A Week in the Sun

Before last week's vacation to Mexico, I had a hard time remembering when my last long, relaxing trip was. Turns out it was more than 3 years ago and attached to the end of a work trip to Europe. Before that... it was even longer. So, needless to say, I haven't had a ton of vacations the past half decade. I am very much a creature of habit, so not having vacations usually isn't a big deal for me, but having taken a week to relax in the sun of Playa del Carmen last week... man, it was much needed.

This vacation was actually the long overdue honeymoon of my wife and myself. We didn't get to take it right after our wedding because we were pretty busy at the time with my job being hectic, my wife switching jobs, and us having a lot of other commitments to attend to. As time went on, we thought about honeymooning, but as we saved for it, we instead took the plunge on buying our current home, so that sapped the honeymoon fund and added other tasks for us to do. Nearly two years after being married, however, we finally got around to it. I'm glad that Kristi took the initiative, researched vacations, and got everything organized. All I had to do was pack, hop on the plane, and enjoy. She was the travel organizing machine!

We spent our vacation at the Riu Palace in Playa del Carmen, a bit south of Cancun.  It was an all inclusive resort, which is the best way to do a relaxing vacation. You don't have to worry about budgeting for food, for drinks, for activities, for travel, and for all of the other things that may come up. You pay once, up front, and then you just go, kick back, and enjoy yourself. It really is the best way to go.

Before vacation I was battling a really strong cold & flu, so I was worried about being sick while in Mexico, but just getting to the beach and warm weather helped me kick the majority of whatever I had and let me fight it in the best environment possible--laying out on the beach under a palm tree with a drink in hand. Usually I'm pretty ADHD and can't sit still, but the combination of the laid back environment and having some of my energy sapped to fight off the plague actually set me into the perfect state of being to take in the slowed down, relaxing nature of our trip.

As much as I tend to think I don't need vacations and as much as I complain about the process of traveling, it was definitely a great trip and we had a wonderful time. It was tough coming back to Minnesota where we had snow and below freezing temperatures, but I think it helped me appreciate the climate we were just in even more!

If interested, I've posted the photos from our trip. There's not a ton as we were mostly focused on kicking back, but I couldn't keep from taking at least a few pictures of the great environment we were in.  I wonder if a palm tree will survive in our back yard...

To Chicago and New York and Back Again

My view as I flew into Chicago

I haven't given up on blogging shortly after having restarted again (after a couple of years off). No, instead I was trying to keep my head above water last week as I made my to Chicago and then New York for work trips. And, of course, as I'm traveling my usual operational and support workload doesn't lessen... it just gets pushed off, so that's what this week has been focused on catching up with.

Traveling always seems to sap my energy. It's taxing and, as much as I really wanted to do some blogging about Chicago or, especially, New York, I didn't for a couple of reasons. First, I was in meetings most of each day and then at dinners with people from work in the evenings so when I got back to my hotel room it was usually me reading for about 15-20 minutes, trying to scan through email, and then hitting my head to the pillow. Second, I didn't get a chance to really do much in either city. While in Chicago, I wasn't in Chicago proper, but out in Oakbrook Terrace. While in New York, even though I was in the midtown area, I didn't have a chance to go walk around or see anything other than my view from the building we were working in and what I could see in the 5 block area where the path from my hotel to the office led me.

The view of NY from my conference room

It was probably good for me to do some traveling as I haven't in quite some time for work, as I do like seeing new places, but the process of traveling always drives me batty. That, and I truly hate/fear flying. I don't know what it is, well, actually I do (combination of fear of heights and giving up control), but it makes the process of flying very stressful for me. Well, and you can also toss in that flying sometimes is a trigger for my migraines, which again was the case as I flew into Chicago, so that adds to the downside of traveling for me.

Anyways, what I was getting to is that it was good to travel this time around as I got to meet a number of people from our company that I've worked with for years over the phone and through email, but never seen in person. Putting a face, body, and mannerisms to a voice is always great. And I got to see some people I've not seen in a year or two, so from a connections standpoint, it was great. From a work perspective, it was also a good trip. I'm in the process of leading a project for which I've been tasked with some responsibilities not previously given to me, and I want to excel at this as it could be a feather in my cap towards other similar projects. The project, not to be too vague (but I will be) has me more in a project manager and subject matter expert role as opposed to working in a quality assurance role, so it's nice to get some strict PM work as well as doing some business analyst work as time permits.

This project will also be a heavy contributor to keeping me away from blogging as my free time seems to evaporate quite quickly nowadays and the free time I do have I don't always want to be in front of a computer, but maybe that will change as the fall and winter of Minnesota start to force me indoors for more hours of the day. Then again, maybe I'll just hibernate!

Stuck?

I'm going to consider myself lucky. I had to be in Chicago for work Thursday and Friday of last week and the way they were forecasting the weather, I was wondering if I was going to be there all weekend. Getting in to Chicago was no problem, but getting out was threatening to be a completely different beast altogether.

