know.  In fact, it is directly on the other side of the globe from me.  I always heard that you could dig a tunnel thru the earth and come out in China, but since I had to leave by Friday, I would not have time to prove out that theory.  I would fly instead.

To get there from Houston I had to stop in three other cities, Los Angeles, then Shanghai, then to Chengdu.  I landed in Shanghai after traveling over 18 hours with no real sleep.  I went thru Customs, since this was my entry point into the country.  Typically you have to collect your luggage, get cleared by Customs, then re-check your bag and get on another plane.  That procedure did not happen on this stop, but I was not concerned since United Airlines told me my suit bag would be sent all the way to my final destination.  (That should have been a red flag for me since the ticket agent in Houston said my bag would get to Chengdu, no problem)

Well, as you can probably guess, I arrived safely at my final destination, at 2 in the morning, but my suit bag, with all my clothes, did not.  I spent another hour filling out paperwork for lost luggage, and then headed to the hotel.  After only three hours of sleep, I had a breakfast meeting with my contacts in Chengdu.  We spent the entire day going over details of the project and completely missed lunch.  By 6pm my bag had still not arrived.  The airline now said they did not even know where it was.  I was still wearing the same hiking pants and fishing shirt I wore for traveling.  On the plane I dressed for comfort, not for style. 

My presentation to the decision makers of CNPC was scheduled for the next morning.  I HAD to go find some clothes.  So I told Jack, my interpreter, to find a shopping area where I could get something to wear.  I am tall and much larger than most Asians.  In fact, I think my shoes are larger than some Asian countries.  Jack was doubtful we’d find anything.  He looked at me as if I were a freaky Herman Munster sized person. I told him that in a city of millions of people, there had to be some store that had my size. He looked at me like I was crazy.  (I get that look a lot). 

We went to a dozen or more men’s clothing shops before we found a pair of dress slacks that would fit me.  The pants were found in the storage area where they keep the inventory that doesn’t sell.  The only reason these pants fit me was because the hemline was not yet tailored and there was plenty of length in the legs.  I did not ask the price, I just had them sew the hem and wrap them up.  We started the process all over again by looking for a dress shirt.  Finding a shirt had to be easier to find than a pair of slacks, right?  At least you’d think that.  But none of a dozen other clothing stores had a shirt my size.  I even tried on a 3XL size golf shirt which was made from stretchy material.  It felt like it was painted on.  No thank you.  I know that science fiction movies predict that all of us will be wearing spandex in the future, but I HATE tight clothing.  Finally, I found a store that had ONE short sleeve, button down dress shirt that nearly fit me.  But the fabric was so thin you could see my chest hair thru the shirt.  I would like to say you could also see my ripped abdominal muscles thru the shirt but they were with my missing luggage.  So, I reluctantly spent the $60 dollars, (ouch) for the polyester shirt, knowing that I would never again wear it after this presentation. 

I took my new “wardrobe” back to the hotel.  Then I realized that I had no underwear.  The hiking pants have built-in mess “briefs” so tomorrow I would have to go commando.  Oh, great.  When I stand up to do my presentation not only will they see my chest hair and flab thru the shirt, they may see more than that with those clingy slacks. 

I then had to get the wrinkles out of the clothes.  The hotel would not loan me an iron and the laundry was closed for the night.  I tried steaming the shirt in the shower but it was not helping much.   I went to bed, knowing that tomorrow I would be wearing jogging shoes with those slacks, no belt, and a wrinkled see-thru shirt while hoping to convince the big shots with CNPC that I knew what I was talking about.  Maybe they’d think I was eccentric and smart.  OK, maybe just eccentric.

I crawled in to bed, praying that the Magic Clothing Fairy would visit me in the night.  Of course, she probably wouldn’t have my size either.  But un-believably, Jack knocked on my door at one a.m. with my suit bag.  He’d called the airport one last time and sure enough, it had arrived. Now all I had to do was un-pack and steam the wrinkles from my good old trusty natural fiber, permanent pressed, wrinkle free, (probably made in China) men’s wear.  Underwear too!  So, the day came for the presentation, all went well, and I did not get arrested for indecent exposure.   Jack’s delivery was much appreciated, but I can’t help wondering what the Magic Clothing Fairy would wear?  And can I make her a red hot deal for a wrinkled polyester see thru shirt and unworn slacks?

