Back in Minneapolis. I’ll probably explain this later.

And I’m in Two Rivers again. And now, back to Minneapolis.

I’ll be doing a lot of driving today.

It’s been good to see both sets of grandparents over the past few days, but, all things considered, it was probably a bit too much traveling considering the three-month-old we have in tow.

In a few minutes I’ll be leaving to drive a 1985 Chevy Caprice Estate wagon across Wisconsin. More on that later.

Well, we’re nearing the end of our yearly trip to Door County. Tomorrow we’re off to Two Rivers to visit my folks, marking the first time Mathias will get to visit the Danielson set of grandparents at home.

Not too much to report from Door County. This is a dreadfully relaxing place, if you’re into that kind of thing. Once upon a time this was a good place for kids, but Tom Thumb is long gone now, overtaken by condos like everything else. If we keep coming back, I’m not sure we’ll be able to find something for Mathias to do.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying. And working, unfortunately. The visit to Two Rivers will probably include much of the same.

Spotted on the trip to buy some apple juice this evening: Seven deer, one raccoon, one fox, and one ferret-like creature I wasn’t able to identify.

Well, I ate too much today, so I’m going to go to bed and see if I can sleep some of it off. More later.

Tuesday morning in Madison. This hasn’t been as much a visit as a rest stop on our way back from Indiana. Mathias was a good little baby on the trip down to Valparaiso, but driving all the way back to Minneapolis on Labor Day didn’t seem like that good of an idea.

Last night and much of this morning has been spent studying for my first class on Thursday. I only have about 60 pages of reading to do, but what my homework has lacked in length it has made up for in density. I got through about 25 pages last night and seem to be in good shape, but I wonder how things will be when I transition to a heavier courseload in the spring.

Picking up my books was kind of interesting. In retrospect, choosing freshman move-in day probably wasn’t the best day to head in to the U of M Bookstore, but I survived. It’s been almost a decade since I’ve been in Coffman, so this is was the first time I’ve seen it since the renovation. It still looks distinguished on the outside, but inside kind of feels like a shopping mall. (And if I had to pick a shopping mall, I’d say Southdale.) Granted, I remember it being a bit of a dump the last time I was there, so it is an improvement, but it’s just kind of sad they weren’t able to put together something a bit more collegiate in nature.

Well, back to studying. Next up, the challenges to Ben & Jerry’s in the mid-90s. I wonder if our field trip there a few years ago will help me with this. Hmmm…

We left one day late, but we’re in Indiana. The plan was to head down yesterday, but I woke up with what I thought were allergies, but later turned out to be a full-blown sinus infection. I’m doing better today, enough that I could do the 7+ hours of driving while Lisa took care of the little one in the back seat. Tonight, we’re camping in the living room of some of Lisa’s relatives down here. Tomorrow, we’re off for what may be the last visit to her grandmother.

Not much else to say about that, I guess.

In more pleasant news, I got to watch the Twins/Royals game from a suite at the Dome Friday night. Distracted by goings-on in the suite, I was a bit slow to realize Scott Baker was close to throwing a perfect game, and in retrospect wish I hadn’t: Literally 20 seconds after figuring it out, the Royals got a walk, and shortly thereafter the chance at the no-hitter was gone as well. It kind of went like this:

“Oh, holy shit.”

“No, don’t say anything!”

“I didn’t!” As if to preemptively say, “not my fault!”

Walk.

“Fuck.”

Well, it’s late afternoon in Chicago. We’re sitting at the Comfort Inn a few blocks off Michigan Ave–it’s actually pretty nice for a Comfort Inn–resting our feet for a few hours before going to see Wicked this evening.

Aside from the cold and blustery weather plaguing this part of the country, it’s been a good trip so far. We got down here Friday afternoon, and spent the afternoon walking the Mile and visiting the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. For dinner we headed to a French restaurant I found online, Kiki’s Bistro, and it was excellent. I had a delicious lamb stew, while Lisa ordered the special, seared King Salmon with a herb dill dip. While my dinner was very good, Lisa’s was much better–quite possibly the best salmon I’ve ever had. We had an onion and bacon pizza for an appetizer and a wild-berry sorbet for desert, both of which were excellent as well. In all, it was probably the best meal Lisa and I have had since our first visit to Town Talk over a year ago.

Today we headed to the Shedd Aquarium, which was a bit of a mistake. The place was cool as always, but was absolutely packed. I’ve been there three or four times before and never encountered a line to get in. Today, not only was there a line, but it stretched for almost a football field outside the front door. It took us almost 40 minutes to get in, and once in some of the exhibits were too packed to visit. Lisa still enjoyed it though, although the next time we’ll make sure we bring ourselves–and our kid–on a non-holiday weekday.

This afternoon was marked by more shopping and a visit to Dunkin’ Donuts. Oh, how I wish we had those in Minneapolis.

Well, time to get ready for the show. More later.

Sunday morning, kind of quiet. I wonder how many people forgot to move their clocks forward last night.

Saturday was pretty good. The panels as a whole seemed to get off to a better start than last year, although from talking to others I may just have been lucky with my selection. I got stuck in the video-enabled consolation section after missing the start of Kathy Sierra’s keynote yesterday, but at least I got lunch at Las Manitas out of it.

Speaking of Las Manitas, it sounds like some development group wants to demolish the block to put up a huge hotel. They say Las Manitas is an institution and that they’ll move it, but so much of what makes the place great is the building itself. The holy trinity of good food, trashed patio and bad service really should be preserved. Besides, I’m sure any replacement building wouldn’t require guests to walk through the kitchen to get to the patio, and that would be a tragedy.

Hung out at Barcamp Austin last night. I didn’t really pay attention to the presentations that much, but did run into a few people and have some good conversations about tagging, identity 2.0 and other things that would make my friends want to slap me.

Lots of network connectivity problems today. Not sure when I’ll be able to post this.

If I were to try to sum up this weekend so far, it would be six hours of driving for 30 minutes of candlelight skiing.

It’s been more than that, of course–among other things, I had a tasty hamburger on white bread–but if I were to expand on anything I’d have to expand on a lot of things, when my main reason for writing is really to take a break from studying for the GMAT. Damn you, data sufficiency questions! Argh.