With a flight scheduled to leave at 6:30 pm out of Midway on Friday night, I was a little worried when O'hare canceled a ton of flights throughout the day on Friday and it was snowing and blowing and cold and gross most of the morning and early afternoon. Thankfully, however, the snow quit, the skies cleared a bit, and the snow in Minnesota decided to hold off until the middle of the night, leaving me a window of about 6-8 hours of perfect weather for flights between Chicago and Minneapolis. And what a well used window it was.

Even though all of the afternoon flights to MN were listed as "on time" at the Northwest website, they were all still sitting at the airport and all of the flights, including mine, left between 5:30 pm and 8:00 pm. I'm really glad I made it home, considering the people stranded throughout the US over the weekend, as well as considering the dumping of snow we got on Saturday, which made getting out to shop and going to the T-Wolves game a real pain in the ass. And snowblowing the yard on Sunday was no walk in the park either, considering it was windy as all get out and about 1 to 2 degrees out. And this morning as I waited for the bus it was -13 out. Winter is most definitely here. And she's going to supposedly bring us some more snow today and Wednesday. There's no escaping a white Christmas this year!

I Have Returned!

I'm back from Europe! Well, I have been since Saturday night, but I'm still getting readjusted. Lots of work built up while I was out, and not just work for my daily job, but other odds and ends work. The first piece of work that I'm working on is getting back to a normal sleep schedule. It took me a few days to get adjusted to the 7 hour difference while I was in Italy and the Czech Republic, but once I was adjusted (with the help of some sleeping pills and strong espresso), my body took to the new time. Now, back in my normal time zone, my body isn't so keen on making the switch back.

I've found the last couple of nights that once 5 or 6 pm rolls around, I'm dog tired and have to force myself to really work to stay up. I can't read a book because it'll just put me right to sleep. Watching TV is tough, because if the show is boring at all I'm nappy. I pretty much have to be doing something to keep my body moving along until at least 9 or 10 before I crash. But then my body is keyed to wake up in the middle of the night, wide awake, because it is still convinced it is morning time. Stupid body. It's a little better this morning. I got up at around 5:20 am instead of 3 am. So maybe tomorrow I'll get up at my usual 6:30 am.

Beyond adjusting my sleep patterns, I had tons of mail to go through. Two weeks leads to lots of junk mail, magazines, Decoy Music review submissions, and bills. Sorting that took some time. And I also will have to clean the house sometime this week since nothing appears to have been vacuumed or cleaned while I was away (and my plant was on death's door since it hadn't been watered... sad). So that'll no doubt be a task, one that I had hoped I wouldn't have to undertake.

Then there's the matter of just getting back into my routine. Having not done any physical activity on vacation other than walking, ultimate was rough on Sunday and I felt like I could hardly jump at volleyball last night. Time to whip this lazy ass body back into shape! All in all, I've proven once again to myself that vacation is fun, but also a hassle. The week after getting back just kind of sucks because of the readjusting that needs to be done, but it's a sacrifice we're forced to make to be able to have our vacation time.

Oh, before I forget, Kristi put up some of our pictures from vacation here. I should have mine up sometime in the next week or so (I hope). Enjoy!

The Rest of Colorado

I'm pretty sure the writing bug has left my system temporarily... probably until later in the fall when I feel like I have a free moment's time to do anything. It's kind of weird how things wax and wane like they do. The podcast was also going strong, but then I went on vacation and now I haven't had a chance to get another episode out simply because there's not a night where I have free time to do it, and when I do occasionally get a moment or two, I'm catching up on bills, laundry, cleaning, or whatever else needs done. I'm starting to wonder whether I need to think about cutting some commitments out of my life so I can focus on what I stick with, but I really enjoy everything that I am committed to, so I can't imagine cutting anything out. Anyhow... that vacation I was talking about... I figured I'd recap quickly since I'm getting prepared to fly to Italy on Saturday for a couple of weeks in Europe.

I never did get to blog more about Colorado while I was out there, mostly because I was trying to catch up on reading I'd had piled up and playing dominoes with the family. Writing didn't top my list of fun things to do while relaxing, I guess. Anyhow, we tried to take in the major tourist attraction type stuff since none of us had been to Colorado and we figured we should see the main sights.

The Royal Gorge was a nice area to visit for a day. Walking over the bridge, feeling it sway, and looking down was quite fun despite my fear of heights. Looking around at the gigantic valleys and scars that nature had carved out of the area was pretty intense. It's so completely different from the flatness of Minnesota. Getting to go down to the bottom of the gorge also gave you a completely different perspective on just how far down it was. As you look back up at the bridge, it's hard to reconcile the fact that this little thing is a two car wide bridge when you're on it. Learning about how it was built was also a treat!

