Pat's Journal

Break out the ice cubes!

2010-03-07T22:08:00.003-06:00

It's been a banner day at our household. The temperature hit 50 degrees for the first time in months. I shoveled off the deck to allow use of the gas grill. We grilled our dinner outdoors. And we purchased a new refrigerator. Now a few more details:

Sharon and I have been looking at refrigerators over the last few weeks. This is because the state of Minnesota is offering a $200 rebate if we buy an "Energy Star" qualified appliance and recycle our old appliance. The rebate applied to dishwashers, washing and drying machines, and refrigerators. The only appliance that we hadn't purchased recently was a refrigerator, which we bought when we moved into this house almost 20 years ago, so it was due for replacement. The new refrigerator is a top-of-the-line Samsung, with French doors, bottom freezer, and ice maker/water dispenser which we didn't have before. We weren't planning on buying one today, but Sharon found a good price on this model, so we went for it. The new fridge will arrive on March 23rd.

Yesterday we spent the day at Sharon's parents' house. They are planning on getting a flat-screen TV, which will not fit in their current entertainment center, so they bought a new entertainment center which will accommodate the new TV. Of course, the entertainment center needed to be assembled, so we spent several hours putting it together, moving the audio and video equipment to the new center, and moving the old center out to their garage. The hard part is over - once they buy the new TV, it will be a simple installation.

In other recent news, we had an orchestra concert last weekend. The orchestra played with all the middle school string students in our school district. Since our daughter K is also in middle school and plays clarinet, Sharon asked our conductor if K could play in the concert as well. The conductor said it was OK, so the three of us got to play in a concert for the first time. K also got to go on a ski trip Friday night with other people from our church. Welch Village was open for all-night skiing, so the group got to ski there until 4 AM. I picked her up from the church at 5:30 AM, we went home and both went to bed.

Work has been mellow. I've got two major projects this year, but they are just getting started. The week of Feb. 15th I took a programming course for a new control system we'll be putting in several plants over the next few years. I like to think of it as job security.

Time to sign off. Sandra Bullock won the best actress Oscar. It's about time!

An Olympic day

2010-02-13T22:24:00.003-06:00

I'm loving the Winter Olympics so far. The Americans just took 1st and 3rd in women's moguls, and earlier this evening Apolo Ohno won his sixth Olympic medal, tying Bonnie Blair for most medals by an American in the Winter Olympics.

What's also fun is reading the blogs and Tweets of other people watching the Olympics. I regularly read three blogs of people that live in Vancouver, and they have been writing and posting pictures of their live experiences, which you don't hear about on TV. My favorite Tweet was from someone watching k.d. lang perform during the Opening Ceremonies, who said she looked like the love child of Clay Aiken, Christopher Walken, and fat Elvis. We both thought that her singing was superb.

In other news, S's basketball team won their game today, despite being 9 points down in the last period. Sharon and I sat in back of an older couple who was cheering for the opposing team. They had scowls on their faces the entire time. When one of the opposing team members knocked down one of our players, and nothing was called, I yelled, "Foul!" The old lady in front of me barked at me, "That was no foul." They thought they were basketball know-it-alls. I was happy to cheer our team's victory at the end, while the old couple were not pleased.

I still need to get a card and gift for Sharon for V-Day tomorrow. I think V-Day is a holiday manufactured by the candy and greeting card companies, and that it's better to show your love for your partner every day, but women still expect something. I'll probably make a trip to Rosedale Shopping Center tomorrow, where they recently opened a See's Candies store. Before the store opened, you could only get See's in Denver and on the West Coast, and their candy is one of Sharon's favorites.

Everyone will be off work and school on Monday, Presidents' Day, except for me, thanks to my boss. Can't wait!

It's getting deep here

2010-02-12T09:38:00.003-06:00

The engineer in me had to know exactly how deep the snow was in the yard. So I took the yardstick outdoors and measured in several locations. (And had I had a camera handy, I would have snapped a pic and posted it.)

The answer: An average of 18 inches of compacted snow, including on the roof of the house. Not East Coast deep, but still impressive. Must go out with the roof rake this weekend and knock some of it off. The bottom of the swing set crossbar is 16 inches above the ground.

Skating away on the thin ice of a new day

2010-02-11T16:53:00.003-06:00

It's Thursday and I wish it was the weekend already. I've got a bunch of work tasks to do, none of which inspire me. Also found out today that I was signed up for a 5-day course next week, which my boss neglected to mention to me. Luckily I'm not busy, and the course subject is interesting. But it would have been nice to know sooner.

I went out to the Comcast service center at lunchtime today to pick up more cable TV equipment for home. Comcast's network is going nearly all-digital on March 31st, so without the converter boxes I received today, the kids' bedroom TV's would only receive the basic channels - local channels and community access. Comcast said the boxes were free. I hope so. I'm already paying way too much to watch TV, but I'm addicted to all those HD channels, the DVR, and On Demand movies.

Also looking forward to watching the 2010 Winter Olympics. I love the Olympics, and especially the Winter Games, although I don't actually do any of the sports. Figure skating is my favorite winter sport, followed closely by downhill skiing and the bobsled/luge. Speed skating is pretty interesting too. My hometown, West Allis, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee, for years had the only indoor Olympic-size speed skating oval in the U.S. (There are a few others now.) Because of the oval, a lot of famous speed skaters were from my area. My brother went to high school with Dan Jansen (when D.J. was in town), and I knew Dan's older sister - not the one who died. Some other speed skaters from Wisconsin included Eric and Beth Heiden, Bonnie Blair, and Chris Witty.

Now that I live in the MSP area, we have another famous local Olympic athlete to cheer on, Lindsey Vonn. I was bummed to hear yesterday that she injured her shin last week and may not be able to compete in some of the skiing events. Although I just checked the newspapers and after Lindsey took a practice run today she was encouraged that she was able to manage the pain.

We've got a lot of snow on the ground right now. Check out this photo of our house I took this morning:

It's not nearly as much as the East Coast has received this week, but all the small storms and very little melting has added up. My gauge is the crossbar on the swing set in the back yard. Usually the snow does not touch the crossbar. Today the crossbar is about half-covered.

That is all.

Faking it

2010-02-09T16:10:00.003-06:00

Tonight we have yet another orchestra rehearsal - strings only! Since Sharon and I play string instruments, we don't get out of this one. It's a Mozart violin concerto and isn't too difficult except for the first movement, which is filled with sixteenth notes that fly by at the speed of sound. I'm sure I won't get them all by concert time - less than three weeks away - but hopefully I can play enough of them and "fake" the rest.

One thing that non-musicians may not know is that almost every musical group "fakes" or doesn't play all the notes of a piece when the piece gets difficult. This usually is OK because of two reasons.

1) The audience is not usually familiar with every note of a composition and only notices when something is out of key or doesn't sound right.

2) Some of the parts were intended by the composer to create a certain feeling, such as gentle waves or the sound of a clock, and as long as enough of the correct notes are played to create that feeling, the piece will still sound good.

Some of the classical composers knew their music theory and placed notes where they should be in their compositions. But that doesn't mean that they ever tried to play the notes they wrote on the instruments they were written for! There have been many pieces I've played that I looked at and said, "What drugs was (insert composer's name here) on when he wrote this?" Mozart, however, rarely made his pieces difficult to play, and they are usually very well structured and pleasant to listen to.

In other family news, I'm relearning physics all over again, since S is taking it this semester and I'm helping him with the homework. I like to call it "Late Night Physics" since S usually asks me for help about 10 PM, when I'd like to go to bed. I also took the first step in applying for S's college financial aid, filling out the FAFSA form. I was more than a little disappointed when the calculations showed we will get little to no aid, since our salaries are too high and I was mistakenly responsible by saving too much money for college. Well, maybe if we're lucky we can still get a low-interest student loan.

Got to zip home now for a quick dinner and then to play Mozart.

February made me shiver, with every paper I'd deliver

2010-02-03T12:14:00.002-06:00

It's time to bring this blog into 2010. So what have I been up to this year so far?

-- A breather at work

Everyone and their brother wanted to have their projects completed by the end of the year in 2009. Since we're in the new year, now there are few deadlines. I've been able to take vacation days off that I worked on in December. I still have enough things to do, but it's at my own pace and schedule. No large projects yet, but I have heard about a few that could be interesting.

-- Sharon's brother finally out of the hospital

Sharon's brother in California went in for surgery on 11/19/09, and due to a series of complications spent over two months there. This was emotionally draining on him and his family, who were at his bedside almost full-time. Sharon had a few days off of work on MLK weekend, so she flew out to L.A. to see him, cheer him up, and give some relief to the other family members. Her brother finally went home for the last time this past Saturday (1/30). He's doing better and is resting at home.

-- S's college options

My son S has been accepted by MSU-Mankato and MSU-St. Cloud, and was put on a waiting list for acceptance at Marquette (my alma mater). He also decided to apply to UW-Milwaukee, since he'd really like to attend a school in a big city away from home. We haven't heard from them yet. Right now St. Cloud is the backup choice, so we're starting to look at financial aid and housing options there, and filling out the FAFSA forms.

-- Vikings disappoint again

With the addition of Brett Favre to the Vikings and HDTV's to our household, we have watched more football this season than in recent memory. I had no high expectations for the Vikings to win in the playoffs, but after the way they pounded Dallas in the first playoff game, I was hopeful. Then the Saints game came along, and even though the Vikings made numerous mistakes during the game, they still had a chance to win at the end. Of course, Brett Favre, who had thrown very few interceptions all season, decided to throw one at the critical point in the game. The Saints capitalized on his error and won. Now on Sunday all I'll get excited about watching are the commercials.

Other than those headlines, we're following our usual winter routines. S is playing rec basketball, K is skiing at Afton Alps, and Sharon and I are rehearsing with the orchestra. Our next concert is on Feb. 28th. More details to come.

Groundhog Day

2010-02-02T09:05:00.002-06:00

"Groundhog Day" with Chinese subtitles, originally uploaded by Pat_and_Sharon.

Nothing beats watching "Groundhog Day" in China. I don't know if the humor translates very well, though.

"When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter."

Happy Groundhog Day, everyone!

Better late than never

2010-02-01T23:11:00.002-06:00

I haven't been feeling the urge to blog lately, but I feel I must, now that we've entered a new year. Here is a summary of what happened in 2009:

January - After some well-deserved time off for the holidays, I returned to China to continue the chemical plant startup. Due to the project schedule, I got to return to the U.S. a week earlier than planned. I stayed home from Jan. 17th until Feb. 6th, until Chinese New Year celebrations were over.

February - My final trip to China. I had two new colleagues join me on this trip who came to help with specific aspects of the project. It was fun having Mike and Mark helping me out and being able to show them around Shanghai. I returned to the U.S. on Feb. 28th, which was also my 51st birthday.

March - Still helping out China from home. Began college visits with son S with first campus visit to UW-Eau Claire. Later in the month Mom thought she was having heart problems and had herself admitted to the hospital in Milwaukee. I went to Milwaukee Mar. 27th-29th to see what I could do to help. S and Sharon visit UW-Stout in Menomonie.

April - More college visits with S during spring break. During the first week of the month we visited MSU-St. Cloud and U of M-Duluth. Mom's found to have low sodium levels. S takes ACT test, and decides to retake test in June. S starts working at Arby's, his first job. We celebrate Sharon's birthday.

May - I do more in-town project work. We buy airline tickets to visit Sharon's brother and his family in southern CA in July. I spent a bit of time scanning old negatives. I was called for and reported for jury duty, but was dismissed after one-half day. We celebrate S's 17th birthday.

June - I travel to Guin, Alabama for work for the first time. The family also made a trip to Milwaukee to help Mom remove some appliances from her house. We also took K to a Japanese language camp in northern Minnesota. She had a great time.

July - The family flies to San Diego to visit Sharon's brother Brian in Orange County. We went to Hollywood, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Catalina Island, and back to San Diego. I took more vacation at home after returning from California and worked on home projects.

August - Overloaded at work. I filled in for several people who were on vacation. Spent second half of the month on checkout in Guin, Alabama and worked 16 days in a row. Sharon had to replace broken sump pump at home while I was away due to heavy rains. The family celebrated K's 12th birthday while I was away.

September - School begins for the kids. Sharon spends a weekend in northern MN with her college friends. Work continues to be overwhelming. I bought a new printer for home.

October - My planned one-week vacation shrinks to one day because of heavy workload. Sharon has a medical procedure done (on my one day off). Son S applies to three colleges. We go see "Little House On The Prairie, the Musical" at the Ordway.

November - Purchased furniture for the home theater room in the basement, in addition to the audio equipment we've been adding piece-by-piece. Sharon and I go to see Steely Dan at Northrup Auditorium - excellent concert! Son S has a minor medical procedure. Thanksgiving is at Sharon's parents, but daughter K and I go to Milwaukee over Thanksgiving weekend. Sharon's brother B has a medical procedure and ends up staying because of complications.

December - Still overloaded at work, I spend two weeks in Decatur, Alabama on another checkout. This trip, however, puts me over 50,000 air miles for 2009, meaning I will be Gold Elite on Delta in 2010. A couple of my projects are cancelled, easing the workload. I get home on two weekends in order to play with the orchestra and a local church. Mom and my brother drive up from Milwaukee to spend Christmas with us. Sharon's brother is still in hospital at the end of the month. We go to see Avatar in 3-D at the MN Zoo's IMAX theater on New Year's Eve.

I started this post on 1/1/10, and finished it today (2/1/10), so I'm still not posting as frequently as I'd like. Work has slowed down considerably so maybe I'll do better in 2010. Tomorrow, a recap of January.

Are you reelin' in the years

2009-11-21T23:01:00.002-06:00

Sitting here watching SNL on a Saturday night, so I thought I'd actually write something on this blog. I've just been so busy with work and life that writing a whole blog post seems to be too much to handle. It's easier to whip out a 140-character update on Twitter.

As Kenan Thompson would say, "What up with that?"

Work continues to be a struggle. I have several small projects currently, and all the project leaders want their project done NOW, before the end of the year. We are also supposed to use half of our banked vacation plus all of our earned vacation by the end of the year, and I foolishly decided to use some of those days around the holidays. In order to meet the project deadlines I may have to work on some of my vacation days. I'm not happy about this.

I am enjoying the pleasant weather we've had this November. It has allowed me to take time in preparing the yard and house for winter. For every day we have good weather, it makes the winter that much shorter. I also discovered that mowing leaves and bagging them is much more efficient than using the leaf blower.

So what else have we been up to the last few weeks?

-- Performed in the East Metro Symphony Orchestra's inaugural concert
-- Went to see Steely Dan at Northrup Auditorium; great concert!
-- Family members had various medical procedures done
-- Bought new furniture for our home theater in the basement

The Steely Dan concert was excellent. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker performed with an 11-piece band that faithfully reproduced the music that they recorded in the studio during the '70s. Although I enjoy all their music, old and new, they played almost everything you currently hear on classic rock radio. It was a display of superb musicianship.

The furniture for the basement was long overdue. Now we can actually have people over to watch a movie. In addition to the furniture, I've been purchasing various components to complete the surround-sound system. The current piece, a Klipsch subwoofer, will arrive next week. I'm looking forward to shaking the house foundations. The final piece will be a Blu-Ray DVD player, which are getting cheaper every day.

Today we had Sharon's parents come over to visit. Sharon and her mom went to a few estate sales, while her dad stayed with me at home while I put up the Christmas lights on the house. When it's in the 50's outside, it's a great time to put the lights up.

Still not exactly sure how Thanksgiving will turn out. The current plan is we will be staying home, but I'm not sure which house the meal will be at. Because S has a follow-up appointment from his medical procedure this past week on Friday, he and Sharon will be staying home while K and I travel to Milwaukee to visit my mom, who needs a few tasks done around her house. I'm hoping to only work on Monday this week, and take the rest of the week off.

Hopefully I'll be more witty next time, and have pictures to post. Right now I'm just happy I actually wrote an entire blog post.

Our 20th wedding anniversary

2009-10-19T21:40:00.001-05:00

Our 20th wedding anniversary, originally uploaded by Pat_and_Sharon.

Sharon and I celebrating our 20th anniversary at home.

I'm on "pinz!" and needles

2009-10-19T15:49:00.002-05:00

It's a good feeling to not be pressured at work. I was expecting to have to be ready for a major software installation at one of our company's plants this week, but after attending a meeting at the plant this afternoon, I found out that others need to get their tasks done before the installation can proceed. So that gives me more time to prepare, and a few minutes to blog.

Sharon went back to work today, and the kids are back in school, now that the Minnesota teachers' convention is over. We didn't do much during their time off, since I still had to work. Sharon has recovered from her medical procedure last Tuesday, though she will still need to take it easy and not lift heavy things for a few weeks.

I did get an unexpected vacation on Friday afternoon, when the power in the area around my office went down around lunchtime. I went to lunch, figuring that by the time I returned, power would be restored. However, it wasn't, and when it was determined that power would not be coming back on until 3 PM or later, the company sent everyone home. I had already left by then, since my laptop's battery had died and I couldn't do any more work at my desk.

