State Fair

It got off to an auspicious start -- I was too late on the draw at the ATM and the machine sucked my card back in, thus (I found out later) destroying it, then our GPS device died the second we got on the highway. Thankfully, we were able to put our collective memories together and successfully find our way to that most essential of midwestern summer events -- the State Fair.

We entered at the west entrance of the grounds, which turned out to be a good thing, as that's where the livestock barns were, so we were able to get "seeing the animals" out of the way right off the bat. First stop was the Miracle of Birth Center, which featured pregnant farm animals of every shape and size. If you hit it just right, you get to see the miracle of birth. If you don't hit it just right, they have the miracle of a continuous video loop, showing you what you missed.

We didn't hit it just right, but the crowd notwithstanding, the girls seemed to like it:

While they also liked the other livestock barns, the Swine Building was far and away the biggest hit:

We spent the rest of the morning navigating the sea of humanity, with both girls staying completely in character and not wanting to do anything that was too loud, too shiny, or had too many other people nearby -- which included every ride on the Kidway. Even the Butterfly Garden, a seemingly safe bet for both of them, got Ellie freaked out.

Eventually, we found our way to the KidFarm, which replicates the farm experience -- tend to the livestock, gather the crops, take them to market, get paid, spend the money in the store:

That being a big hit with both of them, we had resigned ourselves to calling it a day when, from out of nowhere, Ellie broke from the script. We were sitting on the curb, outside one of the food buildings near the base of the gondola ride, and she says, "I wanna do that." So up Kim and Ellie go:

And first thing Ellie says when she gets off is, "I wanna go on the big slide." So . . .

Then of course, she wants to do it again. But by that time, we'd spent just about every cent we brought with us, primarily on food -- which was the only thing they wanted to do up until then. Lesson learned for next year.

And even though food was consumed throughout the morning (including the hands-down best french fries I've ever had), I've saved it for last because it's here that the fair experience truly offers something different. The Tilt-A-Whirl's the Tilt-A-Whirl, god bless it, but you can always count on the food vendors to go above and beyond to create something the make the fair experience memorable. (Note that I didn't say "pleasant" or "nutritious" or "non-vomit inducing." Just "memorable.")

In reality, we didn't stray too much from the old standbys -- popcorn, lemonade, Pronto Pups (simply a corn dog), etc. -- although Kim went for it and had a deep-fried Snickers Bar on a sick.

Here's a short list of things we could've eaten but didn't -- I'll leave it to you to guess why:

• Deep-fried cheese curds
• Elk burgers
• Pickle Dog (quarter dill pickle, coated with cream cheese and wrapped in pastrami)
• Walleye on a stick
• Pork chop on a stick
• Cajun seasoned alligator sausage on a stick
• Scotch egg (hard-boiled egg wrapped in breakfast sausage) on a stick
• Spaghetti and meatballs on a stick
• Corned beef and cabbage on a stick
• Teriyaki ostrich on a stick

The record shows, I took the blows...and walked the Skyways

I had to spend a few days working downtown Minneapolis this week and came across what would likely be called one of the city's defining features (aside from the Mary Tyler Moore statue, which I also saw).

The Minneapolis Skyway System connects virtually every downtown block via a series of covered walkways, accessible from each building's second or third floor. Take a look at this map and you'll see just how far you can navigate the entire downtown without ever stepping foot outside -- you can go from the 4th Street Garage all the way to the Convention Center (near 12th Street), albeit not in a straight line.

We walked from the hotel where we were working to a restaurant a few blocks over, and it was basically one long, never ending shopping experience -- restaurants (both fine and casual), banks, newsstands, clothing stores, nail and hair salons, you name it. It's like some forward thinking civic planner way back when convinced every building owner to gut every second floor in the downtown area to build (with apologies to the Mall of America) the world's biggest mall.

It's not hard to see the benefit here -- while we have yet to experience our first Minnesota winter, I can only imagine what it must be like having to walk the downtown streets to get to and from work every day. The fact that each walkway has a different design is also very cool.

I couldn't help but wonder about the potential downside, though. What is the effect on the businesses at the street level? How does it affect the foot traffic that is so essential to a vibrant downtown?

Think about what Boston might be like if you could get from, say, the State Street T Stop to the Theater District by walking through the second floors of every building in Washington Square, with every potential need available without ever going down to the street. Great in the winter, sure, but wouldn't something be missing?

Well, it likely wouldn't work in Boston anyway. Minneapolis' grid layout makes an endeavor like this relatively easy to pull off -- Boston's cow path layout would make it a nightmare.

Hitting the wall

It happens eventually. You can go only so long commenting about the relative trivialities of living in a new place before the new and interesting becomes the day-to-day, and suddenly there's not much left to talk (or, in this case, write) about. It's a big reason that these posts have trailed of in the past few weeks.