                                                                                                                                           

Mother's Day, part Deux

 alleged parents

Mother's Day, part Deux

It occurred to me, with all of the articles written about Mother’s Day recently, that I too, have a Mother. I should have snapped to this fact sooner.  Both my daughters wrote lovely pieces in their blogs about their mother, the fetching Mrs. Traveler and what a positive impact she had in their lives.  (Oddly enough, she was also their parole officer).  And my wife, (again, the fetching Mrs. Traveler), wrote a lovely piece about her Mom.  And so her mom probably felt compelled to write a Mother’s Day message too, and so on and so on.  I would image that all the way up the female linage on her side of the family, there are angels writing nice things about their even more angelic mothers. 

So this brings me back to my mother.  She is senior citizen now, of course, and at last count was about 420 years old in Hamster years.   And she is quite tiny.  But to be clear, she’s not as tiny as a hamster.  I don’t even know why I referred to her age in hamster years.  I guess so I had an excuse to use my new natural gas hybrid electric hand held calculator.  (It was purchased with Obama stimulus money for only $50,000.)  She is a bit frail now, since she has broken nearly every bone in her upper body at one time or another.  We are trying to get her to retire from the Rodeo Clown circuit.  She has always been a tough, energetic lady.  I remember her famously saying:  “When I work, everyone works!”  Or “while you are resting you can…… (reader fill in the blank with a tedious, monotonous, or boring task)

Mom has kept up with modern technology.  She has a new printer and was excited to test it out.  So she told me she printed every single page of my Intrepid Traveler blog.  The printed version was like a magazine of incredible travel and life stories.  I wanted to see it to get a visual idea of my writing production.  She said she only saved the good stories, and handed me a half page of print. Wow.  Burned by mommy.

It turns out that I don’t come by my savvy ability to travel the world by accident.  I must have inherited it.  My Dad spent several years in the Navy before and during the Korean conflict.  He was gone for weeks, maybe months at a time, serving our nation.  (Dad must have served our nation too much because we all struggle with our weight now).  I remember seeing intriguing old black and white photos of him framed on the wall of his study.  One was where he was standing next to a dogsled in Greenland.  I think they were just about to hitch him up.  I hope he was wearing confortable shoes and the load was not too heavy.  Another photo was of him with a huge iceberg in the background.  In his hands were an ice-pick and a martini shaker.  He always dreamed big.

After my Dad retired, he and my Mom began to see the world together.  They went to Europe, South America, Asia, and many third world nations, like Louisiana.  I am sure if there had been such a thing as travel blogs back then, we would have read about some of their exploits.  Or at least seen the police reports.  Some of their trips were quite long.  I remember one time they were gone for more than 80 days.  We began to worry since so much time passed without hearing from them.  But, not to worry, we found them at home, in the closet. They were a little dehydrated, but fortunately they still had their boarding passes. 

When my oldest child was due to be born, Mom and Dad were on a trip in Australia.  We sent them word that the delivery was going to be any day now.  They dashed back to the U.S. as quickly as they could.  I really wanted my wife to wait for them to get home before giving birth, so I duct taped her legs together for the last 72 hours.  The technique worked and now there is one more thing that duct tape can be used for.

So, there you have it, Gentle Readers.  You can see that my  travel genes did not fall far from the gene pool tree.  So you can rest quietly with the knowledge that my traveling is an inherited trait.  And while you are resting, go back and re-read all my other travel stories.  I can’t think of a more tedious, monotonous, or boring task.

THE DUMBEST MAN ALIVE

The dumbest man alive

I guess they can arrest you for being stupid. Who knew?

I believe that I am or very close to being the world’s biggest dumbass. Sometimes I wonder how I find my way out of the bathroom in the morning.   My entire life has been littered with episodes of idiocy that demonstrate my lack of intelligence.  You be the judge.

Years ago, when my wife and I were young newlyweds, the wife went shopping with my sister.  She came home and proudly showed me her new earrings.  Without any malice, sarcasm, or intended insult, I calmly said something like:  “Nice!  Remember when those were in style?”

I didn’t turn in to a dumb ass overnight.  I think I was always this way.  As a youngster, I painted the neighbor’s car with house paint, I painted that same neighbor’s TV with wall paint, and I painted our newly installed hardwood floor with creosote wood preservative.  I was not old enough to know better, but these actions had to show there had to be a seed of stupidity growing in me.

