Finishing the Memphis Story

(^^^ Jacob, Myself, John and Chris at Central BBQ)
On Sunday, after going to morning Mass at the Christian Brother’s Chapel, I went to lunch at Central BBQ. There were about ten of us there for lunch. Of course I got the BBQ pork nachos. From there most of us went back to school to play basketball. Jacob, Bobby’s youngest brother, and I have a running competition with playing the basketball game “Horse.” (Bobby was out of town the whole time working at a camp in Arkansas). It’s been a thing we do ever since I joined Bobby and his family for Easter my junior year. So Jacob, a few of the other people from lunch, and I went to play Horse at CBU for about an hour. I won once and came in third the other time.

(^^^Ryan, Daniel, Travis, Myself in Martin, TN)
After I drove Jacob back to his house, I headed out of Memphis toward Martin, TN. It was about a two and half hours northeast of Memphis. What’s in Martin? Well not a whole lot. Farm land. UT Martin. And that’s about it. But two of my twin friends, Travis and Daniel, live there. And I’ve heard about their farm, their 280 acres of land, and their three ponds…so I told them when I had the chance, Id go visit them. I got there around dinner time, so we went to Union City, about 20 mins from Martin. They claim Mexican restaurants are the only good restaurants around, so we had Mexican food there. When we came back to Martin, another (former) CBU friend, Ryan, joined us at the Twin’s house. We had a couple of beers and caught up. And somewhere late at night, we also went outside, and out there in farm land, we could see the Milky Way, and in a minute we saw both a shooting star and a bat flying around! The next day, they took me around their farm. We tried to find the cows, who apparently migrated to another piece of the property. We also saw two of the three pond. And acres and acres of soy beans! For lunch we went back to Union City to have lunch at a pub that sells some good burgers. On the way back to Martin, they showed me around town, which while small, was bigger than what I was expecting.

I took off from Martin in the early afternoon to go to St Louis. I drove through Kentucky, into Illinois, and finally into Missouri. This was about a 4 hour drive. Along the way I drove through Cairo, IL. Any idea where that is? Lily has probably already answered it’s the southern most city in the state of Illinois. I was in Illinois for all of thirty seconds driving over the Ohio River into Illinois and then immediately over the Mississippi River into Missouri.

In St Louis, I stayed with my friend Kevin. We had dinner at a local brewery and then we went bowling. (My senior year at CBU, when my team won the intramural bowl, we played against Kevin’s team and won by three pins – I believe it was.) So we thought bowling would be fun. It was a bar/bowling place, so it only had 8 lanes. Even with house ball and shoes and that glow bowl thing, I still won three games.

The next morning, after getting some good sleep, I took off from St Louis and headed north with 9 hours left. And about midway, I stopped for Chipotle in Iowa City, IA. It was of course raining hard, parking was hard to come by, but I was determined to have some. After making loops around the city and block, I parked in a parking garage, walked seven blocks or so in the rain to get some Chipotle. Of course, I took it to go to eat along the drive.


And I know you are all probably wondering what did I do during all the driving? In my CD player, besides music, was a lot of catholic radio programs and Buddhist sermons (Midwest Jodo Shinshu Temple has its sermons on itunes).

I made it back into St Paul about 7 at night last Tuesday.

Tidbit by Thomas: Hmm can’t think of anything because these papers I’m editing takes all the brain cells I need to think…

...Walking in Memphis...

It’s been 14 months since I’ve been to Memphis! And I finally got to go back and catch up with a lot of people! I talk to a lot of them still regularly, so it didn’t seem like long lost friends hanging out, but rather as though we had been hanging out just yesterday…

Well I was on the road about 6:30 last Wednesday headed south. After driving about 13 hours, I made it into Memphis at 7:45. I stopped for gas twice and one of those was in St. Louis, where I also stopped for a few minutes to see my friend Kevin.

At 7:45 I drove immediately to Rendezvous where I met all my good Memphis friends. Yes, of course I had the full order of ribs. Deliciousness as always!

We asked the waiter to take a picture of our group; in the first attempt, one of the other waiters walked right in front of the camera. It was one of those things that everyone else saw happening in slow motion, so it was funny.

Chris (Andrew’s brother), Ashley, myself, Br. Allen, Tony, JP, Turner, and Andrew.

After Rendezvous, a number of us went to Ashley’s place for an ice cream party. And another of other people joined us there. Besides myself, Andrew and Sally were in from out of town, so people came by to catch up.

On Thursday, I had lunch with my old professor, Dr. Nikaido. He’s now using his BS in engineering, but he taught me in scripture at CBU because that’s what his doctorate is in. But it was good to see him, talk about Biblical things and educational things.