And it's started to creep into the phone conversations we have with our families:
"What's going on there?"
"Not a damn thing -- same old same old. What about you -- what's new there?"
"Nothing really . . ."

Just today, I had complete conversations with Carl and Arline that went pretty much according to this script. Then just before I hung up, Arline got on the phone and said, "Oh, tell Kim that I've stopped smoking." (Three weeks so far, she says, so way to go Arline.)

I told Kim that this would happen at some point -- eventually, the major topic of conversation on the phone will be the weather. Then, at Christmas, we'll come home and hear something like, "Well, remember a few months ago when your father fell out the window . . . ?" and we'll say, "WHOA! You never told me that!" Meanwhile, the little relatives will have grown into young adults, talking and dressing in ways we couldn't have imagined, and we'll be astonished at all that we've missed just being away from the day-to-day.

Unfortunately, it's unavoidable. And it just may be the toughest part of being away from home.

By the way, it's raining here. How is it there?

Breaking in the new: Severe Weather Siren

This is a new one for everyone. I became very accustomed to the sudden onset of severe summer weather in Indiana -- watches and warnings were extremely common, for severe thunderstorms, hail storms, and even the odd tornado here and there. But the means of finding out about these situations was always on TV, as when a blizzard hits Boston and every channel has news and weather people in little tiny windows, while the rest of the screen is taken up with maps and crawl graphics.

We'd heard the town siren before, but always in the middle of the day. This time, it went off a little after 3:30 this morning, freaking Kim out and sending to both of us into the kitchen to see what was up. (She's got a thing about tornadoes, as would most normal people, I suppose.) Lo and behold, we were in the middle of the most severe rain we've had since we got here.

This was major stuff -- wind bending trees, rain almost horizontal to the ground, rapid-fire lightning that made it seem much more like a fireworks display. Chikage Windler (formerly of Channel 7), sans makeup and in a deserted studio, showed a Dopplar radar map that was almost exclusively red and covered in little lightning bolts.

Truth be told, we need this rain badly -- the only positive thing about the incredibly dry summer we've had here is that the low levels of the Mississippi River aided in helping the search for victims of the bridge collapse. The siren, however, will take some getting used to.

We're OK

Thanks to everyone who's been checking in via phone, email, and by way of family and friends.

The 35W bridge is about 10 highway miles from our house, and we use it only when we venture into the city.

But with 6000+ people working at my workplace campus, the company is bracing for at least 1 or 2 'close-to-home" instances.

Family birthday wishes, poolside

Thank you Hap

Hap's present arrived last week and the girls put it to use on Saturday. It didn't take long for the boys next door to start loitering on the fringes of our yard, and fortunately the girls are good sharers.

Breaking in the new: Health Club

Employees of the new company get a break on a couple of different counts if they join a health club and attend a certain number of days a month, so with Kim losing weight by the day and me having had virtually no exercise for the three years it took to complete the masters, a trial for at least a couple of months was a no-brainer.

The one we targeted here isn't that much different from others we've attended. Same machines, same offerings, same overly-friendly staff, same annoying tour and interview process:

• "So what are your goals?"
• "So, how can we help you get the most out of your workout?"
• "So, what do you usually look for in a locker room?" (OK, it's the first time I've ever heard that one, but so help me, he actually asked me that.)

This one is different from clubs I've belonged to at home in at least two respects: first, it's sheer size. The place is huge, with parking up the kazoo, a mini-water park, and, Kim tells me, a great room the the girls to hang out in. (The chain is a big fitness name out here, and the guy who gave me the tour said that they can't expand into Massachusetts because the land costs are way too high for the type of facility they usually have.)

Second -- and I guess I always thought this sort of thing usually just goes without saying in a public place -- is the sign that greets you as you enter: "Lifetime Fitness does not permit the use of guns on the premises."

Comic

Nothing particular to Minnesota this time -- just an episode that produced a prolonged giggle fit . . .

Both girls have recently been introduced to the Sunday funnies -- which pleases me to no end, because that's how I began enjoying newspapers. Whether or not actual newspapers still exist by the time the girls are my age is a question for another day.

Anyway, there we are on the floor this morning, all 3 of us reading them together -- classic Peanuts, Garfield, B.C., Family Circus. Ellie starts asking me what this word says, what that word says, and Maggie's trying to get my attention: "Daddy . . . ? Daddy . . . ? Daddy . . . ?" My brain slips into that selective attention mode that all parents seem to develop, where what one kid is saying has receives undivided attention, while whatever the other one is saying becomes mere background noise. I guide Ellie through a couple of easy words, which also pleases me to no end -- her reading is coming along very nicely.

The job at hand now complete, the brain shifts back out of selective attention mode to what Maggie is now saying: "Sir . . . ? Um, SIR . . . ? . . ."

Role reversal

A sharp-eared reader heard Jerry Remy's voice in the background of the laundry video (see below). One of our first orders of business upon moving here was to get the Comcast baseball package so we could see all of the Sox games. To ease the transition, in a way (we'll see how we hold up when we can watch the Patriots every weekend this fall).

