Planet Wilder

It’s the end of the month. Wow! My summer class was over last Friday which means that summer will be over soon. Ahhh, where did the time go? I have two fall classes again this year and one will be really fun. We’ll play with current web technology and putting them into use in the classrooms. Maybe it’ll be so fun I’ll have more students next year :D This is the first time I’m teaching this course. It’ll be online too, so I’ll actually be in Indonesia, Germany, and Singapore when these courses happen.

It’s been a few weeks now too since Kato left us. We still miss him. But we buried him in front of our home, so we get to see him everyday. We have almost 3.5 acres and there’s a little hill between the house and the road and that’s where he lies. I love him! Shady is still somewhat sad we think. She’s getting better, not as bad as the first few days but not the old Shady as of yet. Who knows when we’ll get another dog. I’m still researching which is best for us, but we are 75% sure that we’ll be fostering after we come back from our trip (very soon!!).

There’s this shelter in KC, Wayside Waifs, that seems to have a good foster program. We’re going to try it and see what we think of fostering. Hopefully we won’t want to keep all the animals that we get :D

So this site of ourse… hmmm… I’m trying to think of ways to make it better. I mean it does get boring reading about us all the time but I just haven’t had the time to really do much. Even the layout is a template and I’m a web designer/developer. Eeek! We’ll see. Maybe after the trip I’ll have some inspiration and make the reading material more worthwhile and not just be a place for our family and friends to keep in touch and see how we’re doing here.

I am really partial to which airline I go on. I am not into flying. Not terrified but not the most calm person either when turbulence is involved. I’m not afraid of dieing, but I am afraid of dieing a painful death. I figured if I’m over land, if ever there’s anything, there’s a good chance that I’d have a quick death. But over water… hmmm…. Because of my insane reasoning, I always make sure that I get on the safest airline when traveling overseas.

There are a few good options for flights to Asia (Thai, Cathay, Malaysia) but I always end up going back to Singapore Airlines. They are on the top tier when it comes to safety, the food is delicious, the booze is plentiful and free, the customer service is excellent (though this can vary from human to human), nice in-flight entertainment, can’t complain about Singapore/Changi airport, and the flight attendants, though the males are kind of rare, are really gentle on the eyes. Also, now that I’m a mommy, SQ (yeah, not sure what the Q is, but this is their official abbreviation) is kid friendly. On top of the kids meal, the airline has toys/activities, and kids snacks. The flight attendants also try their very best to help parents, especially single traveling parents, with their children. They’ll take the kids on walks up and down the aisle or offer to watch one when mom/dad is caring for another child. Now, I’ve never experienced this first hand, but I’ve seen all the above happening when I was on the airline. Despite the nice child service, I sometimes still hear the grumpy kids, so I don’t think we’ll be leaving the Benadryl at home :D Come on, it’s is a long (22 hours almost) flight!

Since SQ is often on the top 5th on airline overall rank, it actually snagged this year’s World Airline Award, and we like the idea of the Singapore and Frankfurt stayover, and my great travel agent for over a decade, Bali Barong Tours, can always get me an awesome deal ($1050+ tax from KC!) we decided to go with Singapore Air this year for our big trip.

Can’t wait until the big day!!! Quite soon now.

Wow, four years and we are still going. For this year’s celebration we decided to do movie and a dinner night. For the movie we chose Transformers and Harry Potter. Great movies, huh? Maybe not the most romantic of the bunch but they were both what we wanted to see.

We watched Transformers first. It was good. I can’t remember anything from the past on these characters so I just sat down and watched the movie. I must say, quite good on the CG, and the storyline wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t all action and I was entertained. Drew of course was super psyched about the whole deal. He was a kid again those few hundreds of minutes. He said it was worth the $14 we spent.
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[thumb:1183:l:l=g]Sometimes this morning Kato pasted away. On Saturday he was diagnosed with liver cancer. I’ll miss him very much. He was my sweet little dog and I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye… or a proper goodbye.

I have always wanted a cocker spaniel. Ever since I met Kelty, my food family friend’s dog, I was in love with the cockers. They’re so cute and gentle. So ever since I graduated from college I’ve been thinking about a dog… or a cocker for that matter and every so often I’d look in the paper to see what is available.
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