Finally getting all of my travel plans sorted out

Once I came away from TECO with a sense of confidence that my visa would be ready on Tues I gave my travel group the "thumbs up" to book our tickets. I'll be taking the redeye Sat night on EVA from Newark through Anchorage on to Taipei. It will arrive Monday morning 5:55A local time, and I will somehow make my way to work to settle in; that's my plan, anyway. When travelling intercontinental, it works best for me to just go straight to work. If I try to rest up for a bit, I end up crashing out for 16 hours and it just takes me even more time to get over the jet lag.

The other reason why I took this flight is Shirley will be travelling with the cat in July and she will take this same flight for several reasons:

• A connection in a foreign country, say Hong Kong, with the cat is just asking for trouble. I would guess that would mean more paperwork and I'd be worried about something going wrong.
• China Airlines does not allow pets other than guide dogs so that rules out travelling with them through LAX or SFO.
• EVA will allow you to check a pet as extra luggage. The good thing about the Anchorage flight is they only stop to take on fuel (and maybe some cargo), so there is no plane change and we don't need to rely on the cat being transferred from one plane to the next.

So I figured I would take the same flight and see how it goes. It will also allow me to get in early in the morning rather than mid-day like the Cathay Pacific flights that were available. Unfortunately you cannot fly direct from New York to Taipei.

Friends of ours threw us a going away party on Sunday which was awesome (sushi, wine, cheese and bacon-everything is better with bacon) and we got to see some more friends and family before leaving.

My HR group in Taiwan has been working to shore up my arrangements in Taipei and have confirmed a temporary home at The Spring and they got me a taxi from the airport to the apartment. Now I have to work with them on a car.

This afternoon I'm heading back down to TECO to pick up my visa.

...this man at the wheel is my attorney

After getting that tree cleared out of the driveway it took just a bit more work to get our house ready to list on the market. Selling this house is by far the most significant obstacle in the way. It's been listed for a week and we haven't had any action yet, though the Realtor (c) open house and regular open house are yet to come.

We live in a town that is highly desirable but it is a small town and only transacts about 50 properties per year so you have to be pateint, waiting for the right buyer to come along. It's been a pain in the neck that we actually have to keep the house clean, all the time, but it's also nice actually having a clean house!

Since I'll be gone before the house transacts, I needed to assign Power of Attorney to my wife so she can sell the house on our behalf, and then move to the islands with the lawn guy. Here's how that works:

Our lawyer drafted up a document assigning her POA. It has a list of things she can do (i.e. sell a house, open up a bank account) in my name and I can cross out any or none of them. I then bring it to a notary public; my bank did this for free. The notary and two witnesses (bank employees) watch me sign it and then emboss a stamp on it. That's it. My wife didn't even have to be there.

The next issue will occur if Shirley leaves before we are able close. Then she can assign both of our Powers of Attorney to our friend, Lumpy, who can then sell the house on our behalf. In thinking of Lumpy as my attorney, I am reminded of Duke and Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing..., just the notion of referring to him as "my attorney" is kind of funny. I hope Lumpy doesn't run away with the lawn guy.

Another milestone is putting our other Basset Hound, Ozzie, into foster care. We were about ready to pull the trigger and then he had a lump on his eyelid that got worse and started to infect his eye so we took him in to have it surgically removed. Now he has to wear the "cone of shame" for 2 weeks and go back in for a checkup. Once cleared he'll be off the DL and into foster care. He's absolutely miserable but once the mescaline wears off and we get that cone off he should be fine.

As of now I'm waiting on my travel request to be approved in Taiwan so I can arrange plane tickets. It's not at all uncommon for this to be done at the last minute. I wonder if the flight I want will still be available by the time it get's approved.

taiwanderyears.blogspot.com

A boy and his dog

As if our recent run of bad luck couldn't get any worse after the Canada tire incident and the tree incident, my Mom called Saturday night with horrible news: our dog Kramer died, only a week after moving him up there. He had a stroke and Mom took him in to the emergencey clinic where he had two seizures and she did the right thing and put him down.

I've been thinking for days of what to make of a blog post about this incident and how I feel about it:

• Confused: I don't understand why I was perfectly OK with departing ways with Kramer to leave him with my Mom yet feel a deep sense of loss over his death.
• Relieved: That he passed without getting sick and putting a burden on my Mom to care for him and avoided pain & suffering upon himself.
• Thankful: That my Mom was able to do this and I didn't have to.
• More-confused: I can't fathom how any parent can send their kid off to fight in a war and die in the name of the cause.

"And they all want to love the cause,

'Cause they all need to be the cause,

They all want to fuck the cause" 

- Broken Social Scene

Yeah, I know, it's just a dog.

taiwanderyears.blogspot.com

"In a perfect world, every dog would have a home and every home would have a dog."