This is the 40th anniversary of the 67 Impossible Dream season, and the Sox and sports press back home have justifiably been making a big deal of it all season. With the possible exception of Carlton Fisk's homer of the pole in the 75 Series, it's the one pre-2004 moment in Sox history that we truly have cause to celebrate. Usually Sox anniversaries of note are the ones we'd rather forget (1947, the 49 collapse, Bucky Bleeping Dent, Billy Bucks, and Aaron Bleeping Boone being the most notable), in which the Sox snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

So it felt very strange to pick up today's Minneapolis Tribune Star and read this article about that same 1967 season and the collapse of the 1967 Twins at the hands of the Sox. The Sox the villains in that story? Impossible! But true.

(NOTE: I just tested the link, and you may have to register to see the article. Just do the 7-day free pass -- all they ask for is your birthdate and zip code.)

Normal evening at home

Don't let the creepy eyes fool you

Say hello to our newest edition, Valerie.

Previous posts may have alluded to our intention of getting a pet at some point, and this is the result. Kim found her at a local cat charity and the girls took to her quickly.

A recent mom herself, Valerie was helping to nurse another litter of kittens before moving in. Judging from her prolonged mewing and constant looks outside the window, we suspect she's at that time when a boyfriend would be especially handy, but she's got an appointment with the vet this week that hopefully will take care of that. So far, she's been really good and the girls are having a blast with her.

The name? Apparently her original name was "Bahama Mama," but neither Kim nor I were having any of that. Ellie immediately suggested Valerie, the result of seeing one-to-many Weight Watchers commercials featuring Valerie Bertinelli and asking, "What's that girl's name?" I personally was lobbying for Rhoda -- a fairly clever name, given our new home state -- but Valerie took hold before I could make any headway. (If push comes to shove, I guess I can always say that she's named after Valerie Harper instead.)

Breaking in the new: Local TV stations

Today I read in the online Boston Globe that Natalie Jacobsen is retiring after 35 years at the WCVB anchor desk, and it got me thinking about how we come to prefer, then stick with, one local TV affiliate over the other.

Nat has been a mainstay for most of my Massachusetts life -- I was never a Liz and Jack fan, and Channel 7 changed formats and faces so many times over the years (R.D. Sahl? Robin Young? Zip Rzeppa?) that loyalty wasn't possible. (I'm betraying my age here -- the younger set will notice that Fox and the other newbies aren't even considered.) But -- and forgive me if I sound like the retrospective promo that is no doubt filling every bit of spare ad time on CVB -- Natalie as the face of news during dinner time was always a given, and something Kim and I agreed on no matter who she was teamed with.

Morning news, of course, is vastly different, but it was during those morning broadcasts, while we were in temporary housing, that we found ourselves "auditioning" the different local affiliates. What we discovered was that morning news is probably not the best criteria for picking a preferred outlet -- the personalities here are even more annoyingly goofy in the morning than are their Boston counterparts.

(ASIDE -- for our friends in Boston, you should see the morning traffic reports here in Minnesota: "Unfortunately, there's a pullover on 35W that has traffic slowed to only 35 miles per hour . . . " is about as bad as it gets.)

When we moved into our house and got into a regular routine, we returned to the dinner hour news and found that a couple of coincidences seemed to be steering our choice without our knowing it.

First, the channels had familiar numeric assignments -- the Twin Cities CBS affiliate is Channel 4, as in Boston, and the ABC affiliate is Channel 5, as in Boston (NBC resides further up the dial at Channel 11). But more importantly, the Channel 5 news team features one Cyndy Brucato, who at first glance looks as though she's Minnesota's answer to Natalie Jacobsen -- been around a while, good gravitas without being a downer, appears to be well-respected. A bit of research shows that her career has taken a number of detours through public relations and government work, so it's not as if she's been sitting in the same seat every night for 35 years.

But I strongly suspect subliminal forces at work, because Channel 5 has become our default for news. As in Boston.

Breaking in the new: Hair care specialists

Let's face it -- sticking with a barber or stylist ends up being a matter first of convenience, then of comfort and familiarity (as well as skill, of course). In my Indianapolis days, I wandered from SuperCuts to SuperCuts until I finally found Kelly, who I stayed with for about 4 years, even after she moved to a different shop. Similarly, my first haircut in Winthrop was the result of a 3-minute walk down Main St. to Terri, who I stayed with for the next 8 years, even after we moved to the other side of town.

So what to do when you move to a new, unknown place? Well, the girls are easy -- there are enough places specializing in "kids cuts" that Kim found a suitable place easily. For her part, Kim hasn't gotten a style since we've been here, and I don't think she's particularly looking forward to breaking a new one in (she adored her East Boston girl).

And I did what what most any guy would do -- I looked in the Yellow Pages, found the closest barber shop, and took a shot. What the hell, it's only hair.