Then, of course, there was a visit to Pike's Peak. How could we NOT go to Pike's Peak being we were staying almost right next to it. The drive up was pretty white knuckle for me, even though I was driving. The road is gravel or dirt most of the way and is consistently at a 10% or greater incline. To top it off there is usually just enough room for two lanes, tons of switchbacks, and rarely a guard rail. Looking over the edge as we drove right along it was freaky as all get out on the way up. On the way down I tolerated it a little better, but for someone who doesn't necessarily enjoy heights, this was quite the nerve wracking vacation attraction. Being up on top and looking around was really fun, even though the air was pretty thin and I was feeling light headed at times.

Where we stayed was less than a mile from the Garden of the Gods, so we visited there a couple of times. My dad and I hiked around the entire park, which was a great way to spent an afternoon. The rock formations are beautiful and jarring at the same time. They seem to just rise up out of the ground, which is kind of neat really. On our hike around the park, the map we had didn't have all the trails listed so we ended up hiking into a different part of Colorado Springs instead of coming back around to the entrace we started at. Luckily it wasn't too far from where we were staying.

We also made a day to drive through and see some of the Rocky Mountain National Forest. We entered at Estes Park. There wasn't much time to get hiking in, but I managed to do a 5K trail while the rest of the family was driving around looking at things. Saw lots of beautiful streams and rapids, along with a great view of some of the mountains.

Hmmm... what else? Oh! We went to Seven Falls as well. Gorgeous falls, but a lot of stairs to traverse to see it from the top. And when you get to the top of the falls, if you decide to go hike, one of the two trails is a constant uphill climb for about a mile and a half. Great view when you get up to the top of the trail, but sort of treacherous if you're out of shape.

Lastly, I think the only other main attraction we saw was the Denver Aquarium. It was a ton of fun and one of the best aquariums I've been to. Lots of unique fish, oodles of fun displays, and all around a good amount of information to take in and see.

So... that's pretty much the gist of the Colorado vacation I took with my family... about a month ago. And now I'm off on to another one. And I'm pretty sure I won't be able to write from over there considering how busy I'll be vacationing and, unfortunatly, working as well. It should be great, though!

Early Summer Vacation Photos

I was on vacation last week in Colorado with my family... but these pictures aren't from that vacation. They're from a trip Kristi and I took to the Wisconsin Dells with my parents and brother Ryan. Most of the photos are of scrap metal robots from the Forevertron outside of the Dells area. Also a couple of pictures of the now dry Lake Delton. Click on the photo below to see the gallery!

Out in Colorado

Maybe now that I'm on vacation I'll have a chance to write a little more. Truth be told, I don't know if I'm even ready for this vacation. The last couple of weeks have been killer work weeks, partially because the week before and week after a vacation are always uber-busy trying to cram all the stuff you need to do while you'll be out into the time before and after your jaunt away. So really, vacation isn't all that much of a vacation. It's more of a shifting of when your free time is. I'm sure it'll be a fun time, though.

It's a family vacation. My mom, dad, two brothers, and myself are staying in Colorado Springs for the week to see the sites in the area. We hit up the Colorado Springs zoo today, which was pretty fun. It's a well put together zoo and has a very diverse set of animals to visit. I do feel somewhat melancholy when I'm at a zoo, simply because I don't like the concept of locked up animals, especially those that should be out in very large open spaces (wolves, elephants, giraffes, etc.). Although it is nice to get to see animals that I usually otherwise wouldn't.

One animal that I really have a hard time visiting in any zoo is the Silverback Gorilla. I don't know what it is, but whenever I look at a Silverback, especially when our eyes meet, I feel like there's something more going on in that animal's head than any other animal in a zoo. It's like you can sense there's something more than simply instinct present. A self awareness maybe? Potentially a realization of their captivity or the reality of their situation? I don't know, but whatever it is, I feel almost as if they are partial people and keeping them confined is somehow immoral.

Now today is the first day of vacation, but it almost feels like I've been here for a couple days already, most likely because I had a 6:45 am flight from Minneapolis to Denver after a night of not really getting any sleep. So today has been a long day. The flight itself was also a tad bit stressful, mainly because it was the most turbulent flight I've been on. There was a chunk of the flight, probaly about a solid 10-15 minutes where we were being thrown all over. Cups, magazines, and anything that was loose was pretty much getting tossed every which way. It was a little nerve wracking, especially when there's a sharp move of the plane in a certain direction or a loud slam as the wind or dense cloud hits. Thankfully the rest of the trip was only normal turbulence.

It's getting to be late (10:30 pm home time, 9:30 here) so I'm running mostly on pure caffeine and delirium. Sleeping tonight is going to be a heck of a re-energizing experience that I'm quite looking forward to.

A Weekend Out of Town

Bucking the trend of staying home for vacations this summer, I spent the July 4th weekend with my parents, gf, and brother Ryan in the Wisconsin Dells. It was really great to have some time to slow down a bit, not worry about work, and hang with the family. It doesn't happen nearly enough any more. As I sat back and really thought about it, next to the campfire that was burning, I am constantly going going going going going... It's either for work or for Decoy Music related stuff (the podcast is a new, large time sink) or for ultimate or for catching up on house work or trying to do some reading or TV watching. There's rarely a moment I'm not doing something or on my way to doing something. So it was really nice to have a change to NOT do something, if even for a couple of hours.

