jmarkh on Xanga

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Thursday, 12 June 2008

I'm bringing Xanga back - drop a comment if you're with me!

Sunday, 11 February 2007

There's a new blog post at my website.
Click HERE

Wednesday, 31 January 2007

Here it is folks...enjoy.

http://web.mac.com/jmarkh

Thursday, 25 January 2007

Currently Listening
Love
By The Beatles
see related

Where have you been?

Greetings everyone. Let me do a bit of explaining. I've been staying away from Xanga for a good reason. Once I changed to the Mac I discovered that Xanga is basically married to Bill Gates. It appears that only when using windows explorer can you take advantage of such great features as choosing your fonts as well as most other features. This is totally frustrating so I just gave up. I'm doing this one on Firefox but still only have limited options to choose from. Therefore, this will be my final Xanga entry (with the brief exception of next weeks website address). Yes, next week there will be a new address for my blog that will (hopefully) be all kinds of fun stuff to keep you entertained. Now, the amount of "fun" that will be included will depend on one key element...how much or little time I have once I enter this next phase of my life. See in just under two weeks I will climb on the big ol' China Air aeroplane and head out over the Pacific to begin a new adventure. I will be studying full time and I don't know just how much time that will leave for blogging and the like but as my good friend Jack told me one time, "All work and no play makes, me a dull boy". So I will definitely do my best to give you a glimpse of what's going on in my life. But all that tells us so far is where I am going...what about where I have been.

Holidays were holidays. I got to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with family but unfortunately had to smash those times between speaking engagements (time to make the donuts...hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go...and all that jazz) It was good and during Thanksgiving I got to spend a few days with family (some of whom I hadn't seen in many years) so that was nice. Christmas was with the immediate family and fun as always. We had a lot of snow up in Colorado and I had to cut my time short from Christmas break in order to get out of Denver airport before blizzard number two. I was in Minneapolis for two weekends and got to reconnect with some great friends from university. I got to meet and play with their kids and catch up on some great memories. It was truly a blessing to be with them.

I made it back to Colorado after Minn. and had a few days to pack up all of my stuff from my folks home and head out to Tulsa. I had to do it in a hurry in order to...you guessed it...dodge blizzard number 4 for the Colorado area and got into Tulsa just in time to catch Ice Storm number 2 for the Tulsa area and both of my weekend speaking engagements were canceled due to ice. We were stuck inside for four days but at least there was football on the ol' TV and the Satellite didn't fall prey to the savages of the ice storm so all was good...except for the cancellations. I made it through the ice back to Kansas City for a few days of lunches, dinners and things that suddenly seem more important since my time is coming to a close here in the U.S.

At the end of that week I got on an airplane to New Jersey for a weekend of speaking out there. I had a great time. I was down south and right near Philadelphia, PA so I got to go see the touristy things like the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. I had never been to Philly so it was a nice short visit. During that weekend I spoke in seven different meetings in a 23 hour period and by the end of that period (Sunday afternoon) I was ready for some alone time so I rented a car and drove to north Jersey to visit a former student of mine from the school in Weihai. He is now an exchange school in high school in the northern part of New Jersey so I was anxious to see him. I drove up and got a hotel room and crashed there for the night...reflecting on the week. It was a good time of recovery and recollection after a very busy weekend of being with people. Monday I was with Ryan and his host family in Sparta, NJ and Ryan and I had a blast together. It's surreal (I think Ryan said that...good SAT vocab word Ryan) to be together on the other side of the world...it worked out so beautifully and he told me that he was very jealous that I was going to be back in China in a matter of weeks. I know how he feels but he's getting such a great opportunity to study here...it's bittersweet. For both of us I guess...our hearts are in another part of the world but our butts are in this part and we have to learn and to remember how blessed we are to have our butts here for this short time. BUT...I'm ready to have mine back over there...and so is Ryan. We laughed and joked about both of us ending up back at Zhong Shi teaching together but the truth is...I wouldn't be too surprised at how any of it works out after having this serendipitous experience this past weekend. Oh and on top of everything else...I got to drive on the New Jersey Turnpike while listening to "The Boss" sing "Born in the USA" while seeing the Empire State Building for the first time across the river...through the smog of the oil refineries and shipyards. The song...road and buildings made me think of how much of the U.S. I've missed out on...the smog made me miss China more and that one moment of conflict in my heart and mind did a good job of encapsulating my time here this year.

I made it back to K.C. about 6 p.m. yesterday evening and my bags caught up with me about 1:30 this morning. They decided to take a holiday in Washington D.C. while I was traveling through Chicago. It worked out rather well and was probably a good practice run for the joys of traveling internationally. I have one more day in K.C. and that is filled with lunches and dinners and all the things that suddenly seem more important as my time comes to a close. Sorry to be so late in updating and so long in updating. Hope you are loving where you are in the world. Joy is a tough commodity these days, find it where you can and hang on for dear life.

Peace,
jeff

Thursday, 30 November 2006

Currently Listening
Wincing The Night Away
By The Shins
see related

It's All About to Change!!!
or
You Don't Have to Go Home

Sorry to be gone for so long folks. I have had my hands full with a lot of transitional tasks. What kind of transitional tasks you ask? I'm glad you asked. The request that I made a while back for you to click the donation buttons so that I can get a new MacBook Pro was...well...not much of a success. Thanks to all you who...well didn't do much to help. However due to the fact that I found some stuff to sell and had a large anonymous donor, I am now the proud parent of a smokin' hot laptop. How fun. It has all kinds of fun little toys but it has a lot of challenges as well. I think after about four straight days of monopolizing my time...we have become one. Here's the deal though. I am having compatibility issues with Xanga so ...while I promised a few months ago that I was staying with Xanga...I will soon be making a change. This time to a full fledged website. I'll keep you updated.

Today, it started to get nasty...weather wise. It was nice this morning but mid-morning it began to get rainy and that quickly turned to freezing rain. At about 4:15 this evening Becky (the owner of the Black Dog Coffeehouse) came up to my table and sadly said, "Jeff, we will have to close early tonight because of the weather. We'll be another 45 minutes before we can get out of here but listen...if you want I can give you a key and the code to the alarm system and you can just leave whenever you are ready." How cool is that? I'm common law employee of the month. How exciting. I politely refused the offer because I decided it was time to start chiseling out my car and heading home for a quite night in front of the fire...or at least in front of the fireplace screen saver. Such comfort.

Feel free to now click the donate button to give to the main cause...getting my butt out of the Black Dog and back to China.

Later,
jeff