Talk about a complete 180. Terri is a fiftyish woman of Italian descent who decorated her tidy shop with framed sports-themed pictures and mixed standards collections with mafia tunes on her CD player. She knew my name, recommended books to me, and always asked how the girls were doing. My first Minnesota cut was done by Uy (pronounced "we"), a sixtyish Vietnamese immigrant whose barbers chair faces shots of him, in full uniform, taken at his country's Military College in 1969, and who told me several times that he does ladies and children's cuts as well.

The cut itself was fine, and Uy was a pleasant enough guy. It's just after 8 years, I found myself actually missing the sounds of Rod Stewart singing Cole Porter. Then I realized it wasn't the music I was missing (thank GOD), but rather the comfort and familiarity of the friend I'd made in Winthrop.

Message from Ellie

Hi everybody -- this is how Maggie and me painted our driveway today.

Have a happy 4th of July!!

Love, Ellie

Breaking in the new: Ice Cream Shops

For anyone back home who might be wondering where all of those Dairy Queens from years gone by, I have the answer: all of them, and many more, can be found in the Twin Cities area. Kim says she's noticed more of them than McDonalds or Burger Kings, and I don't think she's too far off.

When we came out here for my interview, I knew that my second order of business was to introduce her to the DQ Blizzard, which she'd never had before. True to my prediction, she loved it and immediately vowed to try every flavor if we relocated.

Still, my first instinct is always to try out the non-chain, so when ice cream beckoned after dinner the other night, I suggested we try a smaller, independent shop I'd noticed when we were house-hunting (plus, I always favor hard ice cream over soft if given a choice). I'm not sure what exactly was the worst part of the experience -- no chocolate whatsoever for the girls, no sundae offerings for Kim, or the fly at the bottom of my key lime sorbet. But, long story short, we ended up making 2 ice cream stops that night, much to the delight of the Doncaster women.

There are two other establishments that Kim has noted as must-trys: Coldstone Creamery and Culver's (frozen custard, as opposed to ice cream). Regardless, I've been told that I won't be picking the dessert stops from here on out.

Voodoo Rabbit Update -- Upon closer inspection of the chain-link fence near where I found the poor little guy, I now believe that he caught his leg trying to get under the fence and either ripped it off or gnawed it off. Not that is makes much difference to him (who's lying double-bagged in our trash receptacle for pick-up tomorrow morning), but it certainly eases my mind a bit.

Dead rabbit voodoo? (and the answer)

So I'm talking to Dottie on the phone the other night, about nothing in particular, when I venture over to the window that looks out into the narrow patch between our house and the fence of the house next door (I'm in the sunken half of the house, so the ground outside comes up to about chest high on me).

And what's lying there looking up at me? Dead rabbit. On it's side, eyes open, little front legs looking as though he dropped dead in mid stride.

Odd, I thought. There are no live wires around for him to have stumbled upon, and he certainly didn't fall off the roof. Oh well, it doesn't really matter what happened -- I've got to get it out of there before the girls see it and Kim has a panic attack that there's a dead animal on the property.

So I go outside with shovel and trash bag in hand, stand over the critter -- and suddenly notice that his left hind leg is missing. And it's not just missing -- the entire hind quarter, up to the small of the back, appears to have been purposefully cut away. Then I finally notice the leg, lying about 10 inches away from the rabbit's head, on the opposite end from where the hind quarter is.

I've run a hundred possible scenarios though my mind and nothing makes any sense. Either we've got Pheobe Buffay's cop boyfriend in the neighborhood -- someone who lies in bed or in a hammock, pistol in hand, waiting to shoot any bird or woodland creature that comes into view, or we've got a voodoo witch doctor living nearby who's trying to tell us something.

ANSWER -- I was thinking specifically of telephone/electric poles, but streetlights also work (there are hydrants nearby). I actually made a point to look around on my way to work (a 15-mile trip, though most of it is on the highway), and found only one or two areas where there were poles to be seen. Makes me wonder what visitors to greater Boston neighborhoods think of all of that wood and wire cluttering up the view.

Picture puzzle

For all of our kinfolk back in Boston -- look at the pictures of our street below and identify what sizable feature of the neighborhood landscape is missing:

There may be more than one, but I'm thinking of one in particular -- one that neither Kim nor I noticed until just recently. Answer next time.

No caption necessary

Feature presentation

You'd think that finally settling in would mean a mostly complete level of comfort regarding the house, but in many ways, it's still as if we just moved in this morning.

Here's a rundown of the features of the house that still make us feel like novice homeowners:

• Central air conditioning -- this has been the godsend I knew it would be, yet even that caused some confusion early on. As with furnace switches back home, central air also has a "mast" switch that took us a while to find. And we've yet to figure out the "auto" thermostat -- we just turn it on and off manually when we think it needs it.
  