A good example of being a dumb ass kid was back in high school, when we played a prank on our Biology teacher.   It was the winter break, just after Christmas.  Many people had already started taking down their decorations, and there were lots of Christmas trees that had been dragged to the curb.  We used my pickup truck and scavenged the entire town for discarded trees.  We particularly wanted the ones that still had a wooden frame still attached to the trunk to help it stand upright.  You see, our Biology teacher lived in a new subdivision, typical of the time, where there were no established trees growing.  The houses looked like toad stools on the prairie.  We had collected more than two pickup loads of trees and anxiously waited until after dark to deliver them.  We wanted to “help” our teacher with his landscaping, so we planned to stack up all those trees in his yard.  He would have an instant forest. 

He lived on a Cul-de-Sac, so I parked my truck on the other end of his street.  I left the motor running in case we needed to make a fast getaway. The night was cold, moonless and pitch black.  We were just about done when a shadowy figure approached me.  I thought it was one of my buddies.  He said “how many trees are you going to put here”?  I told him we were just about done.  Then I realized this was not a buddy, but the Biology teacher.  Busted!  We all scattered like rabbits.  I ran thru several back yards and it was a while before I could make it back to my truck.  When I got to it, the engine was off and the keys were missing.  I knew instantly who had the keys.  I had no choice.  I knocked on the teacher’s front door.  He opened it, not saying a word, just dangling my truck keys in front of my face.  He said I could probably get them back from the police.  Oh crap.  One of the benefits of growing up in a small town is that the police don’t take pranks like this too seriously.  All we had to do was take the trees to the police dispatcher’s house so she could use the trees for her rabbit farm.

Then there was the time when I was in Malaysia.  I was traveling with my agent and we had hopscotched across the tiny nation for a week seeing customers.  I was in a customer’s conference room waiting for the remaining attendees to arrive. To kill time I was studying a large map on the wall which was of South East Asia.  In the middle of the map was the island of Borneo.  I told the group of men who were there for my presentation that I always wanted to go to Borneo.  They all looked at me like I was a lunatic.  One of them said “you ARE on Borneo”.  His tone implied that I had to be an idiot not to know where I was.

A more recent example of dumbassness was when my wife and I were traveling by car.  We were talking about funny billboards we had seen.  I was remembering one advertising a bar-b-que restaurant that specialized in smoked sausage.  Their bill board used a clever word play on the word sausage.  It said “you never Sausage a place!”  But my rendition of it to her was “you’ve never seen such a sausage….” then I realized I was hopelessly garbling the message.  My wife thought I was intentionally botching it to be funny…at first.  Then it dawned on her that I was just being myself….stupid. 

I have never claimed to be the brightest bulb on the tree.  So saying stupid things, or doing stupid deeds, is just what endears me to the world, I hope.  I know my children think that, but they have been inoculated by my behavior for two or three decades.  Normal people don’t necessarily think it is proper or cute or rational for a grown adult to be a fool.  I hope by posting this message I can tell the reader that it is not with malice, or sarcasm or intended insult that I am the way I am.  They can’t arrest you for being stupid, can they?  You never sausage a fool.

That Burning Sensation

Danger:  HOT !  Do not touch !

That Burning Sensation

Greetings Gentle Readers.  Today’s topic is about burning wood.  Specifically:  burning the tree tops and branches left over from the logging operation that was done on our property.  We selectively harvested the lumber grade trees a couple of years ago.  And the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler and I are still cleaning up the remains left by the loggers.  It is hard, dirty work, but my wife feels lucky that she can do it.  I thought it would be helpful for me to offer my suggestions to you if you have a wife and have recently logged your property.  Here are some handy tips for assisting her in getting your property restored to a park-like condition:

Plan ahead

Check the weather report.  You can’t burn when it is too dry, too windy, too wet, too dark, or too hot.  In other words, you shouldn’t ever burn.  If you are like me, you look at bad burning weather as a dare by Mother Nature to ignite giant piles of wood in spite of the risks.  Since you can’t change the weather, just roll the proverbial dice and light it up.  Firefighters have jobs for reasons.  Keep them employed.

