We had a crazy weekend driving back and forth across Wisconsin, and to some extent are still recovering.  It was a lot of driving for three days:  On Friday evening we left the Twin Cities to visit Lisa’s grandmother in Wausau, and on Saturday headed to northeastern Wisconsin to visit my mom, my uncle Eric (who just happened to be in town the same time), and visit with friends.  We weren’t there long, though, and on Monday headed back across Wisconsin–mostly on two-lane roads because of the route–to take Mathias to an allergy specialist in La Crosse.  From there, it was back up the river to Minneapolis.

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.

If you had asked me two weeks ago what I expected to be doing this evening, I would’ve told you that Lisa, Mathias and I would be camping with my mom in the Black Hills, but that was before my mom took a tumble off of her bike, resulting in a sprain that scuttled her involvement in the trip. Since Lisa and I have already been to the Badlands and the Black Hills, and since Mathias is still too young to remember much (if any) of the trip anyway, we decided it didn’t make sense to haul ourselves all the way across the boring side of South Dakota to go camping.

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.

Well, we had quite a week in New York. Despite the challenges of traveling with a three-year-old, we had a pretty good time, and Mathias seemed to get a kick out of our hotels, of all things. While we did make one brief trip into the city, for the most part we stayed up in Westchester and Connecticut, places we could, in theory, be living in a few years. Lisa has pretty much bought in on Westchester county, although depending on what we can find about air quality—a concern since we’re pretty confident at this point that Mathias has at least a mild form of asthma—I may make a push for Brooklyn at some point. Some of the communities we saw in Westchester and Connecticut were pretty nice, but in some ways I feel like moving there would be like running a marathon only to settle down one foot short of the finish line.

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.

Few things have been as bad for this site as my MBA program, but at least I can say I’ve had a successful semester. I’m officially done with all my finance and stats courses—how great the lifting of that burden is I can’t really overstate—and actually managed to pull off a B+ in my managerial accounting class. I had a thoroughly enjoyable class on strategic leadership this semester as well, and in a way I consider it a kickoff to the rest of my MBA. With all but one of the required courses out of the way, from this point on it’s pretty much just the fun stuff. In a way I’m almost a little bit sad that I only have a year left before I’m done.

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.

With all of the time I’ve been spending on planes lately, I’ve had the chance to see a large number of movies I wouldn’t have the time for otherwise. So, in lightning-round format, here are five reviews of movies I’ve seen on small, glowing screens about two feet from my face.

• The Water Horse — I didn’t have sound for this one (I didn’t need it), and didn’t really have a choice as to whether I could watch it or not. 2/10.
• The International — “Hey, our plot doesn’t make any sense, let’s shoot it in a bunch of glamorous locations and hope people don’t notice.” 4/10.
• Watchmen — Meh. Not sure what the big deal was. 6/10.
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — Not Fincher’s best, not Fincher’s worst.  A strange, lovely and–of course–curious film, one I suspect could grow on me. 7/10.
• Milk — Great acting by Sean Penn, although the film seems to skip over a lot. 8/10.

I wonder what I’ll see on the way back.

Despite the scheduling complexity in my life these days–one day this past week had meetings at both 7:30 AM and 10:30 PM–I’m trying to set aside 10-15 minutes every day to write.  So much going on, so little time to write or even think about it.

~ ~ ~

Today is my second Father’s Day as a father, and my first Father’s Day without one.  Not much else to say about that.

Yesterday was Mathias’ second birthday.  We had a small party, and my mom was up in the Cities to celebrate it, along with Ben and his kids.  It was a lot of fun, but to be honest Mathias and Ben’s kids seemed to have just as much fun, if not more, running around the mega mall later in the evening.  (They closed the Lego store.)   Hopefully there’ll be some time to meet up with Ben and his family tomorrow morning before they head back to Two Rivers…

…And before I head back to Bangalore later in the afternoon.  I’ll be gone for a week.  This will be my first trip during monsoon season, so it should be interesting.  I’ll have a really packed schedule while there, but hopefully I’ll be able to get out a little bit, something I really wasn’t able to do last time I was in town.

Last weekend we were in Two Rivers and Green Bay, in what was essentially an in-and-out stop to hit the Day Out With Thomas being held at the National Railroad Museum.  Mathias had fun, but we’ll have to go again when he’s old enough to remember it.

~ ~ ~

I can’t believe it’s almost July already.  It feels like the summer has just begun.  If I have time one of the evenings I’m in India, I may try figuring out when and where Lisa, Mathias and I can go camping.  I better do that soon, as before we know it I’ll be back in school and our brief Minnesotan summer will have faded to Fall.

I thought school being out for summer would mean some spare time for me to get some writing done, get some backlogged India photos up on Flickr, and make some progress on the hundreds of little projects I have going on at once.  So far, not much luck.