As is usually the case with our family trips to the Dells, we spent most of the weekend mini golfing, grilling food, playing camping games (this time it was ladder golf), and reading. We also made the required trip to Rocky Roccocco pizza. Since it was the July 4th weekend, we also took in the fireworks that the city had and, frankly, we were pretty disappointed, for a couple of reasons.

First, there were two fireworks shows in the town--one by the city and one by Mount Olympus (a water park/go-kart place). The town fireworks started at about 9:15 and Mount Olympus' started at 9:30, so there were two competing displays that were on opposite ends of town so if you were seated in the middle you had to rubberneck it back and forth to try and catch what you could of both. Secondly, the fireworks just weren't nearly as impressive as back home. Last year's fireworks display in Austin, MN was phenomenal and other local MN fireworks displays, even in little towns, outperformed what was at the Dells. So I was a little disappointed, but it was still entertaining to sit out and watch them.

Lastly, we re-visited the Forevertron since Kristi had not been to it and our family found it really impressively unique. I could spend hours at the Forevertron simply looking at all of the unique creations that have been put together out of scrap metal and simple creativity. I can only imagine how enamored I would have been visiting when I was an impressionable young child.

Anyhow, it was a great trip and I was glad I was able to make it. Hopefully everyone else had wonderful weekends as well and were able to enjoy it no matter where you were.

The Windy City

Man, is it ever good to be home... or at least my parents' home. I got back from my Chicago business trip yesterday late afternoon, but headed down to my parents' place instead of going home, so I haven't made it home home quite yet. Really, though, I'm quite glad to be back. Chicago is a city that seems to have it out for me. We try to get along, but really Chicago is just kind of a dick to me most of the time and I'm to the point where it's no longer cute but annoying and frustrating.

Chicago is the city I most travel to for business since the division of the accounting firm I work for is based in Chicago, so I try to make the most of my time there, but the city has done everything in its power to make me hate the place. As of this week, it has succeeded. The city is now firmly entrenched on my list of crappy ass places in the US that I don't want to go to unless I absolutely have to.

This week it all started as I was trying to get there. From Minneapolis it would take me around 6-ish hours to drive to Chicago, but an average flight is an hour fifteen in most cases, so of course it makes sense to fly. What is ironic is that on Monday when I was flying to Chicago, because of delays, I could have made it to Chicago in less time driving than I did flying. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the airport waiting for my plane to get in, then waiting for it to get cleaned, then waiting for stewardesses to show up since they somehow disappeared... it was a very trying 3 hours.

Once I finally got in, I found that I had accidentally booked the wrong hotel. I stay at a particular Club Quarters when I'm in town since it's about 2 blocks from the office. This time, however, I must have selected the wrong Club Quarters when booking my flight so I was about 15 blocks from the office. I'm still thinking I was somehow being conspired against, but I haven't put together enough proof yet...

So I got in late, I'm far away from work, and I'm hungry, which leads into the real crux of why this tip sucked so much ass. Each night that I ordered food, I never once received it in less than an hour an 20 minutes. One night I ordered from the restaurant in the hotel, which was the quickest at an hour twenty, but that's pretty freakin' ridiculous for the hotel's in house restaurant.

Another night I ordered from a Chinese place right down the road and got it an hour and 35 minutes later. Trying my luck for a third time I ordered a pizza from a joint not too far away at 5:35 pm, as soon as I got back from work hoping to have some food in my belly in an hour's time, tops. I hadn't had anything substantial all day so I was close to starving. Finally, at 7:40 pm my food showed up. Over TWO HOURS after I ordered.

Two things add to why these delays were so fist shakingly angering. First, each time I ordered I was told that my food would be there in 30 minutes to an hour, yet not once were they even close. Is Chicago on some different time schedule than the rest of the world? Secondly, the tax in Chicago is enough to give you a heart attack, assuming the greasy ass pizza didn't. There's a 12% sales tax. Twelve. Freakin'. Percent. And it's not as if anything is cheap in that town to begin with.

On top of these things, the people in town that I dealt with (check-in lady at the hotel, cabbies, delivery guys, whoever) are all extremely unfriendly. Maybe it's because I live in the middle of "Minnesota Nice", but is it that hard to attempt to crack a smile, say hello, use some common courtesys, or not scream in predominantly curse words to whoever is on the other end of the phone while someone is waiting to check out at the CVS to pay double what a Diet Coke should? Maybe being polite and "nice" just isn't in the cards for the population of Chicago, which is pretty sad and one of the main reasons (outside of the continued bad luck with anything I do in the town) why I really don't like Chicago.

But I'm back now, thankfully, and I can go back to seeing happier faces, actually say hi to people I see on the street, and buy food without having to cough up a second mortgage to pay the sales tax on it. Screw Chicago, it's Minnesota for me.

No Vacation? So What?