Start early

Since fires are hot, you don’t want to be standing near it during the heat of the day.  Start early in the morning.  But first take time to eat the hearty breakfast that your wife has fixed for you.  She can start working outside on the wood debris right after she tidies up the kitchen. Don’t rush her.  Use this time to read the newspaper.  You need to stay up on current events, you know.  And you can check the weather report.   Since you are the male, you are the one designated to light the bonfire.  There is a “Man Rule” written about this somewhere. This rule can be found in the same place where it says men should only do the cooking when outdoors; it is OK for men to smell odd; and men can scratch inappropriate areas of their body in public.  After you have ignited the pile of wood and know it is burning well, let your wife tend the fire.  It is time for you to take that richly deserved nap.

Use Mechanical devices

Since you are the male, you get to use the mechanical devices.  In my case, it is a tractor.  I drive it in to the forest where the debris is to be burned.  Since there is only one seat on a tractor, the wife has to walk.  But that’s OK.  It is good exercise and she wants to keep that girlish figure you fell in love with when you were dating her.  The tractor will do all the heavy lifting.  I use it to drag the big logs in to create a pile.  My wife is there to unhook the chain and re-hook it on to the next big log.  I have to do the real work of steering the tractor, which can be difficult.  This is a skill that a woman just doesn’t have.  Women drivers have a bad reputation for a reason.

Wear appropriate protection.

Your wife should have good leather gloves to keep her hands soft.  She should have a broad brimmed had to keep the sun from her face. And she should have long pants and shirt to protect her skin from scratches.  She’ll be the one crawling around the tree stumps and branches, so let her buy the proper protection.  A real woman would prefer to have the right gear so she can work hard but stay looking young rather than to use that money for dining out or on a new vacuum cleaner. 

Be persistent

I don’t know how it is in your forest, but our place has about 30 acres of wooded area that was selectively cut.  This means there is a huge number of tree tops and branches that are on the ground.  I know that nature will eventually cause this wood to decay but I can’t wait that long.  When I look out in to the woods and see a tangle of tree branches, it hurts my delicate sensibilities.  So it is important for me to instill in my wife the understanding that this job will take time.  She needs to plan her day around piling and burning wood.  If you anticipate ever needing to burn massive amounts of wood debris, you might want to marry a petite woman.  My theory is that they don’t have as far to bend over to pick the branches up.  I did not marry a petite woman.  I failed to anticipate this future need for my spouse.  I chose my wife, instead, on old fashion values:  how much money her family had.

And finally

If the fires get out of hand because you ignored the weather report or the burn ban, do not fret.  There are always excuses for the fire raging out of control and burning down every house in the county.  All you have to do is start a new fire near your neighbor’s yard and claim it started there when he was burning a printed copy of these instructions.  Or better yet, blame it on his wife.  Everyone knows women can’t be trusted with fire, unsupervised, unless it is safely ensconced in a kitchen stove. 

I know this is the age of YouTube and most people get their instructions from videos rather than reading them.  But taking the advice of my attorney, I did not do a video of how to burn tree limbs.  He said it could be “evidence” to use against me in a divorce hearing.  Divorce?  Why would I want to get a divorce?  I still have acres of wood yet to burn.

Very Tall Things

Burg Khalifa in Dubai

Very Tall Things

I write to you today from the city of Kuala Lumpur, which is in the country of Malaysia.  This is another hot and steamy South East Asian country where mildew is the official national flower.  I am here for a presentation but I left my laptop computer back at the airport in Houston.  I realized it when I was on the plane so I alerted the airline; they located it and put it in the Lost and Found for me.  I hope they find my brain too.

I booked this hotel based on a travel agent’s recommendation.  I told him I really didn’t want to spend a lot of money but I wanted to be in a specific area of the city.  So I got this sad excuse for a real hotel. It is a very modern high-rise hotel, but it has no exercise room, no pool, and no business office for guests to use.  Instead of a business office, this hotel had a COIN OPERATED computer at a table in the lobby.  You got five minutes of computer time for each half ringet coin deposited.  (about 15 cents).  I was re-creating my presentation (since I left mine with my laptop) and had to keep feeding this crummy computer these large token size coins in order for it to work.  I would get engrossed in what I was doing and suddenly the curser would stop moving.  I would struggle with it for a moment and remember to put another coin in the slot.  It was slow and tedious. 

The only form of “attraction” this hotel claims is “Fish Reflexology”.  This is where you put your bare feet into a fish aquarium where thousands of minnows eat the dead cells from your skin.  Along with the fish nibbling between your toes, you get a facial and a manicure.   I have big feet.  If I decided to dunk my feet in the aquarium there would be enough dead skin to feed Moby Dick.  The minnows would think they died and wend to fishy DisneyWorld.  (is this how Nemo got his start?)   This hotel’s restaurant features fresh fish on the menu.  I certainly hope their fish does not come from the Reflexology tanks.  Come to think of it, the facial crèmes they used looked like tartar sauce.

