Thursday, we checked out the horse races, the French Quarter, a stroll down Bourbon St and had a famous Moss Family fish fry (nom nom nom).  It was our first time to the horse races and didn’t do too bad on our betting. We were down $5 on $30, so $5 spent for a couple hours of entertainment was surely worth it.

Friday, we went back down to the Quarter for coffee and beignets at the famous Cafe du Monde, took a stroll around Jackson Square and bought some artwork from the street vendors. Had a Muffuletta and Pimms Cup at The Napoleon House. Grubbed on some Popeyes after watching the evening Uptown parade before catching a show at Tipitina’s Uptown.  The band we went to see was “Yo Momma’s Big Fat Booty Band“. They were pretty fun funk band. I highly recommend catching them if they ever swing through your town. The headliners were Leo Nocentelli (Guitarist of The Meters) with Bill Dickens (Bass for Janet Jackson), CR Gruver (keyboards), Jamal Batiste (drums) with special guest Art Neville of the Meters and the Neville Brothers. They rocked the house too and Bill Dickens plays a MEAN bass guitar!!!

Saturday was a pretty lazy day of chillin’ in our parade spot along St. Charles for the 3 Saturday Uptown parades. Munched on homemade crawfish etouffee and red beans and rice all day. Ended the night at Rock N Bowl to catch a Kermit Ruffins concert. For people that don’t keep up with the New Orleans music scene, you may recognize Kermit Ruffins from his role as himself in HBOs series Treme about post-Katrina New Orleans. He sure can put on a show. He played for a good 2 to 2.5 hours. He sure can blow that trumpet! and his piano player was INSANE! Tasha got her picture taken with Kermit and got a couple CDs autographed.

Sunday we got up early for the 2 Uptown parades and lounged around resting before stuffing our faces with some good ol’ New Orleans cuisine at Upperline Restaurant.

Monday we got up to see Rae, Darwin, and Laura off and then BJ and Jim took us to Destrahan Plantation for a tour and then drove us around the area before dropping us at the airport for our flight home.

Pictures from the long weekend are below. Click on the slideshow to go to the full album.

Enjoy the pics. It was the first full-time camera duty I have experienced with my new iPhone 4 (yeah, yeah…that will get it’s own post soon) and I was pretty impressed. Some were taken with the Hipstamatic app for retro-type photos. With the grittiness of the area and the retro look from the App, it made for a pretty neat effect.

Click on the slideshow to take you to Photobucket where the pics are actually in order…

July went by and we spent some time with Doug and Renee and their kiddos at the lake and at their pool. Was nice and refreshing with the heat this summer.

In August we headed out to the 3rd Annual East Texas Goats Guadalupe River Trip. Most folks camped out, but being late August…in frickin’ Texas, we stayed in the Holiday Inn. We also got to use our new waterproof digital camera for some action shots on the river without having to buy one of those cheesy disposable 35mm water cameras.

September was a busy month. For Labor Day weekend, Tasha had Brandy’s bachelorette party and Lisa’s birthday, for which we met up with Duane, Brandon, Denise and Bryce for a trip to Longhorn Caverns.

Brandy’s wedding shower was later in the month..same day as mom’s birthday and the same day I got to fly back from Colombia into Austin on a Saturday afternoon to catch all the fun. I also got to try out the new slingbox since the UT vs UTEP game was going on while I was traveling back home. Pretty neat technology! Check out the pics from Brandy’s shower below…

Late September/early October was pretty busy for me with work travel. Nothing too exciting, just a bunch of short trips. The weekends have been just as busy though. We had the State Fair Car Show and my dad came up to hang with us for the weekend. Tried all sorts of fried foods…fried butter, fried cookie dough, fried pecan pie, sweet jalapeno shrimp corndog, Fletcher’s corny dog, and a Fletcher’s jalapeno cheese corny dog. Got the car all detailed for the car show (thanks to the guys at Stuart’s since I was traveling too much to do it myself), only to have it rain that night!

The next weekend was Eric and Virginia’s wedding…awesome time, despite the reception place not having the UT vs Colorado game on TV . Seriously, who doesn’t have ESPN?!?!?! I kept everyone up to speed watching the live action via Slingplayer on my phone! Beat that iPhone fanboys! We forgot the camera so no pics Beautiful wedding with a nice Texas (UT) flare!!!