Over the weekend, K went to a birthday party at a new entertainment center nearby called "Pinz!" (I love to say the name because it has a Z in it.) It features bowling, as you would guess by the name, but also has a huge arcade, laser tag, and a restaurant. I asked K if she went up to the service counter and asked the staff why they spelled "Pinz!" with a Z, but she said no. No guts, no glory : - )

While K was at "Pinz!", Sharon and I went to a huge furniture clearance sale, jointly run by HOM Furniture and Gabberts. HOM sells run-of-the-mill furniture while Gabberts is known locally for having quality merchandise. That's exactly what we saw reflected in the merchandise available. Most of the HOM stuff was mismatched or had major flaws, such as chunks of wood missing, but was hugely discounted. The Gabberts items were not as heavily discounted and few had any flaws. However, even at the discounted price, the Gabberts items were still more than we could afford, and I did not want to purchase any of the HOM items as the flaws were too major, so we ended up not buying anything. Next time there is a sale similar to this we'll be sure to get there on the first day when there are still good items to buy.

We also watched "Slumdog Millionaire" on HBO Saturday night, and the Vikings Sunday afternoon. "Slumdog" was a very good movie which deserved the awards it won at the Oscars, though it was distressing to see how some people live in India. The Vikings were distressing in other ways. (Nice segue, huh?) The defense fell apart in the fourth quarter, and they were lucky to win when the Baltimore Ravens missed a field goal with 2 seconds left.

In geek news, I reformatted the hard drive on our home desktop computer this weekend, since it had picked up a nasty virus that thwarted my usual methods of cleaning up a virus. It disabled the "system restore" function and would not let the computer boot up into "safe" mode to do repairs. After backing up the family's data - mostly K's drawings and S's iTunes MP3's - I erased the hard drive and reinstalled the original applications. It works much better now. I also spent time organizing my MP3 music collection.

The weather was nice on Saturday, Sunday, and today, but since it's October, it won't last long. Back to the 40's and rain by Wednesday. Oh joy.

Until next time...

The two shall be as one

2009-10-13T22:04:00.002-05:00

Hasn't been much slack time at work lately, therefore no blogging has been happening. I had planned on taking this entire week off on vacation, but because of the workload I'm only taking today off, and working the rest of the week.

Today Sharon had a minor outpatient medical procedure, which I accompanied her to. All went well and we were home by 1 PM. While she rested, I had time to read and answer work E-mails on my day off. Sharon will have to take it easy for the next week. Since she works at a school, we scheduled the procedure today so that she only misses two days of work. She already had Thursday and Friday off because of the annual Minnesota teachers' convention.

In other news, tomorrow is our wedding anniversary, and it's a big one. We've been married 20 years! Can you believe that? I'm amazed that it's been that long, and that she still puts up with me. It must be true, since our son S is 17 and will graduate this coming June. Time flies. Because of Sharon's recovery, we won't be going out to celebrate for another week or two. But there will be flowers and cake tomorrow for sure. We will do something that Sharon's wanted to do very soon - attend the "Little House On The Prairie" musical that's currently playing locally.

We had snow early Saturday morning and again on Monday. Most of the leaves on the trees in our yard haven't even changed color yet! The leaves are late in changing but the snow is far too early. The snow was good for one reason - it forced me to do some much-needed yard maintenance this past weekend.

We've also spent a lot of time watching sports lately. The recent Vikings-Packers game was pretty exciting. As a Milwaukee native, for many years I have had conflicting loyalties to the Packers and Vikings. Things got even more confusing when Brett Favre joined the Vikings this year. However, the Vikings seem to be the team most likely going to the Super Bowl this year, so I'm backing them. If my dad, a lifelong Packers fan, was still around, he would have been so upset with the results of the latest Vikings-Packers matchup, and it would have been funny to listen to him fume. The Twins provided some additional excitement as well, until they met the Yankees in the ALDS. The Yankees are the best team money can buy, and they know it. The end result was inevitable.

I'm also doing more home improvement work in the basement. Last year we finished one half of the basement and installed a large-screen TV. Now I'm adding the surround-sound system. I purchased a set of five Klipsch speakers and mounted them on the walls. They look great but there is nothing to power them yet. Next month I'll be purchasing a receiver to connect them to, followed by a subwoofer the following month. Purchasing them this way makes the cost a little less painful. Of course Sharon would prefer I also complete other basement finishing tasks, like building a cabinet around the sump pump piping, but installing A/V equipment is much more fun.

K has adjusted well to middle school this fall and is getting excellent grades. S's courseload hasn't been too rigorous, and he's doing well in his most difficult subject, English. S has also applied to two universities so far, and will apply to two or three more soon. Most applications need to be completed and sent by December 1st.

Time to hit the sack as I have to return to work in the morning. Good night.

Doctor, doctor

2009-09-25T16:15:00.003-05:00

I never get much done on a Friday afternoon, so it's a good time to blog. In fact this week has not been good for getting things done. I had "soft" deadlines on two projects and procrastinated my way past them. I had better be more productive next week.

Part of the reason I've not been productive at work is because I haven't been sleeping well lately. I usually wake up 2-3 times a night, about every 2 hours, unless I take generic Benedryl to help me sleep. If I do that then I'm usually drowsy until noon the next day. I also sometimes wake up with a headache indicating either that I didn't get enough hours of sleep, or that I'm not breathing well during sleep. Sharon thinks I may have sleep apnea. I think I'd better make an appointment for a checkup, so the doctor can tell me what else is wrong with me (high blood pressure, overweight, ???).

Speaking of doctors, I took S to the doctor for a checkup after he complained of side pains. It turned out to be a recurrence of a medical problem he had when he was 5 years old. Nothing serious, but it was something we'd hoped he would outgrow. No such luck. He was off school for two days to rest and to see another specialist. There will be more trips to doctor's offices for him over the next few months. Sharon is also seeing the doctor about another non-serious problem. The only good to come from this is that I'll probably be able to use up the rest of the money in my 2009 Health Care Reimbursement Account.

The piece we're playing in the orchestra right now is by a 20th-century Mexican composer whom our conductor calls "the John Williams of Mexico in the 1930s." Most of the piece is OK but the 4th movement is a disaster. I would not call it music. I would call it "random noise." Sharon didn't come to the rehearsal on Tuesday night, and I told her she didn't miss anything.

Last night Sharon and I went to daughter K's middle school for their open house. K is going to a different school than S went to, and although it is one of the oldest schools in the district, I was impressed that many improvements have been made to the building so that it is at the same standard as S's former school. The teachers seem OK but there wasn't much time to chat with them because of the meeting format.

I also spoke to one of my colleagues in China last night. It was the first time I'd spoken to him since late March, although we have exchanged E-mails since then. We still need to finalize the electrical drawings for the project. My colleague's manager will be coming to the U.S. in about 10 days, and working in our office, so we'd like to complete the drawing work before then. I also asked D (my colleague) about the upcoming Chinese national holiday (60 years of communism), the upcoming Shanghai World Expo and what work is like. D said his wife's family will come to Shanghai to visit over the holiday, and that the Expo construction is on time. At least that's what the media tells them.

I also spoke to Mom, who's doing OK. She had more work done on her car this week, and the people who bought the house next door to her have continued to rapidly repair and improve the property.

Tonight is homecoming at S's high school, and today it decided to rain for the first time in a month. Hope it lets up before the football game starts. Other than that, we don't have much planned for the weekend. I should be leaving work myself, so bye for now!

The trip we made to Hollywood is still etched upon my mind

2009-09-20T15:24:00.003-05:00

I've been ignoring this blog in recent months, favoring the microblogging you can do over at Twitter. But I'd really like to do a better job of documenting my life again, especially since I shouldn't be as busy at work this fall. It's also my son's senior year of high school, and my daughter's first year of middle school, which should bring interesting stories to tell.

Let's see if I can briefly summarize the last few months:

-- We visited Mom in Milwaukee in June to help with a few home maintenance items. I'm still too far away to help with much, and she has to depend on neighbors for many things. She had more health concerns in August, but tests did not reveal any serious problems. She's feeling better lately.

-- We also spent nine days in Southern California in July, visiting Sharon's brother and his family. We also brought along Sharon's parents, who are in their 80's, so they could see their son. We tried to do activities that didn't involve a lot of walking or standing, and split up on occasion. S got to spend a few days with a Minnesota friend who was in California visiting family. We also went to Hollywood, Catalina Island, Laguna Beach, Sea World in San Diego, and several excellent restaurants. Also had my first In-N-Out burger!

-- After returning from vacation, I was very busy at work. First I helped another engineer in my department with designing some important controls for a machine being built locally. Then I traveled to Alabama in August to help another engineer with the operator interface for his project. I worked 16 days in a row before returning home. There were no days off after returning, as I had to finish the controls design and startup that was unfinished before I left for Alabama. Now I've got another software startup coming up locally in the next two weeks. I'm planning to take a week of vacation in October, so I have a goal to complete my work before then.

-- Our orchestra survived under a new name. It is now called the East Metro Symphony Orchestra. So far we have a good deal: we will be rehearsing and performing at the new high school in our area, about 10 minutes from our house. The music looks interesting so far. And I am no longer involved in the business activities of the group, so I can just enjoy playing. It will be fun to see how the season plays out (pun intended).

-- In Internet news, I followed a British expat who completed a road trip to all 48 continental U.S. states, visiting a place in each state that had the same name as a tube station on the London Underground. It was a lot of fun because he posted stories and videos on his blog, as well as messages on Twitter in real time. Since I had visited many of the same places in the Western U.S., I offered suggestions for places to see and things to do along the way. I also almost got to meet him in person when I was in Alabama, but returned home before he came through the area. You can read about his trip here. I also found the new blog of a blogger I enjoyed reading in the past. The blogger shut down the original blog in late 2007, and I had missed keeping up to date with their life.

-- Sharon spent this weekend in northern Minnesota with six of her college friends. One of the friends and her family own a cabin and invites the friends (women only) for a weekend in the fall each year. She's been having a great time. So have I, as I've been free to do things I want to do (like blogging) instead of always working on house projects and cleaning.

-- S has been working at the local Arby's since late April. He got very few hours over the summer, which was disappointing, but in mid-August started getting more hours, finally making it worthwhile working there so he could save some money. He also took the ACT test twice and completed visits to potential colleges, so now he is starting to fill out applications for admission.

-- We're going to see Steely Dan! They're one of my favorite bands that I've never seen live, and they're coming to Minneapolis, which I never thought they would do. Sunday night, November 8th at Northrup Auditorium.

That's all for now. I'm going to try to post at least once a week, if time allows. Maybe I'll link some pictures when I have some time.

Seventeen with a bullet

2009-05-27T21:21:00.003-05:00

Back again, if you can believe it. Time for a bulleted update:

-- Mom's much better than one month ago. It took a long time for her to get over her weakness, but all we can figure is that her sodium level was too low. She still gets tired, but only after doing lots of housework or yard work, which is understandable.

-- I was called to be a juror by the county I live in, and reported on the assigned day. Only had to stay until noon, since all 31 cases that week were settled that day and no jurors were needed.

-- Wyoming. Forever West. (as just seen on a TV ad)

-- We've purchased airline tickets to go to Southern California in July, to visit Sharon's brother and his family, who live in Orange County. Sharon's parents will be traveling with us also. We're flying from Minneapolis to San Diego for $229 round trip. The prices to San Diego were the best of all the area airports, and besides it will give us an excuse to spend some time there. I've only been there once before, back in the 1980s. I had enough frequent flier miles to get the tickets for free, but I thought it would be better to save the miles for a longer (overseas) trip in the future.

-- I've started the process of scanning years of negatives and slides, bringing our old photos into the digital age. I purchased 200 negative holder pages and have organized the negatives in chronological order. This task will surely take a couple of years, since I have 20+ years of negatives to scan, but it is rewarding to see all the images from the past. Might as well get started now!

-- The last orchestra concert of the year will be this Sunday, and will mark the end of the orchestra under its current name, and also will be the end of my tenure as orchestra president. Next year the orchestra will continue under a new name, without funding from my employer. I'm relieved it's almost all over.

-- I'm picking up new project work at my job and staying busy through the economic slowdown. I still hear the occasional noise from China. There will be an appreciation dinner later in June for the primary people that supported the China project, but the management is not inviting the spouses of the employees. As one of my co-workers said to me, "Now they want us to spend another night away from our family!"

-- As the weather has improved, we're working on more home improvement projects. This past weekend I power washed the deck, installed new outdoor lights, while Sharon bought and plants some new flowers. Now we need some rain!

-- S's birthday is on Friday and we still need to find him a gift. He'll be 17. He gave us a list of ideas and the good thing is that none of the ideas are more expensive than the Xbox 360 he got last year.

It's getting late so I must close. Wish I had more time to write.

I'm glad it's your birthday

2009-04-27T14:45:00.003-05:00

Happy birthday to my beautiful wife, Sharon. Today is her birthday.

I didn't have much of a clue about how to celebrate it this year, since much of our social life is based on what our son is doing. He goes out in the evenings quite a bit, and we don't like to leave K alone for very long, so we've got to schedule our nights out. Then the perfect idea came to me - let's go to a Sunday brunch at a nice restaurant with the whole family. I made reservations and we went for brunch at the Afton House Inn, the same place we celebrated my parents' 50th anniversary a few years ago.

The atmosphere was elegant as always, but strangely enough there was only one other couple at the restaurant when we arrived. It was probably due to the bad weather and the fact that Mother's Day, a big Sunday brunch holiday, is only two weeks away. About 10 minutes later, a large group of 14-16 people showed up, and suddenly it didn't seem so empty. Most of the food was excellent, especially the prime rib and omelets made-to-order. There were also "bottomless" mimosas which we took advantage of. S and K also enjoyed the large selection of food, and K had some green tea - she's quite the tea connoisseur.

Sharon also went out for lunch on Saturday with her friends from college, who also helped her celebrate her birthday. Prior to lunch she stopped by her parents' house, where they were having a garage sale. Her mom is 81 and still loves to go to sales and hold one every year in her neighborhood.

I didn't have to worry about a birthday gift for Sharon, since she got it earlier from me. About a month ago, Tiger Direct had a sale on a refurbished IBM ThinkPad laptop for only $299 - an excellent price for a quality laptop. She's wanted a laptop for a long time, so I immediately ordered it. I'm also bringing home some roses tonight.

As far as the rest of the week went, we had an orchestra rehearsal Tuesday night at a new location, a church in Grant, a far northeast suburb of St. Paul. The location was convenient for us and there was plenty of space to practice. If we moved there permanently in the fall, that would be fine with me. I was going to arrange a sectional rehearsal with a few of our newer members this Thursday night at our house, but there are too many other things happening this week, so I think it will have to wait until next week. Our next concert, and final one of the year, will be on May 31st.

I talked to Mom a few times during the week. She still feels lousy about every other day and tires easily. I wish her doctor could find the cause of her illness.

In geek news, I figured out how to scan negatives from Kodak 126 film, the kind of film used in Instamatic cameras back in the 1970's. Most scanner software that scans film negatives is designed for 35mm film, and the dimensions of a 126 negative are different than the 35mm negatives. However, by going into the scanner driver and using the advanced manual mode, you can scan any shape negative you desire. This came in handy for scanning images of Fleetwood Mac taken during the "Tusk" tour in 1980. To see the results, go here. I also purchased and installed a couple of hard drive enclosures to make use of old hard drives from discarded computers.

That is all for today.

Here we go again

2009-04-20T14:32:00.004-05:00

I thought I'd try this blogging thing again. I got so busy with work and life this winter that I had zero inspiration to blog any more. But the situation has changed since then and I find myself with more free time and a desire to document what's going on.

A brief update on the last few months:

-- My traveling to China is done, although the project work is not. I returned from the final trip on Feb. 28th. There are still several paperwork tasks to complete, but the pressure is off. The new plant started making product a couple of weeks ago. My family is happy to have me home again after being in Shanghai for most of the past 6 months.

-- My son S and I have been touring colleges in the area to get an idea of where he might want to go to school in the fall of 2010. So far we've been to St. Cloud State, UM-Duluth, UW-Stout, and UW-Eau Claire. He doesn't know what his major will be yet, but the more time we spend examining his options, maybe that will become clearer. S also has taken the ACT entrance exam and will be taking it again (with the writing portion this time) in June.

-- Because of the slow economy, my company is requiring us to take half of our banked vacation plus all of our earned vacation by the end of the year. For me that means I need to take 9 weeks (45 days) off. I'm OK with that as long as I still have a job at the end.

-- The orchestra is limping along, but will be run by a new group of people next year, as my company, which used to provide financial support, will no longer do so. I'm free! Sharon and I have also played in a few other church groups recently.

-- The holidays went well, and Mom and Dan came up to the Twin Cities to celebrate with us. During the last few weeks Mom has not felt well, and worried that she had a serious health problem. All tests to date have ruled out major problems, so we hope that she can shake whatever bug she's got.

-- All the good food I had during my time in Shanghai added to my waistline, and I'm now heavier than I've ever been in my life. With the better weather that's finally here, I'm going to make walking and exercise a high priority, and try to cut back on unhealthy food.

I've also joined the Twitter craze, although I only "tweet" when I'm near a PC, since I don't have that capability on my cell phone. You can find me at @cheappd.

In the future I'll probably devote a post or ten to the time I spent in China, which was a unique experience. Also I'll be talking about summer vacation plans. We hope to visit California where Sharon's brother and his family lives, if we can arrange a time with them.

Anyway, I'm back and ready to rock!