With the rising gas prices and hurting economy, there's been a lot of talk in the news about people not taking vacations this year. Instead people are taking "staycations", which is a word that I hope withers away and dies quickly. One of my biggest pet peeves is when the media makes up supposedly cutesy words to describe things. Made up words should be used only in cases of extreme sarcasm and internet-speak, not in the media. But anyways, that's besides the point.

There have been lots of articles and whatnot about making the most of your vacation at home, which is cool and all, but there has also been some negativity attached to the fact that people here in the US, a country that hands out vacation days as if they were rations during a food shortage, are ended up stuck at home on their one or two weeks off that they have for this year. I can totally understand that sentiment, but on the other hand vacation travel can be stressful as well.

Personally, I'm not completely sold on the idea that you should travel when you have a vacation. I do like to travel, but because I end up doing some traveling for my job (albeit it is business travel, so mostly full of suck, but travel nonetheless) I enjoy taking some time off and NOT traveling. And I don't think there should be anything negative construed about that fact.

The biggest problem that I have when I take vacations is that the week before I go on vacation I usually end up putting in a whole bunch more work time to try and get things done before I leave, then I have vacation (which is nice), but the whole time I know that when I get back I'm going to be overwhelmed trying to catch up. So for the week or so after vacation I'm also killing myself to catch up. It's just not worth it sometimes.

I've run up my vacation bank at work and am sitting at my limit continually so I take a day off here or there each month just so I don't lose them and I think that works out fine. And if I'm going to take an extended amount of time off, I like having my laptop and blackberry with me. Sure, I then end up working a couple of hours a day, but I'm not so rushed the week prior or after my vacation. And I save money.

And I get to catch up on so many things I've gotten behind on, like books I want to read, movies I want to see, personal projects I want to finish... and sometimes it feels more rewarding to really dig into those types of things instead of stressing out over traveling and getting yourself more behind with things. I almost feel like I need a vacation after a vacation (depending upon what I do or where I go).

So let's drop the negative stigma that's creeping onto the concept of the "staycation" and let's also not ever use that word again. People finally get a summer to catch up on all the little things they've let go instead of stressing out about going somewhere. I don't think that's a big deal at all.

Still in Miami

So I've been in Miami (and am still there as I write this) for work this week. I was co-leading a 2 day training session on a software application that we are rolling out internationally. My session yesterday was a little rushed since the 90 minutes I was budgeted to have got scrunched into under 60, but we managed to make it through, even if I was a little razzled at cramming so much in so fast. Today my presented sections went much smoother since I had enough time to go through everything. That and I simply felt a little more into things today than I did yesterday.

It's been warm and busy and, oddly, filled with bad luck. There seems to be a ton of small things going awry on this trip. It started when I got myself a mocha at Seattle's Best in Atlanta. Let me tell you, never buy a mocha there. It's outrageously expensive (more expensive than Starbucks), the drink itself is mostly whip cream, and it's pretty much just some chocolate milk warmed up. I couldn't even really taste any espresso. Also, Atlanta is a terrible airport for finding fast food. Every fast food place is tex mex and anything americana at all is a sit down place, which makes it really hard to get food quickly while on a layover.

Beyond the flying troubles, when I got into Miami, my taxi ride to the resort I was staying at (the Doral golf resort, if anyone knows it) was about 45 minutes long because of a crazy accident that closed off 4 of the 5 lanes of the highway we were on. Then, to top it off when I got in, not having eaten all day other than my Seattle's Best mocha, I ordered a pizza only to have it delivered not as you'd expect (flat, like any freakin' idiot could deliver it), but upright like a book on a shelf. Needless to say all of the pizza was squished into one corner. I was too hungry to bitch, so I just sucked it up and tried to eat what I could.

Throughout the training sessions, everything was pretty good, except for some odd internet issues here and there... and the temperature of the meeting room. It was about 60 degrees in the room, which is pretty freezing when you're in there all day. Then you go outside and it's like 90+ out so there's no winning. Either I'm frozen or I'm overheating. Frickin' Florida.

Then my wonderful $50 noise canceling headphones broke. They suddenly decided it would be fun to only play bass out of the left earphone. Killer. So I went and dropped $35 on a pair of what I thought would be decent Sennheiser earbuds, but really they're no better than a pair of no-name earbuds I could have grabbed for $20. Oh, and the Circuit City I bought them at was 2.5 miles from the resort. I thought it was closer so I decided to walk there. A sweaty half hour later I finally got there and then walked back another half hour but being able to listen to my Zune on my new overpriced and underwhelming headphones. Yay!

I'm afraid of what else could go wrong, but thankfully it has just been the little things. Nothing major has really happened or gone wrong, so that's great. My luck, though, I'll somehow get delayed on my way home tomorrow and miss my ultimate game. Go me!

More Bus Talk

So, two more things about buses. First, when a bus doesn't show up, whoever was responsible for the bus not arriving should be flogged and then drug behind the bus for the entire route. It's unbelievably annoying to have to wait, doing nothing, for an extra 30-45 minutes because a bus didn't show up. Especially when I'm standing outside in sub-freezing temperatures.

