Adoption Update: Contact achieved!

Hey all...

Just a quick update on the adoption situation. I've been in touch with my birth mother and things are going well. We're writing back and forth via email and she's been giving me information that fills in the gaps of what was in the state's records. She's been very nice and helpful in answering questions and understanding of the situation as it stands. It's really turning out to be a "best-case scenario" and I couldn't be more pleased.

I'll give a more detailed report in the near future including some information about her (with her blessing) and about the situation that led to my adoption.

Oh, and it's very likely that she might read this message since she now knows about my website. How's that for exciting!

-chad

The rest of the year...

There's a lot to look forward to between now and the end of the year, and I just wanted to put together a list of what I'm looking forward to most. We know next year is going to be a crazy year and we might not get to travel much, so we are trying to cram as much into the rest of this year as we can. Here's a quick rundown...

TRIP TO ORLANDO, FL:
this, as you can imagine is a multiple "looking-forward to" list which includes the following events:
• Seeing Coldplay's "Viva La Vida Tour" at the Amway Arena
• Epcot's Food & Wine Festival at Walt Disney World (LINK)
• Visiting Universal Orlando with Jen (her first trip there) and having lunch with my old co-workers at Finnegan's Bar & Grill (LINK)
• Taking Jen to Celebration, the Disney-designed community near Kissimmee. If she loves Lenox Village, she'll go crazy over this (LINK)
• Dining: Girodano's Pizza (LINK), Yak & Yeti (LINK), California Grille (LINK) and Casey's Corner (LINK)
• Riding: Toy Story Midway Mania (LINK), the renovated Spaceship Earth (LINK), the Simpsons Ride (LINK)
• Shopping: since we're renting a car, I hope to hit IKEA (LINK), Crate & Barrel, Urban Outfitters, etc. Although I love Nashville, there's a few key stores that are missing from our city. This is especially true as we're trying to get things for our house right now, so these shops will be a lot of fun to visit.

TRIP TO CHICAGO:
Seeing as I've never been to Chicago, and this is my first trip I've taken with my folks since I moved out years ago, I'm anticipating having a great time spending Thanksgiving in the Windy City! Here's what I'm looking forward to:
• Staying at the Allerton Hotel (LINK)
• Shopping, dining and exploring along the Magnificent Mile (LINK)
• Seeing "Wicked: The Musical" at the Ford Center (LINK)
• Dining: Chicago Pizza & Oven Grinder Co. (LINK) and Rosebud (LINK)
• ...and just exploring one of the only major cities in the US I've never been to before!

PLUS:
• Trip to Lincoln for Christmas! Hoping to see snow, just not while we're driving. Unless airline ticket prices drop like a stone, this will be me and Jen's first bona fide "road trip" together. I'm a little nervous about the possibility of snow while we travel, but I'm sure it will be a nice drive and we'll have a good time. Plus, it's CHRISTMAS, my favorite time of year. Won't be long until I bust out the Christmas music (you can start pitying Jen right now).

• A true "winter" experience. Between the Lincoln and Chicago trips, these will be the only trips I've taken out of the South in the winter, so I'm expecting colder temperatures than I've ever experienced before. Note to self: convince everyone to spend next Christmas in Cancun...

-chad

House Progress: Since we got back from Mexico...

So it's been a few weeks since I updated the blog about the house. There's been a lot of progress too.

Before we left for Mexico, they had finished the roof and put the shingles on. Then, when we got back they started putting brick on the townhouse. Now, there's brick, windows and even doors have been installed. It actually looks like a real house.

Oh, and on our last visit, a little turtle was hanging out by the entrance to our neighborhood. Since we obviously have a thing for turtles (see our Cancun pics if you don't know what I'm talk about) we stopped and checked him out. Jen named him "Oakey", after our neighborhood, Oak Hill.

-chad

Fires around Nashville

I've had an opportunity to view 2 of the fires that have happened in Nashville up close lately. Seeing sights like this definitely make me respect the destructive power of fire. The first set are shots of Mario's Restaurant in Nashville (from the sidewalk through the busted out windows). The second are shots Building 14 at Brentwood Downs. Thankfully, no one lost their lives in these fires. If you want to help those who lost their belongings in the Brentwood Downs blaze, call the front office at 615-834-6355.