Walking with my feet ten feet off of Nanjing

2008-11-17T07:40:00.003-06:00

If you've never been in a car outside the U.S., you would find driving in China a unique experience, and not in a good way. I was giving this topic quite a bit of thought as I rode back to the hotel tonight.

First of all, you probably would not drive yourself here for two reasons:

1) Most foreign companies (mine included) will provide a driver to get you around the city because of liability issues. If you drove yourself and had an accident - very likely to happen - you would be held responsible for the damages and injuries, regardless of who was at fault, because you are the foreigner and have deep pockets. It's cheaper to hire a driver and avoid all that. The cost of a driver is very reasonable here, and they can navigate the traffic better than you can.

2) Taxis are widely available and cheap. The initial fee is 11 RMB (about $1.50 US) and most rides cost less than $10. There is also a very good Metro train system that is expanding rapidly.

My company uses a driver because we have 4-5 people in town at one time that need to go from the hotels to the plant. Our driver probably would have his license taken away if he drove the same way in the U.S., but here he fits right in. He rarely signals his frequent lane changes, blows the horn and flashes the headlights when someone is in his way, regularly travels 20 MPH above the speed limit, comes up dangerously fast and close behind slow-moving vehicles before slamming on the brakes, and blows through red lights if no traffic is coming. He is not alone in doing this, however. Taxi drivers also drive like this. I would be very surprised if cars' brakes lasted more than 15,000 miles before needing to be replaced.

Other things that annoy me about Shanghai drivers include no right-of-way for the pedestrian. If you're walking across the street, you need to look all ways around you, whether the traffic light is red or green. Cars will make turns and honk at you if you're in their path, even in the crosswalk. Cars also will never stop at a red light or stop sign if they're turning right. They presume that the driver in the cross traffic will yield to them. Most times they are right.

This kind of traffic behavior applies to all vehicles - buses, dump trucks, electric scooters, bicycles and tricycles. Many times as a pedestrian I had near misses from scooters and bicycles because they're so quiet. Pedestrians, scooters and bicycles often get caught in the middle of heavy traffic while crossing a road or making a turn, and many times try to cross expecting that the vehicles will stop for them. It's a miracle more people aren't hurt. Many are, though. A sign at the Shanghai Auto Museum said that over 100,000 people die yearly in traffic accidents in China, the highest rate in the world. I don't like the traffic behavior here, but I am more tolerant of it now.

There are also some other peculiarities with Chinese roads, even on the newest ones. On most multilane divided roads in the U.S., at an intersection, a left-turn lane goes off to the left, and a right-turn lane goes off to the right, while the through lanes go straight ahead. Here's how the Chinese do it:

Notice that to turn left, you just go straight ahead, and you turn right from the right through lane. (No need for a right-turn lane since no one stops to make a right turn.) Both through lanes shift to the right at the intersection, then shift left after the intersection. With all the lane-shifting going on, how can this be safe?

Other peculiarities include a U-turn lane at some intersection, signaled separately. What's unusual about that? It's NOT the left-most lane, it's the second-to-left most lane! That means that a car making a U-turn crosses in front of the cars in the left-most lane, which are either going straight ahead or making a left-hand turn. Also on many roads where there are bridges, the transition from bridge to level road is too short, creating a mini speed bump, especially when your driver is traveling 20 MPH over the speed limit.

There are a few things the Chinese traffic engineers do differently that are good. Green lights flash a few times before changing to yellow, giving you a warning, and a yellow light appears with the red light just prior to turning green. On the newer roads, a separate divided lane is provided for scooters and bicycles, which is good, but some bicyclists choose to ride on the car portion of the road anyway.

Traveling on the Shanghai roads has been a wild ride. : - )

Four more years!

2008-11-17T07:26:00.004-06:00

And no, I'm not talking about Obama. Today is the blog's fourth birthday. I still enjoy writing my thoughts down here, but it's getting harder to find time to do this. I pretty much gave up writing here this spring, and never did blog about our fun trip to the Pacific Northwest. Hopefully I can get a brief summary posted someday. There are over 500 pictures of the trip on Flickr.

Even over here in China, there is limited time to write. I get up every weekday at 5 AM, have breakfast at 6 and am picked up by our driver at 6:30 for the 1-hour ride to the plant. We get back to the hotel by 5:30-6 PM, then go out to dinner and get back around 8:30. I call Sharon, answer a few E-mails, then it's nearly bedtime. Still I want to document this experience, since it's something most people don't get to do.

Anyway, hope you enjoy reading this as much as I do. Happy blog-a-versary to me.

We're gonna zoom, zoom, zoom-a-zoom

2008-11-10T01:41:00.001-06:00

Today is day 9 of my current trip to China. I’ve got 12 more to go. Today was the first day of the controls startup on the project. We finally got our rooms cleaned up enough so that computers could be installed in racks and power could be turned on. This means that we can start checking the system in its final location. It’s a major project milestone. There is much more to do yet, but at least we’ve made it this far.

It’s been an interesting trip so far. I left on Halloween, October 31st, around noontime. A taxi took me from home to the airport. Shortly after being dropped off, I realized I was missing my cell phone. I called the taxi company, but they could not reach the driver. I called Sprint, but I could not answer the identity question correctly, so they would not cancel my service. I called my office and asked if they could cancel my phone’s service. They said they would try, and then it was time to board the airplane.

Once I boarded the plane, we left the gate and then came right back. An engine oil pressure gauge was broken, so it had to be repaired. 2.5 hours later, we finally left MSP. Because of the delay in leaving, we were going to miss the connecting flight in Tokyo. So while in flight I wondered what happened with the phone and what I would be doing once I got to Tokyo.

Fortunately Northwest had the situation under control. Our flight to Shanghai was rebooked for the next morning on JAL, and they had a shuttle and hotel room waiting in Tokyo. We got to Tokyo early enough so that I got a good night’s sleep, and the Internet worked well so I could call Sharon and Mom to let them know what happened. I also found out that people in my office had taken care of the cell phone situation, and the taxi driver called Sharon when he found the phone in his car. The taxi company will mail the phone back to our house.

The next morning I took the shuttle back to the airport, checked in at JAL, and walked a long way to get to the gate. When we landed in Shanghai it was gray and drizzly. Arriving in the middle of the day allowed me to take the maglev train from the airport into the city (always fun), and then the Metro to my hotel, which was one block from a stop. I checked in, called Sharon to let her know I’d arrived safely, and was going to rest when my colleague B called. He was waiting in the hotel lobby. I came down to the lobby and we had a couple of beers. I was pretty hungry, so we took a taxi over to Malone’s, a local American sports bar, and had a meal and yet another beer. I finally returned to the hotel around 5 PM and rested for the night.

Last week at work progress was slow. The contractor was letting the completion date slip, and then they walked off the job Tuesday afternoon because they wanted more money from my company. The managers spoke to the contractor and got the workers back to the job site the next day. My company’s engineering manager in China came to the site on Thursday to get things moving, after we gave him a list of things that needed to be done before we could proceed with the startup. It must have worked, because most of the things we asked for were ready this morning.

On this trip I’ve been staying at a Courtyard hotel near the company apartment I stayed at last time. B and my other colleague, D, who arrived on Tuesday night, are staying at the apartment. A driver picks us up every weekday and takes us from the city out to the plant. I’m happy at the hotel because the Internet works great and the bed is big and comfortable. For dinner last week we revisited some of our favorite restaurants – the Blue Frog, the Flying Fox, the Max, and others. Two more U.S. colleagues are arriving in China today, so tomorrow we will have five U.S. people in town. They’ll be staying at the Courtyard also.

On Saturday I had no plans, so I went with B and D to see the Shanghai Auto Museum. It is located about 30 miles northwest of Shanghai near the Volkswagen assembly plant. When we arrived we thought they might be closed, since there were no cars parked in the parking lot. But it was open, and we were the only visitors at the time! It is a state-owned museum, so that is how they can afford to operate it with so few visitors. I think they primarily cater to tour groups. It was a cool place, with many antique and modern cars, mostly on loan from GM and others.

A Ferrari Testerossa, just like on "Miami Vice"

1921 luxury car, the Heine Velox

1951 Volkswagen Beetle

Leaving the museum after an hour, we realized we were in the middle of nowhere and there were few taxis on the street to take home. B tried calling a taxi company to get one to pick us up, but communications were difficult and we weren’t sure if a taxi would show up. Finally we did see an available taxi on the street and jumped in. After being in the taxi for 5 minutes, the first company called us and said they had arrived at the pickup point. Too late for us!

The taxi took us over to Bubba’s, where we enjoyed another good Texas BBQ meal. By the time we got back to the hotel it was around 5:30, but our fun for the day wasn’t over yet. Around 7 PM B, D and I took a taxi over to the engineering manager’s house, where we met other people from my department at work, who are also in Shanghai right now but working on a different project startup. We had a beer at the house and then walked over to a nearby Chinese restaurant, Amy’s. As usual there was plenty of food and most of it was delicious. We followed up dinner with stops at Big Bamboo and another Blue Frog (it’s a chain of restaurant/bars around Shanghai). After 11 PM and several drinks, I called it a night and took a taxi home. Several of the others were just getting started, including B and D. I found out the next day that B and D didn’t get back to the apartment until almost 5 AM!

Sunday started a little later, since we all slept in. In the afternoon B and D had expressed an interest in riding the maglev train, which travels at speeds up to 270 MPH, so they walked over to my hotel. We walked one block over to the metro station and took the metro out to the beginning of the maglev line.

Riding the Shanghai Metro

Maglev train arrives at Longyang Road Station

I’d ridden the maglev train before, and you can look at my Flickr set of China pictures for October 2007 if you want to see more maglev pictures. It was B and D’s first time, and they loved it. We went to the airport and back in about 30 minutes, less time than it usually takes to get there in a taxi going only one way.

Taking the metro train back into the city, we tried to get to the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center building, which is one of the tallest buildings in the world. However there was a wait of over two hours to get in. We decided to return to the SWFC during the week when crowds are smaller. Instead we went next door to the Jin Mao Tower, the second tallest building in the world. There were few people waiting to go to the top of the Jin Mao Tower, so we zipped up there and had some spectacular views.

Puxi skyline

Oriental Pearl Tower and Pudong

Inner atrium, looking down from the 88th floor to the 56th floor

And finally, the Jin Mao Tower and the SWFC from the street:

We stopped at the Super Brand Mall afterwards for a small dinner and drinks. After all that excitement, we called it a night at about 6:30 PM, to get plenty of rest before the work week started on Monday.

Hopefully we’ll make better progress at work this week, and the contractor will do the work they have promised to do.

Don't get your hopes up

2008-11-05T05:20:00.000-06:00

It was interesting to watch the election results from halfway around the world. I’m in China right now, but election results were readily available on the Internet. As I was working this morning, I made periodic checks of the CNN and twincities.com Web sites to get the latest info. I told my colleagues, “After we get back from lunch, I think the election will be decided.” And it was.

It was tough supporting a candidate that was much criticized around the Internet, on the major networks, and especially in the blogosphere. Of the many blogs I read on a regular basis that mentioned politics, there was only one that supported McCain. The bloggers I read made me feel that I wasn’t thinking or must be stupid for not supporting Obama. Well, I refuse to accept that. I was a big believer in McCain long before he won the Republican nomination. I was a fan of his back in 2000 when he ran for president only to lose in the primaries. I was a fan of his early in the campaign, back in 2007, when no one gave him a chance of winning any primaries. Somehow he managed to outdistance all his opponents and win the nomination. He was a moderate Republican, a candidate much more in tune with today’s issues than previous Republican presidential candidates, and wasn’t trying to force his personal values down your throat. And yet he was ridiculed, called a “cranky old grandpa,” “creepy,” and other derogatory terms.

He didn’t run the best campaign, and I blame most of that on others in his party that wanted him to adapt to their expectations for a Republican presidential candidate. The choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate probably made sense to him but didn’t appeal to the voters he was trying to win. Regardless, I still thought he was the best man for the job.

So, while the rest of the Internet is gloating about what an historic moment this is, and how our new president-elect will change the world, let me make my last political points:

• McCain ≠ Bush
• McCain was not too old to be elected President (no more old jokes, please)
• Sarah Palin would have been no worse a VP than Joe Biden will be
• The love affair with Obama will end soon when reality sets in

I really hope that our president-elect can bring the country together and make a difference in the world. But he has to prove that he can work with everyone, not just like-minded Democrats. McCain’s already done that in the Senate for the last 25+ years.

In good news, looks like Al Franken is not going to steal Minnesota’s Senate seat! He is welcome to move back to New York, where he’s spent most of his adult life, and try to win a Senate seat there.

More about China in the next post.

The basement tapes

2008-10-19T23:33:00.005-05:00

It’s late on a quiet Sunday evening, rare around here. The kids are upstairs getting ready for bed. We’re in the family room with the TV off. Sharon is reading the book “Marley & Me,” stopping every few minutes to tell me the latest funny thing that the Marley, a dog, did in the story. Good time to blog.

Last weekend the new flat-screen Sharp Aquos TV for the basement arrived. I received a call on Thursday from the delivery company so we could agree upon a delivery time. Although I asked if they could come on Friday afternoon, they called on Friday morning to say they would be right over. Instead of going right to work, I waited for them to show up, and they arrived about 9 AM. After they left, I did some brief checking of the contents before going to work. But of course it was hard to concentrate on work tasks, knowing that this magnificent piece of electronic hardware was waiting at home to be played with. I managed to accomplish a few tasks that morning before I took a half-day vacation and left work at 1 PM. I picked up a few necessary cables at Home Depot on the way home, then arrived home and removed the TV from its huge box. Although Sharon warned me not to try to move the TV from the first floor to the basement by myself, because I might drop it, I did it anyway since I found a good hand hold on the TV. I did bump it once going down the stairs, but it made the trip to the basement without any damage. I set the TV up on the included stand, hooked up the antenna and was amazed by the high-definition broadcasts I could receive.

The next task was to attach the wall mount hardware to the wall and to the TV. I did some of the assembly that night, and finished on Saturday morning. Due to bad instructions for the wall mount, one of the lag screws would not tighten into the wall, and started to pull out after the TV was lifted onto the wall bracket. I made another trip to Home Depot for a larger and longer lag screw, and the second time S and I lifted the TV onto the wall bracket, it held tightly. We added more cables later, and we now have two game systems, the cable box, and a DVD recorder attached to the TV. Still to come are yet-to-be-purchased home theater audio system and a Blu-Ray DVD player. We may wait a while so that we can pay off our recent purchases. We spent more time this weekend finishing more basement tasks, including purchasing and staining baseboard oak trim, installing a wood panel to cover up a drain pipe, mounting a storage cabinet, and installing the last remaining piece of drywall. Several other items cannot be completed until the carpeting we ordered arrives and is installed. Maybe we’ll hear something this week.

We do other things around here besides spending time in the basement. On Tuesday evening Sharon went to orchestra rehearsal while I attended a meeting at S’s high school about planning for college testing and admissions. Tuesday was also our wedding anniversary, so I brought home flowers for Sharon after the school meeting. The kids were off school Thursday and Friday for the annual teachers’ convention, so Sharon and K did some shopping both days. I took off work on Friday and installed a new swing in the backyard for K, since the old swings broke a few weeks ago while I was in China.

Sharon’s parents came over on Saturday afternoon to take us all out to celebrate our anniversary. We went to a nice restaurant in Afton, the Catfish Saloon. It’s in the same building as the Afton House Inn, where we celebrated my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary a few years ago, but is not quite as formal. The weather was perfect, so it was a pleasure to stroll along the streets of downtown Afton after our meal, look over at the St. Croix River and the trees at their peak color, and stop at Selma’s Ice Cream Parlor for dessert.

At work, I’m trying to answer the E-mails I’m receiving from China, as well as make progress on a few local projects. We had a phone conference with all the China and U.S. managers on Thursday night, and everyone agreed to the project schedule we developed in the U.S. two weeks ago. It’s nice to have a plan we can work with. The plan also allows us to return home over the holidays, so my family is pleased about that.

I talked to Mom a few times recently. She’s had some checkups and was asked to come back for further X-rays and a biopsy. Hopefully it’s just routine and not something more serious. She has been thinking positive and is not worried about “what might be” yet. She’s more worried about one of her neighbors who is going to sell their house, and what the new neighbors will be like.

I enjoyed watching a couple of NFL games on the big screen today. High-def really makes you feel as if you're watching it live. However, the quality of the Vikings' play ruined it for me. How could they score 41 points in a game and still lose? And lose to the Chicago Bears? Because the Bears also sucked (and always will), the Vikings still had a chance to win until the final seconds. Today, however, the Vikings sucked worse than the Bears.

It’s time for bed. Hope you all have a good week!

Shoppin' from T to V

2008-10-08T15:46:00.001-05:00

I’m nicely settling into being at home. However, it won’t be long before I return to China again. I already have reservations to leave the Twin Cities on October 31st, and returning November 22nd. The plane ticket was a bargain - $986 round trip. During the past week at work, I’ve been meeting with co-workers planning our trips, our startup schedule, and how the startup team will be organized. There has been much discussion about where the U.S. engineers will be staying during the startup, either at the apartment in the city or out at the Ramada near the plant site. It doesn’t matter to me very much, but it’s very important to some of the other U.S. people, since they’re not happy to be traveling to China in the first place. By next week we will have met with all the managers and hopefully everyone will agree that our plan is acceptable.