Thursday for dinner, a group of us went to dinner at Tasty Buffet (the Memphis version of China Buffet). 8 of us. We got there about 6:30. Everyone arrived by 7…and we shut down the place at 10. Yes, we were there when they started throwing food into trash cans!

Friday for lunch I met up with my old roommate, Jon, who I haven’t seen since he graduated in December of 2005. We went to a local burger joint, Huey’s. In the afternoon, Br. Allen, Br. Rob and I went to the cemetery where the Brothers are buried. I haven’t had a chance to pay my respects to Br. Vincent, who was CBU’s president when I graduated. So I was able to do that.


Friday night was Mark’s wedding, the primary reason why I went to Memphis last weekend. Though he was a year below me, he played baseball and happened to live near me in the dorms my sophomore year, so I got to know him well; and I got to know his parents over the years at the baseball games so it was nice to see them. I also got to see a number of the baseball guys as well. There were maybe about 250 guests there, probably even alittle more than that. A number of her relatives came from Greece and the middle east. And the food was ethnic food as well. An interesting touch: At the end of the night, instead of throwing rice, they had people hold sparklers. Drunk people (particularly drunk baseball players) + 2 foot sparklers = interesting mix. No one was hurt, though I did see one guy with a few burn embers on his shirt.


Saturday, I had lunch with just Br. Allen at a sandwich place, though I got the bake potato and the lobster bisque. For dinner, a group of about 10 of us went to Café Ole, a Mexican food restaurant. A mismatch group of us, but I got to catch up with some of my Little Rock buddies I made last year, which was awesome. After dinner, those of us who were old enough, went down to Beale Street for some fun. And due to some shooting a couple weeks ago, they know wand everybody down before the allow them onto Beale. Not sure if I felt any more or less safer though. Nonetheless, we had a good time.

I’ll post the escapades of Sunday – Tuesday later… It’ll give you something to stay tuned for…

Tidbit by Thomas: This is sure a tough job market!!!!

South Bend Trip

My trip to South Bend went well.

I left Thursday around noon-thirty. It was a slow start; I had been hoping to be on the road closer to 11. It didn’t take long to get into Wisconsin. It’s just on the far east side of Saint Paul, so it only took like 30 mins to get into WI. I knew I wanted to fill up with gas before I got into Chicago. So after traveling about 4 and a half hours and 260 miles, I stopped in Madison WI to fill up even though I could have gone another hundred miles. But I figured, if I filled up there, I’d have more than enough to go the other 240 miles to South Bend. While in Madison, I also stopped at the local Chipotle, of course. (No, the cheese didn’t taste any better.)

From Madison, I continued toward Chicago. I don’t know how much I paid in tolls on the way to Chicago, probably about $5 or so at different toll booths along the way. Though they get annoying to stop at, it kept the drive interesting. I ended up taking the route yahoo gave, which included taking 90 from Madison, through Chicago and down to the Indiana Toll Freeway. Now, I’m betting Lily is laughing her head off right now, thinking how foolish of me to do such a thing. I should have probably consulted her because 90 practically goes through the heart of down town Chicago! Even at 7:30 I was in bumper to bumper traffic!

Around 8:30 as the sun was nearly done setting, I made it to Gary, Indiana. It wasn’t any worst than Orange Mound in Memphis. (And for the Sacramento people out there, Oak Park would be considered “nice” compared to Orange Mound.) Police had streets around 2300 Jackson partially blocked off. I parked about three blocks away and prayed my car would still be there when I got back. Approaching the house, there seemed to be more of a festive feeling to it than a sorrowful vigil feeling. Across from the house on the other side of the street they had booths set up with videos, selling tshirts, etc. It is a simple house but it has a large yard that seems to take up two lots. There were a lot of posters, flowers, stuffed animals, and all sorts of things laid down there. I brought white carnations myself to leave there. I had to call a few friends from that hallowed ground. Br. Allen was one of those lucky people. JP and Chris also got calls.

I arrived in South Bend at 11pm. It took a while to figure out my way to find where Br. Dat was staying since he wasn’t too familiar with the campus, but after asking enough people, we figured it out. While he was in class Friday, I did some homework myself and walk around campus. When he got out of class, he showed me around the campus and did quite a bit of walking. After dinner, we went to the South Bend mall, the only other highlight of the town apparently. And well, this mall make Sunrise Mall look great!

Saturday morning, we went back to Chicago. Br. Dat was flying out of Ohare to go visit family in France for a couple weeks. After I dropped him off, I decided to continue driving back to St Paul. It had crossed my mind to stay in Chicago for their Obon festival that night, but decided I’d rather drive home since I wasn’t sure if my friend from CBU would be around later that night or not.