-ch





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Cancun Trip Report, Day 6: "Back to the Real World..."

Tuesday:

We got up the following morning and packed our belongings (okay, for those of you who know me, I was 90% packed the night before, but I'm just crazy like that). We made our way down to the front, squared away the bill and said our goodbyes to the Le Meridien Resort (for now... we'll be back, I bet). We took a taxi and did something I had been dying to do the whole trip. I REFUSED TO TIP the skycap at the airport, totally refusing service from him. Sorry, but it felt good to not feel pressured into something like that for once on our trip. We checked our luggage, bought some souveniers in the duty-free shop and had a wait ahead of us for the flight. We decided we had enough Mexican food and opted to have Johnny Rocket's for lunch. We both had burgers and fries and I have to admit, it was nice to have a taste of something from back home. Shortly after that it was time to hop on the plane and make it back to the USA.

The trip back was quiet. We saw "Made of Honor" again on the flight, since the VCR seemed to be crazy and chewed up the other movie. All our luggage made it back just fine through customs. Tara picked us up from the airport and was nice enough to bring us some beverages (thanks again, Tara).

We were shocked to see that one of the buildings in our apartment complex had caught fire while we were gone (fortunately, no one was hurt).

If you made it this far, thanks for reading the trip report. I highly recommend a trip to Mexico if you get a chance. Do your research beforehand as there's a LOT of ways you can get ripped off, but there's a lot of ways you can have a pretty stress-free trip. If you find yourself down there, let me know and I'd love to hear about your trip. I want as much information as I can get before the next time I visit so we can try some new and exciting things.

-chad

Cancun Trip Report, Day 5: "Visit Tulum, For Sure!"

Monday:

The final full day of our trip, was a visit to the historic Mayan ruins of Tulum. The morning was a bit of a blur (mercifully, for you blog readers). We grabbed breakfast quickly at El McDonald's and met the tour group. We rode the hour and a half to the ruins with an interesting group of people. There was a couple in the front from Atlanta who kept mostly to themselves, a "FAB-U-LOUS!!!" gay couple from Manhattan, a British couple celebrating their retirement by traveling the world and...us. The tour guide (Arturo) was a nice fellow who accentuated every phrase with "for sure" the same way a girl from the OC would say "like, totally". We were amused. He was also adept at educating our group while also building up to a sales pitch for some cartouche pendants with your name on them in Mayan heiroglyphs. A great deal, for sure (or so he told me). We passed.

The most valuable thing we bought when we arrived wasn't the jewelry but the bottle of water. I don't know if it was the particular temperature that day, the humidity, the lack of shade, the jungle area surrounding the site or what, but it was the hottest experience of the whole trip. And that's saying a lot. My light blue shirt was drenched before we even got to the ruins site (it was about a 3/4 mile walk), and I wasn't the only one. I ended up at one point going around without a shirt on, not something I usually do even at swimming pools.

Once we arrived at the site, though, it was worth it. Not having traveled the world much, the oldest structures I had seen up to that point had been at St. Augustine and along the coast of Florida. Seeing these ancient Mayan ruins was astounding. And when Arturo explained to us how every architectural detail of the Great Temple Castle was influenced by the Mayan calendar, down to the number of the steps and the placement of windows to have light shine through them during the summer and winter equinox, I was astounded. To think they had to work out these calculations before they even started to build these temples is amazing. The grounds was interesting, including an entrance to a beach down a set of stairs on a cliff. Reminded me of the beaches in California, but the water was the beautiful blue of the Caribbean. An amazing site. We also saw a great number of iguanas here at the site, and they definitely had made the Temple site their home, sunning themselves on the rocks strewn about, blocked from the people by railings.