This past weekend we set out to tackle one of the remaining milestones: getting Kramer into his new home with my Mom in Niagara Falls, Canada. We still have to find a home for Ozzie so Kramer is the first of two pets to make a departure. We packed up the Mini with Kramer's crate and set out after work. When we travel with Kramer in the car, he is usually just loose in the hatchback which typically results in a lot of restlessness, whining and him stuffing his snout in your face as best he can from the back seat. This time we actually had the crate set up back there and put him in it. He was much more comfortable and rested the best he could considering the Mini + Pennsylvania highways is not the smoothest ride in the world.

We made a pit stop every couple hours at a rest area to let Kramer out, and arrived at the border in Niagara Falls around 11PM. I had read on the internets that you just need a rabies certificate to get your dog into Canada. We had that along with Kramer's entire vet record, just in case my Mom would come to need it, but I was still wary of customs. Going through the border always results in some sort of dumb question that I must trick myself into NOT answering literally.

I think the way she phrased it was, "Are you bringing anything in?"

"Well, this here car, for starters!"

Sometimes I get, "Are you bringing in any gifts?" "Is there anything NOT coming back with you?" "Do you have anything to declare?"

So I answered, "A pound of cheese and 2 boxes of cortizone cream, apparently difficult to find in Canada (probably not as tough as tires, though). I made no mention of the 50# dog in the back but had his rabies cert in hand. She let us pass asking nothing of the dog. Not sure she noticed. Not sure "this dog" was what she was looking for in her questioning.

We got to my Mom's place around midnight. She recently got a German Shepherd puppy, "Barkley", who is a year old and probably just under a hundred pounds. I had Kramer on a leash as we went through the door and Barkley lit up when we came in. He came charging over to Kramer a bit aggressively, upon which Kramer latched on to Barkley's ear until I yanked him back.

I think this set the stage perfectly. Kramer proved that he could hold is own and he and Barkley got along very well afterwards. It was funny to see Barkley follow Kramer around with an inquisitive look. Whenever Kramer did something new, Barkley would come charging over to see what was going on. As soon as Kramer would go outside, Barkley would go charging out the door after him. Kramer got along with Dan pretty well, too, as you can see them practicing their napping skills together.

In the morning Shirley and I went down to the local YMCA which is amazing. They have a nice pool, actually two pools: one kiddie pool and one 4 lane 25m pool with a water slide. Above that there is a huge weight room, loads of cardio equipment, yoga room, spin room, basketball court and some classrooms. They let you in for free the first time and thereafter it's 10 bucks a day as a drop fee. There is also a coffee shop and library on site so I come here often when visiting my Mom. I don't think this is the type of YMCA the Village People had in mind, but you can, in fact, get yourself clean and have a good meal.

After working out my Mom joined us for a trip down to the falls since Shirley has never been. We lucked out and had great weather, albeit a little chilly. I swear it rains constantly in Niagara Falls; my Mom swears it's only when I'm visiting. I hear the same thing from people in Seattle-never rains there, either. If you've never been to Niagara Falls, I think the Canadian side is the tackiest place on Earth. Shirley thinks Vegas holds that title but at least Vegas has an authentic Madame Tussauds Wax Museum whereas Niagara Falls has the "Louis TussaudsWax Museum". Cheezy.

On the way home the check tire light illuminated in the Mini and we stopped to get air but found the air leaked out as fast as it would go in. The Mini has no spare and uses runflats, tires that you can drive on even when flat. We made it back to Mom's and I crawled under the car to find that the tread and the sidewall had become separated at the seam. This tire had seen it's share of mileage and needed to be replaced (probably 10k miles ago) along with its rear conterpart on the passenger's side. It was 6PM on Saturday and we couldn't get a hold of a tire shop. I made some calls on Sunday and could not locate a tire in that size anywhere in the vicinity. I was quoted a lead time of 10 days. There was a Mini dealer a few miles away in St. Catharines and we would have to use that as a last resort on Monday.

On Monday morning we called some real tire shops (as opposed to Candian Tire and Wal-Mart) hoping that might be a better option. Found a guy who could get us a tire in 5 days. The Mini dealer had them in stock and we bit the bullet and headed up. We wanted to avoid the highway as with the damage to the tire, it got a bit wobbly above 40MPH so we needed to take backroads which were under construction. With Dan leading the way we limped in to the dealer and were directed to the lounge area to wait for them to look at the car. Here is Shirley waiting with her blue Mini through the window in the background. An hour later they assesed the situation and gave us a quote. 2 tires, mounted...guess how much? Over $800, Canadian! So with today's exchange rate, $787. It was actually around $820CN so we broke the $400 per tire barrier. Insane! But we had no choice to get us home that day. So we waited another 2 hours for them to mount the tires and were on our way. They even washed the car, for free!