Second, on a positive note, bus rides can be very interesting at times. Not only on account of the somewhat interesting people that will ride the bus, but also because of the interesting bus drivers you can get. Every now and again I have some old, white haired woman who must be in her late 50's or early 60's who is actually a pretty decent driver. However, she finds it her solemn duty to inform everyone that gets off at every stop to have a wonderful evening and for peace and happiness to be with you. It's nice and all, but by the time I get off I've heard it about 15 times and am ready to strangle her to death.

Also, I recently had a middle aged bus driver who thought he'd give riders some background information on money laundering. "Ok everyone, do you see the fish and chips restaurant on the right up here? Now, think back to every time you've driven past it, either on the bus or on your own. Have you ever seen it open? Yeah, me neither. You see, this is what we call a money laundering front. No doubt some local drug dealers or other unsavory characters are using this supposed restaurant to launder their illegally gotten gains through. So if you ever come across a business that never appears to be open, it's probably a front for money laundering. Just thought I'd point that out to you. We'll be downtown shortly."

Awesome.

Seattle Pictures

Finally, after having to deal with Comcast taking a giant dump all over our internet service here at home, I have uploaded all of my pictures from our Seattle vacation. Check out the gallery here. I'll probably be adding some more later when Caleb gets his pictures off of his camera. For now, however, enjoy what I have up.

Wisconsin Dells - In Pictures!

Not too many pictures, though, at least from me. I only took a few, but my mom snapped a bunch. It's fun to look at the pictures now and remember the laid back, fun time we had in Wisconsin. I'd kill for that right now since work is doubly busy. We have a lot going on, priorities have shifted, and I'm still catching up from taking two vacations this month. Guess I'll just sit back in my chair, sigh a little, and imagine that work was somehow as fun as vacation.

Seattle, Day Five

Our final day in the city of Seattle started off slower than the rest. Being it was the last day, we didn't want to rush anything so we woke up, got some breakfast, packed our junk, and lounged around in the hotel lobby or our room until about noon. At that time we had to check out. After checking out we stowed our bags at the hotel's baggage room and headed off to our first activity.

This activity happened to be the Experience Music Project and Seattle Science Fiction Museum. They are both a part of the same building, which was created to look like a sketch that Jimi Hendrix had drawn at one point in his life. It was a really unique structure.

We spent a significant amount of time at the two museums, with most of my time being spent in the sci-fi half being the geeky nerd that I am. It was really a classy, wonderful museum that treated science fiction seriously. It wasn't just a bunch of old Buck Rogers toys tossed in a display case, but instead was galleries upon galleries of different aspects of sci-fi history, literature, culture, and subjects. It was a shame that they didn't allow photography because I would have filled up my camera with geeky pictures.

The Experience Music Project was interesting, especially the history of the guitar section, but the galleries on Seattle hip-hop and Seattle bands of the early to mid 1900's didn't interest me as much. There was also a significant shortage of grunge information and displays. I had hoped for a little more.

After exhausting ourselves there, we grabbed some food, wandered around the Seattle Center (if you're there, check out the International Fountain as it's pretty cool), and then moseyed to the Seattle Art Museum's sculpture garden along the shore. It was an interestingly set up garden, but there was a shortage of art and what was there wasn't all that interesting to me.

By the time we had finished looking at the gardens, Randy needed to head to the airport to catch his flight home. He headed out with one of his friends, Alan, that had hung out with us while we were visiting. Once he took off, a couple of my friends (Alex and Crystal) came and picked up the three of us that were remaining.

They took us up to a beach in the area and showed us their place, which has a wonderful view of Lake Union. Later, before we also had to head to the airport, we had some Mexican food at a wonderful restaurant in Ballard. I believe it was called The Matador. The entire town or village of Ballard was very interesting and unique. We walked around for a bit and there were a ton of very neat, homey shops that hadn't been eaten up by your standard tourist shops.

Finally, it came time to head home so we hopped on our 1:00 am Seattle time flight (which is 3:00 am Minnesota time) and got back at 6:15 in the morning -- just in time to head in to work for the day. It might not have been the best idea as it took gobs of coffee to keep me going, but it saved me a vacation day to use later on.

All in all, this was a wonderful vacation and I hope this group can get together and travel again next year. It'll just be a matter of figuring out where to go!

Seattle, Day Four

Day four was our second to last day in the city. Since we'd been going going going for the first three, we slowed down a little and took things somewhat slower for the day. We didn't actually leave the hotel until a little before noon. We spent the morning sleeping in, catching up on news, eating breakfast, and taking some time to decide what we wanted to do.

After leaving the hotel, we strolled up Queen Anne Avenue, which led up to Kerry Park. Talk about an uphill walk. It was a long haul and we had some pretty tight, tired thighs and calves by the time we got up to the top. We were greeted with a wonderful view of Seattle and the bay. It was extremely beautiful and we got a few good pictures of the group with Seattle in the background.