We walked around for a little while after Arturo gave us a brief tour of the site, but the heat got the better of us and we headed back to the shopping plaza by the parking lot before too long (getting a little turned around along the way). We had some Mexican ice cream cones and found a gift shop to cool off in while we waited for the van to return. We also met up with some of the members of the tour group, getting some good advice for future travels by the British couple. They were great... so friendly and full of stories. Hearing them talk about their travels on the drive home was worth the trip in my opinion.

After a return drive through Playa del Carmen (which appeared to have some amazing, and surprisingly contemporary, furniture stores), we were dropped off at Le Meridien and made a bee-line for the beach in an attempt to cool off. The waves were ideal for playing around in that afternoon and we grabbed the waterproof camera and snapped away. Then back to the pool where we ordered our prerequisite guacamole & chips and settled in for a few hours.

Later, we went upstairs and got cleaned up and decided to have dinner at Kukulcan Plaza. We were going to try an Italian restaurant, but changed our minds and went to the Mexican restaurant Casa Maguey once we got there. The food was very good, I had some salmon and Jen had her only fajita of the entire trip. We also ordered Key Lime Pie, which was our only dessert we ordered for the entire trip. We shopped a bit for souveniers and beverages and headed back to the hotel room to pack and get to bed early, since we had a full day of traveling ahead of us.

"I Like Turtles" video

For those of you who don't know where I got the title of the previous blog:

Cancun Trip Report, Day 4: "I Like Turtles!"

Sunday

This was one of the quietest days of the trip. We got up and decided to have breakfast at McDonalds, and it was fun to order something familiar but different. Then we went back and sat by the pool... the only problem was that it started raining shortly after we got out of the pool. We went inside and talked to the concierge about taking the bus into Cancun and by the time we were done talking to him, it had stopped raining and we went back out for a few hours. I had to sit there like a grandmother and her quilt over her legs to keep from getting my legs burned, but it was nice. The overcast sky and breeze made for a nice break from the relentless sun.

That afternoon, we decided to pay for internet for a half-hour and we updated our blogs. Just doing this almost took the whole half hour as the internet there is incredibly slow, even though it is not dial-up. After that we decided to hop the bus and ride up the strip to find a new place for dinner. We got out close to the Hard Rock Cafe, and looked around for a non-chain restaurant. We really couldn't find anything we wanted. In fact the area had more boarded up places than open ones. After having a couple of scoops of Haagen-Dazs, we just headed back and ate at the seaside cafe at our hotel. We could see some clouds in the distance and the manager of the restaurant told us that the unusal cloud formation was actually Hurricane Ike. Beautiful, but a sobering sight.

After dinner the hotel held an interesting event... releasing 117 baby sea turtles into the sea. We got to actually take about 5 of them ourselves. They are incredibly small, fitting easily in the palm of one's hand. We would set them on the shores and watch them walk out into the waves, washing away and starting their lives in the ocean. It was a really beautiful moment, with the destructive clouds of Ike in the distance watching these new little turtles start their lives. THe power of life and death in the waves.

Cancun Trip Report, Day 3: "Beer, Fanta, Tequila, Coke?: A Trip to Isla Mujeres"

Saturday:

Got up early and walked to Aqua World where we had our trip to Isla Mujeres scheduled. The tour group "Aqua World" was a very nice touristy company where you could book about a dozen different kind of excursions in the Riviera Maya area.

They served a continental breakfast. Well, they had dry pastries, okay fruit and orange juice while waiting for our tour to start. Sadly, about what you would expect. We then boarded the boat that went across the lagoon. As we exited the lagoon we went through a patch of mangroves, where we spotted a monkey! After we emerged back into civilization, we went under some bridges and then out into the open sea. They turned up the throttle and our boat shot across the waves. I can't express to you how much fun that was! That's not something I had done since my early days in Jacksonville. I loved it more than I can tell you. During the trip to the island, we were constantly offered "beer, tequila, fanta, coke?" so often that it was ridiculous and started distracting from the amazing view of the high-rise hotels fading in the distance and the approach of the rocky island shores.

