January 2008 – Page 2 – My Thought Spot

Birthday trip

Thursday finally came! It was a day for which I had been planning for 5 weeks. It was my wife’s birthday and I had big plans.

The goal:
Totally surprise my wife and take her off on a two day vacation without the kids.

The setup:
I had friends who had agreed to keep our kids for two nights. Our son was in on the surprise since he would have to help me conceal a few details. Also, he needed to know what was going on to help avoid any blowups with the baby while we were gone. But he was only fully aware of the surprise 24 hours before.

Since I was not sure how comfortable my wife would feel leaving our kids with our friends, we had to test the water. One week prior to the event we scheduled a double date in which the friends were to help me do some secretive questioning. A personal crisis on their part caused us to move our date to their house. They told us about a trip out of town they took while leaving their kids at home to be cared for by the oldest daughter (18 years old). They had a wonderful time and wondered if my wife would ever be willing to leave our kids with them for a day or two. She said, in her ever present reserved tone, that she would feel comfortable about it.

Heading home that night, she looked at me excitedly and asked, “did you hear them offer to keep the kids while we go out of town?” She was no longer reserved. She was thrilled. And so was I, but for a different reason. I got confirmation that my plans were headed the right direction.

The details:
My wife and I had planned to take the kids ice skating in the morning and then we would go to drop the kids off “for lunch.” That was all my wife knew. It was a fun game since the kids didn’t know anything about ice skating, and my wife didn’t know anything about leaving the kids for 2 days.

We were to spend Thursday afternoon through Saturday afternoon in Valladolid. It is a city (I think the third largest in the state) just under 2 hours from where we live. I had a few activities planned, but mostly just lounge around and read.

The execution:
In the morning I tried to act as normal as possible. It was not hard. Normal would mean that I still had not bought her the gift I was planning. And it certainly was not wrapped. At least this year I had the gift, but it was still shoved in the bottom of a drawer unwrapped.

Valladolid She mentioned that she needed to go to the store that morning before ice skating and lunch. That was just what I needed. It gave me a chance to wrap her gift and put the finishing touches on my big plans. While she was gone I found a gift bag from Christmas and re-purposed it. I dropped in the token gifts I had bought the day before. Then I went to the website of the hotel I was whisking her away to and downloaded a few pictures for a printed announcement I was making. With the pictures I added text that read something like “Happy Birthday! A 2 day (kid’s free) trip to a tropical city.”

When she got home from the store, we met her at the door and sang “Happy Birthday!” and gave her the gifts. The final gift was an envelope with the pictures and announcement of a tropical vacation, but she was not allowed to open that. I winked at her and told her that it was one of those kinds of gifts she needed to open in private without the kids around. This (I hope) built suspense throughout the morning. She was instructed to take the envelope with us and I would tell her when she could open it.

Everything went as planned.

We had a good time ice skating. The rink opened just last week. We then took the kids over to our friends’ house. I had been taking clothing and necessary items over there a little at a time for a few days. I could not take too much at once or my wife would have suspected something. When we did take the kids over, we just needed one (really packed) backpack with final items such as toothbrushes and pajamas. I also had to snag some shoes at the last minute. The pack made it into the car and into the friends’ house without any suspicion.

We were off to have lunch. At this point our son knew we weren’t coming back, but our daughter and my wife did not know. Of course the friends knew.

After we ordered our meal, I allowed her to open the envelope. She was thrilled and showed no hesitation. After I told her all the things I had taken over for the kids, she seemed comfortable that I had covered most bases and was ready to head out of town without having to see them. If we had not forgotten to get the telescope we were borrowing from our friends, we would not have gone back at all. We actually got the telescope while parked a few houses away, that way our daughter would not see us.

We got to the hotel and it was a bit rainy. We just sat around and read for a while. We decided that it was a bad night for using the telescope and just walked around the main square–after the rain stopped. We had a cup of coffee and some junk food off a street vendor.

Friday we took a short walk and then went to breakfast. I think we finally got the day going a little after 10:00. We went to a couple of different cenotes (see pictures) and then came back to the room and read some more. Somewhere in there we ate too much pizza for lunch. In the evening we walked to a convenience store for a coffee and some cookies. That was supper.

We grabbed the telescope and stared at the moon for a while. We tried looking at Mars, but it was too close to the moon and straight overhead. Looking at anything in this telescope that was right overhead was hard. So, we just enjoyed the moon until the clouds got too thick.

Back to the main square to see what we could eat off the street vendors. NOTE: Eating from street vendors is not recommended. Proceed at your own risk. Don’t blame me.

This morning we were so energetic that we came back to the room to have a nap after breakfast. We finally picked up the kids in the early afternoon.

Our friends seemed to have had a good time. Our son was tired and ready to go home. They played hard. Our daughter cried that she had to leave as well as a couple of the younger kids of our friends (they have 9 and a bun in the oven).

A very successful weekend. We have not taken too many vacations like this, but each one is special.

Mission accomplished!

My Thought Spot 20: Catching Up

I have not put out a regular episode of MTS in a while. This will help catch up on the posts, though I don’t try to get completely caught up. I did add the audio from The Child’s Story that I recorded previously. This is tacked on to the end. If you have already heard it, it will be easy to skip.