Returning home meant I could resume working on the basement. I spent Friday afternoon and most of Saturday completing the power wiring, adding a few new lights in the process. I also terminated some speaker wires. The only wires remaining are the audio and video wires for the TV and sound system, and a few telephone jacks. Sharon followed me and did repair work on the walls where the holes for electrical boxes were a little too big and weren’t covered by the face plates. I’ll take a few pictures of our progress for a future post.

We also made a couple of major purchases for the basement in the last week. I ordered this TV from Sharp Direct. Our company offers deep discounts on Sharp TV’s because we make a few of the components that go into Sharp products. The prices are much lower than at Best Buy or Circuit City, and the delivery is free. The TV should arrive within the next week. We also purchased carpeting from Home Depot, since they offer a low installation price. A Home Depot rep came to our house last Friday to take measurements, and we reviewed the quote on Monday night at the store. It will take 2-3 weeks before the carpet arrives and can be installed. I hope they can install it before I leave.

Other exciting happenings around our house included going to a parents’ meeting for S’s basketball league, and weekend grocery shopping and housework. This fall S will be playing basketball with some friends for fun. The meeting was mostly to get parents to volunteer to coach, and to let them know about the start and end dates. S will also be taking a 4-week course to prepare for taking the ACT test, one of the standard college admission tests. He’s a smart kid but does not always do well on tests, so maybe the course will help. One of the shopping items this weekend was mounting hardware for the TV, purchased at Sam’s Club. Their prices on the hardware are very good, since they also sell a large number of big-screen TV’s there.

I’ve also been to orchestra rehearsals the last two Tuesday nights. We have a temporary rehearsal location at a junior high school through November, but are still looking for a permanent location. We have scheduled a concert for Sunday, November 2nd and will play Mendelssohn’s 5th Symphony (the “Reformation” symphony), a couple of fugues, and there will also be small groups performing. Unfortunately I will miss the concert since I’ll be back in China. We have a good group of people returning this year, except in the string sections. We really need more violins and cellos. Sharon, who plays cello, came to a rehearsal for the first time last night. She is not happy with our conductor because the conductor is very loud, singing and shouting while conducting, and Sharon says the conductor gives her a headache. If we weren’t so short on cello players, Sharon probably would not play with the orchestra any more. There are still several other problems to sort out with the orchestra, including how to replace the funding that my company used to provide. In 2009 there will be no money from the company, so that may be the end of the orchestra.

On that cheery note, see you next time!

Back in the high life again

2008-09-30T16:27:00.002-05:00

I’m back from China, and have survived the usual 3-day period it takes me to adjust to the 13-hour time difference. I don’t know how people who travel internationally all the time survive. They must sleep a lot. I was pretty useless over the weekend, and only started feeling normal yesterday.

My last week of work in China was busy. On Monday I visited the plant site again, making sure all panels and equipment had arrived, and that it was being placed in the correct locations. Wednesday morning was spent in my company’s offices in the city to discuss system checkout plans. The rest of the week was spent at the outside engineering company’s offices, helping them complete electrical drawings, and also making corrections to completed drawings. It was nicer working at their offices than at the plant site, which only has a limited number of temporary offices to be shared by everyone. The air conditioning also worked better away from the plant. I spent way too much time in the evenings sending and replying to E-mails.

The apartment was a nice place to stay, and it had a “million-dollar view,” as I told my wife several times:

However, the Internet needs to be fixed if I’m going to stay there again. I mentioned the problem to the managers at the plant, and they are planning on sending an IT person to the apartment to make the router work. (That would never be done by company IT people in the U.S.). Bob and I managed to share the connection during our stay, but it was a hassle.

In the evenings, Bob and I had some good meals. On Sunday of the last week, we met with my U.S. field service guy and my company’s engineering manager in China at his home in Shanghai. We talked a lot about the project and other business. After a couple of beers, we went over to Bubba’s nearby for some more Texas BBQ. On Monday, since neither of us wanted to go out, it was a KFC delivery. Tuesday was dinner at the Blue Frog, and Wednesday was food at “The Max” pub (not named after the Prince song). Thursday night we were back at the engineering manager’s home again, where he and the field service guy grilled chicken and ribs for us, along with potatoes, rolls, and Chinese broccoli (sorry I don’t know the Chinese name). We didn’t eat until 9:30 PM since the field service guy got stuck in bad traffic, and the one hour trip from work turned into two and one half hours. The food was great but I almost fell asleep at the dinner table. We didn’t get back to the apartment until 11:30 PM.

Bob left to go back to the U.S. on Friday. Since I wasn’t leaving until Saturday, it was up to me to pay for the apartment’s driver when I left. I was shocked to find out that the bill for the car and driver was about $6,000! I only used his services 3-4 times during my trip. I looked at the bill and determined that it hadn’t been paid by anyone else at my company since August 1st – that’s why it was so high. I explained the situation to my managers at home and the charges will be transferred to the correct account. I just have to figure out the details soon.

The trip home was uneventful, which was good. I spent most of the time listening to my MP3 player. The movies on the airplane were “Kung Fu Panda,” “Made of Honor,” and “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.” The last two actually looked interesting, but not enough to turn off the music. We arrived early in the Twin Cities, and going through customs and immigration was a breeze, so I had to call Sharon to come to get me. It was great to be home.

A few things were accomplished over the weekend. I got a haircut about 2 hours after getting off the airplane, and Sharon’s parents came over for a visit and dinner. I could not stay awake after dinner. I worked in the basement on Sunday with Sharon. She finished the last bit of painting left to do, and I did some electrical work that allowed us to turn a few more lights on. We also went to Home Depot to figure out what carpeting will work best for the basement. My goal is to finish enough work in the basement so that the entertainment space can be used before my next trip to China in November. That includes purchasing the big TV and mounting it.

Time to wrap up this installment. Tonight is my first orchestra rehearsal of the season, and I’ll see how well the orchestra is limping along. More on that later.

Muggy to the max

2008-09-22T01:34:00.004-05:00

***FROM THE WEATHER CHANNEL***

Right Now for
Shanghai, China
Save Location [ English | Metric ]
FREE Weather on Your Desktop

Haze 88°F
Feels Like 97°F
Updated: Sep 22 04:00 p.m. Local Time
UV Index: 1 Low
Wind: From SSE at 9 mph
Humidity: 66%
Pressure: 29.68 in.
Dew Point: 75°F
Visibility: 2.2 miles
Sunrise: 5:43 AM
Sunset: 5:51 PM

An hour ago it was 84 F and 84% humidity. It is miserable to be outside in, but OK in the air-conditioned office.

Subway, eat fresh

2008-09-21T03:09:00.001-05:00

It’s Sunday afternoon here in China, and for the second weekend in a row, it’s raining. Later on this afternoon we’ll be meeting two other work colleagues for dinner at Bubba’s. One of them is the engineering manager for my company in China, so I’m looking forward to bending his ear on a few subjects.

I’ve made some progress here in the last few days. Wednesday was spent at the apartment, since my company’s host was still ill, and the outside engineering firm’s engineers were otherwise occupied. Nevertheless, I ordered some parts and finished some documents that have been due for a while. Since I didn’t hear from anyone all day Wednesday, I took a taxi across town Thursday morning to the outside engineering firm’s offices. Some of the electrical panels that we checked out last week were finally delivered to the plant site that day, and my company’s host returned to work. I had a serious discussion with the project manager at the outside company to stress the importance of “no more delays.” I think he got the message since more panels showed up at our site on Friday, and the delivery of the remainder of the process panels was moved up to Monday morning (instead of Tuesday as he told me earlier last week). I spent all day Friday at our site, working with some of my China colleagues and inspecting the construction so far.

The apartment here is working out fine, although I gave up on trying to make the router work. It kept dropping out and crashing. When my temporary roommate Bob and I were at Carrefour the other night, I bought a 10-meter Ethernet cable, which allows us to use the Internet almost anywhere in the apartment. If it would have been 10-15 feet longer, it would have been even better, but that was the longest cable I could find, and it only cost $5.

I was also successful in adding minutes to my prepaid Chinese cell phone. I had to ask around at several convenience stores, where no one spoke English, and try to convey what I wanted. After a few attempts, I finally found a street vendor who sold phones and phone minutes. Somehow he understood what I needed, and even tried to sell me a monthly plan. But in the end, I gave him the money, he punched the codes into the phone, and it started working again. I still haven’t figured out how to check my balance in English, though.

As far as eating goes, I’ve mostly been having Chinese food at lunch with my China colleagues, and non-Chinese food for dinner. I’m not much of a risk-taker, and if no one is with me to translate the menu or choose the food, I stick to familiar foods. For dinners we’ve been to an American-style sports bar, a Chinese pub, and a couple of Irish pubs. However, the Chinese lunches have all been good. I think someone told me that they go by the menu pictures to determine if they’d eat it. Maybe I should try that. It’s easier in Japan where many restaurants actually have plastic models of the entrees so you get a 3-D representation of the meal.

Yesterday, Saturday, Bob and I went back to Yuyuan Garden Shopping area to buy gifts for people back home. In any of the tourist areas you are constantly bothered by people wanting to sell you a “Rolex” watch and a designer “bag.” What they usually say to you is “Hello! Hello! Watchbag! Rolex! Gucci! Louis Vuitton!” I told Bob that if one of them comes up to me with a Gucci bag with a Rolex watch sewn into it, I’d consider it. : - ) After we got tired of the gardens we went to another Irish pub with the same name as an Irish pub near my home, O’Malley’s, and had a good meal accompanied by Guinness and Strongbow cider.

I talked Bob into taking the metro subway back from O’Malley’s, since we didn’t get a taxi to stop right away. It was much easier this time, since I did it last Saturday. The subway was much more crowded this time, and we had to change trains twice. Bob grew up on a farm and today lives in a rural area, so after it was over he decided that it wasn’t his cup of tea. I still thought it was a blast. It was about a 15-20 minute walk from the nearest subway station back to the apartment. I finished the evening talking to the family at home, working on the computer and enjoying my favorite Chinese beer:

At home, Sharon has been painting the newly-finished basement like a madwoman. She said she’ll probably finish this weekend. When I get back I can finish up the electrical work, decide what to do about the floor, and then we’ll be ready to purchase the big TV and move furniture in. Both of us are glad that my time in China (for this trip) is almost done.

That is all of my adventures for now.

The illustrated China

2008-09-17T21:11:00.002-05:00

Here are a few pictures from the trip so far:

One of the reasons I’m here is to see that this equipment is completed and ready to be shipped to our company’s plant site. Here we are doing a little testing.

The Shanghai Museum, which I visited on the weekend.

And now a few views of the apartment:

All the pictures from this China trip are here.

Shanghai surprises

2008-09-16T01:23:00.002-05:00

I’ve been in China for 10 days now and as always, there is plenty to do. Some good, some not so good. I got here a week ago Saturday night, and on Sunday, after talking to the family, slept most of the afternoon. That’s what a 13 hour time difference will do to you. Arriving a day earlier had its benefits, though – I felt pretty good on Monday at work, and by Tuesday was 100% back on schedule.

The reason for my business trip this time is to advance the project construction along, both at the plant site and away. The first three days last week were spent at an electrical equipment manufacturer’s shop about 30 miles north of downtown Shanghai. We witnessed the electrical equipment being powered up and tested. A local engineer from the company we hired to do the electrical design also ran the equipment through its tests. By Thursday, all the equipment in the first group had been tested. Then the manufacturer’s shop went on holiday Friday and Monday. So we’re back here today (Tuesday), making sure all the corrections have been made before the first panels ship to our site tomorrow.

On Thursday last week, my host engineer and I visited the plant site, which is a one hour drive south of downtown Shanghai. Construction is humming along, and there are so many people on site that the temporary building housing them is overflowing with people. I managed to meet with my field rep. from the U.S. who came to China to show the Chinese contractors the way we want the work done. We walked through the new buildings and viewed the progress. Later on Thursday, I met some more colleagues from the U.S. and got a ride back to the city with them. Friday was spent at the electrical design company’s office, which is much closer to the city. There was no work on Monday, which was a holiday in China.

As is usual in this city, you spent a lot of time riding around in taxis or private cars. I averaged about 2 hours/day going to and from work last week. A taxi ride is usually the best way to go – almost every ride is $10 or less, and in a city where right-of way on the road is ignored, and traffic lights are merely a suggestion, you don’t want to drive here yourself.

I had a couple of interesting travel experiences over the weekend. On Saturday I took a taxi from my hotel to the Shanghai Museum, which has an extensive collection of ancient Chinese artifacts, although my Chinese colleagues say the best museums in China are located in Beijing and Xi’an. I spent over two hours touring the museum, looking at the unique items, and running down my camera battery taking pictures (to be posted later). I had planned on taking a taxi back, but when I left the museum a 4 PM it was still raining and there were people everywhere, meaning no taxis were available. To get out of the rain, I ducked inside the entrance to the subway, which led to an underground shopping mall. It was even more crowded in there. I tried to look for food, since I had skipped lunch, but nothing looked good. I decided to learn the subway system to get back to the hotel.

First I found a map of the system and noticed that a road near my hotel was one of the stops, so I knew which train to take. Then I had to figure out how to buy a ticket. There were booths staffed by people, and there were also ticket machines. Seeing a non-Chinese person using a machine, I decided to try the machine. There still wasn’t enough English on the screen to figure out what ticket I had to buy, but a person behind me helped me purchase the correct ticket. From there I followed the signs to the train. Success at last!

Or so I thought. When I got to the exit and put my ticket on the scanner next to the turnstile, it wouldn’t let me through. The person helping me buy the ticket picked one for 3 RMB, instead of the 4 RMB ticket I needed to travel to this stop. The cleaning lady in the subway pointed me toward the booth where I could pay the difference. Finally I got out through the gate, and also found a food stand in the subway to buy a sandwich and a drink.

Emerging from the subway, I discovered that I had arrived at the correct street, but not near the hotel. I determined that I was about 1 mile north of the hotel, so I followed the street south and finally got back to the hotel. It took time to get back, but I did it, and who knows when the next taxi would have been available.

On Sunday I checked out of the hotel and moved into a furnished apartment in another part of Shanghai. Former project leader “Steve” had this place before he retired, and now it’s been kept by our company for the U.S. visitors to China. It has its good and bad points. Good points: spacious, located downtown, great view, big TV, DVD, satellite channels not available at the hotel. Bad points: must share with another person, long way from work, and the Internet is unreliable. That last point is a BIG bad point. I use Yahoo Messenger to make phone calls home to the family, and I need Internet access to check E-mail and keep up with my work at home. I fought with the Internet Sunday night and for a few hours on Monday, just so I could survive. It doesn’t look as if it will improve much for the rest of my stay. If that’s the case, I will not stay at the apartment next trip. I’m willing to forego all the other advantages just to have the reliable Internet at the hotel.

The other guy staying there now, B, is very easy-going, and if I have to share a place with someone, he’s probably the best choice. The apartment does have separate bedrooms and bathrooms, so we only have to share the living room and kitchen, except when the Internet router crashes, which is located in his bedroom.

B and I didn’t do too much over the weekend. We went out for dinner Sunday night at Bubba’s, the Texas BBQ place I’ve mentioned on previous China trips. On Monday we visited the Super Brand Mall near the apartment, where the second Best Buy store in China will open soon. We also visited the Yuyuan Shopping City, where we looked at pearls, jade, and found a charger for my Canon camera battery (yay!) Although we took a taxi to the Yuyuan area, I convinced B to walk back to the apartment, using a few shortcuts and a ferry across the Huangpu River that I had learned about from “Steve” on a previous trip. I found the ferry after walking down many side streets, and we got back to the apartment before a thunderstorm appeared. It rained a lot this weekend.

Tonight’s challenge is to recharge the Chinese cell phone I’m using with more minutes of call time. I need to go to a convenience store here and communicate that to a store clerk, who can sell me the minutes. One guy told me he hands the clerk the phone and lets him listen to the recording saying in Chinese that the phone is out of minutes. I might have to try that.

On the home front, Matt the taping guy finished our basement on Saturday, including painting the ceiling. Sharon started painting the walls with primer just minutes after he left. With any luck, maybe all the painting will be done before I get home. S and K have had colds, but Sharon seems to be doing fine. I’ve also been in touch with Mom, although not on Sunday because of the Internet problems. I had Sharon call her, and of course the first thing she said to Sharon was, “But he said he would call!” I tried, Mom. But I’m not going to pay $2/minute to call. Blame it on the bad Internet. As Harold Ramis said in “Ghostbusters,” “That would be bad.”

The next post will be pictures, followed by a shorter update.

On such a timeless flight

2008-09-06T09:33:00.001-05:00

Greetings at 35,000 feet, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean or Alaska. I’m finally on my way to Shanghai, China by way of Tokyo, I began packing for the trip last night (Thursday) during McCain’s nomination speech, and finished this morning shortly before the taxi came to take me to the airport. I said goodbye to Sharon and the kids this morning as they left for work and school, The morning flew by. I had hoped to complete some work on Wonderware reports for my job, but after an hour of getting nowhere, I had to stop to finish the rest of the packing. The one thing I’m going to purchase in China is a new battery charger for the Canon camera. Hopefully this won’t be difficult to find.

