Ok, ok, ok,
So it's been three months since we have written anything.

No time.


So soon we will have photos of the trip home to the States - San Jose, Lakin and Topeka - lots of relatives, a bit of snow, etc.

Mali and Douglas Pai also each had road trips with Dad (Mae Sot and to Mae Hong Son) in the past few months.

Mom's world famous coffee factory and noodle shop is getting greener and greener.

The rainy season is finally over and the cool season is here. Cool enough we bought a small room heater this year.

More soon - promise

In Transit

In Korea waiting for a flight. No time recently to update the blog but it doesn't mean we haven't been busy back at the ranch. Updates soon on the cats, the snake, Mali's road trip with Dad to Mae Sot and Doug's road trip with Dad to Mae Hong Son....

New Editions

OK, so the two new kittens have arrived. The kids are happy. The new kittens are litter mates. One has a perfect tail (difficult to find in Thailand) while the other one has a stubby, crooked tail as do most other cats in this country.

Mali named stubby tail "Tiger" because she misses the old Tiger. Douglas Pai named the other kitten "Hero" as he is still on the path to becoming a superhero himself. I probably would have chosen different names, but what can I say, when I was 7 or 8 I named our new kitten "Hercules." Herc was with us for about 20 years!



Phum Phuey, our Dog, Senior Pet and the Ponderosa's Director of Homeland Security has not yet commented publicly, but in private she is expressing "grave concerns" over this new arrangement's impact on household peace and stability.

In past interviews, Phuey has frequently mentioned the need to close the border of the Ponderosa to any new immigrants citing concerns over allowing potential terrorist animals into the compound, spread of fleas, ticks and other parasites, and the general the lack of resources to maintain additional pets at the Ponderosa. She is noted to be particularly concerned about any potential re-allocation of pet food rations, stating that such re-allocations would be greatly inconvenient to Mom and Dad, but denies being concerned about her own rations.

Phuey is well known to be particularly scornful of cats, stating that "they smell funny, they make no attempt to learn our language and they can't be trusted - they just don't belong here."

Mom is quoted as saying she is looking forward to the kittens beginning their mousing duties in the coffee bean storage room outside the house. She has already issued preemptive warnings about scratching up furniture, bringing in fleas or peeing anywhere other than designated areas. She hopes the new kittens will keep the kids gainfully occupied for a while.

Dad has already put both kittens on probation for disconnecting the modem line to his computer, absconding with a sock, holding relay races up to the top of the screen door using their nails for traction and for dipping into his yogurt cup when he wasn't looking and then trying to deny it, although the evidence was all over their faces.

So far, the two new kittens have not shown any concern about their tenuous status at the Ponderosa.

When asked how they felt they were fitting in, Tiger - who now appears to be the spokescat for the two, said "yeah - whatever."

Snakes #2

Yiikes!

So Mom opened the door to the roasting room and saw this guy (photo left) sitting there. A little snake is ordinarily not a problem and doesn't raise any eyebrows around here but the pattern and coloration on this one was consistent with that of a hatchling king cobra (photo below, taken from the web).

I figured it was better to know where he was that to let him roam around, so I caught it and now he is safely ensconced in an empty one gallon jug with a few holes poked in the lid.

If he turns out to be a harmless snake, maybe we will keep him - he is very pretty. If he is a cobra, then we will have a lot of work to do.

King cobras hatch between 20-50 eggs at a time, so he would not be alone. The baby's are lethal from day one and the moms protect the nest. A full grown cobras get up to 18 feet long.
That is not a misprint - Eighteen Feet.

Snakes don't scare me, but I believe if I opened the door to the tool room and found myself face to face with an 18 foot cobra, I would pee my pants.

Have a lot of photos and Uncle Doug is consulting with experts but no confirmation as of yet.

Life on the Ponderosa, always something new.

Win A Prize!!!!!

So - after 10 years of faithful companionship, I have traded Betty in for a newer, younger gal.

Betty is (was) my Honda motorcycle. In fact, we now have just acquired two slightly used motorcycles. The Pink One and The Green One.

Before you get too excited, the motorcycles are not prizes - the contest is to name the motorcycles. We need names and are soliciting ideas. Winning suggestion(s) will get a prize which has yet to be determined, but I assure you will be of high value, worthy of your time spent.

Before you start offering suggestions, I need to explain that we have a strict nomenclature for naming vehicles which must be followed. All trucks are MALE and must be named after country western singers. Hank is still chugging away back in Kansas and we have Willie here in Thailand.

All motorcycles are FEMALE and must be named after cartoon characters. Betty was actually christened the same time my work motorcycle, Wilma was. Betty and Wilma (the Flintstones - gettit?).

So - having a pair of names that come from the same cartoon might be handy, but is not absolutely necessary.

The Pink One is more or less a large moped - running board that Pai stands on, automatic starter and automatic transmission so all you do is go. Riding it is like sitting in a chair that is moving down the street. The Pink One will probably live at the house and will mostly putz around the neighborhood to get eggs or whatever. The Pink One came from the dealer where we traded Betty in at.

The Green One requires a kick to start, you actually have to change gears and it feels like you are riding a motorcycle. The Green One will probably live at Mom's World Famous Noodle Shop and Coffee Factory and will be out delivering coffee to restaurants, coffee shops and to the airport, bus and train stations on most afternoons. We bought The Green One from our friend, Anusorn and came not only with helmets, but also raincoats tucked under the seat.