• In-ground sprinkler system -- another case of turning it on when we need it, even though there is a date/time function that puts it on a schedule. It's also not as effective as we'd like. The lawn gets watered alright, but the circular reach of each sprinkler is such that the coverage doesn't overlap. So what we're left with are rings of discolored dry grass all over the lawn that make it look like a scene location for Mel Gibson's "Signs."
  
• Humidity control -- we haven't even bothered to touch this yet, and wouldn't know what to do with it if we did. Unless a manual turns up, we'll continue to leave it alone.
  
• Water conditioner -- every house we looked at outside of St. Paul had one of these, an obvious testament to the "hardness" of the local water. There's a knob at the top of our unit that indicates "service," so undoubtedly we'll either have someone look at it or explain it to us before the summer's over.
  
• Trash service -- this one actually took us by surprise, and is one that should produce a "wow, really?" from the folks back home. There's no municipal trash collection built in to the town service structure -- we have to contract with a service for a once-a-week pickup, one large bin only, with extra charges for extra trash.

If there is one feature of the house that can genuinely be described as both "cool" and useful at the same time, it's the laundry chute -- or, as the girls call it, the "dirty clothes hole." A little door in our bedroom wall leads to a zippable hanging bag in the downstairs hall, just outside the laundry room. Very handy, though sometimes we have to reach way up and loosen "clothes clogs."

New pics

A few shots from the company outing at Como Park Zoo & Funpark:

And a little shot of the thing most responsible for getting us here in the first place (just received in the mail):

From a distance

For a time when I lived in Indianapolis, I was a regular runner, eventually getting up to 5 miles per run (seems unfathomable now). When I started out, I logged only about a mile per run, and I recall the surprise of people back home when I told them that a mile run was a run around the block. Literally. After leaving the entrance to my housing development, one lap around the block I lived on was slightly more than a mile.

This is an example of how distance can be distorted by what you're used to vs. what actually is, and we're finding that living in a Twin Cities suburb provides a similar distortion from what we were used to in Winthrop.

Out temp housing complex was right off Rte. 35E, but was removed from Eagan's main retail drags, so every time we needed to go shopping or hit a restaurant, we had to get on the highway to get there. On our first day in town, I went grocery shopping while the Kim got the girls settled. I was familiar with Cub Foods (think Market Basket) from my days in Indiana and knew there was one a few exits down the highway, so that's where I went. The mere concept of getting on the highway to do grocery shopping made it seem SO far away, compared to the 3-4 miles I usually drove to get from Pleasant St. to Shaw's in Revere, but it was actually about a mile and a half.

A similar distortion occurs every day when I go to work. The drive to the campus is about 14 miles from out house, then it's "just" a walk from the parking lot. But there are 4500 people working in this one location, and the 6 available parking lots fill up quick. By the time I arrive at the lot at around 8 am, I have about a .4 mile walk from my car to the back door of the building -- which is almost exactly the distance I walked from the Aquarium T station to the Northern Avenue Bridge on my way to my former place of employment.

No deep insights today -- just a reflection. Just as perceptions of time have been disturbed by network programming coming on at 7 pm and daylight still visible past 9:30 pm, perceptions of distance also need considerable adjustment.

Video of the girls

Kim has joined the YouTube generation and posted a short video of the girls in the yard. Check out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etfFdhIxq9Q

Father's Day, and another big scare

Flashback to May 2000 --

Kim and I had just moved into our first house, with all of the caution and nervousness that goes with it. Within the first week or so, Kim noticed water in the basement. A call to Winthrop's major plumbing outfit resulted in the discovery of a broken pipe in the wall along the kitchens of the apartments. A major expense right that we weren't ready for off the bat -- although, truth be told, it would up being a blessing in disguise. The guy who took care of us, Bill Grayson, became our "plumber friend" and my personal hero for all of the small jobs he did for us at a moment's notice. (And his daughter Maura was a godsend to us as Ellie's first babysitter.)

Fast forward to 2007 --

The other day -- not 2 full weeks into the ownership of our new house -- we noticed a wet spot in the carpet of the family room that was getting bigger and wetter by the day. Once again, we were bracing ourselves for a big expense that we weren't ready to tackle, and visions of ripped out walls and jackhammers kept me up most of Wednesday night. Two visits by a local plumber later, it turned out the culprit was a condensation hose from our air conditioning unit that was supposed to be positioned over the drain, but was instead tucked away behind the furnace in our laundry room. We've got to replace the padding under that section of the carpet and dry the whole thing out, but that's nothing compared to the major pipe replacements I was envisioning. (It's yet to be determined if this episode is a blessing of any kind.)

In both cases, my immediate reaction was to call my dad.

When it comes to things like this, I guess I never really grew out of the childhood notion that he knows how to diagnose and fix just about anything around the house. As I got older, I realized that he just learned by doing and watching, like I did. But that has never kept me from going to my "go-to" guy.