Normally I don’t care much about the hotel’s amenities.  I am very busy going to meetings or getting lost returning from a meeting.  But this time I spent three nights here for just one presentation.  The rest of the time I wandered around the area surrounding the hotel.  There are hundreds of tiny restaurants and unkempt shops wedged in to every available space along the streets.  There are an incredible number of retailers selling the identical merchandise:  watches, cameras, T-shirts and tiny replicas of the Petronas Towers.  Petronas is the National Oil Company.  To show off their oil wealth, they built a twin set of office towers which, at the time, was the world’s tallest building.  This was back in the 90’s.  You may have seen a cheesy Sean Connery movie in 1999 that featured the Petronas Towers as the setting for a high stakes heist.

Two decades later, the Arabs had to one-up Petronas by building what is the currently the world’s tallest building in Dubai, U.A.E.  Originally it was to be named the Burg Dubai. (Burg has a soft “G”, like in barge)  This thing is massive. (see photo)   It is over 2,000 ft tall; nearly twice as tall as the Sears (now Willis) Tower in Chicago.  The Burg Dubai was a financial fiasco.  The city of Dubai built it when they were flush with investor cash. They ran out of money and had to get bailed out by the city of Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. which is controlled by Shiek Khalifa. As a thank you for saving their financial “bacon” the developers re-named the building Burg Khalifa.  As of now the building still sits 80% vacant.  I like to call it the “Splurg Khalifa”.

I took a tour of it with a colleague last year.  We stepped in to the elevator, the doors closed, then nothing happened.  I looked over my shoulder and saw a computer screen displaying the floor numbers which were changing rapidly.  We had already started moving up at lightning speed but there was no sensation of movement.  I had a brief flash of concern that the brakes on this elevator would fail and we would be launched like a cannonball in to the Arabian Gulf.  (Editor’s note:  that did not happen)

This building was also featured in a recent movie.  You may have seen the commercials for it showing Tom Cruze jumping out of one of the upper floor windows of it.  I understand his frustration.  He was probably tired of feeding coins in to his “business office” computer too.

One last thing about my travels which is sort of interesting…on this trip I’ve been to Dubai and to Kuala Lumpur, both with two of the world’s tallest buildings.  Now if I go on to India as planned I will probably see the world’s tallest rubbish pile.  World travel can be memorable.

Mass Transit for Dummies

What is it about  }/{/&}];{ that you don't understand?

Well, here I am in another Asian country.  This time it is Thailand and I am in the city of Bangkok.  I hear it is a huge city.  But since I took the taxi from the airport directly to my hotel, and it was midnight, I really have no idea of how large the place is.  All I know is that it takes frikkin forever to get anywhere in a cab because of all the traffic.  This is a city of 12 million inhabitants.  They all are very petite.  They would have to be tiny because there is no way 12 million full size people would fit here.  Otherwise, some would flake off the edge of the city like an overstuffed pie crust.

They all look alike to me, of course, because I am a round-eyed westerner.  They all have dark straight hair, are about four feet tall, and have a blank stare on their face, sorta like democrats. (Editor’s note:  Careful readers may remember that a similar comment about Democrats was used in my story about Korea.  Since I never miss an opportunity to make fun of Democrats, I will continue to re-use this timeless bit of sarcasm.)  The citizens here are very nice, but it would be helpful if they could say their “V’s”.  There is another letter of the alphabet they don’t care to use either, but I can’t remember what it is.  Anyway, I digress.

I am here on business.  I am attending a technical conference and my company has an exhibit showing off our expertise.  This will be three fun days of trying to explain my designs to people who are probably just being polite by listening to me.  They barely understand “Engrish” and, with my Texas accent, I can hardly speak it.  It makes for either a long difficult conversation or a short quick nod of the head and a smile which means “I don’t have a clue what was just said”.

In my attempts to be a more cosmopolitan traveler, I decided to use the Mass Transit system from my hotel to the conference center.  But I lost a few “Man Points” by asking for directions from the hotel concierge.  He gave me a street map and circled where the hotel was and where I was going.  Easy enough, even for this Intrepid Traveler. 