We’re in Madison, staying a dog-free hotel while visiting friends and family during the day.  (The hotel is cheap and doesn’t have wifi, so who knows when this will be up.)  The need for the hotel was brought on by Mathias’ allergies, which, now that we know what they are, are bringing a range of unpleasant changes to the Danielson household.  For one, there are the morning and evening allergy-related nebulizer treatments we have to give Mathias.  For two, well, we have to get rid of the resident feline, as well as both of Lisa’s guinea pigs.  We’ve found a good home for the pigs, but for a range of reasons I’m not going to expand upon here, we’re trying to keep Putter close to home in Minneapolis.  I’m working on a couple of leads, but the search for a new home for the kitty is complicated by the fact that he’s a fairly senior cat, and has a track record of not playing well with other members of his species.

Hopefully I’ll have an update on the cat in the next few weeks.  We don’t have a deadline to get him out of the house, but the earlier the better.

~ ~ ~

Beyond that, May has been busy.  My first business trip to India for the most part went very well, and my project there seems to have gotten off to a great start.  I’ll be heading back in late June for my second work-related visit, and may be headeded back once again in late Q3.

Back at home, the next few months are looking pretty booked.  We’ll be heading to Green Bay the weekend of June 13th to visit some friends and take Mathias to the “Day Out With Thomas” tour, and the following week my mom will be up for Mathias’ birthday.  (I leave for India the day after his birthday, Father’s Day.)  I’ll be hitting my 15-year high school reunion in July–don’t ask me why, I’m not sure I know–and sometime in the next few months we hope to take Mathias camping, and, well, take a few weekends off.

Well, Lisa sounds like she’s getting done with the shower, and Mathias is acting psychotic in the way only a two-year-old can–he’s in a big walking-around-the-hotel mode today–so I should go.  Up today: Visiting with Robin and Andy, and hitting some crazy brat festival a few miles from our hotel. Also, later tonight: Brisket hamburgers. (Today is sponsored by meat.) More later.

Now that everyone is back home and pretty much settled in, I’d like to be able to say Mike and Andrea’s wedding was great, but part of me would still like to know who the hell I can punch for everything that happened.  What was supposed to be a small, leisurely gathering to witness and celebrate a new marriage was turned into a day-long rush-and-stop-and-rush endurance test.  Royal Caribbean, who’s Voyager of the Seas was to be the site of the event, definitely bears some of the blame, but the complete lack of coordination and communication by the planning company Mike and Andrea worked with didn’t help.

The schedule as we knew it going in was we were to get to the Port of Galveston cruise terminal around 10:00, and would likely be onboard around 11:00, over three hours before the ceremony, allowing plenty of time for the families and friends to visit and walk around the ship, for the bride and groom to prepare for the big event, and for a certain toddler to take his afternoon nap.  Long story short, we didn’t get on the boat until 1:30, and a number of delays and changes after that caused the ceremony to slip to 3:00, one hour before the non-cruising guests—everyone except for Mike and Andrea—had to be off the boat.  Mathias never got his nap, the reception basically left time for photos and nothing else, and the officiator at the wedding even managed to accidentally swap Andrea’s name for… Lisa. (“She was holding the flowers,” was the explanation we got later.)

Both Andrea and Mathias get extra bonus points for the day,  Andrea for holding it together despite the cavalcade of idiots running amok across her wedding day, and Mathias for dutifully putting up with a second long day of limited sleep time.  (As many parents can attest, a sleep-deprived but patient toddler can be a rare combination.)

~ ~ ~

Our experience trying to park our cars was kind of representative of everything that happened.  We actually scoped out the cruise terminal the day before to make sure we knew where we were going, but upon arriving Sunday morning, with two huge ships in harbor and people everywhere, all bets were off.  We dropped off Mike and Andrea and headed for the parking lot.  Arriving there, we were told it was only for people on the ship, and we were supposed to park in short-term parking.  We headed back to the terminal and couldn’t find the short-term parking, and, still believing that we were scheduled to board the ship in the next half hour, parked on a sketchy-looking nearby street (and by “nearby” I mean roughly three city blocks away).  Upon getting into the terminal and checking through security, we found out the short-term parking was in the same lot as employee parking, it just wasn’t labeled as such.  Not wanting to return to our SUV to find it stripped of its tires and devoid of our luggage, I left the terminal, spent 10 minutes driving through the line of cars in front of the terminal (again), negotiated with law enforcement on parking, and waited through the (now much longer) security line a second time.

The time spent didn’t matter, though, as we still had a full hour and  a half before boarding.  We just didn’t know that yet.