And truth be told, he's been, and continues to be, my "go-to" guy for just about everything in my life. Advice on my first mortgage, unexpected tickets to a Sox or Bruins game, sharing oversight duties at the Stool, or just needing a guy to talk to about something going on in the family -- JD has always been my go-to guy.

So when we noticed that the carpet was getting wet, it stung a bit to know I couldn't call Somerville and have the voice on the other end say, "I'll come over tomorrow and take a look at it." The sting wasn't that he wouldn't be the one to figure it out -- I could care less who figured it out. The sting was that my "go-to" guy wasn't close by, ready to give me reassurance that his mere presence has given so many, many times over the years.

Perhaps it's appropriate that the carpet got wet when it did, four days before Father's Day. It gives me another blog entry, to be sure, but it also gives me a long overdue opportunity to let the world know how much I honestly love and miss my dad.

The flying car

I briefly touched on the differences between relocating 15 years ago and doing so today in an earlier post. But my sister Lynne reiterated as much following an online game session we had the other night:

"Though I know you've probably thought of this already, an observation on what it's like to live in the future: Twenty years ago the long-distance rates were such that you could only talk to the family once a week, and we had to watch the clock the whole time. Now we can e-mail as much as we want, long-distance calls don't break the bank, and last night people in three different states played Scrabble together. Where's my flying car?"

All within an easy drive

Sunday was our warmest day yet here, and the sun was particularly strong. Historically, it just the type of day we would have packed up and went to "Nana & Grampy's beach" until 6pm, so after finishing breakfast, my mind immediately flipped to the trying to find a place to take the girls swimming.

Fortunately, a quick look on the Burnsville web site turned up Crystal Lake Beach (about 3 miles away), so I decided to give it a try. As I suspected, it was very much like Sandy Beach on the Mystic Lakes in Medford -- big parking lot, a roped off area for swimming, a bath house, and picnic tables in the shade. The main differences were no life guard on duty and a lot of speedboats and jet skis further out on the lake.

The girls liked it well enough, and of course I couldn't help comparing it to afternoons with the cousins on White Horse. But I have fond connections with Sandy Beach as well -- that's where my Nana & Grampy met, and to this day, I can recall the summer of 1984 and how fantastic it was to pull over on my way home to take a plunge after a long day of unloading tractor trailers at the Marshall's warehouse in Woburn -- so that took care of some of the home sentimentality.

But get this -- as I was sitting on the beach watching the girls, I looked out over the lake and saw, looming over the far side, Burnsville's Buck Hill ski area, and I couldn't help but think of one of Boston's major tourism selling points -- "skiing and swimming, all within an easy drive."

Apparently, our surroundings haven't changed as much as one would think.

First looks

Well, pretty much everything is unpacked and put away, which means it's as good a time as any to give everyone back home a few glimpses of how we're living now:

Kim said Maggie walked around the house the entire first day saying, "I'm SO happy that all our stuff came back!" And I must admit, there is a certain euphoria that comes with seeing so many familiar things after 3 weeks (until you have to sort through it and dispose of the boxes).

Does everyone know how much I hate hate hate hate hate hate doing the grass? Or any other kind of yard work, for that matter? Well, how's this for poetic justice:

My father-in-law and brothers-in-law and no doubt are tickled to see this.

Finally (for now), I leave you with this shot of our garage ceiling:

This hole was not there when I woke up this morning. I'll leave it to you to figure out what happened (hint: think the 3 Stooges).

Wild life

Ever since we committed to this move, Kim & I have been discussing the possibility of getting the girls a pet. Both of them are mildly intrigued by the prospect of getting a cat, and their parents think it might benefit them (Maggie especially) if we got a dog.

Negotiations are still pending, but getting an animal may turn out to be a moot point. Today Kim met the acquaintance of Mrs. Gregerson from across the street, who gave her a flurry of information about the neighborhood, including a few things about our property that we weren't prepared for:

• A family of bunnies has been noticed in our driveway -- she seems to think they're living in a burrow under the garage.
  
• We can expect to see deer in our backyard from time to time, as they apparently are drawn to the apple trees at the back of our property.
  
• On a somewhat creepier note, coyotes have also been seen in the neighborhood from time to time.
  
• To top it off, she says to expect a lot of mosquitoes in the summer -- which, I would expect, would in turn mean large numbers of bats.
  

Under the cherry spoon

With the traditional Plymouth cookout out of the picture for a while, we spent our day before Memorial Day by getting out of temp housing and exploring a little bit. Every book and brochure about Twin Cities tourism features a shot of the cherry-and-spoon sculpture, so we set out to find it.

Kim has posted the pictures taken that day at the Walker Arts Center sculpture garden -- you can see them at:

http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=94151181097802673/l=268438970/g=31956021/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Southbound and down

It was like a white-collar, upper-Midwest version of Smokey and the Bandit -- all I needed was Sally Field riding shotgun and Jackie Gleason chasing me.