We then walked through the Queen Anne neighborhood checking out the ridiculously expensive houses. Seriously, I can't even imagine how much some of the houses there cost. We looked at a couple of the condo for sale brochures and for a 1 bedroom, 1,000 square foot condo, it would run you around $350,000 so imagine what a beautiful, 3,000 square foot house would cost? Insanity.

Once we finished marveling at the houses, we hopped a bus up to the Ballard Locks in the hopes of seeing some salmon coming back home to breed. There weren't as many salmon as we had thought there would be, but as we watched we saw plenty of fish jumping up the Ballard Locks ladder. The ladder is a series of pools of water that the salmon can take upstream to get back to their breeding grounds since the locks were created and cut off any other way for the salmon to return home.

While we were there we checked out the locks, saw a couple of seals, watched a history movie on the locks, and checked out the displays about the history of the locks. It was all pretty interesting, although I'm sure many people would think it was pretty dry.

On our way back to downtown, we stopped by Lake View Cemetery to visit the graves of Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee. Both of the headstones were very tasteful and not overly huge or gaudy. While we were there we also explored some of the areas of the cemetery and checked out some of the more interesting looking and older headstones. It was a beautiful cemetery with a nice overlook of Lake Union.

For the rest of the evening Randy met up with some of his friends while Caleb, Kristi, and I went out to a spectacular Thai restaurant. We all reconvened at the hotel later on in the evening, once again ready to get some good, quality sleep.

And now, today, we have our final day in the city. It's time to pack up, see the few things we may have still wanted to check out, and head back to the airport to fly home and, for Kristi and I, head back to work as soon as we land.

Seattle, Day Three

All right. Day three is done and over. It was another busy one, but we're here not only to relax, but to see as much of the city and what it has to offer as we can. We started off the day once again with the badass breakfast they have here at the Quality Inn.

Once we were satiated, we started our walk for the day. Our first stop was at the REI flagship store. It was a pretty impressive building and had an amazing climbing wall setup. It wasn't so much a climbing wall as it was a climbing DNA-strand looking thing. The landscaping outside of the building was also very pretty.

Moving along we headed down to the piers and grabbed a ferry to Bainbridge Island. Kristi had had it recommended to her (but we can't remember by whom), so that helped us decide which ferry to ride since there's ferries to a lot of places. Riding the ferry was actually pretty interesting... and cold. Being on the water the wind really rips through and made the 60 degree weather feel like a cozy, blowing Minnesota winter day.

On Bainbridge Island, we walked through the touristy area they have set up, full of shops and eateries. We grabbed some ice cream at one of the cutest and quaintest parlors I've seen. It's nestled in a little wooded area at the back of a one-way road, completely out of the way and peaceful. It was also very expensive, but oh so tasty.

We grabbed some food at a local pub that overlooked the harbor. Wanting to get some seafood while we were out here, Kristi and I split a cod dish and Caleb had some Asian shrimp. Again, the restaurant was very quaint and quiet. The whole town seemed that way.

On our way back to the ferry, we walked along a waterfront path to notice two things--there are a crap ton of spiders that have webs in the trees and bushes (big spiders, but not quite the size of some of the larger barn spiders we have at home) and the water is so toxic, you can't eat anything from that bay. All of the sea life in that bay contains paralytic bacteria.

Upon returning to Seattle, we visited some of the shops in Pioneer Square, including Seattle's Mystery Bookshop. It was a pretty neat little bookstore that had a predominant focus on mystery/thriller books and local authors with lots of signed books for sale. It's too bad I'm not a huge mystery/thriller reader or I would have picked up a couple of books.

Once our shopping was finished, we went to the Seattle Underground Tour, which gives you a tour of the old underground portion of Seattle that was present before the Seattle fire in the late 1800's. It was pretty interesting seeing the parts of the city that are now underground, but what was more interesting was learning about the history of the Seattle and Tacoma area. It was well worth going to.

The rest of the evening we spent chilling in local bars and pubs in the Pioneer Square area. We hit up the Underground Bar, which was a pretty great place and really cheap, much to our pleasure. We also hit up an Irish Pub (I forget the name) that was definitely more expensive, but had some live music (a band called Vote for Pedro who played mostly indie rock cover songs) so it was ok in the end.

Having finally exhausted ourselves, we made the long walk back to our hotel (although it felt like Kristi was sprinting and pushing us all to keep up even though she felt she was going at merely a walking pace) and hit the sack. Another day behind us.

This morning we're taking a chance to catch our breath and decide what to do. We still want to go to the Experience Music and Sci-Fi Museum and potentially go see where the salmon are coming back to breed (I guess it's that time of year). There's also the possibility of the Seattle Symphony and just hanging out with some of the people Randy and I know here in Seattle. I do think that today will be a little more laid back than that last couple.