Wikipedia describes Isla Mujeres like this: "Isla Mujeres is the name of a small island, as well as the town on that island, a short distance off the coast of the northeast of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Caribbean Sea. It is about 13 km northeast of Cancún, at 21.20° North, 86.72° West. The island is some 7 km long and 650 meters wide. In the 2005 census the municipality had a population of 13,315, and the town had a population of 11,147. The municipality, which lies mostly on the mainland in the northeastern corner of the state, has an area of 1,100 km² (424.7 sq mi)." Wikipedia doesn't bother to tell you how beautiful it is, though. Isolated out at sea, it really feels like it's own little world.

We landed at the island dock and were led onto the beach where Aqua World had their own setup. From that location, we could do a variety of things. Jen and I opted to do the snorkeling tour. So back on the boat and around the edge of the island to where the snorkeling reefs were. After trying it out, I decided that breathing through a straw with my head under the water was not for me. But I enjoyed the view from the boat while Jen snorkled away and saw barracuda, a sea turtle and submerged Mayan ruins.

Once we returned to Aqua World's "home base", we ate a quick buffet lunch that was about as good as the continental breakfast had been. Then came the fun part... we got the keys to the GOLF CART we had rented for the next couple of hours. Now, renting the golf cart was too much fun, and something I could've done all day. Anyone who knows of my days at Universal Studios knows how I used to make up excuses to "borrow" the golf cart the advertising department had and drive around the backlot for hours. Driving around an island in a golf cart? Even more fun!

Golf carts are allowed to drive all over the island. The max speed limit is 40/kmh. We first tried to find the turtle sanctuary to no avail (but no worries, we had a close enounter with turtles. More on that later). It started to rain on us, but that didn't stop us. It reminded me of riding my bike around in the tropical showers in Florida as a kid. So I still like to play in the rain. Sue me.

The rain stopped as we drove to the south end of the island. We passed many houses and condos along the cliffs on the shore (some of which we would love to stay in someday). We passed Garafon, a water area with zip lines, snorkeling pools and a beautiful beach. Then we went to the park near the lighthouse that was one of my favorite areas in all of Mexico. Ix Chel Park is a small park that had many modern sculptures near the shear cliffs that dropped off into the ocean. At the far end of the park was the very end of the island. There sat a small pile of stones, remnants of a Mayan temple to the goddess Ix Chel (the "lady" in the name of the island). The paths led down stars to the rocky shore and wound around through holes carved into the cliffs by the waves. It was a true natural beauty. We stayed as long as we could, but were on a time limit, so back to the cart. We drove as far as we could on the ocean side of the island past beautiful homes and villages of huts, and into a small downtown area that was very authentic and in stark contrast to the "touristy" downtown area the tour led us to later. We ended up unable to find the road that was a shortcut back to the camp, so we ended up backtracking, but made it back just in time.

The next excursion was to the downtown area, so back to the boat. After another brief trip being endlessly assaulted with offers of BTFC, we were off the vessel and into the downtown section. On the way off the boat, I dropped my old-but-expensive Oakley sunglasses into the ocean. One of the guys on the boat offered to get them. This was the same guy who spoke little English but was very friendly to me when I was on the boat during the snorkeling tour (very proud to tell us of his 5 kids once he found out Jen was my wife - trying to encourage us, I suppose). At this point we were both tired and ready for a break. Although I found the architecture and culture of this area interesting, the constant verbal assault by the people running the markets became a bit much. After about 20-30 minutes, we settled in at a bar on the shore and had some nachos and diet coke and waited for the boat to return. The "people-watching" from this location was great entertainment (for the record, speedos should be banned, particularly if you are over 50, over 300 lbs and especially both). We returned to the boat for our trip back to Cancun. Some of our fellow passengers (5 college-age boys from the UK) started giving the staff a hard time. They had been drinking the enitre time they were on the island. They were threatening to dive overboard and even relieving themselves off the back of the boat. It was more amusing than anything, but we were all relieved to reach the shore.

That evening, Jen and I had a very quiet time going to a Mexican restaurant down the street called "La Destileria". It was very good, but that's because most everything had cheese inside of it or covering it. You can't really go wrong with that, can you?