~ ~ ~

In the end we were told there was a large Mexican tour group on the boat, and there were problems with many of their visas, and that boarding couldn’t begin until all the current passengers were “dealt with.”  I asked why that wasn’t recognized when the tour group, was, you know, BOARDING THE FUCKING BOAT, but was told there was no way Royal Caribbean could have foreseen the problem.  Right.

But, in the end, none of that is too important, as eventually we got to see this:

And, hopefully, in a few years everyone will be able to look back at the crazy events of the day and laugh.

I still kind of want to punch someone, though.

Well, the funeral is over. What else is there to say?

I saw a lot of people for the first time in years today, many for the first time since my grandmother passed.  The funeral itself was short and informal.  My mom spoke, then Mike and I got up together, followed by two of Dad’s siblings, Eric and Margi, and my dad’s good friend Rich. There were a few stories I heard for the first time, and part of me wished I could’ve heard my father’s comments on them

I no longer have a dad. That feels so incredibly weird.

After the funeral many headed over to my parents’–or I guess I should start saying “my mom’s”–for a reception.  There was a wide mix of people, and of course there were was a lot of laughter and crying paired with plenty of eating and drinking.  Kids in costumes were running all over the place, and in many ways there was more life in the house over the course of the afternoon than I think I ever saw there.  (Well, maybe except for the time my brother threw that huge drinking party when my parents were on vacation, but that’s a different story for a different time. At least no walls got bashed in this time around.)

~ ~ ~

The house was busy last night as well.  My mom’s friend Darlene was over, as were Ben, Beth and their kids.  Mike’s plan for dinner was scuttled after he learned at least 1/3 of those around for dinner didn’t like shrimp, and so we ordered out from Fatzo’s and ended up having a good time anyway.

After everyone had cleared out or gone to sleep–including Lisa and Mathias, who were back at the hotel–I headed back to my mom’s and she, Mike and I just stood around talking for a few hours.  We talked about all kinds of things–the trip our family made to the Packer’s SuperBowl in New Orleans, Mike planting his Delta 88 out in the middle of a farm field, Dad’s early exploits while working for a scorched-earth car dealership in Green Bay, Dad’s and my trip across the country in a 1950’s Plymouth, pink dollar bills, cribbage tournaments, golf trips, and, eventually, the effect of disability payments on dad and the family.  Looking back, more than anything else, those payments were likely where the problems as we eventually knew them really started, and their ultimate effects were probably seen this week.  If only we knew then.

Before I left, Mike and I sat down for a game of cribbage.  We used a tournament board, cards and pegs from when Dad ran cribbage tournaments all over the Midwest (the last of which, incidentally, was held in the hotel I’m sitting in now).  It had been years since I’d played the official family sport, and quite a while for Mike as well, and we were rusty enough on the rules that Mike had to google “knobs” to see what qualified.  The irony was that our dad was the one who first wrote the rules of tournament play for the American Cribbage Congress, and here his two sons were struggling to figure out what exactly they were.

In the end, I won by a pretty big margin, almost double-skunking my brother.  I kind of wanted it to be a closer game, but unfortunately Mike got one of the most ridiculously bad series of deals I’ve ever seen in a card game.  Cribbage is a mixed game of skill and chance, but last night my win was almost all chance.  We had one of the cardboard bracket boards they used in the tournament days, and to be completely proper about it Mike filled in the results once our game was over.

We left the bracket board, playing board, cards and pegs at the funeral home today, along with a few other items.  When they cremate dad on Monday, they’ll place those things with him.

~ ~ ~

I’m sure I’ll have more to write over the next few days and weeks.  My dad was a big man with a big life, and there’s so much to say about him and everything he did, but for now I just need to absorb the fact that his life is over.

He was only twice as old as me. It still seems that he went way too early.

More later.

Well, I’m at the Chennai International Airport, a vigorously skanky airport if there ever was one, sitting on one of the few clean seats well away from the piles of garbage surrounding some of the trash bins. The coffee I’m drinking is decidedly horrible, but it’ll keep me awake until boarding time two hours from now.  Considering this was the first ISO 9000-certified airport in India, I’d like to see the process documentation they put around their maintenance activities.

Today was the second of two long days with vendors. By long I don’t mean bad, just long. I’m wiped, but the days were very useful, and I now have a better understanding of the capabilities of some of the organizations my company works with. The only question now is how to leverage that knowledge.

From Chennai it’ll be an 11 hour flight to Brussels. After a two hour layover—apparently a dangerously short stop when traveling with checked luggage on this route—it’ll be a nine hour flight to O’Hare. From there, it’ll be a short hop home. With layovers, I’ll be in transit for almost 25 hours. The 14-hour flight that’s AA 292 looks almost luxurious by comparison.

I’m too tired to think now, so I’m going to sign off. Goodbye, India. I’ll see you later.