The easy part was finding the train system.  It was the giant elevated concrete structure about a hundred yards from the hotel.  It was mid-morning and reasonably cool, but after lugging my computer case up four flights of stairs to get to the level of the trains, I already sweated enough to need another shower.  I now had to figure out which station I was sweating in, and compare it to street map I had been given.  But the train map had no resemblance to the street map.  I wasn't even sure the street map was for the same city. 

I made some uneducated guesses as to what platform I was to go to, but then could not figure out how to buy the ticket.  There were machines that took coins and there was a real live human behind glass.  I chose to deal with the human.  I thought I told him where I needed to go and I gave him paper money.  He gave me coins back and pointed in a general direction as added assistance.  He was pointing right back to the coin operated ticket machine.  Apparently all I had done with him was get exact change.

OK, I stood in front of this ticket machine that had a lot of squiggly lines (Sanscrit, or Hindu or graffiti; not sure) and numbers on it.  Fortunately, there was a British flag on one button.  I pushed it.  The squiggly lines became words.  Or I presumed they were words.  I think they were the station names.  But I found it impossible to know which station I needed.  They all sounded and looked so similar.  What station name did the Change Maker guy say I needed?   Was the name:   KNOT HEER, HOP SING, or BIC PEN?  Perhaps he said YAN QUI?  or U LOS?   I thought it had some K sound in it somewhere. 

As if standing there, like a goat looking at a light switch was not embarrassing enough, I had to be helped by a family from India.  They didn’t know where I was going either, but they at least could show me how to get the machine to spit out a ticket. Thus armed with a credit card sized ticket, I approached the entry area.  After four tries, I finally oriented the four sided ticket properly into the gate opening mechanism.  I followed the crowd of Petite People.  A train came in to the station and opened its doors. I squeezed myself in and hoped for the best.  The train doors closed and off we went.  I had a rough idea of what name to listen for as we chugged along above the city traffic, but the recorded voice announcing the stations was so faint I could barely hear it. 

After a few stops, I decided it was time to dis-embark.  I found another train map and started to do more comparisons with the street map.  I slowly started to realize that I had traveled in EXACTLY the wrong direction from where I wanted to go, of course.  I could keep relating more details of this sad tale of ineptitude, but the short version is that I finally did get to the conference.  At the end of the day I didn't feel my manhood could stand a return trip on the Mass Transit of Doom, so I took a cab back to my hotel.

Mass transit travel and I do not seem to get along.  Once, a few years ago, I was in Rome with my family.  I wanted to go see the Coliseum since we were leaving Rome the next day.  The family was too tired, so I went on my own.  My wife told me to take the Red Line, or perhaps she said take the Blue Line from our hotel to the Coliseum.  She said I couldn’t miss it.  Well, those four words always spell doom for me.  If someone says:  You can’t miss it, you can bet your boots I will miss it.

My wife was referring to me taking the Red or Blue SUBWAY.  Instead, I took the Red or Blue CITY BUS.  Poor decision.  After several hours of waiting for the bus to drive past the coliseum, I finally gave up (losing man points again) and asked the driver when we would get there.  He looked at me like I was a lunatic.  Then he said something in Italian, I suppose, then opened the bus door, and rudely gestured me out. 

They say necessity is the mother of invention so I wish I could say I came up with a clever solution to my problem.   But no. I resorted to pestering strangers for directions.  (losing more Man Points) Eventually I figured out where I was and what direction to walk.  It took me until dark to find the coliseum.  By then it was closed.  All I could do was stare at the outer walls of that magnificent edifice.  I felt defeated.  Like a Christian about to be fed to the Entertainment.  I was tired of trying to be a savvy consumer of big city mass transit.  I had more money than pride, so I wimped out and took a cab back to the hotel.    Some things in life just never change.

What's that noise?

What's that noise?

found in the archives and never published
Written Feb 2012

Hello Friends.  Those of you who follow this blog, and who are not incarcerated, need to find something better to do.  But, if you are a reader, you may know that when I am not gallivanting around the globe, I invest in income producing real estate back near where I live.  I buy foreclosed homes as a way to diversify my money away from the stock market.  I don’t like having all my investments under the control of some fat cat banker or greedy stock broker.  I would rather be the fat and greedy one and control my investments personally.

At the time of the incident to be discussed here, I had purchased four single family homes that had been foreclosures.  I fixed them up, and leased them out.  I have not had any major problems yet and I have been doing it for three years now. 