After dinner, we went back and crashed very early. It had been a long day.

A new low, even for me.

Naturally, since I post about food on this blog SEEMINGLY ALL THE TIME, I should probably give you the flip side of things and let you know that I have actually been taking better care of myself and trying to lose weight.

Many of you know that I lost 70 pounds a few years ago after letting myself go in my late 20's & early 30's. I worked hard and went to Weight Watchers faithfully and went from 282 pounds to 212 pounds. Then I hit a plateau and I've been stuck at or around 212 for the past several years. At the beginning of this year, I was about 224.

I was reminded of a promise I made to myself to be in better shape by the time I hit 40 than I was at 30. I decided to make it one of my priorities this year to go the distance and get to my goal, which is somewhere in the lower 190's. With Jen's help, I've been eating better, watching my portions and counting calories (I needed a different tactic than Weight Watchers to get motivated again - same idea, different approach). And I got back down to 212, but that wasn't good enough.

So for the few weeks before we went to Mexico, I kicked it into high gear and finally broke through the wall and got to 210.4! That's the lowest weight I've been since I was in college.

I can't tell you how exciting that was, but disappointing that I got there right before a trip where I wanted to indulge. But Jen and I decided to eat what we wanted and just watch our portions, and it worked. I was able to keep off the weight on vacation and am now looking at getting out of the 210's in the next week or 2.

Part of the reason I'm blogging about this is accountability. When I was doing Weight Watchers, I would call a couple of close friends to tell them the results as soon as I left the meeting. Well, I've decided that this time around I'm going to post it to my blog, where I have to be accountable to everyone. So if you don't hear from me about once every 2 weeks or so about this, email me and ask me how I'm doing. I could use the encouragement and the reminders that people are watching.

-chadley

Photos: Me at 282, back in the early 2000's

Cancun Trip Report, Day 2: "Swimming, reading and...working out?!?"

Friday

Our first full day of vacation in Cancun, we got up and first thing decided to work out.

That's right...I said work out. Like, at the gym. Stop laughing. I'm serious!

We've been on a real health kick watching what we've been eating and we didn't want to totally ruin any progress we had made. We didn't come fully prepared to exercise but we made it work with the clothes we brought down. It actually felt good to get a workout in (don't worry... it was the only workout time of the trip). Then we changed into our bathing suits, slathered on the sunscreen, and went to the beach for awhile. The waves were much friendlier and we stayed out there for a half-hour or so. Then we picked out a spot by the pool (we were surprisingly the only ones there) and stayed poolside for most of the day, either swimming or reading in the shade the umbrellas provided. It was nice having the ocean right next to us, but being able to enjoy the calmness of the pool. I was reading "Book of Lies" by Brad Meltzer and "Spinning Disney's World" by Charlie Ridgway, in case you were wondering.

After several hours, we decided to book our excursions for the next few days. The following day would be at Isla Muerjes and Monday would be a half-day at Tulum. Sunday would be a "down day" with no specific plans.

Then we went back to the room to cool off and assess our sunburned state. We watched some TV out of Miami. They were tracking hurricane Ike, and it did look like there was a slim chance of it coming near Cancun. However, we weren't going to let it ruin the trip worrying about it, but we'd check the TV on Sunday to see what was the latest.

After that we got ready and rode the bus to La Isla shopping mall. The bus was filled with locals heading home from work, mariachi music blaring and the bus barely slowing to let people on and off. For the first time I had a sense of being truly in another culture. We got off at the mall and made our way to "Thai", a beautiful restaurant that had cabanas on the shore of the lagoon. I had a duck curry, Jen had a beef curry. The food was great, but it was the atmosphere that was truly incredible.

After that, I had my first Starbucks since Charlotte. I played it safe with my order, not knowing if they would have all the same things they did at home. It was good... different but familiar, I suppose. Then we walked back to the hotel (they left little cookies and a breakfast menu on the bed for us as part of turndown service) and crashed for the evening. We had a BIG day ahead Saturday.