My daughter and all my money go to Texas Lutheran. It’s a good thing, really. She’s getting a top-notch education, she’s earning great grades while enjoying herself, and someday she’ll be able to support me in a lifestyle to which I hope to become accustomed. Maybe.
However, the odyssey isn’t over yet. Still lots of smiles, [...] Read more »

It doesn’t matter whether you spell it Barbecue, Barbeque or BBQ; it’s still America’s entry into the Great Cuisines of the World. Practically every state in the Union has its own style. Well, okay; maybe California doesn’t; and that’s just fine with the rest of us. After all, they’ve got Schwarzenegger movies any time they [...] Read more »

Tim and Derek had seen a lot of stuff on Tuesday, but they were ready to see another full day’s worth of sights today. We grabbed breakfast at the motel, then squeezed into the shuttle van with about a dozen other brave souls tourists headed downtown and hung on for the five-minute screaming session ride [...] Read more »

Sunday afternoon I traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet up with my summer research students. They are presenting a poster at the American Chemical Society’s Fall Meeting, covering their fifteen months of undergraduate research efforts at their school, Texas Lutheran University. I get to go along and snicker make snide comments assist in my own [...] Read more »

Stan and I were done with our planned site visits, but not with the paperwork. Yes, even in tropical China, there’s always paperwork. So we ate a hearty breakfast, knowing full well that even the condemned get to eat something. The buffet was well stocked, and I tried out more of the Chinese goodies this [...] Read more »

Wednesday’s a special day on this trip. We made our last site visit! We saved the “best” for last. At least the longest, anyways. We visited a factory in Guangzhou, which is nearly two hours from Shenzhen one-way.
My previous visit to Guangzhou involved the same factory, nearly three years ago. I have some interesting memories [...] Read more »

A fairy-tale trip needs an enchanting guest house as a base of operations. We had ours: The Dunraven Arms Hotel in Adare, Co. Limerick. Founded in 1792, The Dunraven has everything a modern, quality hotel should have. More importantly, it has “quaint” built into its bones.
I knew the Dunraven from working trips to Ireland in [...] Read more »

Today was very hard. Just getting out of bed, after yesterday’s mad dash (and six extra hours due to time-zone relocations), is Very Hard. Realizing we’re not in Ireland anymore, well, that’s the Hardest of All…
It was fun, though. Grand, glorious fun! All the tasty pub grub; touring around Dublin, then travelling most of the [...] Read more »