I’d like some time off–not a vacation but just some time to rest–but things are not letting up.  Lisa is changing jobs next week, which means Mathias will be changing his preschool as well.  Due to scheduling conflicts at work, I’m starting to go back to the office late at night for meetings with India–I’ll actually be heading there in a half an hour–and in a few weeks the fall semester will be underway again at Carlson.  On top of all that, we’ll be making our annual trip to Door County in a couple of weeks, and this weekend will have Lisa heading to Madison (sans toddler) to visit her mom, who’s recovering from surgery.  I’m thinking of taking some days off at some point just so I can have some alone time and catch up on stuff around the house…  But I need to reserve as much vacation as possible for the China seminar I’ll be attending for school in January.

Have I mentioned I’ll be going to China in January?  I’ll be in Hong Kong for about five days at the start of the year, and then in Guangzhou for about a week and a half after that.  So, there’s a lot coming up in the next few months.

For me to transfer the domains, I will need to know what that “interesting” thing is, and, well, find it interesting. The domains:

• cedaravenue.com
• hennepinavenue.com
• lyndaleavenue.com
• snellingavenue.com
• university-avenue.com (the “dash of shame” is included for free)

For what I hope would be obvious reasons, I’d prefer not to break up the above group of domains. Once upon a time I had planned on doing something similar to Hiawatha Avenue for all of them (no, that’s not my site), but I let life get in the way and it’s pretty clear I’m never going to have time for that. (I’ve had some of the domains for over a decade. Yikes.)

I am also planning on getting rid of the following domains, and will let them expire if no one expresses any interest.  If you want any of them, let me know and I’ll transfer them for free.

• hennepinavenue.net
• university-avenue.org
• waronreality.us
• warwithreality.com

Those last two were registered during W’s first term.  Go figure.

But we still wanted to go on a trip this week, so we now find ourselves camping (metaphorically, not literally) at a ski resort on Minnesota’s North Shore. (Hey, it was available on short notice.) And aside from our hotel, which is a bit weird, the trip has turned out pretty well so far.

~ ~ ~

On Sunday we departed the Twin Cities and headed up to Duluth. Between the two of us, Lisa and I know a couple hundred folks who just love Duluth, but I don’t think either one of us have really fallen for the city in the same way. If anything, we’ve been a bit perplexed about what people find to be so great about the city, but we tried to go back in with open minds. The Fourth of July was a good day to visit, as it provided us an excuse to hang out on the riverfront and watch fireworks, which Mathias loved. Other than that, we basically walked around a lot, trying to crack the nut that’s Duluth.

Before bolting for the North Shore on Monday afternoon, we stopped at the Duluth Depot to hit the children’s and train museums there. The Lake Superior Railroad Museum has an impressive collection, but the lighting in the main shed made the place a bit creepy, and that, along with the huge trains and the penetrating silence of the place, kind of freaked Mathias out, so we didn’t stay as long as expected. On the flip side, it was a bit of a challenge to extract him from the children’s museum, so the morning was by no means a wash.

After a quick lunch in the canal district, we headed up to Lutsen to check in at our hotel, and from there headed up to Grand Marais, where we had dinner at Sven & Ole’s and watched Mathias throw rocks into the lake for over an hour. Today had another rock-throwing marathon, this time at Cascade River State Park, followed by a drive up the shore to Canada, plus brief visits at a bunch of other parks along the way. (Mathias was sleeping in the car, which obviously limited what we could do.) Tonight we had a catastrophically bad dinner at our hotel, but I’ll save that rant for Trip Advisor. (I’ll probably complain about the wifi as well, which exists only in theory, not in practice. I probably won’t be posting this in real time tonight.)

~ ~ ~

Tomorrow should bring more trips up and down MN-61, followed by the short trip home. Nothing too exciting overall, but it’s been nice to get out of Minneapolis with the family for a bit.

And now, I should get some sleep.

One area I may want to look into—and I’m kind of surprised I’m saying this—is Queens. I drove through it after dropping off Lisa and Mathias at JFK, and, you know, it didn’t look that bad. On the flip side, we are no longer considering Staten Island—it came somewhat recommended by someone who grew up there, which, in retrospect probably biased that person’s opinion. Lisa had some pretty grim comments on New Jersey that I generally agree with, but I may still be open to looking at some of the leafy areas to the north. Again, though, the end result would be the city taunting me every day on the commute home, but that’s life.

~ ~ ~

Our travels between Minnesota and New York provided some of the most unexpected events of the trip. Lisa and Mathias went by air, which aside from Delta trying to put Mathias in a seat a number of rows away from his mom, generally went pretty well. The return trip, however, was kind of eventful. About 25 minutes into their trip they were pulled back to JFK, where they found the plane surrounded by cop cars, and, to the best Lisa could tell, someone was removed from the plane. They were then hit by a weather delay, and when all was said and done, they spent almost nine hours on a flight that should have taken less than three.

