Yearly Archives: 2011

Casey’s 1st Birthday

I did all my jawing about being a dad for 365 mostly-wonderful days last post, but would be failing in my fatherly rights of overly saturating this blog with talk of my son. We ended up dividing Casey’s first birthday celebrations into two. For his actual birthday we hit the local park and took him …

May 8, 2011
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Father of the Year

Shortly after noon tomorrow I will have been a father for one year. Yep, Casey’s already one year old! I can hardly believe that we’ve hit his first birthday already. Oddly, at the same time, it feels like a century ago I was in that hospital room marveling at his wrinkly hands and unpracticed cries. …

May 3, 2011
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Haikou Airport Pickup

I’ve learned to set my expectations low with service in China. I don’t mean for that to come off too jaded, but there’s only so many times you can say “it’s just done differently here”. So, when I do get amazing service, I love sharing it for both the benefit of anyone who happens upon …

April 22, 2011
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Trip to Haikou’s Holiday Beach

We’ve had awesome weather here in Haikou for much of the last two weeks — in stark contrast to the cold and rain of our first week on the island. Not wanting to push our luck though, Maggie and I decided that we’d play hooky from the massive amount of stuff we still need to …

April 16, 2011
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Home Hunting in Haikou

I thought I had a decent amount of apartment hunting experience, but Haikou was beginning to kick my ass. The problem is a simple one — pretty much all the decent apartments are owned by Mainlanders, and so most potential landlords are either not here or here but on their way off the island until …

March 30, 2011
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Homeless

As of 5pm Friday Maggie, Casey, Button and I became homeless. After a hectic few days of packing, we said farewell to our gear Friday morning as it left on a truck destined to eventually (hopefully) meet up with us in Haikou. Judging what the costs would be for shipping our stuff was one part …

March 27, 2011
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Rick’s Web cam of the Japan Quake

My friend Rick, who lives in Tokyo, switched on his Web cam when things started to shake in Japan two days ago. Here’s the resultant video. There are quite a few videos floating around that show much more stunning imagery than Rick’s apartment wall and chair moving around, but for me at least it really …

March 13, 2011
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Ryan and the Rubik’s Cube

Back in 2003, while backpacking through the UK and Ireland, I ended up at a party in Dublin where I met a guy who claimed he could complete the Rubik’s Cube in under 5 minutes. After having me scramble it for him, he did as advertised. I was suitably impressed and asked how he did …

March 5, 2011
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Bedtimes and Toy Boxes

The little guy is growing so fast. He’s got two teeth now and has started to show signs of wanting to walk. He doesn’t have the balance yet to attempt it himself but he loves trekking around the apartment with us supporting him. Oddly though, he’s shown no interest in crawling. Our good friends’ little …

March 1, 2011
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