Since last I wrote, Matt the taper/mudder guy has started work on our basement. He stopped by on Saturday, Sunday and Monday mornings last weekend for about 2 hours each time. On Monday the mud had not dried enough to continue, so he did some minor repairs and left. We couldn’t have him come by during the week when both of us weren’t home, so I called him this morning to confirm that he will stop by the house on Saturday and Sunday morning to finish the work. He may have to make one more trip after Sunday to finish sanding. We shall see. So far he’s done excellent work. Here are a few basement photos taken just prior to the taping:

Last weekend, being Labor Day, we got a lot of work accomplished. I spent Friday afternoon and evening completing the framing of the basement window so we were ready for the taping guy. After Matt left on Saturday, I did some major grocery shopping at Sam’s Club and at Cub. Cub had several 2-for-1 again deals on meat, which will help Sharon with preparing meals while I’m away without having to visit the grocery store much. I also brought the lawnmower into the garden repair shop to get a few things fixed.

On Sunday Sharon and I went to Maplewood Mall together and purchased several new sets of clothes. Mine were for the trip to China, where it continues to be warm throughout September, while Sharon needed new clothes for going back to her job at the school. She will be working full-time this year, meaning more cash for us but also less time to be home with family.

On Sunday night we had our neighbors, the R’s, spend an evening on our outdoor deck with us. We had plenty of drinks and food on hand, but as it turned out, the food was consumed at a faster rate. I did mix a few margaritas, but no serious drinking ensued. We had kebob skewers with steak, peppers, onions, shrimp, and other ingredients cooked on the grill. K and the R’s son, J, played together well and made hotdogs and marshmallows over the fire pit in the back yard. The weather was perfect and we sat inside our screened-in gazebo, so there were no bug problems. It was a relaxing evening.

Monday was spent running more errands – another grocery store trip – and preparing for the first day of school. I talked to Mom, who is doing fine and feeling better when she does her exercise class and her physical therapy exercises. She went to a Labor Day picnic with some friends and had a good time. She asked if I would send her some more recent pictures of the family, so that she could show them to friends when they visit, so I sent them Monday and they arrived on Thursday.

The Republican National Convention was in town all week, and it was quite the spectacle. My office at work was only about 1.5 miles away from the convention center, so I decided it would be fun to take the bus downtown on Tuesday and see what was happening there. I saw plenty of delegates, plenty of police and other security, big tall fences, and a few protestors. I thought maybe I’d get lucky and bump into a celebrity like Meredith Viera, Brian Williams or Tom Brokaw, but it didn’t happen. The closest I got was MSNBC’s broadcast live from Rice Park, where I saw NBC’s political analyst Chuck Todd, who was anchoring at the time. I managed to steer clear of the violent marches in the evening on Monday and Thursday. I watched the big speeches from Palin and McCain at home on TV like everyone else. Today, as I arrived at the airport for this trip, there were still many delegates around, waiting for their flights to go home.

EDIT – I’m now at Tokyo Narita airport, waiting for the final flight of my trip, Tokyo to Shanghai. I was getting sleepy before, and the guy sitting in front of me on the airplane leaned his seat back so far that it was difficult to type, so I gave up. On the flight from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Tokyo, I did have a nice conversation with a young lady sitting in the window seat next to me. She was from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and was on her way to Thailand to meet her boyfriend and do some scuba diving. It sounded a lot more fun than my trip. It was her first time outside the U.S. and Canada, except for Costa Rica. Sharon and I would like to visit Costa Rica someday.

Back to earlier this week. Tuesday was the first day of school for S and K. S is in 11th grade now, and K is in the 6th grade. K’s getting bored with being in grade school, which is not surprising. S likes all his teachers except for his chemistry teacher, whom he describes as “the meanest teacher ever.” It’s his hardest subject this quarter, so it won’t be easy to get him motivated to study. I went to the school’s open house on Thursday night, and of course the chemistry teacher was absent.

I was very busy trying to get many things done before the trip, since I won’t be back until the 27th. I tried to finish some work tasks and got a few done. I wanted to talk to my boss before I left, but every time I stopped by his office this week, he was busy with others. Guess I’ll have to make an appointment the next time. I did manage to pick up the lawnmower that had been repaired, and attend a few meetings.

The orchestra situation is still up in the air. It looks like we won’t be able to use the theater we used in the past because of its cost and availability. The banquet rooms at the same building may be available, but the city people responsible for renting the space are dragging their feet. We do have a place to play through the end of September, at least, but we need to nail a permanent location down soon. I’ll probably need to contact one of our members who has close ties with a local church.

Well, it’s almost flight time for Shanghai, so I’m done for now. This will get posted once I arrive in Shanghai. More China adventures soon.

Now the real fun begins

2008-08-27T15:54:00.002-05:00

Matt the taper called a short time ago. He can start on our basement earlier than expected! He'll either come to our house on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning to start, and can work all weekend. Sharon will be excited to find out. Guess I'd better finish framing the last window tonight.

Ride, captain ride, upon your mystery ship

2008-08-25T21:47:00.004-05:00

It’s been a while since I updated. We have been so busy.

The weekend before last (Aug. 15-17) we drove down to Milwaukee to visit Mom. As usual, it was a pain getting everything in the van and leaving town, but a pleasure once we were on the road. We dropped Jessie (our dog) off at Sharon’s parents’ house, and then it was on to Milwaukee, via Rochester and La Crosse. After lunch at Culver’s in La Crosse, S drove. It was the first time he had done any long-distance freeway driving, and he handled it well. The traffic wasn’t too bad, but by the time we reached Wisconsin Dells, he was ready to quit. I drove the final leg to Milwaukee.

Mom was happy to see us. After some visiting, we headed out for dinner at Filippo’s, another great Milwaukee-area pizza place I’ve visited since the ‘70s. Most of us had pizza, but K chose lasagna. There were plenty of leftovers which we brought home on Sunday.

There were no plans for Saturday, but the weather was so nice, we had to get out and do something fun. Irish Fest was taking place at the Milwaukee lakefront, but that was too big of a crowd for Mom. We ended up driving north to Port Washington to attend the Maritime Heritage Festival. Port Washington is on Lake Michigan, and five “tall” ships had come there to be part of the festival. You had to pay to board the boats, but it was free to look at them across the marina. Here are a few that we saw:

The US Brig Niagara

The Pride Of Baltimore II

The Red Witch

We also drove around the city of Port Washington and through Saukville and Cedarburg on our way home. In the evening we dined at one of Mom’s favorite restaurants, Heinemann’s, where the food was pretty good. Mom had their world-famous grilled tilapia. We also watched the Olympics again and saw Michael Phelps win his 8th and final gold medal.

It was a short trip, since we had to return on Sunday. The traffic was a little heavier but not too bad. I drove from Milwaukee to Tomah, where we stopped for lunch and Humbird Cheese. S drove from Tomah all the way back to the Twin Cities. It was a good experience for him. Later I picked up Jessie.

Last week was filled with events. Sharon had to have a crown put in at the dentist. We had several members of the orchestra over to our home on Tuesday night to make decisions about the orchestra’s future. K celebrated her 11th birthday with 4 friends on Thursday night, which included a sleepover. S had his high school picture taken on Friday. I was exhausted by the time Friday came around, and took Friday afternoon off from work.

I spent Saturday re-installing one of the two outdoor antennas (the UHF TV antenna) that I had removed last summer when our roof was re-shingled. I saved the original wiring, but the tripod was replaced with a more aesthetically-pleasing Commdeck antenna mount. The Commdeck was installed last summer with the roof. I replaced the ancient antenna mast, antenna rotor and controller with new parts, including a controller that can be run by remote control. Cool!

Sharon’s parents came over Saturday afternoon to celebrate K’s birthday, since that day was her actual birthday, and we usually have the family party at a different time than the friends’ party. K was surprised that we got her a Nintendo Wii system, something she’s wanted for a while. She enjoyed playing it the rest of the afternoon and evening, and I played with my new toy (the antenna + rotor) as well.

Sunday was spent doing various home tasks, including framing of the windows in the basement. Yesterday I finished one of the two windows, and should have the other one finished sometime this weekend. A while back we had a taping guy, Matt, come over and give us an estimate for the basement work. He said we still needed to do more work on the windows before he could start. He will start the taping and mudding on September 6th, which means it will all take place while I’m in China. When I get back, then we can paint, put the floor down, and complete the electrical work.

The China project at work is charging along. Installation is well underway, and currently one of my U.S. colleagues is over there assisting with electrical panel checkout. I’ve made my reservations and will be leaving September 5th, to stay for three weeks, returning on the 27th. By October the plant will be ready for a full checkout, and my colleague and I will be making alternating visits to China throughout the fall and early winter. I’m looking forward to the project’s completion early next year.

I’m sure glad the Olympics are over. We watched the coverage almost every night for 17 days. It was exciting but it took valuable hours away from other tasks, including sleep. I was so tired last Friday morning I literally stared at the computer screen for 4 hours. Now we can get back to real life. Sharon went back to work today – she’s an educational assistant at K’s school, which starts next week – so she appreciates watching the news at 10 PM again.

Good night!

Money, it's a hit

2008-08-13T14:14:00.002-05:00

The Olympics are turning my brain into mush. Sharon and I stay up too late watching them, and then I have to go to work in the morning half asleep. Maybe tonight we will watch them in bed and not wait for the 10 PM news to start at 11:45.

Besides the sporting events, NBC has been showing many stories about life in modern China. I’ve found them of great interest because of my recent visits to China. Although I’ve not been to Beijing, it seems very similar to life in Shanghai, where I have gone. The project I’m working on over there is being constructed right now, which means I’ll be spending about 50% of my time there from September through January.

The orchestra I belong to has been occupying too much of my time lately. I’ve been searching for a suitable place for us to rehearse weekly in the fall, with no luck yet. Last week a bombshell was dropped on me. The orchestra’s sponsor, my employer, decided that they could not continue to fund the orchestra’s activities after this year. Since the company provides over half of the orchestra’s income, we will have no money to pay for a conductor, a concertmaster, rental fees for rehearsal space, purchase of new music, etc. We do have some money in reserve, so we may be able to survive one more year. But after that, unless we find a new way to raise the missing funds, the orchestra is finished. I guess I’m not surprised, since there is so much cost-cutting going on everywhere. But to disband a group that’s been together for 50 years will be sad. I don’t think there is enough passion among the orchestra’s members to try to find another source of income in order to continue.

The drywall work in the basement is complete! Last week I solved the remaining power wiring problems. I spent Saturday figuring out the audio and video wiring for the TV wall, the last wall left uncovered with drywall. I finished putting up the last large piece at 11:30 PM on Saturday. Last night I installed the last two small pieces to complete the work. Sharon got the name of the contractor who did drywall taping and mudding at her parents’ house, and he will stop by Thursday night to give us an estimate for the work. We are also going to get an estimate from the contractor who worked on our neighbors’ basement. Taping and mudding will commence soon!

While talking to Mom on Sunday, she mentioned that she’d like us to visit her sometime soon. After discussing it with the family, we decided to make the trip to Milwaukee this weekend. The following weekend is K’s birthday, and S has school-related things to do on that Friday. The weekend after that is Labor Day weekend already, and Sharon did not want to be coming home from a trip the day before school (and her job) starts again. After that I’ll be in China a lot, so the only weekend available to travel was the upcoming one. Mom says there aren’t any chores to do while we’re there, but even if there are, I’ll be happy to help.

Sharon’s parents and her brother Stu came over Sunday so we could celebrate her father’s birthday. He turned 81. He’s had memory loss problems for several years, but it seems that lately it’s getting worse. I hope that we can help Sharon’s mom cope with the problems that may arise. We got her dad this radio as a present for their bedroom. They already have another almost identical radio in their kitchen which they enjoy very much. Here’s a picture of it. We bought that for them in February for Sharon’s mom’s birthday. Stu brought over a chainsaw and cut up the remainder of the tree that’s been lying in the back yard since it fell down a few weeks ago.

Well, I’d better prepare for this evening’s phone conference with my colleagues in China, among other work that’s waiting. I’ve been spending 2-3 nights on the phone every week with them lately. That is all.

Le grand dejeuner

2008-08-04T13:12:00.002-05:00

I’m really getting back into the blogging spirit lately, since I’ve read several new ones. I don’t know if I have much more to talk about.

Last night I got a call from my brother Dan. We discussed the subject of my last post, Sonic, and my less-than-satisfying experience there. He said that there are several Sonics in Denver (where he lives) and that he frequents them often. He recommended any of the ice cream drinks and their “famous slushes.” He also said that, like Perkins or Denny’s, they serve breakfast items all day, not just in the morning. Or, in his words, “if you want to have French toast sticks at 3 PM, you can do it.” Dan’s enjoying the current record streak in Denver of 22 consecutive days with highs above 90 degrees – NOT. I guess it was 104 there yesterday. He still needs to put his vacation pictures on Flickr.

On Friday at work I was treated to a free lunch, courtesy of one of my co-workers and the company. He invited several co-workers who have China projects to have lunch with the engineering manager from China who is currently in the Twin Cities. Earlier in the week he asked me for a good place to have lunch near work, and I suggested Dixie’s on Grand Ave. in St. Paul, a place I haven’t been to in a while but have fond memories of. That is where we went, and since a few people couldn’t make it, I drove everyone to the restaurant in the minivan.

The service was great, however next time I will not order the BBQ beef brisket, which was very average tasting. Since Dixie’s specializes in Southern food, I would have done better with the jambalaya, which one of my co-workers had. During the course of the lunch, I learned a few new things:

• One of my co-workers, who is 43 and recently married, changed his cell phone service from Verizon to T-Mobile because now his wife can call her mother in Peru cheaply (she also has T-Mobile). Didn’t know his new wife was Peruvian.

• Another co-worker said that it only costs an extra $3 per month to enable our work-issued Sprint cell phones for international use, and that non-GSM phones actually work in China. That will be even more necessary for me as I spend more time in China this fall. However, talking on the phones in China costs over $2/minute, so they should only be used in emergencies.

• The same co-worker entertained Korean guests from our company by taking them up to Cragun’s Resort near Brainerd, where they all went snowmobiling and crashed three of the snowmobiles. Total damages: about $1800.

• Another co-worker, who goes to eat chicken wings at lunch every Friday at Hooters at the Mall of America, is not interested on going there during Lent. (I guess he DOES just go there for the food.)

• Our guest from China ordered a club sandwich and got twice as much food as he wanted.

It was fun to go out to a nice restaurant with fun people, have good conversation, and drive there and back on a beautiful summer day.

On Friday night Sharon and K attended a book release party at the local Borders store for the latest Stephenie Meyer book, “Breaking Dawn.” K is the fan of the Twilight series of books, and “Breaking Dawn” is the final one of the series. All the novels were set in the town of Forks, Washington, the rainiest place in the contiguous U.S. and a town that we visited during our vacation in June. Someday I’ll get around to writing about it, but for now you can look at our pictures of Forks on Flickr.

K wore a T-shirt that she had designed herself. It had a picture that contained the combined images from all four of the “Twilight” novels. Sharon and I assembled the items from the previous covers on a black background and photographed it. K took the photo and edited it in Photoshop. Then we tried to print the image onto a iron-on transfer, but our printer couldn’t do the job, so we asked a neighbor for help. He got it to print on his printer. Then Sharon and K ironed the design onto the shirt, and presto! The creation was complete. Not bad for a 10-year-old.

The rest of the weekend wasn’t too exciting. I spent Saturday and Sunday afternoon trying to finish up drywalling in the basement. Saturday was focused on finishing the new closet, which was successful. Sunday was spent trying to put up the last piece of drywall on the TV wall. The first step was reconfiguring the power wiring in one section of the wall. I made the changes I wanted, connected everything back together, and when the power was turned on, the GFCI outlet kept tripping. I tore everything apart and still it didn’t work. I finally separated all the wires and tested the power feed, which looked correct. At that point Dan called and no more progress was made, as it was getting late, and I still had to call Mom. Hopefully I’ll be able to at least finish the wiring tonight.

While I was working I had the TV on, and saw a few Discovery Channel shows. It was the last day of Shark Week on Discovery, and except for a special “Mythbusters” episode about sharks and the movie “Jaws,” most of the shows about shark attacks were depressing. I followed that up by switching to National Geographic Channel, which showed back-to-back episodes of “Locked Up Abroad.” That is one show that’s guaranteed to depress you. It was followed by “Curse Of The Tasmanian Devil,” a show about the title animals getting a contagious cancer, at which point I changed the channel to “Saturday Night Live.” SNL was a repeat and pretty stupid, but at least I laughed.

Today's lunch has been over for a while now, so it’s back to work and more exciting times.

My first Sonic experience

2008-07-31T13:11:00.002-05:00

Ever since I began blogging and reading blogs four years ago, many people have raved about the joys of eating and drinking at Sonic drive-ins. I have traveled to many cities across the U.S. and driven by many Sonics, but never stopped at one. Recently Sonic opened their very first location in Minnesota, a mere 5-minute drive from my office. There have been TV reports and newspaper stories about the huge crowds that have been eating there, and how long the lines were just to be served.