Let us know your ideas for names. The four Chiang Mai Vincents will vote at some point in the near future. In event of a tie, I hold the proxy for the dog's vote - so if you are interested in bribing the judges, I am the guy you want to talk to.

Use the "comments" button to place your suggested names, lobby for your choice and trash your competitor's choice.

It's a jungle out there

While the umbrella monsters are lurking in the bushes at Mom's world famous noodle shop & coffee factory, unsuspecting diners (seated behind the plants) are enjoying their Khao Soy - not aware that this may be their last meal...

MORE RAIN

OK, so it has been a long time. We have been busy. Really busy. It rains every day. Mom is roasting all the time and I have work piled up to my ears. The kids are getting bigger and learning all sorts of ways to circumvent parental authority in favor of childhood anarchy.

Doug stapled his fingers together a couple of days ago, just to see what would happen.

I don't think he will do it again any time soon.

Tiger, our cat, did not really have nine lives after all. He got hit by a car, coughed up blood and tried to catch his breath for about an hour and failed. Kids haven't figured out he is really gone yet, but we will probably have a sit down with them the next day or two.

He was a good cat and we will miss him. He let the kids drag him around by the tail, a leg or an ear, whatever was handy to grab onto. He seemed to enjoy it. You could tied him up in knots and hand him upside down and he would just purr and look at you with sleepy eyes.

We won't be without a cat for long as Tiger actually had a job, a real purpose. He was a mouser for the coffee storage area. He was very good at it. A very important job in the rainy season. The lot our house on is elevated and we have empty lots all around us that are pretty much swamp this time of year. That means the denizens of these lots are all looking for a dry place to hang out from June to November and our house and yard are it. We get many surprise visitors. Remind me later to tell you about the 7 foot rat snake that came last year and was mistaken for a cobra. Poor snake.

Anyway - looks like we will be picking up one or two kittens this weekend. Same mother as Tiger.

R.I.P. Tiger

Our friend Marie is visiting from Germany. She has brought a photo and love notes from her nephew Max (age 6?) to give to Mali. Mali is playing it cool and not committing herself at this point. I figure she should wait another few years until she starts thinking about boys - until maybe she is 25 or so.

Lots of fun with bureaucracy this week of both the Thai and the US variety. Took the kids in to get passports. They will each have two passports - one for each country. The US Consulate visit for the US passports did not take all that long, but you had to get forms in advance and have a lot of supporting documents, proof of this and that and translations. The Thai version was chaos, long lines everywhere - but all things considered it went pretty smooth. They did not ask for that much documentation and they didn't seem interested in checking it closely.

After practicing four or five times, Mali actually signed her Thai passport. Doug couldn't be bothered, so he was fingerprinted.

Both stops done on the same day. The same LONG day.


CAREER UPDATES:

This week Mali wants to be a nurse - primarily because her little friend at school wants to be a nurse. Douglas Pai wants to be a superhero. He is not providing additional clarification on that, but he is doing a lot of research via cartoons.

Sunday Night

We bought a small piece of land up the road a bit - with Quyen and Gee. Hoping we can turn it around pretty quick. Property prices are going up out our way (good!) but with all the construction, there are nails all over the place and the rain drainage in our neighborhood is screwed up. The small dirt side street to get to our house nearly requires a boat to get in and out of.

Auntie Nok (Dhai's younger sister) is a special ed. teacher and she has been living in Chiang Mai for the past 2-3 years to do her masters degree. For the first year she lived with us. She is finished and is going back to Khon Kaen to her previous post. We will miss having her around.

The jing-jook egg still hasn't hatched.

Mali's computer art (it's a slide show in MS Paint)

New Science Project

The caterpillar has already escaped.
So then we found two jing-jook eggs (jing-jook are the small pink geckos that run up and down the walls and ceilings at night, eating bugs).
We carefully placed the eggs in the middle of the kitchen table where nothing could happen to them so we could hopefully watch them hatch.
The next day there was only one.
Doug admitted (only after Mali threatened to tell on him) that he sort of accidentally broke one of the eggs. Perhaps a dubious claim considering it was smashed against the wall.
Mali is always ready to tell on her brother. We figure she will end up being a cop.

Science Project

Hi Grandma,
We are working on a project. We have a caterpillar and we want to turn it into a butterfly. We found out it doesn't like taking a bath and it won't eat fish.

Tuesday May 22

So we went to the zoo on Sunday. Mali has a lifetime membership which allows all of us free entry year round here in Chiang Mai and to several other zoos and parks around the country. All the animal and they got the most excited by a little frog on the path (see photo below).

Mom added another staff person to her coffee business recently. The new gal will hopefully be able to learn how to run the roaster, at least for the regular orders.

Congrats to cousin Geoff who will receive his PhD in Archeology from Yale on May 28. Geoff has been doing a lot of groundbreaking work in China.

This here is a place to put the stuff that other folks, like Grandmas and Grandpas might want to see. It will be a lot easier for us to post stuff from time to time to one web site rather than e mailing to you and having our messages get bounced by your servers (Jamie/Juergen!).

The rainy season started the other day and now we have tadpoles and frogs all over the place, which is good, because we also have a lot of mosquitos that need to be eaten. It rains pretty much every day.