The next weekend we headed out to Mexico for Brandy’ss wedding at the Iberostar Grand Paraiso in the Mayan Riviera. We stayed for 8 days and had a blast. Some nights we (I ) can’t fully remember and some days we will NEVER forget! From catching Britney on fire with a flaming shot, to snoring so loud Tasha slept in the huge jacuzi tub, to a day trip for snorkeling and beachside chilling in Akumal with everyone, to a day trip to drive around Cozumel island to enjoy undistrurbed beauty and oceanside drinks and grub, and last but not least, the beautiful oceanfront wedding of Brandy and Todd. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting and hanging with their other friends and family in such a scenic and fun place! We didn’t even have to miss the Texas-OU game thanks to the wonders of Slingbox and free broadband at the resort. It rained most of the day anyways that day, so we didn’t miss too much resort fun! We stayed a bit longer than the rest of the group to celebrate our 5 year anniversary and then headed back home this past Friday. There are a ton of pics posted up, so have a look…

I think that is enough for now. If I think of more later, I will post. To look at the individual pics if you like, head over to the Photo Gallery…

- peeps

The resort was a decent place. We would probably stay there again if a smokin’ good deal came up, but it wasn’t so great we would just not consider other places the next time. I mean what kind of Mexican resort doesn’t have a swim-up bar????

Click on the pic to go to the pictures. Enjoy!

- peeps

So on May 1st, Blake Marrou got hitched to a really great gal named Becca Rice. I got the honor to be a groomsman in the wedding. It was a fun time and we are really happy for Blake! they suit each other so well! We wish them the best! The pictures we took are in the gallery…

Below is a video of Trent’s toast! He is quite the character!

[flv]http://www.philpeeps.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/trents-toast.flv[/flv]

[flv height=640&width=480]http://www.philpeeps.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/dustin-does-frisco.flv[/flv]

This is also a test of some new code I added to allow me to embed my own flash videos with my own configuration, aspect ratio, etc instead of having to worry about using other sites like youtube or whatever. Please let me know how it works out for you by leaving comments below.

- peeps

– September TMS Laps for Charity

– 4th Anniversary at Greer Farm

– Evan Studebaker

– Halloween

– Renee’s Birthday

August
We spent a couple days tubing the Guadeloupe River (actually the Comal one day which wasn’t as fun) with some GTO buddies. It was fun to do 2 river days back to back and now that we have tubed the Comal, I can’t say we will ever try it again. The Guadeloupe is just SOOO much better. Natural rapids, less developments around, etc. After a weekend tubing the river, we spent a day or so in San Antonio checking out the Alamo, Natural Bridge Carverns, and the Riverwalk since it had been a while since we were down that way. From San Antonio, we headed towards Galveston (despite tropical storm Edouard hitting the area at the time. We killed some time on the way there at the Spoetzel Brewery where the lovely Shiner beers are brewed. If you have never been, I suggest you take the trip down to Shiner next time you are in the area to check it out. They give you 4 little cups of free beer and the tour is pretty cool too. We spent the rest of the week and weekend in Galveston at BJ and Jim’s beach house on the Bolivar Peninsula soaking up the sun, chilling out, and celebrating with friends. It was great to get away for such a long time and enjoy what would turn out to be probably our last trip to that beach house (thanks alot Ike! We enjoyed that place!!!!) More on that later… Rae and Hugh came back and spent the following weekend with us and we went to a place in Denton and saw a cool old man sing the blues!

• Pics from San Antonio, Shiner and Galveston
• Pics from the weekend with Rae and Hugh

During that trip, we “adopted” an addition to our family. With Rae and Hugh heading on a couple month vacation around Central America and then headed to Asia for who knows how long, Rae’s little doggie Darwin (a 7 lb Crested Malt) needed a place to hang while they were out gallivanting all over the world. We of course welcomed him in. So far, he has been a trip! Watching him and Jester play just cracks us up and the way he barks at ANY animal on the TV is always worth a laugh.

• Pics of our canine family

Mid-August, I took another trip to Indonesia that I covered while on my way there, so you can read all about that below. Jakarta was quite different than the places I had stayed before in Indonesia, but not different enough… Traffic is INSANE there!!!!