This week I’m off to Memphis. I’ll leave early Wednesday morning and drive for 14 hours. Im attending a friend’s wedding there Friday night. Sunday I’ll head to visit some friend in Martin, TN which is a couple hours north of Memphis. Monday I’ll go from Martin to St. Louis to see another friend and stay the night there. From there I’ll only have 9 hours back north on Tuesday.

Tidbit by Thomas: I don’t know if it’s because I feel like I’m busy studying and worried about a job; or if im just getting old; or what…but all this traveling doesn’t seem as much fun as it used to be. Seem like more work than what it used to be…

Post-4th of July

(Pictures from the Bash, when we mobbed DQ right when they unlocked the doors. Everyone in the pictures, minus the workers, were from the Bash)

I actually got a lot of school work in this past weekend, reading and doing papers. Progress is being made.

For the 4^th of July, I joined some people on top of one of the university’s apartment buildings that’s like 8 or 9 stories high. One of the guys taking classes with me works in campus security and a group of them watch the skyline’s fireworks. Instead of having to deal with parking, traffic, etc to only watch one fireworks show, we didn’t have any traffic and got to watch about 20 different shows across the skyline between Minneapolis and south St Paul between 10-10:30. It was amazing to see those at the same time.

This weekend, Im going to Chicago/South Bend. Br. Dat is taking classes at Notre Dame, so I’m going to go visit him for a couple days. I leave tomorrow, and a will be back up here Saturday or Sunday. Some hopefuls during the trip include seeing a friend from CBU that I haven’t seen in about 4 years and taking a swing through Gary, Indiana (yes, I did watch the whole memorial service on TV).

So I’ll save Lily and Marty the time and tell them there wont be another posting till the beginning of next week when I return, so they don’t need to check the rest of this week.

And the following weekend, I will be going to Memphis for a wedding.

Some of you have seen those pictures I recently posted on facebook. mainly facebook people in those pictures, but from different parties and travels this past year from California to Las Vegas to Minnesota. Apparently Lily didnt like any of the pictures of herself because she untagged them. The perfect picture search continues...

Tidbit by Thomas: What were you doing at 12:34:56 am or pm today, July 8, 2009? Well today this afternoon at 12:34:56 7/8/9 I was writing this blog.

Start of a New Blog

Well, here we go, again. (Reminds of me of the 80's song..."Here I go again")

Special thanks to Lily for helping me preserve my memories from my old blog.

Stats from the old blog on 360:
*First Entry: October 25, 2005
*Last Entry: July 2, 2009
*Number of Entries: 235
*Number of Comments: 20 (thanks marty)
*Not sure how many views, can't seem to find that information any more on there.

Well Last weekend, Charlie had his 7th annual Bash party at his dad's cabin in Wisconsin. It goes from Friday to Sunday. I ended up going just for Saturday till Sunday (I played host to Sharon's daughter, nephew and family friend Thursday night since they were in town for the JACL youth conference. I took them to St. Paul and the Mall of America Friday morning and then dropped them off at the conference, which happened to be at a college 3 mins down the street from me.)(Saturday afternoon, I had a graduation party for of my seniors. Thus I went Saturday evening to the Bash.) The cabin is about an hour and a half north-east of here in Siren, WI (not a big place, but at least they got one stop light in town). So I got there about 7:30ish in the evening. Pretty much the Bash is drinking, playing games, hanging out by the lake, jamming out to music, etc. There were about 30 of us there. At night they go to the town's bar, which has karaoke and music, and Saturday night they had a mechanical bull on top of that (of which I did neither, though i did some dancing). Sunday at 11 we swarmed upon the Dairy Queen a few flocks away from the cabin, we got there about 10:45, they wouldn't open till exactly 11. But exactly at 11am, about 18 or so of us swarmed in on them. They knew we were outside, so they had all three cash registers open, which I'm sure hasn't happened in a while.Though to their credit, it went smoothly and rapidly. We did some more lounging around Sunday afternoon. I stayed around to help clean up; when all was said and done, the last few of us left about 4:30.

Hope you have/had a great 4th of July. Happy Bday USA!

Tidbit by Thomas: Where were you when you heard about Michael Jackson's death? I think that will rank up there with the question of "Where were you when you heard about Kennedy?" or "Where were you when you heard about 9-11?" After leaving the grocery store, I was driving down University Ave here in St Paul. Heard it on the radio, which was quoting TMZ. I called Ann, my friend Chris, and Br. Allen.