it20071124 - Saturday

Saturday evening in Madison. I’m kind of losing track of time; I had to look up the day to make sure I knew what day it was. One day sick, two on holiday, and now the weekend. I tend to start losing track of what day it is on whatever day three away from work may be, so at least I’m consistent.

I’m still kind of sick. Whatever I had on Wednesday has slowly transformed itself to a slow, hacking cough. Argh.

Thanksgiving in Two Rivers was good. We’d planned on driving across Wisconsin Wednesday evening, but between me being sick, the weather and last-minute funeral preparations, we didn’t do the drive until Thanksgiving proper. We were out of the metro early enough that we weren’t able to listen to Turkey Confidential–unfortunate, as it was becoming a tradition of sorts–but instead got in some audiobook listening in and caught the first half of the Packer game.

My parents’ first reaction to Mathias was surprise at how much he’d grown, followed by about 24 hours of continuous fawning. At one point Mathias spent probably 45 minutes suspended on a comforter between my dad’s legs, apparently loving it. Less than a day later Mathias was in a shopping cart at Wal-Mart pushed by a very proud grandfather, a grandfather already completely intent on spoiling his grandson.

In other words, the visit with my parents went well.

Mainly due to me being a) sick, and b) horrible at communication in general, we were barely able to link up with Ben and Beth while in Two Rivers. We did get to hang out for a few hours, though, sitting in our hotel room along the lake, talking in hushed inside voices as to not disturb the sleeping baby nearby.

After departing Wal-Mart on Friday, Lisa, Mathias and I headed down to Madison on what from that point forward would basically be a funeral trip with detours. Most of the drive was on US-151, a highway I once frequented back what seems to be a lifetime ago. It was probably the first time in over a decade I’d driven it, and with the bypasses and so-called improvements that had taken shape over the intervening years, it bore little resemblance to the drive I remembered.

Madison had a dusting of snow when we arrived, albeit a more modest one than we’d seen along the lake. Much of today was spent out and about as the mom and grandmom took care of errands for the coming days. The funeral will be an extremely proper Polish Catholic two-day affair, which apparently caused some clothing concerns for Lisa and Ann. (The extent of my preparations consisted of making sure my ties weren’t wrinkled and polishing my shoes.) Anyway, we head down to Indiana tomorrow.

We got to see Robin and Andy for a few hours this evening, which we used to have dinner at Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry before catching No Country For Old Men at the new Sundance Cinema here in Madison. Dinner was good, and the movie was great. As usual, Robin and Andy seem to have about five million things going on–I always feel lazy after talking to them–but overall are doing well.

Well, we have to be on the road to Valpo in a nine hours, so I’m going to hit it. More later.