Author Archives: tim

1) Guidance counselors at West High School will alert Keesia Hyzer (the English Department Chair) to the large number of students lamenting “Mr. Storm’s” absence. Students will bombard the guidance office rescheduling lines in attempts to get the second best English teacher.
2) After a month of so, the English teachers at West High School will finally put their finger on why this year seems so strange: Tim Storm isn’t here!
3) Cashiers at Bagels Forever, Whole Foods, The Sushi Box and a half-dozen other Madison establishments will, sometime in October or November, turn to one another and say, “Wait, you remember that one guy?” (the others will know immediately) “He hasn’t come in in a while.” Conversations detailing Tim’s best qualities will ensue.
4) Tim’s high school friends will forgive his years-long negligence in keeping in touch and, growing curious about his whereabouts, will descover through googling and the grapevine, that he is to be admired anew for his purely selfless act of volunteering in Ecuador for a year.
5) Upon arriving in Ecuador, Tim will immediately draw attention from the 30-some other volunteers and program coordinators for his cool demeanor and quick wit. Over the course of the four-week orientation, Tim will dazzle attendees of social gatherings with his newly acquired guitar virtuosity and his captivating stories and jokes.
6) Tim’s Spanish will come back so naturally that after one week of the orientation Spanish classes, he will be withdrawn and given private lessons by an Ecuadorian college professor.
7) The Ecuadorian owners of the one or two internet cafes Tim frequents will be so impressed with his gregariousness, his Spanish fluency, and his computer skills that they’ll allow him free internet access, and they’ll greet him with an enthusiastic Norm-from-Cheers-like salutation every time he walks through the door.
8) Tim’s English classes in Ecuador will require little planning. His students will be delighted at all times with their expert teacher. The whole experience will be stress free for Tim.
9) Back in “the states,” Tim’s friends and family will read his website fervently. They will love it. They will tell their friends.
10) Upon arrival back in Madison, Tim will have more friends than when he left. They will greet him at his Madison home and help him move back into his house. It will take one day.

Today we completely moved out of the house. There’s something conclusive and nostalgic about empty buildings. You stand there in a room that just days ago held the familiarity of home, and you wait for the voice-over — the one that poetically concludes the years’ ups and downs. And you look around as your wife plays Chopin’s Nocturne in E Minor for the last time on the piano and you say, “goodbye, piano; goodbye, bedroom; goodbye, wall.” And then you realize you’re being ridiculous. Cuz you’ll be back in a year.

Eileen and I have been cleaning the house with some toxic sludge. It’s ridiculous. We wouldn’t be doing any of this if we were’nt moving out and renting to someone else. But that’s our dysfunction. We’re dirty people. Once things are clean, we like it, but for both of us the process of putting on rubber gloves, pulling shirt collars up over noses, squinting and turning slightly away as we spray on the Easy-Off or Lime-Away is thoroughly unpleasant. We’d much rather talk about what we need to do rather than do it. What’s up with that? Why do we so often get excited about planning what to do, but not so excited about doing it?
We move out in three days or so. We leave for Ecuador in three weeks or so. I’m pretty excited. Hope that’s not a bad sign.

Personally, I think the dog following aspect of the front page is its best feature. The house is not my best. And the image of the house doesn’t fit well with the colors of the background gradient, but so far, we’re proud of our experiments. Of course none of the links work, but so what. We’re up and running.

Today, I hurt my hand. After getting off the water, I had my boat on my head; I reached up to pull some weeds off my Speedcoach propeller and yanked them off. But in doing so, I hit my hand hard against the rigger. It really hurts. Here’s a picture of my hand: