Worry-free vacations

My flight to Bangkok via Tokyo leaves from Minneapolis this afternoon at 3:30. About 20 hours en route, arriving in Bangkok just before midnight on Sunday, local time. My primary reason for going to Thailand is to speak at the EARCOS Teachers' Conference. It's a great group that I also visited with last November at its administrator/technology conference.

But it's also a chance for a little R & R. My buddies Judy Freeman and Ian Jukes will be speaking there as well, and I am looking forward to meeting Jeff (Thinking Stick) Utecht for the first time. The LWW will be flying in next weekend and we will play tourist at the end of the conference, seeing the major tourist traps historical areas of Bangkok which I have not toured for 20 years. We'll probably make the day trip to the old city of Ayutthaya, too. I've always been a sucker for getting my picture taken with elephants and snakes. For the last few days we will head to Phuket for a little beach time. Last time I was there I visited a temple with attack monkeys. They would scamper right up your body with sharp little toe nails to snatch food practically from your mouth. Something you just don't see in Mankato everyday. What I am really envisioning is a pool side chair with my name on it and a cold beverage with a high alcohol content. I've packed some potboilers to read and plan on actually being a bum as much as my nature allows.

I believe I have most of the items checked off my guilt list:

• long range tech plan submitted
• staff need survey completed
• RFP for 2007 IWB installations sent
• applications for participation in SmartClassroom project read and forwarded
• interviews for new student information system manager completed
• state legislative matters for MEMO done as much as possible
• article sent to MEMO for journal
• article sent to Threshold magazine
  
• article and column sent to LMC magazine
  
• article sent to Texas Libraries journal
  
• column sent to Leading & Learning journal
  
• column (almost) sent to Education World
• 2006 income tax prepared and sent in
• presentations for EARCOS conference prepared
• materials for Discovery Ed webinar put online
• bags packed with snorkel remembered
• credit card companies called to say I will be out of the country (and not to suspend my account)
• mail stopped, papers stopped, children notified of hotels
• haircut
  
• e-mails all answered (almost)
• hard drive backed up

I need a vacation. And enjoy your respite from the Blue Skunk for a while. I am deliberately planning not to be diligent about all things virtual. But I will post any attack monkey pictures I take.

Comments

[Dennis Harter]

Wait until your credit card bank puts a hold on your card anyway because you used at a shop with Porn in the name (it's a very common name in Thailand!). I bought a digital camera at a store here called Pornthip and my card got frozen. As I said to the manager at Bank of America..."that WOULD be a lot of money to spend on porn!"

Ahh...the pleasures of living in Thailand! You will have a great time here. Enjoy your well-earned vacation.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for the tip. I never thought about all the names that have porn in them in Thailand.

Had a fantastic trip and the credit card worked all the way. Worked too well, probably.

Thanks again,

Doug