Seattle, Day Two

Well, our first full day in the city was yesterday. We tried to pack in a bunch of wonderful touristy stuff and hit some of the major sights. After stuffing ourselves full at the cafeteria style breakfast at the top notch Quality Inn & Suites we're staying at, we put on the footwear and headed out for a walkabout in the city.

Our first stop was at the Pike's market. You know, the place where they throw the fish? It was interesting enough. Saw some fish and crab tossin' and looked at all the local market shops and realized that everything was way too expensive to buy, so this will most likely be a souvenir-less trip.

While down in the market, we saw a full size pig statue made of, I'm guessing, bronze or some other copper tinted metal. After seeing it there, we saw all kinds of plastic pig sculptures throughout the city. I really don't have any clue why they're around and most of the people I've asked have no clue either. I'll probably have to consult the internets and ask that google guy what the deal is.

After checking out the market and the view over the harbor from the city side, we made our way up to the post office to mail some post cards. Right across the street from the post office is the symphony hall of Seattle (or some musical performance venue, I forget the name). While we are here, the symphony is doing their tribute to sci-fi with narration by none other than George Takei. I would really like to go, but I'm having a hard time convincing the rest of the crew.

Once the post cards were sent on their way, we continued our adventure towards downtown by stopping at the library, which is pretty trippy. The architecture is awesome. As much as the building doesn't seem to be that good of a use of space, everything we read about it inside points out how naturally sustainable the building is. We tried to go to the roof (Randy's idea), hoofing it up the stairs all the way to the roof access only to, obviously, find it locked. While we were up there we went down one floor to the 10th floor (and top floor accessible by the public). It was pretty neat and there's one overlook point where you can look straight down to the basement. It was awesome to look down, but very disorienting as well.

Next up, we met Alex in the Columbia Center, which is the tallest building in Seattle. While we were there, he showed us up to the observation deck, which gave us a perfect view of the city and surrounding areas. It was a little overcast so we couldn't see Mount Rainier or the Microsoft campus. It was still amazing to get to look over the entire city.

We then ventured into Pioneer Square to grab some food at a bar/grill that was built back in the late 1800's. It was a great bar atmosphere and had pretty good food to boot. It filled us up for the long bus ride down to the Museum of Flight.

One of Randy's friends who lives in Seattle met up with us at the Museum and used his membership to get us in. It was really an awesome place to visit. Tons of planes (replicas and full size versions) to see with the two biggest attractions currently being a Concorde jet and a retired Air Force One. Both were quite fascinating, as was the entire museum. I have tons of pictures that I'll get up when I get back.

As the day started coming down, we visited a local mall just to see what Seattle's malls are like... well that and Caleb had forgotten to pack enough clothes for the trip. Anyhow, after clothes shopping, grabbing some food, and relaxing for a bit, we headed back to the hotel and chilled the rest of the evening, making sure to watch some re-runs of American Gladiators on ESPN Classic before nodding off.

Now it is day three. Who knows what's on the agenda for today...

Seattle, Day One

Yesterday was our first day (or half day, I guess) here in Seattle. Our plane got in about 4:30 local time. We took the bus down to our hotel after getting in (thankfully Kristi noticed we were waiting for the right bus, but going in the wrong direction). We're staying in a very hotel-ish area that's north of downtown and about 5 blocks or so from the Space Needle.

After getting in, not knowing what to do, we decided to just go grab some food and figure out our game plan for the rest of vacation. Oh, yeah, we're a rag-tag group of four out here on vacation. Kristi, Caleb, my brother Randy, and myself decided to make the trip. Anyways, we were going to try to eat at a local restaurant (The Bone Fish Grill), but it was pretty spendy so we decided to save a little money and go to the Bucca di Bepo's next door. It was pretty much a carbon copy of the Buccas that they have in Minnesota.

Afterwards, we met up with some friends of mine who moved out here about a year ago. It was great to see them and they also were able to drive us around and show us some of the interesting sights. We saw the bridge troll sculpture, the statue of Vladimir Lenin, went to the shore opposite the city to see the skyline, drove by the two sports stadiums, and ended up in a part of town that felt very much like the Uptown neighborhood in Minneapolis.

After hanging out at a local bar and catching up, the time lag started to get to some of us. It was only around 10 local time, but after midnight our time, so we headed home to hit the hay and get rested for today.

On tap for today... we don't really know! I think we're going to check out downtown, maybe go to the Museum of Flight, and then figure something fun out to do for the night. Let the first full day begin!

Going Away

Well, I'm off to Seattle for a little 5 day vacation starting today. I'm looking forward to taking in the town and seeing what Seattle has to offer. The weather looks like it'll be ok, mostly in the 60's and overcast with only a slight chance of rain.

The only thing I'm not looking forward to is coming back... I'm taking the red eye home Monday morning, which leaves at 3 am Monday morning and gets me back to Minnesota at 7 am... at which time I'll take the light rail to downtown and stroll into work at 8. I'm sure that I'll need at least two pots of coffee to get through that day, but it'll be worth it to save that vacation day for using later on.

Ok, with that said, I'm off!