Now that the local Sonic has been open for a while, today I decided that it might be a good time to eat lunch there. As I pulled up to Sonic, I noticed that all the parking stalls had cars in them. There was some outdoor seating but no indoor seating. This Sonic also has a drive-thru, and the line was not too long, so I got in line. The line crawled. It was one of the slowest drive-thru lines I’ve been in. Eventually I ordered a meal: a superSonic cheeseburger, onion rings, and a limeade, which Sonic is famous for.

Pulling up to the window, I couldn’t understand why the line was slow, since most people were paying by swiping their credit or debit cards. I used cash – how old-fashioned! The total was $6.30, pretty “spendy” for what I ordered. The attendant gave me my food and I drove to a nearby park to eat.

First I tried the limeade. It had some lime flavor but mostly tasted like water. The small cup was filled halfway with crushed ice. Next were the onion rings. They were mostly breading with a little bit of onion inside. The breading had a slightly sweet taste, not what I was expecting or hoping for. Finally I tried the cheeseburger. It was the only item that I enjoyed. It was messy and the sauce dripped on my clothes, but it was tasty. I think there was some cheese in there somewhere.

I have to say that I was not too impressed with my first Sonic meal. Their food is a cut above McDonald’s and Burger King, but their main chain fast-food competition in the area, Culver’s, is much better. Culver’s, although it’s not a drive-in, does have a drive-thru and indoor seating, which you really have to have most of the year in Minnesota. And Culver’s has custard!

Maybe I should have ordered different food, or flavored limeade that had a little more taste. Maybe I would have enjoyed the Sonic experience more had I parked at the drive-in to eat instead. I’m still willing to go back and try another meal there. Does anyone out in blogland have any suggestions for favorite food items? I want to know what I’m missing.

Hot town, summer in the city

2008-07-29T10:29:00.004-05:00

There’s nothing like walking outside early on a summer morning and feeling the mugginess surround you like a wet blanket. At 7 AM today it was 78 degrees with a dew point of 71. Ugh.

The summer is zipping by faster than I would like, but things are getting done. The weekend before last, Sharon and I spent a lot of time drywalling the basement again. All that’s left is one part of the TV wall, trim around a couple of doorways, and some corner reinforcements. I will go back over all the walls to make sure all the screws have been put in, and put in correctly. Then I will be able to call in the taping guy.

We were in a hurry to get most of the wallboard up because Sharon had some minor surgery scheduled for last Wednesday. It was elective surgery and had been scheduled for some time, but meant that she couldn’t do any lifting afterwards for a few months. My son S can help with lifting, but is not eager to spend all day doing that kind of work.

Getting back to the surgery, everything went according to plan. I was at the hospital most of the day Wednesday, while Sharon’s parents stayed with the kids at home. She got out of recovery about 7 PM and got a room, and I stayed with her until about 9 PM. She only had to stay one night, and was cleared to check out about 3 PM on Thursday. I took off from work Wednesday-Friday and was Mister Mom all weekend while Sharon rested. I went back to work yesterday and Sharon’s parents came over for a few hours to help out. She’s improving every day and will probably be able to drive herself to the doctor on Thursday for a post-op appointment, but I will be doing much of the housework for the next several weeks so she can recover. I also spent part of the weekend making repairs to the half-pipe.

Our Hyundai Sonata was back in the repair shop again yesterday. Last February the power window on the driver’s side stopped working, and last week the power window on the passenger’s side had the same problem. I suppose because the car was built in Korea in 2002, they were still using crappy Korean window motors. I can almost understand why the driver’s side stopped working, since it got used a lot. But the passenger’s side window was barely used. I’ve had more problems with this car’s electrical parts than any car I’ve owned. At least the engine and transmission are fine, and the car still looks nice. Since S now has his driver’s license, he was able to drive the car to the shop and pick it up when it was done, with me driving the other car to get us there and back. Sharon could rest.

I finally talked to Dan last week about his recent time off from work. He went to two different hot springs resorts during the week he was off. He still needs to post his vacation photos on Flickr so I can see them! The air conditioning at his workplace was finally repaired after a few weeks. He spent many days working indoors in 85-90 degree heat. Mom’s been OK lately, spending time with friends and working on her porches and in the yard. She still is having leg pains occasionally, but all the doctors can tell her is to take Tylenol for the pain.

This week at work we are having our department’s annual summer meetings. The meetings started yesterday morning and continue through tomorrow at lunchtime, when we get to spend the afternoon at the company’s park out in the country. We will have a catered lunch there (free beer included) and play various goofy games to promote “team building.” It’s actually pretty fun, but was more fun years ago when the company also paid for a round of golf on the course at the park.

As part of the meetings, most of our department’s engineers that are located at plants away from the Twin Cities travel here to attend, so I’ve gotten to talk to a lot of former co-workers who used to work locally. We also have a special guest in town – the engineering manager in China that I’ve been working with. He gave a presentation yesterday, and I will be meeting with him in person later today. On Friday one of my colleagues invited him to lunch along with all the local engineers who have China projects, including myself. So work is fun for now.

The one thing I’m dreading is orchestra duties. It’s almost August, and the orchestra has no permanent place to rehearse when the season begins in September. Some of the other members have been asking me if I’ve done anything about it. We’ll have a phone conference tonight to discuss it. I hope we can find a location soon.

Here’s wishing your lawn is not as dry and weedy as mine. Happy August!

Another brick in the (dry)wall

2008-07-15T15:33:00.005-05:00

I’m feeling rather productive today, so I can probably crank out a post and get some work done this afternoon.

It was another basement finishing weekend at our house. We purchased another 12 sheets of drywall, and spent all day Friday and part of Saturday putting it up. There are just a few small spots left that have not been covered, including the wall where the big TV will be mounted, and the entrance from the stairway. We’ve held off on the TV wall because I’m still figuring out a wiring scheme for the numerous video and audio cables that will need to fit inside the wall. Sharon and I visited the local Best Buy store on Sunday to get some ideas from their displays. We only had to talk to one salesman, who of course tried to sell us on the idea of having a consultant come to our house to make suggestions on the wiring and equipment. No thanks, I think I can do this myself and save $100. As soon as we finish putting the remaining pieces up, and add some corner reinforcements, we can contact a person who will do the taping and “mudding” for us, since that is a skill neither one of us possess. I need to take some pictures of the work to post here.

Friday was a good day to work in the basement, where it was cool. Outside it reached 93 degrees, followed by severe storms in the evening. On Saturday the temperature and humidity were better, but the winds continued to blow. After having a little lunch, I sat down to relax for a few minutes before returning to the basement, and heard a BANG! from outside. I wasn’t sure where the noise came from, but thought maybe the storage doors on the half-pipe slammed shut from the wind. A little while later, I went outside and saw what had caused the bang. There was one of our older 30-foot-tall box elder trees, lying on top of the half-pipe. The wind had weakened the tree to the point where it fell down. In case you forgot what the half-pipe looked like, here’s a photo of it shortly after we finished building it two years ago:

Here’s what it looked like with a tree on top of it:

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The tree was not tall enough to hit the house, and only did minor damage to the half-pipe and the surrounding trees. It wasn’t nearly as big as the trees that fell down in my mom’s backyard last summer. Since it was a nice day, I got out the reciprocating saw and was able to cut up most of the tree into manageable pieces for hauling away, with help from Sharon and S. I still need to find someone who can lend us a chainsaw to cut up the main trunk, which was too big for my saw.

We knew that the base of the tree was hollow and rotting away, but since it was technically on our neighbor’s property, we didn’t do anything about it. The wind took care of our problem, although it would have been better if it had fallen the other direction.

In addition to our Best Buy trip on Sunday, we also went to Home Depot to pick up more basement-finishing supplies and also new surface boards for the half-pipe. I also picked up this item which was on sale at Circuit City this week, allowing me to watch HDTV on my laptop. There was also time on Sunday evening for more viewing of EastEnders episodes. We’ve been slacking lately and are about 1.5 months behind on viewing.

Although the China project continues to keep me busy, work is not so busy lately, which has allowed me to take off a day here and there. I’ll need to be at home more to help after Sharon’s minor surgery later this month. I’m also grateful that I don’t need to travel to China until September, because I’ll get to fully enjoy summer in Minnesota, which is too short already.

I’ll be back next time with more stories of basement finishing, which is probably boring to most of you. I’m mostly excited because I can see the rooms starting to take shape, and because we’re getting closer to the finish, when we’ll be able to enjoy our new entertainment space.

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back

2008-07-09T22:52:00.000-05:00

Where do I start? I’ve neglected this blog for far too long. I just haven’t felt like I had the time to blog. But I’ve noticed on the “statcounter” that a few people are still checking to see if I’ve written anything new. I have plenty to write about, including a family vacation trip to the Pacific Northwest in June. Most of the pictures are on Flickr, if you want to check them out. Just click on the Flickr badge on the sidebar. I will write about the trip very soon.

I’ll start with the past holiday weekend. Sharon and I spent last Thursday and Friday working in the basement, putting up drywall. In May we managed to cover the basement ceiling with drywall over a 2-day weekend. But because we were busy every weekend after that, no more progress was made until last week. Again we rented a drywall lift, making it easier to place the drywall in the correct location. By the time we were done on Friday night, all the walls were covered from the ceiling level (8 ft.) down to the 4 ft. level. On Sunday we purchased more drywall and brought it home. I’ll be taking a day off work this Friday, and we’ll spend Friday and Saturday putting up the rest of the drywall. We’re getting closer to being done with all the work.

Saturday and Sunday were pretty lazy days. I did some grocery shopping, went to the city’s compost site with a van full of brush, and got some great deals on meat. We also did some house cleaning, and Sharon worked on her fountain and our new fire pit. I talked to Mom, as is usual on Sunday nights. She usually tells me about her medical problems, and the medical problems of her friends. I guess that’s the most interesting thing in your life when you’re in your 70’s. Mom has had some pain in her legs the last couple of months, but so far the doctors have not been able to pinpoint the cause, other than to say it might be arthritis.

This week at home Sharon finished the fire pit, and finally put up the gazebo on the deck. This allowed us to eat dinner outdoors the last few nights. I talked to people in China on Monday night and tonight.

S took the road test for his driver’s license on June 20th and passed the first time. He made a couple of small mistakes but not enough to flunk. Since then he’s wanted to use the car almost every day. He’s lucky that we have two cars, so usually one is available. When I grew up, I got my driver’s license shortly after I turned 16, but rarely got to use the car, since my parents only had one. I didn’t get full use of a car until I was 19, when my parents sold me their old car after buying a new one. Every time he asks to use the car, I tell him, “Gas costs money!” I’m sure he’s tired of hearing me say that. S has put in several job applications in order to work and make some money, but so far no luck. I’ll be happy when he gets a job so he can pay for the gas he’s using.

The China project at work drags on. I was planning on being in China right now, but the project is behind schedule, so another person will go to China in August, and I will travel there in September. That’s fine with me, since I’ll get to spend the entire summer at home. Most of the checkout and startup of the plant will happen in the fall.

That’s all for now. From now on, I hope to post at least twice per week, but right now, I need to get some sleep. Maybe the next few days will be more interesting than the last week.

Spring has sprung

2008-04-03T22:05:00.004-05:00

What a glorious day we had today! The high was 55 degrees, sunny and no wind. I wanted to go for a walk at lunch, but there wasn't time. Tomorrow I will walk for sure, since it will be 60 degrees and I'm not working in the afternoon. Today was the official start of spring.

Our daughter K left yesterday to go to this place with her class. All 5th and 6th graders at her school make the trip to learn about the outdoors and the environment. S also went there several years ago. K's been on sleepovers before but this will be the longest she's been away from us. Good thing the weather has improved, since her class will spend most of their time outdoors. Hope she's having fun. She'll be home tomorrow afternoon.

S has been off school all this week on spring break. He's been sleeping until noon every day, getting up just before Sharon gets home from work. He's been out with friends a few times but has spent most of his time playing World of Warcraft. I blame my brother for getting him interested in the game. Sarah Silverman said it best: "There's a big wide world out there, and it's not Warcraft!"

Sharon will be working more hours next week, since the girl she assists at school, a kindergartener, will be attending school full days on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It's not full time but at least there will be more hours and more money.

My boss is also on vacation this week, so work has been pleasant. No phone calls and e-mails questioning my China project execution. The project at the local plant was delayed due to slow work by contractors, allowing me to take off work tomorrow.

Since K wasn't home, and S was otherwise occupied, Sharon and I went out to dinner by ourselves for the first time in a while. We went to our local Red Lobster - how adventurous! They're celebrating "Lobsterfest" there right now. Sharon had a lobster meal, but I decided that coconut shrimp was more my speed. The shrimp tasted even better with a couple of Coronas.

Enjoy the weekend!

Listen to the music... all the time

2008-04-01T17:07:00.001-05:00

Well, I’ve already wasted most of the afternoon on the computer. Might as well update the blog.

The highlight of the weekend was the orchestra concert on Sunday afternoon at a church not far from our house. Musically, all went well. The concert featured members of the orchestra performing as soloists or ensembles, accompanied by the remainder of the orchestra. There were several good performances, especially if you like bassoons. One piece featured two men, father and son, playing recorder and bassoon with the orchestra. A second piece, written by a Polish composer, was titled “The Grumpy Bear” (in Polish) and featured our lead bassoonist, who came out wearing a bear hat and walking with a cane. The same bassoonist was later featured in a Mozart piece with a few other woodwind instrumentalists. Our substitute conductor, who has been our substitute concertmaster in the past, also played a few solos on the violin.

Being that we had a substitute conductor, however, meant that I, the orchestra’s president, was responsible for organizing the non-musical aspects of the concert. This included several requests:

-- The substitute conductor wanted to show a video of himself, taken when he was 6 years old, back in Poland in 1948. It was a clip from a old newsreel, the way news was distributed back before television. He wanted to do this to celebrate his 60th anniversary of performing on stage.

-- The substitute conductor’s lady friend wanted the orchestra to sing “Happy Birthday” to him, since he recently celebrated a birthday. She also brought a cake and asked for help in providing the punch and coffee. Sharon was nice enough to take care of this

-- Another orchestra member wanted to present an award to a Girl Scout who had assembled two scrapbooks with concert programs, news clippings and pictures from the orchestra’s 50 years of existence. (This year is the orchestra’s 50th anniversary.) The Girl Scout forgot when the concert was being held and didn’t make it in time to receive the award, but brought the scrapbooks before the end of the concert.

-- I also spoke several times over the weekend with another orchestra member who was the liaison with the church to arrange other details, such as the free will offering for the church, and for a person to run the audio/video equipment.

Everyone did the jobs they were asked to do, and we were all pleased at the outcome. Best of all, the concert ran for 1 hour 45 minutes, with a short 10-minute intermission and VERY LITTLE TALKING. Our regular conductor, who took a hiatus from her job for this concert, was in the audience. I hope she saw the way we’d like to present a concert – shut up and play more music. The audience gave us a standing ovation at the end, but our regular conductor was not one of the people standing. Maybe she was a little jealous?

Not much happened the rest of the weekend. Sharon and I did spend more time in the basement putting up studs around the pipes and HVAC ducts. There isn’t too much stud work left, and I still have to finish some light wiring and install some smoke detectors. But soon we will be ready to install sheet rock! I talked to Mom Sunday night and all is well in Milwaukee. We asked if she wanted us to come visit this coming weekend, but she was OK with waiting until the weather improves a bit. I talked to Dan last night. He has big plans for purchasing a new desktop PC.

Speaking of weather, we had a miserable storm pass through here yesterday, dropping at least 6 inches of heavy wet snow. I shoveled the stuff and it was like lifting weights. The only good thing about the snow is that it will be gone soon. The sun has been out all day, melting the snow, and the temps will be in the 50’s by Friday, so we should be snow-free again by the weekend.

We tried to get a machine at the local plant site running yesterday and today, but were not successful because a number of mechanical and safety items have not been completed by the contractors, which meant we couldn’t turn the electric, natural gas, compressed air, or water on. The lead engineer wasn’t on top of the project because the field service rep is out on medical leave. The checkout people for the machine went back to Milwaukee, and hopefully will come back on Monday next week, when all of the outstanding items should be completed. Since that project is on hold, I’ll have time to catch up with China items.

No orchestra rehearsal tonight, because of our concert on Sunday, so I’d better get home and enjoy the free evening.

Back in black

2008-03-28T13:36:00.002-05:00

I’ve neglected this blog for far too long. Work and life have been extremely busy, and back in November I joined the “365 Days” group on Flickr, which required that I take a photo of myself every day for a year. I intended to use the project as a way of documenting my life, but after 122 days I determined that I wasn’t attractive or interesting enough to keep doing the project for another 240+ days. So it’s back to the blog, where hopefully I can get back to posting something interesting 1-2 times per week.

Here are some more bullet points, to try to summarize the highlights of the past month. I’ll expound on a few of them:

• Went to new Irish pub in Hudson, WI
• Toured a model home in Balsam Lake
• Worked more on finishing the basement
• I’m half-a-century old
• Went to China again, much work accomplished, also visited Zhouzhuang
• Saw Irish music and dancing at Landmark Center
• Orchestra back on track, sort of
• Canceled Easter trip to Milwaukee

We’ve made significant progress on basement finishing. More wiring is complete, although there are a few lights still needing power wires, and smoke detectors need to be installed. Sharon installed the HVAC ducts while I was in China. We’ve also put up studs around the low-hanging ductwork, and need to finish more stud work on the angled wall on the southwest side of the basement. But then we will be ready to start putting up drywall, and it will start to look like finished rooms! Sharon has also purchased some cabinets and counter tops for the bar that will be part of the new rooms.