The closing of our home on Pleasant St. went off without a hitch on Friday May 25, and the proceeds were deposited in our Massachusetts bank account the following Tuesday -- plenty of time, we thought, to have the money transferred to our new Minnesota bank account in time for our closing on Friday June 1.

Silly us. Nothing so seemingly simple ever is. Turns out the wiring of so large a sum is not a simple thing -- there are rules, regulations, restrictions and, of course, fees and more fees involved. We were told that the only way to make sure we had a cashier's check in hand for our closing was for one of us to drive to the closest Bank of America branch and get one.

That's how I found myself on the road at 6am Friday morning, headed for Mason City, Iowa.

I logged an awful lot of miles in my Indiana days, and this trip reminded me very much of that -- miles upon miles of wide open spaces, farmland as far as the eye could see, and not much to choose from on the radio. In fact, after my CD of choice ended as I near the Iowa state line, I committed to listening to the first station I came across on the dial (at least until I arrived at the bank). It turned out to be the local affiliate of the American Family Radio Network -- lots of songs featuring lambs, rivers and light.

I reached Mason City at 8am on the nose and found the bank branch 5 minutes later. Having just short of 30 minutes to kill before it opened, I decided to get my oil changed at the Jiffy Lube next door. Had a fun time telling my story to the guys who work there as well, as the older Michigan couple who was having their car serviced.

I stepped into the BOA branch at 8:30am and waited for the teller -- "Bobbie Jo," by her name tag -- to finished up with an elderly gentleman she referred to as "Marshall." Throughout my short time there, I didn't hear one "How can I help you?" or explanation of what banking service was needed. Every bit of talk was a pleasantry of some kind:

• "How y'all doin' this morning?"
• "Where's that fine granddaughter of yours?"
• etc.

When I explained to Bobbie Jo that I needed a sizable cashier's check, she immediately said, "Oh, closing on a house today, are we?" Again, flashbacks to Indiana, where every small town is just like that. Bobbie Jo fixed me up in short order and I was back on the road by 8:50am, just enough time to make the 11am closing.

Kim and the girls pulled in to the parking lot not 2 minutes after I did, and we were soon signing away across the table from the former owners of our new residence. A very nice couple who were headed back to their native Wisconsin, they gave us the names of three potential babysitters in the neighborhood, wished us the very best and gave us the keys to our family's second home.

Temp housing

Temporary housing could've been SO much worse.

Originally we were looking at the prospect of spending up to 3 weeks in a 400-sq foot hotel room and were not happy about it. Thankfully, the nice folks at the relocation service were able to negotiate something more suitable for a family of 4 -- a "penthouse" suite, which looks very much like this:

Clearly a far more comfortable arrangement, the main advantage is that the girls have their own room downstairs, with a door that closes and allows their parents to watch TV or whatever. When all is said and done, however, it IS a hotel room, and Ellie in particular feels the loss of space and privacy -- Maggie, being Maggie, just rolls with it.

Truthfully, this place has worked out far better than expected due to some very special touches. We were told that we would get daily maid service (Kim's been loving that), but during the first few days, they went so far as to turn our dishwasher on for us, regardless of how many dishes were in it. We knew we would be getting free breakfast in the lounge each morning, but one staff member in particular has been extremely attentive to the girls, bringing out small toys and offering to make special items beyond what was available that day. The pool, which opened on Sunday (day before Memorial Day), has been a life saver (no pun intended), especially for Ellie, and the on-site shuttle has taken me to work each morning, meaning that Kim and the girls didn't have to go through the hassle of driving me to work.

The lone low points are those to be expected in a hotel environment -- limited television options and inconsistent wireless connectivity. While there's nothing to be done about the former, the lobby does have a communal computer that has allowed Kim and I to check email and do other computer tasks at least a few times a day.

All in all, we couldn't have asked for a better arrangement -- but we'll be very glad to be in our own place next week.

Weeknights at 8 -- 7 Central

On second thought, I'll put off commentary on our temporary housing to note the thing that's really been messing with us to this point (and by "us," I mean Kim and me).

In theory, the 1-hour time difference between the Boston and Twin Cities shouldn't pose too much of a problem. It's not like when we were in London and had to stay awake until 4:30 am to watch the Patriots win their first Super Bowl.

But in practice, something very weird is going on.

Let's use Kim as an example. She usually likes going to bed close to 10pm, so on Mondays she would watch "24" (at 9pm eastern, 8pm central) for an hour, then hit the sack. She's almost conditioned to feel sleepy at 10pm.

In Minnesota, by the time "24" is over and the clock reads only 9pm, that knowledge takes over and convinces the mind that she really CAN'T be sleepy, because it's too early.

So the solution, you might think, is to stop watching so damn much television. But you'd be wrong there too. Latitudinally, Minneapolis is as far north as Bangor ME and Salem OR, and is farther north than Toronto. So leading up to the summer solstice, it stays lighter longer. Our first few nights here, we were wondering why it was still light out after 9pm (a friend of mine and Minnesota native tells me to wait until mid summer, when it's still light out after 10pm).