We already had to skip a day of work, keep Ozzie in the kennel another day, and have someone come up to our house to take care of the cat. The price of the same tire in the U.S. on Tirerack=$144. So we can look at it as a $500 car wash, or ammoritize the cost across the few cups of "free" coffee we drank in the dealer lounge. Warning: if you ever go to Canada, bring tires. I will forever have 195/55R16 burned into my brain. Oh, and these are STOCK tires. We don't have any wacky low profile or huge spinner rims or anything like that. Next time I buy a car, I'm checking the tire size and making sure it is readily available in places other than a car dealer.

We at least were able to leave knowing that Kramer was comfortable in his new home and had made a new friend in Barkley. I think it's more like, Barkley made a new friend in Kramer. Here is my last moment with Kramer. Not sure why he's licking his lips. The food must taste better in Canada. Either that or he secretly ate that tire to get revenge on us for deporting him.

We hit the road for home and were planning on stopping in Buffalo for chicken wings since we've never had a "real" Buffalo wing and it might be something that we can't quite get in Taiwan. My buddy Brett is from Buffalo so we asked him where to go. It seemed to be a tough choice between Duff's and Anchor Bar but when pressed he suggested Duff's. There are two places that we go to for decent wings: TK's in Danbury,CT and Frankie's in Melbourne,FL.

We each ordered a lunch special which is 10 wings in your choice of hotness and 2 sides. The menu indicates they have a scale factor in their hotness, like a "chicken wing exchange rate". They tout "Medium Hot is VERY Hot" so I ordered Medium Hot and Shirley chose Mild Medium. We asked for chili and fries as our sides and they had run out of chili and gave Shirley the last scoop. Bummer. Our wings and fries arrived. Fries were shoestring which I like and you could smell the vinagar in the air from the wings.

In a nutshell: the meat of the wings is superior to anywhere else, but the flavor of the sauce is very basic, Frank's Red Hot in butter with some white pepper and probably not much more. I thought the assesment of the hotness was pretty accurate. Duff's Medium Hot is comparable to a TK's "suicide" and Frankie's 4 or 5, depending on which cook made the sauce that day. Frankie's sauce is rated on a scale from 1-9 with each level having a moniker, e.g., level 9 is called "Dial 9-1-1". The thing with Frankies is not just the hotness of the sauce but with the flavoring; it's not just a jar of Red Hot or Tabasco but I think it has tomoto paste in it and other secret ingredients, probably stuff with a very short half-life.

I easily put down 10 Duff's Medium Hot but even one 7 at Frankie's can disable your digestive tract for days. I've witnessed someone vomit on the table at Frankie's when trying to ingest just one level 9. Folklore says they make a level 10 but you have to be "in-the-know" to get them as they are worried about the side effects and potential lawsuits. All said and done, Duff's was good, but Frankie's has the best hot wings I have ever had. I think Frankie was from NY so maybe he was originally from the Buffalo area which might add to his wing cred. Frankie died about 5 years ago. I wonder if it was in the act of researching a #11. They should name it, "Call the coroner".

taiwanderyears.blogspot.com

Dog eat dog world

One of the questions I get asked most frequently is, "What are you going to do with your dogs?" There were two tough pills to swallow with this opportunity, one being the house and the second being the dogs. There was actually a point in time where I envisioned bringing one of them to Taiwan with us but I fortunately came to the conclusion that this would be self-serving and the right thing to do would be to find them both suitable homes. Living in an apartment in Taipei is not suitable for these guys.

Kramer is 14 and I've had him since a pup. I actually solicited my sister to enter as a silent partner into his purchase from a mall pet store. They had two Bassets at the time, Kramer and his brother. I got to play with them and Kramer mauled his brother so I chose Kramer. Also, his brother had only one testicle.

I recently read that Bassets rarely live past 12 years of age. Kramer is still going pretty strong at 14.5. Luckily, my Mother has agreed to take Kramer and we'll be hauling him up to Canada this weekend. I'm sure we'll have more to say about that later in the week.

We got Ozzie from a coworker of mine who had an uncle who had a kid that worked at a pet store who brought home this dog and their condo association allegedly told them they couldn't keep the dog. Ozzie is a handful. I think they were just looking for an exit strategy. We took him in when he was eight months old and he is now 10 years.

We've been working through a Basset Hound rescue organization to find him a home. Anyone who runs a Basset Hound rescue has to be insane, for multiple reasons. I called the rescue lady tonight and she didn't disappoint. There's just something not right, in that crazy cat lady sort of way. But I'm really hoping that she can find Ozzie a good home before I leave in May. Go crazy Basset Hound Lady!

We'll be sad to part ways with our dogs. I think the void left by bringing Kramer to Canada this weekend will propel the imminence of this move into a new league. I wonder if he'll like life as an ex-pat.

taiwanderyears.blogspot.com