At the end of August, our friends Doug and Renee had their 3rd child…Cade Carson! We went up to the hospital to visit the day after he was born (since I was flying back in from Indonesia the day he was born). I’m sure he will grow to be just as fun as his siblings!

• Pics of Cade Carson and family

September
We spent a weekend in Austin and Burnet a couple weeks ago for Sara’s baby shower and Lisa’s birthday. I got to see Byron, who informed me that he and Christy are expecting! We chilled at Sara’s house for the shower while enjoying good food an good company. For Lisa’s birthday we drove into Kingsland to eat at the Junction House. While we were out that direction we drove out to see the Rybaski lake house…not sure if they still live there, but it still looked nice!

• Pics from Sara’s shower and Lisa’s Birthday

Last weekend was Kai’s 1st birthday party (son of our friends Charity and Greg). He got all sorts of cool toys! Ahh to be a kid again!

• Kai’s Birthday Pics

This coming weekend we are doing the Texas Motor Speedway Laps for Charity again! It is always fun! Hopefully they give a bit more room to stretch the Goat’s legs this time!

In sad news, Hurricane Ike let loose on the Bolivar Peninsula and wiped out much of the area. After scouring the web, I found the aftermath photos of BJ and Jim’s house. It looked like it was still standing, but likely had lots of roof damage and no telling what else. They will head down there once they are allowed to check things out and gather whatever they can salvage. I guess that is always the chance you take when owning Gulf property, I just wish Ike had chose somewhere else! Good luck to them while getting through this.

I am loving that football season is here now, although I know Tasha isn’t nearly as excited. She pretends to like it to humor me…she is a trooper! That’ why I love her!

Well, that’s all I have for now…Hook ‘em! and Go Cowboys!

- peeps

Other than getting in a round of golf the first Sunday I was in Soroako, the rest of the time there was pretty uneventful. I have highlighted the exciting events below:

My co-worker that I was traveling with had scheduled his arranged marriage to coincide with our trip, so I got to go to an Indonesian wedding reception. He had kept it quite around the office and I didn’t even find out until we were in Bali. Quite a surprise! All I can say is I am glad our wedding decorations were not selected by an Indonesian Basically, they line a walkway with all the family members, have the wedding party up on a stage decorated with bright colors and other decor, with food lining the exit aisle. So you have this huge receiving line with local food at the end. I guess if you know all the people there you might work up an appetite by the time you get to the end of the line. I didn’t stick around for the dancing, but he said that it went on for a few hours. I think he even left before the dancing ended….Now he gets to deal with all the Visa requirements to get her back to the US.

The only other interesting thing that happened in Soroako was the phone call I got one night before leaving the office. The day before, I had gone to exchange some US dollars at the local bank. I exchanged $200 USD (ten $20 bills) without problems. I was expecting they would not accept some of the bills as they were not the new design and that seems to always be an issue. However, I left with over $1.8M Rupiah, a full exchange of my $200 USD. That evening before leaving work, we got a call at our site office asking for me. It was the bank. Somehow, they had tracked me down and gotten our site office number, which had not been occupied for about the last 6 months. I suppose they did quite a bit of calling around to get in touch with me. They told me that four of my $20 bills were invalid. INVALID???? They sure do spend nicely here and in Canada and Mexico!!! They needed me to exchange the $80 USD back because they cannot accept bills older than 2003 series! Perhaps US banks won’t buy them back from Indonesia in fear of counterfeits. Either way, they needed them back. I tried telling them I already spent the money I exchanged, but I ‘m sure they know how hard it is to spend $1.8M Rupiah in one day, so they weren’t buying it. I went back the next day and re-exchanged the money. Since the bank’s ATM would not let me take a withdrawal on my credit card, I had to do a withdrawal on my bank card to replace this money. I really didn’t want to do this since the last time I used the ATMandiri in Soroako, I had a bunch of weird charges on my credit card when I returned. I surely didn’t want that on my actual bank account….crap! I should check my bank account