Those two factors combined are wreaking havoc on our sleep patterns. Fortunately, we're keeping the girls at a strict 8pm bedtime, so they're not impacted at all (they're just getting up a bit "earlier" than they used to).

Nightie-night.

Planes, trams & automobiles (that's right, TRAMS)

Anybody who knows Ellie to any degree will understand our concern heading into Saturday morning's flight out of Boston. This is a girl who, historically, has panicked at any hint of loud noise and/or attention directed her way. (Her lone "performance" in a dance recital was a classic.)

So while both girls were great on all pre-flight counts -- getting up at 5:30 am to get to the airport, enduring baggage check-in, moving slowly through security and enduring a 1-hour delay in taking off -- Kim and I were both anticipating a minor scene as the plane made its way down the runway.

Indeed, as the plane sped up, her hands went up to her ears and she got that look she gets just before the breakdown. But to our surprise, she looked at Kim and started smiling. At lift-off, the smile got bigger. And we knew we were home-free.

And thanks to Auntie Lynne's loaner copy of "Sesame Street Old School," the 3-hour flight was episode-free as well.

On a symbolic note: As we came down from the clouds over Wisconsin and crossed into Minnesota airspace, I looked out the window and literally saw our future -- my new company's headquarters, clear as day, on the horizon below.

Post-flight notes --

• Maggie had an accident waiting for the baggage, but both of them liked the tram ride from the terminal to the car rental area.
  
• Moments after I accepted a compliment on my ability to stack 9 pieces of baggage on a small cart, they tumbled into the road after the card hit a seam in the concrete.
  
• Our rental vehicle is an overly-bright shade of blue that seems to be reserved solely for rental vehicles.

Next entry: The thrill that is temporary housing

Back to earth

Nothing like having young kids to bring things into focus for you.

Friday wasn't a great day for me. Watching my house empty out, I spent far too much time wandering from room to room, noticing the little things I always meant to do but never got around to, scribbling our names in little nooks and crannies of closets and the attic, and generally being far too sentimental for my own good. Sandra (our much missed tenant and de facto member of the family) didn't make things any easier by coming home early and engaging me in yet another round of reminiscing. After I put the keys on the counter and closed the back door for the last time, I was in what would be charitably called a "major funk" and arrived at the hotel convinced that it wouldn't wear off for days.

The first thing Ellie said upon my arrival was, "Daddy, tomorrow, are we going to Minnesota?!"(followed by "Can we go in the pool?!")

It put me in mind of the excitement I felt when my family moved to Chandler St. from the Bossi's house on Chetwynd Rd. I had no inclination toward sentimentality then -- I was far too excited about the future, what was to come, to dwell on what would be no more. At such a young age, I had no appreciation for what it takes to make a house into a home, nor for the relationships that can be forged (if you're extremely lucky) within the two-family structure. And why would I? I was 8.

My mother tells me how tough it was to leave after 7+ years living in the Bossi house. Both of my parents had grown close to the family and always considered themselves extremely fortunate to have fallen into such a positive tenant-landlord arrangement. Now I have an idea of how she felt, and I think the sadness isn't so much regret about moving on as much as it is sincere gratitude for the chapter that is ending.

So now my 4-year old daughter throws cold water in my face (literally as well as figuratively, for the pool at the Embassy Suites was on the chilly side) and snaps me back to reality -- this IS indeed about our future, so the sooner I start focusing on that, the better.

Final night on Pleasant Street

May 16, 2007 -- The past two months has been a whirlwind for us, from the interview and the house hunting trip to selling our Massachusetts home, coordinating and finalizing the moving plans, and saying our goodbyes to friends and family. Now, on the last night in our home of the past 6 years, I'm starting this blog as a record of our new adventure.

When I returned to Boston in 1994 after 9 years in Indiana, I told my family, "This is it -- this time it's for good." But the funny thing is, fate and fortune aren't tied to a specific place. You go where they take you, lest you regret not seizing an opportunity when it presents itself.

And so it is that Kim, Ellie, Maggie and I are venturing from our roots to see what's doin' in the Gopher State.

Understandably, we're walking the inevitable tightrope between excitement and sentimentality. Family is the strongest tie that binds, and leaving our parents, siblings, nieces, nephews and cousins is the hardest part of relocating. At the same time, moving halfway across the country isn't what it was 15-20 year ago -- cell phones, email, and the video-capable web have made the world a smaller place and promise to take much of the sting out of moving away from those we love.

And, hopefully, this blog will be a big part of it -- especially in the beginning.

Entries will be scattered until we're fully computer accessible and established in our new home, so your patience is appreciated. We should have plenty of photos and details along the way, so we hope you'll check in often.

Minnesota, here we come.