A new foreclosure came on to the market that I was interested in.  It was a very nice little home in a typical middle income neighborhood.  It was all brick, three bedrooms, two baths and had a nice back yard and was on a quiet street.   It had been recently painted on the outside and the inside looked good.  I planned to re-paint the inside and put in new carpet.  It should have been a painless, low cost rehab.  Since I am a guy, I think about the mechanical components of a house more than the floor plan or paint colors.  This means I focus on the HVAC system (This house had a new one) and  plumbing:  This house had copper water pipes which indicated to me that the original builder put in more quality in to this home than a home that just used galvanized steel water pipe.

The day I was supposed to finalize the purchase of this house I decided to swing by the property to check it out one more time.  I discovered that the outside air conditioner compressor was missing. Thieves had stolen it.  All that was left was the small concrete pad that it sat on.  Crap!  That was a problem.   I made a few frantic phone calls to see what it would cost me to replace the outside unit.  The prices ranged from $500 for a used unit, to $2,900 if the inside unit had to be replaced to match the new outside unit.  Crap again!  

I had my Real Estate agent tell the seller, a big fat cat banker, that if they did not lower the price by $3,500, the purchase was off.  They came back with their counter-offer, which was a $500 reduction.  I came back with a $2,000 lower price.  The seller acquiesced to my stern demands and reduced the price by $2,000.  HA!  Now I could buy a $500 used A/C unit for the house and have an extra $1500 to use for putting more tile flooring in the house.  What a wheeler-dealer I was!  So, I signed all the paperwork, and now owned this cute little house.

It was a few days later before I had a chance to go inside the property.  I was showing the house to my wife when, as luck would have it, the city water dept. worker stopped by and turned on the water for us.  We suddenly heard a loud gushing sound.  My wife and I look at each other.  “What’s that noise?”  It sounded like a water hose blasting the wall in the garage.

I ran outside.  The City worker said he turned the water back off since there was water pouring out of the attic and running down the outside brick.  NOT GOOD.  I was astonished.  I went in to the garage and saw that the water heater had been pulled away from the wall and all the copper pipes and connections to it were cut and mangled.  The power cable to it was also severed.  What on earth could have caused that?  How weird!  But that did not explain why water would be coming out of the attic.

I pulled down the retractable stairway and scrambled up in to the dark attic.  My flashlight zeroed in on the area where the water would have been pouring out.  Everything was soaked.  The insulation looked like a giant serving of over cooked linguini.  The sheet rock had a half inch of water puddled up on it.  And I suddenly realized that the source of the water leak was a ragged stub of copper pipe sticking out of the ceiling rafters.   I looked around and realized that all the copper pipe in the attic was gone.  Every bit of it.  And most of the copper electrical wires that crisscrossed the attic were gone too.  I was dumbstruck.

I slowly crawled back down the stairs.  My wife was standing in the garage, anxiously waiting for an explanation.  I could hardly spit out the results of my examination.  I told her what I found and she was dumbstruck too.  That often happens to her when I open my mouth, but that is something she has learned to handle, with the help of her psychologist.  

So, fast forward a few days later.  I found a plumber who could quickly replace the piping system.  Then I found an electrician to replace and repair the damaged electrical wiring.  Then I had to replace the water heater and rewire it.  The last item was to replace the outside A/C unit and repair the damaged inside unit.  All total, the cost for all these repairs were around $5,000.  Ouch.  That $2,000 I got deducted from the house price looks very inadequate right now.  The pathetic thing is that the thieves probably got less than $50 bucks for the scrap copper.

One of the contractors told me that the police were taking this sort of crime seriously, so I called the sheriff's office. A sheriff came out and took some basic information from me.  He asked why I didn’t report the crime as soon as it happened.  I told him I thought it was a waste of time.  I asked him what they would be doing to investigate.  He said they were too short handed to investigate, and it would be a waste of time. Arrrrgh.

But this tale did have a happy ending.  My wife and I installed a lovely tile floor in the kitchen and entry.  The painter did a great job patching the holes that the plumber had to cut in the walls to connect new pipe to the un-stolen pipe.  And, best of all, I found a nice family to move in and make a home out of the house.  They hope to buy it one day.   I just hope we don’t have to call the plumber, electrician, or the police again.  But I make no prediction about whether my wife should call her psychologist.