On February 28th I turned 50. That’s right; I’m now older than dirt. There was talk of a party by the neighbors, but since I had to leave town on business two days after, we didn’t do anything big. We had a small celebration at home with a cake, and the kids and Sharon got me some nice gifts. Maybe when I turn 51 we can have a big celebration.

The first two weeks of March were spent in Shanghai, China again, to work with engineers in the design of a plant for my company. Unlike the last trip there, I was very busy for the entire two weeks. This time I stayed on the west side of Shanghai, closer to my company’s offices, and the offices of the external engineering company doing the design work. While there I ate at a few new restaurants, including this one that served Peking Duck:

Across the street was the only Best Buy store in China, similar to U.S. Best Buy’s, but they did not sell CD’s or DVD’s:

During my free weekend in China, the engineers at the external company took me to a small town west of Shanghai called Zhouzhuang. It is one of most popular “water townships” in China, with most homes and businesses near a lake, river or canal. The homes in the town are good examples of traditional Chinese architecture. It was a good chance to experience the real China, away from the busy, modern landscape of Shanghai. Here are a few photos:

You can see more of my China photos on Flickr here. I’ll probably be going back to China again in May or June for more adventures.

The day after I returned from China, the family and I went down to Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul for a day of Irish music and dancing, in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. It was fun to see the young boys and girls dance:

The orchestra I belong to has gotten back on track. For now we’ve been able to rehearse at our original location, although in banquet rooms, not the theater. I managed to move our upcoming concert (this Sunday), originally scheduled for the theater, to a local church where we’ve played before. And when our conductor decided to take a hiatus from conducting for this concert, the concertmaster agreed to take over the conducting duties. The financial side of the changes has not gone as well, but hopefully we can correct that soon. I think we’ll be OK for the rest of the season, which ends in June. Next year is still a big question mark.

Last weekend we had planned on traveling to Milwaukee to visit Mom for Easter. But as luck would have it, a snowstorm blew through the Midwest, right along our travel path at the exact time we planned on traveling. Mom called early Friday morning and advised us not to come, since 15 inches of snow was predicted for Milwaukee. After looking at the weather forecast for the day, I had to agree that it was not a good time to travel, so we postponed the trip. Hopefully we will come down to visit on a weekend in April. In the end we made the best of our extra free time. Sharon and I did more basement finishing work on Saturday, and we went to Sharon’s parents’ house on Sunday for Easter dinner. Mom got through the weekend OK, going to church with her neighbors, and visiting friends on Sunday afternoon. The rest of the weekend she was shoveling snow. This winter has been the 2nd snowiest winter of all time in Milwaukee, totaling nearly 100 inches of snow for the season.

That’s enough blogging for now. I’ll have another post in a few days, I promise!!!

Beneath this snowy mantle cold and clean

2008-02-11T14:15:00.000-06:00

Well, this is a slow time of year. We alternate between normal cold days in the 20’s and the miserable windy -40 F wind chill days (-15 F real temp.) we had this past weekend. Fortunately we’ve been spared from large snowstorms.

The same can’t be said for Milwaukee, where Mom lives. They’ve had almost 70 inches of snow this winter, with 3 to 5 more inches predicted tonight. On Wednesday night when I called Mom, she sounded OK, although 12 inches fell that day. The neighbors have been helping with some of the shoveling and snow blowing. But last night on the phone she was in tears again. The cold temps and 3 inches of snow Saturday night kept her inside, where she thinks about how much she misses Dad. She also worries about her dogs who have no place to run around outside because of all the snow. One of the dogs, who is 12 years old, has a throat problem that the vet hasn’t figured out yet. I hope that the weather improves soon so Mom doesn’t sit and feel sorry for herself all day.

The last two weekends Sharon and I have spent a lot of time working in the basement of our home, making improvements that eventually will result in a finished TV and rec room. We’ve framed all the new walls previously, and now we’re working on the electrical portion, which I’m very comfortable doing. Sharon made up a sketch of the locations she wanted receptacles, lights and switches, and I’ve installed the boxes and Romex cable to connect them all.

This past Saturday I peeled back the plastic covering the insulated walls and installed new wiring along the northwest wall of the basement. We now have several more places to plug things in. I’m currently trying to figure out what audio and video cables I’ll need along that wall so they can be installed before I seal up the plastic again. Trust me; it’s more exciting to see the results than to read about it.

Last weekend our Hyundai spent the weekend at the dealer’s service department, since they didn’t have the parts to fix it on Friday. They gave us a loaner car for the weekend, a brand new 2008 Sonata. It was a nice ride, which included XM Satellite radio and a CD player that also played MP3-encoded CD’s. I was in heaven. Satellite radio is cool. There were 3 or four music channels I enjoyed, commercial-free, including one channel that only played Led Zeppelin - the Zeppelin Channel, XM 59. I hated to return the car on Monday, but it was also nice to have our car working well again.

Last Sunday we went over to the neighbor’s, the R’s, for a neighborhood Super Bowl party. The game was pretty good, and so were the margaritas. I’m starting to get tired of going to parties with the same people, though. We’ve got to get out more in the winter with different people.

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, and we attended services at our church. Putting ashes on everyone’s forehead in the sanctuary took quite a while, but I was glad we went. I don’t know what I’ll be giving up for Lent yet.

I finally got around to doing Federal and State income taxes on Turbo Tax last week. Although we will still owe money to the government this year, the amount is much less than in past years. I think we should still get some credit from the state of Minnesota for educational expenses for the kids, but we may earn too much to get it.

Yesterday, Sunday, we celebrated Sharon’s mom’s 80th birthday by taking her and Sharon’s dad to Sunday brunch at the Lake Elmo Inn, where we dined in the Oak Room. The surroundings were elegant, and the food was delicious. It was also nice to have your champagne glass continuously refilled. I told Sharon we should go out for Sunday brunch more often, even when it’s not a special occasion.

After the brunch we came back to the house, opened presents and had a little cake. The cake had eight candles on it, one for each decade.

There is still trouble with the orchestra. I cancelled the rehearsal last week because our conductor was ill and I was not assured a rehearsal location. Today I’ll be calling the person at the community center we rehearse at to see if a banquet room is available for tomorrow night. We also will have to move our next concert date because there is a conflict with the theater group who is now in charge of the theater. Stay tuned.

Work has been a little less busy during the past week. The startup I was working on throughout January was delayed because of transformer problems. However the transformer was repaired and the startup will resume later this week. China is still on holiday, so no late-night phone conferences or E-mails from China until next week. I’m just trying to catch up with other project work. I’ll be leaving on another trip to China March 1st.

Someday I’ll get caught up with the blog. It seems to be harder to find time to write this, although I still want to do it.

We're gonna be elected, respected, selected, call collected

2008-02-06T12:50:00.000-06:00

I’m still preparing a post about the absent-from-my-blog month of January, but in the meantime, I wanted to share with you the experience Sharon and I had last night. Keep in mind when reading this that neither of us is very political, and I’m not trying to persuade you to vote for any particular candidate, Democrat, Republican, or other party. I just found last night’s events very blog-worthy.

In general, although we’re not thrilled with a lot of things our current president has done, we tend to agree more with the Republican viewpoint on how the U.S. government should be run. I wouldn’t say we’re “conservatives”, whatever that means, but I’d say that we’re traveling down the middle of the road, leaning a little to the right. Of the candidates running for President, the one Sharon and I agree with the most happens to be a Republican. Due to that fact, and that we wanted to support our candidate, we decided to attend the local Republican caucus at a nearby high school, although neither of us had “caucused” before, only voted.

We drove down the country roads to the high school, and came to a stop in an unusual place – one mile before a four-way stop! I deduced from the traffic jam that these were people headed to the local Democratic caucus location, which was a short distance after the four-way stop. I turned the car around and found an alternate route to our destination.

Eventually we arrived at the high school, which had a respectable number of cars in the parking lot, but it seemed that there had been more cars headed the opposite direction to the Democratic caucus. We walked in to the high school’s large cafeteria where we were seated at tables by precinct. The local Republican Party chairman spoke and said, “Where were all of you in 2006 when we lost?” He introduced two party candidates running for the Minnesota House in our district this year, and they gave short speeches.

Then letters from the governor and the Presidential candidates were read. The letters were from John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul, but none from Mike Huckabee or Alan Keyes. It seemed that most of the people attending were Romney supporters, which was proven later when Minnesota’s election results were broadcast. There were a few younger folks in the crowd who supported Ron Paul, including one young man who read his letter to the crowd. The speech got very scattered applause, which was funny.

After the speeches were done, then we went off to smaller rooms to meet or “caucus” with people from our precinct. We had great difficulty finding our room, since the organizers had not labeled a room for our precinct to meet in. Eventually one of the party regulars found us and got the school janitor to open up a new room.

Instead of going right to the Presidential vote, we all had to sign in and choose a meeting leader and secretary. Then we also had to choose 11 delegates and 11 alternates to the local district convention in March. There weren’t 22 people in the room, so the leader asked, “Who wants to be a delegate?” We barely got the 11 delegates, until more people walked in the room. They had been in another room with another precinct, but found out later that they were in the wrong meeting. The meeting leader made them also sign in, and asked if any of them wanted to be delegates. We finally got the 11 people needed plus a few alternates. Oh, and there was also a roll call to make sure everyone who signed in was actually there.

As you can imagine, all of this procedure took a long time, more time than most of us expected it would. When it came time to vote for the Presidential candidate, there weren’t enough ballots, so someone went off to get more. Several minutes later, there were enough, and we finally got to vote.

Notice the heading at the top of the ballot. It says “2008 Presidential Preference Ballot.” That is because in Minnesota, the delegates elected can vote for whoever they wish. They are not bound to vote for the candidates chosen on the ballot. That is why some of the media have called the Minnesota Republican caucuses a “beauty contest,” since it doesn’t really help the candidates at all. It’s more of an opinion poll for the party.

After the Presidential vote we left, while the meeting leader was saying, “You can’t leave yet if you’re going to be a delegate. There’s more business to take care of," we walked out. We had spent over two hours attending the caucuses.

I don’t consider the evening a waste since we got to hear what other people were thinking about the candidates, and we got to see how caucuses work. It’s amazing that anything gets accomplished, based on the level of disorganization we saw. But we really didn’t help our candidate win any more delegates. You have to be a delegate to have any say in the nominating process in Minnesota.

After all that intense caucusing, we finished the evening with a little relaxation.

I'm still alive

2008-01-31T22:30:00.000-06:00

I've been very neglectful of my blog lately. Not that anyone reads this or leaves comments. I've spent a lot of time actually working during the day, and doing the 365 days project on Flickr. Just wanted to make sure I had more than one post this month.

I'll have a bigger post on the weekend, but I leave you with this: I made reservations today for my next business trip to China. I'll be leaving March 1st and returning March 15th. There won't be much happening with the China project during the next two weeks, since Chinese New Year holiday begins next week and the whole country is on vacation.

Later.

While my violin gently weeps

2008-01-07T17:05:00.000-06:00

It’s the first Monday of the New Year today. Everyone’s back at the office and it will be a regular week filled with K’s horseback riding, an orchestra rehearsal tomorrow, and the usual weekly activities.

Actually the orchestra part might be a little different. In my role as orchestra president, I attended a meeting last week where I found out that the theater we rehearse in is changing management. With the new management we are not guaranteed any rehearsal or concert dates beyond the end of January, and we will be paying a yet-to-be-determined higher fee for rehearsing there. This probably means the orchestra will have to leave the theater we’ve been at for the last 13 years. If the expenses elsewhere prove to be too high and our major sponsor doesn’t help us out, it may mean the orchestra will fold. I hope not, even if I sometimes have differences with our conductor. I really like playing music with the other musicians, and it would be a shame if it ended. Stay tuned for further developments.

On Friday night I drove S and his girlfriends over to another friend’s house, then picked them up and brought them home. I really felt like a limo driver that night, and told S not to expect that kind of service all the time. As it turned out, he didn’t go anywhere else the rest of the weekend. As usual, Sharon and I caught up with old and new EastEnders. The old show featured bad guy Steve Owen’s funeral, which nearly no one attended. On the new show, Lauren just discovered that her dad Max has been messing around with Stacey, her half-brother Bradley’s new wife! She caught them on her wedding camcorder footage. She burned a DVD of the footage and labeled it “Happy Couple, X.” The fireworks will begin soon!

Saturday I attempted to repair the broken power antenna on our Hyundai Sonata, but could not find the right parts at a few auto parts stores. Now it’s time to search the Internet for parts, or maybe call the local Hyundai dealer to buy a new part. I was successful in getting an oil change done on the Sonata. Sharon took the lights and ornaments off the Christmas tree, and I got it out of the house. I tossed it onto the curb, “like a drive-by shooting victim” as some comedian once compared it to.

Yesterday the temperature reached 43 degrees F, about 20 degrees above normal, and the sun came out for the first time in several days. I took advantage on the good weather to vacuum out both of our vehicles, take down all of the outdoor Christmas decorations, pack them up, and haul them down to the basement crawl space, where they will stay until next Christmas. The job of taking things down has never been completed so quickly by me, but I was inspired by the beautiful day. Usually things don’t get taken down until later in January, and they usually don’t get put into the crawl space until the summertime, if at all.

I also spoke to Dan yesterday for the first time since he was here at Christmas. Work’s been OK for him, and he had fun with his friends over New Year’s. He also told me how he entertained himself waiting for his flight to leave Milwaukee for Denver. It was delayed for over two hours because of snow in Denver.

Since the last time I posted, I’ve spoken to Mom twice. She’s sounding bored and lonely again, because of the winter weather and the holidays being over, but at least she hasn’t cried lately. Pretty soon it will be the one-year anniversary of Dad’s passing. I hope we make it through that anniversary with few problems.

It’s time to go home now and cook a few burgers. What a skilled chef I am. Tomorrow I’ll be out at the plant site since an external engineer from Ohio is coming to help me with the machine shutdown there. It’ll be a blast!

Start me up

2008-01-02T16:31:00.000-06:00

Let’s get back to the excruciating details of life, shall we?

On New Year’s Eve, as in past years, we went over to our neighbors’, the R’s, to eat, drink and be merry. In addition to us, there were the S’s, the F’s, and the N’s. Our contributions to the party included Sharon’s homemade Italian sausage and tortellini soup, the first use of K’s chocolate fountain (with food to dip in it) that she received as a Christmas gift, champagne, and “Menage a Trois” red wine. The F’s brought some homemade limoncello, a mixture of Everclear, lemon juice and sugar. It was delicious, and had they brought more of it, I might have had too much of it.

The R’s had done more remodeling of their basement since our last visit. Mr. R installed two 32” flat-screen HDTV’s in the basement, in addition to one upstairs. The screens were linked to over-the-air signals, satellite TV, and an Internet-connected PC. It was fun to switch between the various stations, and if you got bored you could always surf the Net on a huge screen, using a wireless keyboard and mouse. In front of one of the screens Mr. R had built a bar, ideal for New Year’s parties. Let me show you:

As midnight approached, more people crowded around the bar and TV to watch Dick Clark do the final countdown. I don’t know how much longer Dick will be doing the New Year’s show as he is not looking good. Finally the moment arrived:

After midnight the R’s turned the TV and PC into a karaoke machine, and we took turns singing various songs. We didn’t leave their house until 2:30 AM, and didn’t get to sleep until well after 3, a very late night for lightweights like Sharon and I.

Yesterday, New Year’s Day, was laid back. We got up about 10:30 and shortly after I went to pick up S at his friend D’s house, where he spent New Year’s Eve on a sleepover. I did some shopping at Menard’s. Sharon made a very good roast from Trader Joe’s, with colorful potatoes and green beans. In addition to preparing for the work week, we were watching interesting special programs on TPT 2: excerpts from the old “Johnny Cash Show” and a two-hour-long documentary on the Second City comedy empire.

Today I’m back at work, although I made a point to spend all day in the office. I’ve got to ease into work after being off for 12 days. Tomorrow I’ll be out at the plant site and have several meetings, so it will be business as usual.

Final thoughts on 2007

2008-01-01T22:49:00.000-06:00

Well, 2007 is over, and since this is my blog, I thought it might be helpful to sort through and summarize the events of the last 12 months. Here they are:

The high points of 2007:

- Spring break in Kauai, Hawaii with the family – Poipu beach was the best!!
- Finally selling the Nissan Altima and getting a decent amount of money for it
- Traveling to Shanghai, China for work, with more trips in 2008
- Celebrating Sharon’s dad’s 80th birthday in August
- Beginning to finish new rooms in the basement of our home
- Having Mom and Dan come to visit us in Minnesota for Christmas

The low points of 2007:

- Dad’s last days and death from multiple myeloma, and his funeral. The saddest days of my life so far.
- Trying to help Mom cope with being alone after 50 years with Dad
- Sharon’s uncle dying from cancer, Sharon’s brother and my uncle being diagnosed with cancer
- Too many projects at work, not enough time to do a good job sometimes
- Watching the orchestra I belong to shrink, and the conductor not care enough to make it fun and challenging

Overall, apart from my Dad’s death, it was not a bad year. I’m grateful to have a nice home, a wife who loves me, children who do well in school and don’t get into trouble, and a steady job that is usually interesting. I also have been fortunate enough to travel to many interesting places, especially this year.