Show Notes:

Enjoy!

My Thought Spot 20: Catching Up [ 25:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Goals updates

I have been very busy this week and have not really had a lot of time to write. But, even though I have been busy, I have not run across much to write about. Therefore, you get to read about how my goals for 2008 are progressing along.

Running
My goal is to run 1000 miles this year. I have currently run 40 miles. That is a bit ahead of schedule, but not much. I need to run 19.3 miles a week. By Monday of this week (1-14) I need to have completed just 38.6. Being ahead of the goal is never bad. I have been able to run pretty consistently and have not missed a single planned run in the last several weeks. I am in just a maintenance mode right now. I am not training for anything specific. While running with my friend Jeff, we are running much faster than I would normally run alone. This has been good to help me with some tempo type running.

Reading
I am attempting to read 800 pages a month this year. I have not decided yet if I will make this a month to month goal, or a year goal. If it is month to month then I will not carry over any extra pages that I read in one month to pad the following month. If it is a goal to read 9,600 pages (12 X 800 pages) in a year, then I could carry over extra pages.

Currently I have read about 450 pages. That will translate out to over 1,100 pages by the end of the month if I keep up this pace.

Summary
I am excited about both goals for the year. I just hope that excitement stays with me long enough to make it a commitment that I will absolutely stick to. Writing about it here and sharing it with you really helps.

How are your goals going for the year?

Ugly American circumvents jewelry store security

I have mentioned the whole idea of the ugly American in the past. I recently had another encounter with one.

I was interpreting for a group while they went shopping in Mexico. The group was in a hurry to move from one area of town to another. Everyone had made their purchases at one of the jewelry stores when the ugly American found the perfect gift for his daughter. They were a set of earrings that probably only cost $6 or so.

The way the store works is you tell the lady which item you would like to purchase. She then writes up a receipt that you take to the cashier whom you pay. Depending on the store, you either have to take the receipt which is now stamped “paid” to the original clerk to get your item, or she brings it to you at the cash register. Either way, the person who handles the merchandise and the person who handles the money are separate people. They each have a copy of the receipts to show what they sold and what they received money for. It is a process that is slow, but leaves a very good paper trail.

This man was in a hurry and insisted that the clerk handling the merchandise take his money and let him leave the store. She was very hesitant to do so, but she also wanted to make the sale. She took the money and he ran out the door.

The problem is, that though this system basically says that the store does not trust its employees, one or both of these girls could lose their job over this. The system has been circumvented. Both girls could go into cahoots and make everything right. But now, you have two people who know that the other has stepped over the line of procedure. When something comes up missing and the boss does an inquiry, they can both say that they know for certain the other girl has gone outside the process at least once.

Whether either girl will lose their job over it is not the point. This is not the way we do it in the US. But the ugly American does not know, nor care. He wants it done his way or it is wrong. He does not want to be inconvenienced by a different system.

I tried explaining it to him. He seemed concerned that someone could lose their job over it. But mostly he was frustrated that he had to go through all these steps to buy the item he wanted. Never mind that he got a nice set of silver earrings from Mexico for a great price and could have enjoyed the experience of something new. The ugly American wants to go to new places but wants it to be just like home.

My Birthday and Christmas gifts

Since we don’t have mail sent directly to us, the books and videos I got for Christmas and birthday were hand delivered on Monday. I have not gotten all of them yet, but I did get two items.

The first is the book Running Through the Wall (it is was a birthday gift). It is a collection of race reports from ultramarathons (any distance longer than 26.2 miles). I have made it about a quarter of the way through the book. I will be giving a full book review on it in a few days. The quick analysis is that it has some incredibly great stories that are worth the price of the book and some stories that seemed to be included just to make the book thicker. I guess the stories mean something to the individual author, but they are not too moving to me personally.

I had a fun experience related to the book on Monday (the day I got the book). The book was brought down by a mission team from Ohio. While they were helping to paint our church, we stopped to eat lunch. I was chatting with a couple of the team members asking where they went to school and what they studied (these are all college age young people). One of the girls attends Liberty University. I asked her if she had ever had a class with Dr. David Horton, who is responsible for influencing many of the stories in the book and is a professor at Liberty. She said she took a running class from him. I got all giddy to be in the presence of someone who has taken a class from him. I told her that I would bring my running shoes the next day so that she could sign them. She did not seem to have much of a sense of humor, so I took the shoes, but ended up not pressing the issue and making her sign.

The other item that arrived with the book was the video Running on the Sun about the 1999 Badwater 135 ultramarathon which is run from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney 135 miles away (a Christmas gift). I watched it last night. It was very good, though slow moving. I was pleased with how “clean” the film was. Though there were the shots of puking, draining blisters and conversations about bodily functions, it was basically PG content. Until…the last 30 minutes of the film went totally downhill. I kept thinking that my son might enjoy the film and that since there was no cursing, he would be able to watch it with me some time. But at the end of the show everyone was tired and irritable and they made up for the lack of cursing for the previous hour.

I am expecting a couple more running books with the next shipment. Stay tuned.