While I was there, my company was awarded another project for a plant on the same island. Since I was already only about 200 miles away (straight line distance…this will be important later), it made sense for me to travel down there, extend my trip by 1 week, and do the initial site visit. It was decided we would hire a driver to pick up me and another co-worker (Indonesian and bi-lingual…this too will be important later) in Soroako and drive to the other plant. So, a 200 mile drive doesn’t sound that bad, eh? Well, like I said before, it is 200 miles straight line distance…not actual miles. It takes 9 HOURS to drive from Soroako to Kolaka!!! OK, no problem. The roads around Soroako are nice roads. Surely this must be how all the major roads/highways are. HA! It was 9 hours of winding up and down mountains on roads, broken roads, and demolished roads that are about the width of 1 lane in North America, all the while dodging people that don’t have sense enough to stay out of the road or even walk facing traffic, dodging animals (cows, horses, chickens, and dogs), dodging other passenger cars/trucks, and dodging buses and freight trucks. So we left Soroako at 7:30 am, stopped for lunch (fried chicken, soup and rice…see the post below) and a couple times to stretch our legs, and finally arrived in Kolaka at 4:30 pm. Our driver only spoke Bahasa (Indonesian), so for 9 hours, I listened to the driver, his brother, and my co-worker speak in a language that I only know about 10-20 words. When I wasn’t trying to figure out what they were talking about, they had a cassette tape playing of some popular American music they thought I might like to listen to. It’s funny actually. One of the other long road trips I have been on, I listened to the same music for an extended period of time. Now, I know some of you may like her music, but about an hour is all I can really stand of SHANIA TWAIN!!!

The hotel we stayed at in Kolaka was decent…meaning it had a proper shower and a western style toilet. The included breakfast consisted of fried rice and…well, that’s it. Fried rice. The room was about 40′ x 40′ with the bed and TV (with satellite thankfully) in opposite corners. Surprisingly, the remote and the volume had enough range. The seafood in Kolaka was pretty good. Fresh fish, squid, and lobster, all for about $3-$5 USD. The lobster was actually a bit more expensive. It was $50 for 4.5 pounds of live lobster, still a bargain!

In Soroako, there are lots of expats on site from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, so English is spoken by many, even the locals. In Kolaka, there are no expats, so VERY little English is spoken. So basically for a week, the only communication I had was with my 1 co-worker who speaks some English. Needless to say, I was very pleased to get into Jakarta and Hong Kong where English is more widely spoken. It almost sounded like a foreign language by then;)

So after spending 4 days or so in Kolaka, the driver took us to Kendari so I could catch my flight back to Makassar to start my journey home. This drive had much better roads, but we had about an hour of driving in the dark, which is always scary there. On our way there, we stopped at this area that had about 20 tents lining the road. Apparently, all of them sell steamed corn. Seems a bit like market saturation, but what do I know…I’m the foreigner. Well they bring you a bucket of sweet (yellow) corn and a bucket of white corn. You eat what you want, throw the shucks and cobs into another bucket, and pay for what you ate. Pretty tasty, but white corn on the cob is not nearly as good! We finished the drive to Kendari and I checked in at my hotel. Since Kendari is the capital of Southeast Sulawesi, the accommodations are a bit better. We hit up another seafood place for my last night and went back to the hotel since my flight was at 6:45 am the next day. The poor driver and my coworker had to start their 3-4 hour drive back to Kolaka at almost 10pm…uggghhh!!!

So began the long trip back home. A 45 minute flight to Makassar, a 2 hour flight to Jakarta, a 4 hour flight to Hong Kong, 1 night in Kong Kong, a 14 hour flight to LA, and a 4 hour flight back to Dallas. Flights went pretty well until I got to LA and got back to American Airlines. International carriers have much better accommodations for their customers, especially when traveling business class…short lines, free entry to lounges, etc. The security line in LA was pretty crowded and the flight was delayed more than an hour with no place to wait other than a crowded gate. After such a long trip home, nothing is more annoying than a delay on your last leg of the trip.

Well, that is all I can think of for now. I have pictures posted in the gallery, so feel free to browse.

Oh yeah, while I was in Hong Kong and headed back to the hotel to check out after a morning of walking around Kowloon, I stepped off the escalator wrong and got this shooting pain in my foot. So far it still hasn’t gone away. The doctor says it is a mid-foot sprain and the only treatment is ice, supportive shoes, and Aleve. This sucks! I guess it was from wearing my el cheapo flip-flops for the whole trip, aside from when I was working, and walking a few miles around Kowloon the morning it happened…also in my el cheapo flip-flops. I wonder if my nice, expensive Reef flip-flops (you know, the ones with the bottle opener on the bottom) would have had the same effect.

- peeps

Peace out!

- peeps