In Chinese we have a saying, first year marriage is paper marriage, being said that, which means it could break easily. I know that it is very different compare dating and getting married. As when you are dating, you do not have so much responsibilities plus you are mostly try to entertain each other more than to live together. I am happily to say that I have a good marriage, we do have fights here and there, but most of the time after a couple of hours, everything is healed. My husband brother is not this lucky, he always has problems with his marriage. Then he found out that he should do some relationship counseling, he went a few times and told us it is really helpful. He said that he found out lots of things that their expectations are different, so it is better than he was trying to figure out what was the problem. They like to continue with the counseling for some time to make their relationship better. They even recommend us to go, I told him that we are fine, but he said you never know and this is really helpful to strengthen their relationship. I am not so sure but maybe next time when we have a fight, we will try to find someone to help us.

Woke with anticipation/anxiety of going through 3 locks.
7:30    Left MM 449 (Aqua Marina)
Destination Midway Marina – MM 393
This day was a gift from above with sunny skies, warmer weather  High
70s, low 40s at night
The three locks were a piece of cake compared to the Illinois River
locks.  Whew.
The first one was the third deepest lock in the country – 88 feet.
Pretty awesome dropping down that far.  The next two were typical of
all the rest on the TennTom and very nice bollard tie up.  I can
breath easy for the duration of these locks, a total of ten through
this passage over the next week.
3:00 Arrived Midway Marina.  Older marina, seemed a little dirty.
Dock master was extremely helpful and friendly.  He spent many weeks
in Plainfield visiting his now deceased Aunt and Uncle while growing
up.  We exchanged memories and updates to the town.

After fueling and pumping out, Al and I went for a nice walk around a
1 acre lake.  Later we went for dinner at the restaurant at the
marina, a nice walk past the lake, with Dale and Brenda.  Once again
we had some good laughs and shared stories.  Walked home across the
grassy path along the pond and down to the river.  The stars were so
bright and plentiful – they seemed close enough to reach up and gather
them in the palm of your hand.  burned in early.  A day in the outdoors
can make an old4er person tired.
Even though there has been so much rain up til now I have not seen a
rainbow.  But today I experienced one of His promises in a beautiful
day seeing and experiencing the beautiful nature surrounding us.

My mom has a friend used to the coach of the youth ice skating team in Beijing. He took me to ice skating a few times, he skates very graceful, he could do some circles and to go forward and backward. I tried buy could not get it. Then he told me that practice makes perfect and he also recommends me to get a new pair of skates instead of using rental ones as they are not as comfortable. I found this web site has lots of choices of Element Skateboards. I like white ones, I got a pair from them and really like it.

I went to Typhoon restaurant for sushi today. The fish is very fresh and tasty, the price is reasonable; I hope it is a little lower. The service is OK, they do not have hot tea as lots of Japanese restaurants do, plus she gave me the credit card copy for the other customer, so you should be careful. They are located underneath of the AON building; it is the closest Sushi place I could find in the neighborhood.

People are still using the old method to do back up, even in some big companies. I went to do some consulting work for this company last year and my hardware crushed, then I found out that they did not back up my e mails for over 3 months. What a big mistake, then I started to find some options for them to perform backup. I found this site Anytime @ Anywhere Offsite Backup, which could provide great services. We started to use them from this year.