Chinese Chipmunks

It makes a better post title than a story. Kathy and I ate at a Chinese buffet in San Antonio on Saturday night. While we were sitting there, I noticed that the background music had a vocal track that sounded most like Alvin of the Chipmunks. I don't know if there was a reason for it, or whether the singer was just singing in falsetto with a fairly effected voice. For all I know, since it was in Chinese, it was the translation of "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)".

OK, it was a lame story.

The other note about the buffet: we were talking about how every Chinese buffet has essentially the same items, faithfully reproduced in each place even though each restaurant is totally independent of any other. Then I went to get my usual desert of an almond cookie and tapioca pudding, only to discover that this buffet had no almond cookies!

And, on the other thing I mentioned. In Oklahoma, pretty much every interstate exit had signs that said "See <insert town name>!", with a list of about four local sites to visit. So, for example, there was "See Purcell!". But the exit was "Purcell / Lexington". As if the sign said "See Purcell! But screw Lexington, it's got nothing!".

Yesterday I visited the Alamo briefly, then walked over to San Antonio's Riverwalk and finally through the convention center to HemisFair park, site of the world's fair in 1968. The latter was interesting as there was still plenty in indications of where the fair was and how it might have looked, though there had been also a lot of redevelopment of areas since then. Some nice water features near the base of the Tower of the Americas looked like something that would be for a world's fair, but I later discovered they were added when the area was re-done less than 10 years ago.

I cut some of my touring short to go set up Kathy's wireless internet access, since the installer had been there to set up the cable modem. It was a good thing I did, since the router we'd gotten didn't set up properly with the given instructions. I called tech support and they got me straightened out. One line telling me the IP address of the configuration page in the router itself would have save the call, though.

The flight back was smooth and a bit shorter than expected, though a late departure meant we got into Chicago right on time. Ellen, Kalen and Cody met me at the airport, and then we met Ryan for a quick dinner. My the time we got home (about 10pm) I was ready to crash.


So much for Tim and Kathy's Big Adventure. I may be doing the same thing in reverse in May, but I've got four months. Hopefully Kathy will pick up some blogging telling us about her student teaching.