While me driving out by car saved us a fair amount of money, and give me the opportunity to visit friends in Ohio and Wisconsin, Indiana made my car pay for it. Not only did my air conditioning go out, but a dump truck launched a large rock at my windshield, putting an inch-and-a-half spider-web crack right in the middle of it. So, uh, time for me to call Progressive on that one.

~ ~ ~

And with that, we’re off to central and northeastern Wisconsin for a visit with Lisa’s grandmother, a visit to Mathias’ grandmother (my mom), and a birthday party. Because, hey, what everyone wants to do after driving 3400 miles is drive 700 more.

Almost sad. By which I mean “ecstatic.” I’m taking one summer course just to make sure I won’t find myself one class short at the end of Spring 2011. If I knew for sure that I could get into at least one of the international programs I’d like to take I wouldn’t have to take a course this summer, but I’ve known a number of really bright classmates who didn’t get into any of the international programs they applied for, so I’m hedging my bets.

~ ~ ~

With graduation on the horizon, and with Mathias only a few years away from kindergarten, it’s time for Lisa and I to consider what we want to do with ourselves over the next few years. It’s for that reason that tomorrow evening will find me in my car headed to New York, with Lisa and Mathias following by plane two days later. No, this does not mean we’re moving—it’s just another step in us understanding what our options are. Maybe New York is in our future, or maybe somewhere else on the east coast could soon be our home. (My company is like a rash across the Eastern Seaboard. A friendly rash with good benefits and lots of advancement opportunities.) Or maybe Chicago, San Francisco, or even—am I actually going to say this?—LA. I really want to stay with my company, which limits us somewhat, but considering the number of people I know who work for companies that only exist in the Twin Cities, I’m feeling pretty fortunate.

Staying in the Twin Cities is also a possibility, of course. While neither Lisa nor I have any strong ties to the area, both of our professional careers here are going pretty well. If they weren’t, we probably would’ve checked out some time ago. While the Twin Cities have a lot going for them, both of us feel we’ve been here too long. (I’ve now lived in the Twin Cities for longer than I have anywhere else in my entire life. When I came up here for school, I only expected to be here for a few years before getting out.)

~ ~ ~

You can’t really settle down somewhere without settling. (I knew that when I named this site, but my problem then wasn’t that I wasn’t moving, it was that I wasn’t actually going anywhere.)  I spent most of my life growing up settling for one thing after another, often at the direction or suggestion of others, a trend that continued for a few years after I completed my undergrad. And you know what? Settling isn’t really my thing anymore.

So, with that, New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area, here we come.

2009 was a crazy year of ups and downs. Mathias’ health, my dad’s suicide, a new job, multiple trips to India for work and school, and all kinds of interesting things with friends and family… I feel like I should feel something about the year, but I don’t. 2009 happened, but it doesn’t feel like it was ever here, and January, February? Those months feel like they were decades ago, almost a different life.

So, goodbye? Good riddance? I don’t know, and I’m not sure I care. There’s a decade some would say we’re bringing to a close as well, but you know what? Whatever.

What’s next?

As hectic and sometimes stressful as life has been, it beats being bored. I don’t know what a typical life would be, but I’m glad that I can’t say I have one. (Key goal for 2010: Get my wife, who has been watching me run all over the place for work and school, to get to say the same thing.)

Thanksgiving was fine aside from Mathias making another asthma-related trip to the emergency room. My mom seemed to handle the first Thanksgiving without her husband of many years, as did everyone else, all things considered. The absence of my dad is still somewhat weird for me—we had broken things off months before his death, but I had expected him to still live many years, and had just a little hope, however slight, that he would’ve pulled out of his decades-long decline. There is still an abruptness to it all.

Work is challenging and fantastic at the same time. As I write this I’m on a British Airways 747 somewhere over Germany, heading back home after a week in India. (There were a few times this past week where I had to stop and think, holy shit, I actually do this for a living. The flip side, of course, is that I had a total of roughly four hours of downtime my entire week in India, so I’m looking forward to having Sunday off.) I have a great team in Bangalore, great people to work with in Minnesota, and all kinds of interesting (and sometimes stressful) problems to deal with. There are times I feel completely out of my depth… But it’s exciting, challenging, and, well, I do believe I’m getting better at what I do, so there’s that, too.

And with that, I’m heading back to my email. I’d been hoping to use my flight time to get close to inbox zero, but there’s a frustrating number of items—almost 100—that require me to have web access to close them out. I guess I know what I’ll be doing during my layover in London.

More later. Really!

Maybe Lisa has had something like this happen before, but it was a first for me.