Hello from Osaka the second largest city in Japan

I am happy to report that after being awake for almost 24 hours to get here, I was able to sleep all the way through the first night. Granted, I didn’t sleep on the planes & I didn’t go to bed until midnight after arriving but still it’s an accomplishment for me to sleep all night upon arrival. I have been able to sleep every night since and am feeling good. Registration hasn’t started yet because the JCI World Congress officially starts tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov 2 but we’ve had several Board meetings & many committee meetings. I found out the other day that registration will take place outside in the courtyard of the Grand Cube Convention Center where the Congress is being held. It is a huge place and the courtyard is equally huge. There was a typhoon warning (but not in Osaka!) for a few days and it was rainy & windy but it has cleared up and the temperature for the rest of the week is supposed to be sunny/partly sunny and in the 60’s so I’m not complaining too much about having to work outside.


The food has been a challenge. A lot of my co-workers love sushi so they’ve been in heaven. I’ve been to MacDonald’s for lunch twice and the Hard Rock Café for dinner once. There was a big Halloween party at the Hard Rock and it was pretty neat to see everyone in costume. There were many unique costumes based on Japanese characters and also a lot of American costumes like Michael Jackson and Mario, Luigi & the princess (who looked like a transvestite). We all were taken out to a Japanese barbecue restaurant where they bring you the raw meat and you cook it at your table. I sat with Edson & two other Japanese which may have been a mistake as they were eating a lot of things raw. They raved over the raw liver which disgusted me! The beef & chicken we grilled was good but I didn’t like the pork which was 80% fat and I wouldn’t even try the intestines. I had it when I was in Japan in 2004 and I didn’t like it then so I refused to try it again. There is a cafeteria in the Cube where we get lunch and several co-workers have gotten the box of sushi which also has octopus testicles, oh, I mean tentacles in it. As Eduardo put it “that looks nasty in many different ways!” I got the egg salad sandwich today which was pretty good. It was crustless white bread layered with egg salad, bread, potato salad with a little wasabi, bread, cheese, bread and ham. Not exactly the way I make an egg salad sandwich but I liked it. Luckily, I got about 8 potato chips today which was more than the three I got yesterday. You should’ve seen me trying to spread those out to last through my sandwich!

Hope everyone had a happy Halloween!

Preparations for Osaka

I will be leaving tomorrow morning for the JCI World Congress in Osaka, Japan.  As you all know from my posts from previous years while working at Congress, I usually cry at one point or another.  Normally it's because of my being emotional from lack of sleep and people getting angry while registering.  This year I'm prepared with a sign:

                      Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

                      L’ impolitesse est la pretension du force de l’homme faible.

                      La rudeza es la imitación de la fuerza del hombre débil.

I have this printed on cardstock in three of the official JCI languages - English, French & Spanish.  The final official language is Japanese but I decided not to write it in Japanese because they usually aren't mean or rude.  I already have permission from my boss to wave it in front of anyone that yells at me during registration.  I'm determined to be a big girl this year....                      

The Armadillo

After Mom’s funeral the whole family came back to my house.  Some of the kids were playing shuffleboard when they came upstairs to tell us that there were maggots on the table. I told them they were crazy because it wasn’t like we had raw meat down there or anything that maggots would be living on & I blew them off. The next thing I knew Jim came traipsing through the house with the shop vac and by the time I got downstairs to check he had vacuumed them all up. Everyone was freaking out and trying to figure out where they had come from. As I looked around, I spotted the armadillo that Janice had sent to me 2 or 3 years ago. It was a real (dead) armadillo that lay on its back and held a bottle of Lone Star beer to its mouth. When I got it in the mail & opened it up, it scared me. It had wiry hairs on it and it was real ugly. My first reaction was to throw it away but I knew that when Janice came to visit I’d have to produce it so I put it down on the bar. I figured it would be a good conversation piece and it was. I grew to like it.

Anyway, as I was looking around trying to figure out where the maggots came from I remembered that there had been some mysterious dust around the armadillo that I had cleaned up a couple of weeks earlier. As me & the kids looked closer, the kids exclaimed that there were maggots on it! So I got some bags out and pleaded with Morgan to put a bag on each hand, pick the armadillo up & place it in the third bag I was holding. We brought it upstairs and put it in the trashcan in the garage which should’ve been the end of the story. Nay, nay, reindeer. I got the brilliant idea to play a trick on Jim. I asked Morgan & Madison to take the armadillo to the back yard and put it down on Jim’s new path he made in the woods that he’s so proud of. I thought it would be funny for him to find it the next day. I made them promise not to say anything because he needed to find it on his own or the joke wouldn’t work.

Well, it took him a week but he finally saw it. We were under the deck & he was on the ladder getting a few of my wind chimes down for repair when he spotted the armadillo. He didn’t know what it was and started making comments to me about it & I had to turn away so he wouldn’t see me smiling. I ignored him & talked about other things. He kept looking & trying to figure out what it was until he finally walked up to the beginning of the path to get a closer look. He was freaking out thinking it was an animal and he even said he thought it was something growing. Then he realized what it was and started to get mad until I joked that the kids must’ve thrown the armadillo there as a joke. Then he spotted it. A Natural Light beer can right under some flowers at the top of the path. Ronnie! He said there was proof that Ronnie had done the dirty deed!

We went back up to the house just as Angie & Brian were pulling up. Jim told them the story and as they were in on the joke, they went along with accusing Ronnie. Jim proceeded to call Ronnie who denied ever having put the armadillo there and said that I knew all about it. Brian told Jim that Ronnie was just trying to cover his ass by blaming me. Jim called Scott next and ended up getting a good laugh out of it.

Barb said in her blog about Mom, “our family has a great sense of humor and so did she”.  This just goes to show you that even when we are grieving, we never miss the opportunity to play a good joke on someone. Mom would’ve loved it!

Bakers Junction Railroad Museum

Jim & I met Ron, Janet, Joyce, Scott, Devon & Madison at Lake Monroe in Indiana for the Labor Day weekend and visited a very interesting museum while we were there. On the way to the place where we stayed we passed the Bakers Junction Railroad Museum which was located on the corner of Fairfax Road & East Scott Lane in Smithville, Indiana. What a coincidence, huh? When Jim & I passed it I commented that it looked like a good place for American Pickers to shop because there was a bunch of junk lying around. There was also a haunted train that would be open on weekends in October. It looked pretty scary, too!


After we got to the place we were staying and Ron & Janet arrived Jim asked if they had seen the museum on their way in. They said yes and I suggested we go visit sometime. I was shocked when Ronnie said he wanted to go see it too. I asked Janet if he was serious and she said that he was. I still wasn’t convinced so I asked Ronnie again until he yelled at me that he wanted to go. When the Smiths got there they agreed to join us.

We went Saturday morning and we joked that we were afraid it might be closed and we weren’t sure how much the entrance fee would be so we decided to just wing it. When we got there we were a little leery because there was nobody there. We started walking around, afraid that we were trespassing until we saw a sign that said we should take a look around but the haunted train would not be open until October. We proceeded to tour the area and what a sight it was! We couldn’t decide if it was a junkyard or a train museum. There was crap everywhere. There were a lot of grave headstones and we wondered where they came from because they certainly aren’t cheap. Janet suggested that maybe they were headstones that had mistakes on the names or dates and John Baker had bought them cheap. There were several railcars, cabooses, train depot stations and railroad crossing signals. And let’s not forget all the concrete skeletons and other gory stuff lying around.

There was a box that said free on it so we took a flyer and learned more about John Baker. It seems he was a disabled veteran with bone cancer that had bought the property & started his railroad museum back in 1976. He worked on the museum for nearly 20 years when a new neighbor moved in across the street and vowed to get his museum shut down and his property cleaned up. John proceeded to have problems with the “Commmie planning & zoning pinheads” and he spent $100,000 and nearly lost everything in auctions he was forced to have to make money in order to finance the ensuing court battles.

You can read his rambling story at http://www.bakersjunction.com/ and even though he seems pretty eccentric, after reading his story I felt sorry for him. It seems to me the new neighbor should’ve found another piece of land because there’s plenty around there. Anyway, leave it to us to find such a unique place to visit. Hey, at least it wasn’t another cave!

P.S. In case you’re interested if you visit the website, John Baker has a human finger for sale.

What is it?

While Jim & I were taking a stroll through our gardens last week we came upon a strange growth. It wasn’t standing up but a day later when I went out to take the picture it was erect. I gave it a nickname. Pencil d--- (fill in the blanks). Does anyone know what it is? I guess it’s some sort of fungus. I’ve ordered a book through Missouri Conservationist on mushrooms & other fungi so maybe I’ll find it in there. If not, I’ll just chalk it up as another mystery at the Miller’s.