In 2008 I hope to continue to make Mom’s life easier without Dad, help the kids do well in school, help S decide upon a career, and maybe take another family trip to the West Coast. We should be able to finish work on the basement, and I’ll be wrapping up my China project by mid-year. It should be interesting.

Time has come today

2007-12-31T17:43:00.000-06:00

Well, there are only a few hours left in 2007. The time off work has flown by, and I wish I would have accomplished more.

On Friday afternoon we went out for lunch with Sharon’s parents. They had wanted to take us to a new Japanese restaurant near their house for our anniversary back in October. I was in China at that time, so it was delayed. We looked at reviews of the restaurant on the Net, which were not good, so we suggested another nearby Japanese restaurant, the Osaka Japanese Steakhouse. At 1:30 PM on a Friday, the restaurant was not crowded, so we got to sit at a hibachi table all by ourselves.

The chef put on a show with his grilling tools, knives, and squirt bottles. He shot some alcoholic liquid into my mouth from a distance. I think it might have been rice wine. He also flung a few pieces of shrimp into our mouths from his spatula. I was the only one of us to catch the shrimp. The rest of our meal consisted of chicken, steak, shrimp, scallops, and fried rice. It was very good.

On the way back from the restaurant we picked up S’s girlfriend M, who came over to visit for several hours in the evening. Sharon and I caught up with the latest EastEnders, both new and old.

We spent much of the weekend working in the basement. We’re finishing one half of the basement to be a TV and rec room, with a storage closet. On Sunday we put up the final wall of studs, a major milestone. Now we’ve got to figure out the electrical and HVAC work needed before we can put up the sheetrock. We also went to church Saturday evening, and I took S out to Afton Saturday afternoon to go snowboarding.

I talked to Mom last night. She sounded worn out from another Milwaukee snowstorm on Friday. She’s been in touch with most of her relatives and friends, who were anxious to hear how her visit to Minnesota went. She’s been assembling puzzles that we got her as Christmas gifts.

Today we’ve been getting ready for New Year’s Eve. As predicted, we will be going over to our neighbor’s, the R’s, for eating and drinking. I went grocery shopping for some of the party items, and Sharon is preparing food items we’re bringing over. I also went to a few electronics stores today to look at flatbed scanners that will scan 35mm negatives and slides. There are very few being sold that only scan. Most units are “all-in-one” and are not suitable for negatives and slides. I want to find a scanner for around $100-$150 that does an OK job, not spend $400 or more for a pro model.

That wraps up the year of 2007. Happy New Year!

So this is Christmas, and what have you done?

2007-12-27T21:25:00.000-06:00

Well, we made it through the Christmas holiday, and I think everyone enjoyed it, even my mom and brother Dan, who managed to travel from Milwaukee to the Twin Cities and back, and not get caught in one of the numerous snowstorms we’ve had over the last week.

Prior to the holidays, it was a hectic week. There was an orchestra rehearsal on Tuesday the 18th, and there was gift shopping to do. I spent time at my company’s local plant, because there was a machine shutdown that involved one of my projects. I also spent two evenings on phone conferences with China. I took Friday the 21st off work to help clean and organize the house prior to my family arriving on Saturday, and also went shopping for groceries and liquor.

We finished cleaning on Saturday. There was extra time to finish, since Mom and Dan got stuck in a 7-mile traffic jam on I-94 near Mauston. They finally arrived about 4:30 PM. We had a turkey-cranberry “wreath” for dinner, along with homemade Italian sausage and tortellini soup. We sat around that evening, visiting and watching Saturday Night Live repeats.

Sunday was a busy day. S wanted to go snowboarding at Afton Alps, I needed to do Christmas shopping, and the weather was crap. Dan and I took S out to Afton, slid around on the snow-covered roads, and went to two Target stores to find the wine cellar that Sharon wanted. Shortly after arriving home, S called and needed a ride home. So I got back in the van and slid down to Afton to get him. Turned out that S’s friend never made it out to Afton, and one of his bindings lost a screw. After reviewing the local restaurant choices for dinner, the only one we could all agree on was Famous Dave’s. It turned out to be pretty good. We also watched and suffered through the Packers game in the afternoon and the Vikings game in the evening.

More shopping ensued on Monday, Christmas Eve. I began the day by ordering new cell phones for Sharon and S, since our current contract is almost over. Dan and I managed to squeeze in trips to Sam’s Club, Rainbow, and Best Buy in little over one hour so that we could all go to the 3:30 PM Christmas Eve service at our church. See?

There was enough time after the service so Sharon and K could go to Best Buy again for a final gift before closing time at 5. We had a delicious dinner, with filets from Brine’s in Stillwater, baked potatoes, corn, and other items. Everyone got to open one gift, as is our tradition. My gift from S was the DVD of “Mr. Bean’s Holiday,” a favorite of mine which I saw on the way home from my last trip to China. I had to share my love of the film with my family, none of whom had seen it before. As I thought, Sharon and K loved it, while Dan and Mom thought it was dumb. We ended staying up late filling stockings and picking up the house.

Everyone was awake by 8 AM on Christmas morning to open gifts. I got up at 7 since I hadn’t finished wrapping Sharon’s presents, which were large. We ripped through the gift opening in about an hour. Dan had already guessed that I got him the box set of Saturday Night Live’s second season, but I think everyone else was surprised with their gifts. After some breakfast and getting dressed, we traveled over to Sharon’s parents’ house for part 2 of Christmas celebration. On the way over to their house I was excited to finally hear the end of KQRS’ “Rock-n-Roll A-to-Z Countdown” for the first time ever. There were only three Z songs: “Zanzibar” by Billy Joel, “Ziggy Stardust” by David Bowie, and finally “The Zoo” by the Scorpions.

At Sharon’s parents’ house, there was more gift opening. I got a couple of great gifts: the “Gorillapod”, a flexible tripod for my Canon pocket camera, and a bottle of Bushmills’ “Black Bush” Irish whiskey. Sharon’s brother Stu said when he saw the name, he had to get it for me. We had a nice dinner, including honey-baked ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans, rolls, etc. We also had a birthday carrot cake for my mom, who was celebrating her 75th birthday. We stayed for a few hours, took a few family photos like the one below, and left around 6 PM, driving through more sloppy snow.

Dan and Mom were up by 7 AM yesterday to get ready for the trip home. I got up to shovel the driveway yet again. After saying goodbyes, they were on their way by 9 AM, driving through the still-falling snow. They made it home safely and called us around 4:30 to let us know. We didn’t get much accomplished yesterday. I spent much of the day editing Christmas photos and putting them on Flickr. Later in the evening Sharon and I caught up with EastEnders again.

This morning I spent a few hours reviewing electrical drawings and answering E-mails at home (a.k.a. working), although I’m supposed to be on vacation. Two of my projects needed immediate responses in order to keep on schedule. It’s one of the “advantages” of having high-speed Internet and a company-issued laptop. In the afternoon Sharon, K and I went to Target to exchange the wine cellar I bought for a larger one, and also picked up Christmas photos ordered from Flickr, and other items. S went out to dinner with his girlfriend M, her mother, and her friend S. It is M’s “sweet” 16th birthday today. Maybe she’ll be able to drive him around soon, instead of me. I still need to write a New Year’s letter tonight, to go with our New Year’s photo card. We didn’t get a Christmas card and letter out in time this year, so it’s turned into a New Year’s card and letter.

No plans for New Year’s Eve yet, but drinking with the neighbors is a high probability. I’ll update the blog before 2007 is done.

It’s been such a long time, I think I should be going

2007-12-18T22:34:00.000-06:00

Since it’s been over two weeks since my last post, I’m going to resort to bullet points to summarize recent events.

First week of December

• First snow of the year on December 1st
• Bought Christmas tree and decorated it
• Prepared for and performed two Christmas concerts with the orchestra
• Had the long-awaited kickoff meeting with the outside engineering firm in China, was on the phone with them two nights
• Installation of new controls at local plant, worked until almost 11 PM on Thursday
• Mom upset about multiple snowstorms and shoveling in Milwaukee

Second week of December

• Company-sponsored lunch on the Minnesota Zephyr
• More evening phone conferences with China
• More late-night EastEnders viewing
• Snowstorms in Milwaukee continue
• Chiseled compacted snow from driveway, sore for 2 days afterwards
• Volunteered to play in church orchestra, and got paid! (surprise)

And now, a few details about the items above:

It is Christmas concert season. I played three concerts over the past two weekends. The first two were with the orchestra I belong to. We were performing the concerts jointly with a choir, but only played four pieces, a total of 20 minutes of music, and only one piece featured the choir and orchestra combined. It was almost not worth showing up for. Still, it went well, we had a large audience both days, and I like performing in a Christmas concert, even in a minor role.

The third concert was at a church in Maplewood. The clarinetist from our orchestra asked if I would be willing to be part of the church concert the following weekend. I said yes since I wanted to be nice and I had no other plans. There was a 2-hour rehearsal on Saturday morning, and the rehearsal and concert for 3 hours on Sunday morning. There was more music for the church concert than there was for the orchestra concert, and it was more interesting. I played well except when the sheet music decided it wanted to blow off the stand. But the biggest surprise was on Sunday morning, when the church conductor handed me an envelope with a check inside. When I agreed to play, I didn’t expect to get paid. I was doing it for fun.

This past Monday was an interesting day. Our management generously took several of the work groups out for an elegant dinner aboard the Minnesota Zephyr dinner train. The train leaves from just north of downtown Stillwater, Minnesota and travels slowly to the end of the tracks in Grant, about a 7 mile trip. Then the other engine fires up and the train returns to Stillwater. Meanwhile we were fed tenderloin, prime rib, or salmon, including chicken wild rice soup and a slice of cheesecake at the end. The food was great. The weather cooperated as well, as we rode through snow-covered woods and crystal blue skies.

The trip was also special for another reason. I first rode the Zephyr back in the summer of 1989 with Sharon. I asked her to marry me while we were in the dome car. Fortunately she said yes and we were married a few months later. Spouses weren’t invited today, unfortunately, so Sharon and I will have to go again soon. There has been some talk by the owner of the Zephyr that he would shut down the train, since he wants to retire and couldn’t find any buyers. However, it was announced recently that the Zephyr will continue to run into 2008. We may still get a chance for a final ride.

Mom hasn’t enjoyed the weather this month. Milwaukee has had four significant snowstorms since December 1st. One evening when I called her she was very depressed about everything. The bad weather and short daylight hours really got her down. She’s also worrying about what the weather will be like when she and Dan drive up here for Christmas. Right now it doesn’t look good for this Saturday. Hope things change before then.

Well, I really want to get this posted tonight, so that’s it for now. Check out the Flickr badge on the right-hand sidebar and look at the “Year In The Life” set, where I’m taking one photo of myself every day. It’s more up-to-date than the blog is right now.

Sunrise, sunset... swiftly flow the days

2007-11-29T15:34:00.000-06:00

Everyone I know is talking about how they hate the short amount of daylight we’re getting right now. I feel the same way. We’ve almost reached the earliest sunset of the year – 4:31 PM, which happens on December 6th-15th, after which the sunsets get later. Strangely enough, the sunrises keep getting later until December 29th – 7:51 AM, and continue until January 8th, when sunrises start getting earlier. The two trends intersect on December 22nd, the shortest day of the year. The scientist in me couldn’t help but explain the daylight phenomenon. Go to this Web site if you’re like me and want to learn more about sunrise/sunset times.

I’m supposed to be putting together a project checkout schedule for a meeting tomorrow morning, but what fun is that? Next week will be busy as I will be spending much time at one of my company’s plants, installing and starting up new hardware and software. It’s the fun part of my job, as long as we don’t cause anything to shut down.

Mom called last night. I think she’s finally gotten the hang of using her cell phone, since she’s used it to call me the last few times and hasn’t complained about it at all. She had maintenance done on her car so it will be road-worthy to travel to Minnesota at Christmas, and she figured out how to transfer an old stock in my dad’s name over to her. She’s also getting the snow blower ready to use in case Milwaukee gets snow this weekend (although right now it looks as if Minnesota will get the big snow amounts). She also spent most of Monday night on the phone with friends and relatives. I’m proud of the way she’s “takin’ care of business” lately.

We had another exciting orchestra rehearsal Tuesday night. With only four pieces to play on the concert, we went over and over each piece to fill the two hours of rehearsal time. We also received promotional posters to hand out. The ticket price, which was set by the choir we’re playing with, will be $10. We’ve never asked people to pay that much to see us, but this time, I guess, the audience will be getting two groups to see, so it should be worth the extra cost. Also at orchestra I was asked by our lead clarinet if I would play in a musical group at her church on Sunday, December 16th. I agreed to do it, since I couldn’t think of a reason not to. I just hope the music isn’t too tough or that there are any solos for me, so I don’t embarrass myself.

Sharon and I both are still feeling the effects of the nasty cold we’ve shared, but it is improving. I’ve slept better the last few nights, except this morning at 2:30 when I woke up with a coughing fit. My chest was still a little sore this morning from all the coughing. By this weekend I should be back to 100% healthy.

Well, it’s now 3:30 and it looks as if it will be dark soon. That’s late November for ya.

You're as cold as ice

2007-11-26T22:16:00.000-06:00

I have come down with “the creeping crud.” This is one of the nastiest colds I’ve had in recent memory. I started noticing its effects Tuesday night. I took off work on Wednesday and laid around the house most of the day. I didn’t sleep well at all while in Milwaukee for Thanksgiving, and I was glad that Sharon split the driving duties with me during the trip. I made it to work today, but I’ve been coughing most of the time. Hopefully things will improve this week. Sharon has also been battling this bug also.

Last time I posted, I was in the Quad Cities, attending a safety review for the China project. The meetings went well, and I got to meet more of the Chinese team members who also attended. They’ve been in the U.S. for over a month and will go back to China in mid-December. Last Wednesday they were going to drive from the Quad Cities to St. Paul to spend Thanksgiving with a company family, and then do work here in the Cities. They’ll go back to the Quad Cities next week. My one free evening on Monday was spent at Culver’s and Super Target. Pure excitement.

The meetings concluded Tuesday afternoon around 4 PM, and I immediately headed for home. It was 55 degrees when I left, and I watched the temperature drop on the rental car’s display as I continued north and west through the rain. By the time I reached northern Iowa, it was cold enough to snow. I was home by 9:30, totally exhausted.

Not much was accomplished on Wednesday, since I felt so lousy. I put off packing for the trip until after a 2-hour “Deal Or No Deal.” It was a pretty exciting episode, but then I had to stay up later to finish packing.

Thursday morning we dropped off Jessie at Sharon’s parents’ house, and then headed for Milwaukee. Most food places were closed for Thanksgiving, so we had packed sandwiches for lunch. We only made one stop, at a truck stop near Tomah, before getting to Mom’s house. When we arrived Mom had most of the food ready to eat. I had the honor of carving the turkey. It was small but there was plenty for everybody.

Afterwards, I put up my feet and we watched football.

Mom seemed to be doing well. She was in good spirits and only teared up a few times when speaking of Dad. She still talks about him a lot, which is understandable.

Friday was a low-key day. I had no intention of getting up to wait in line to shop at 4 AM. We did go to Sprecher’s Brewery in Glendale, a Milwaukee suburb. They make specialty beers and gourmet soda, and we wanted to pick up some for Christmas gifts and some glassware as well.

I also took S and K to the local Best Buy to get a few bargains, and later we all went out for pizza at Filippo’s. I also helped Mom with a few household tasks.

We returned to Minnesota on Saturday, stooping on the way home to pick up Jessie. We vegged out in front of the TV and watched “The Incredibles,” which I’d never seen before. It was a very well written story, to go with the incredible animation.

Yesterday was another slow day. I did help Sharon with a few last-minute outdoor chores, and then spent the afternoon and evening doing work, answering E-mails from China. We also watched Extreme Makeover:Home Edition, which featured the home in Minnetonka we watched being built in August.

I’m going to finish now, since my eyes are having trouble focusing. I’m really sick and tired of this cold!

Sail away, sail away, sail away

2007-11-18T23:59:00.000-06:00

I’m writing this at a hotel in Bettendorf, Iowa. I’m staying in the Quad Cities area until Tuesday night, because I’m attending meetings for the China project at our company’s plant in Illinois, about 30 minutes from the hotel. Several of the people helping with China work at the plant, so it made sense for us to meet there.

In order to get here, I decided to drive rather than fly. It’s about a 5.5 hour trip to drive, and you only really save about 2 hours by flying, if you consider the time to and from either airport. By driving, you can leave when you please, and you can throw all your junk in the trunk and not worry if it fits in a suitcase. I rented a car for the trip and got a brand new 2007 Pontiac Grand Prix. It’s nicer than I remember GM cars being. The car had a trip computer so you could monitor all kinds of trip stats, such as average trip speed, average trip gas mileage, direction, outside temp., etc. That, and the CD player, entertained me most of the trip.

For the first part of the trip, I had to deal with mixed rain and snow, which made driving interesting. I had to make two slight detours – one at the I-380/I-80 intersection near Iowa City, where a ramp was closed, and another one south of Rochester on County Road 1, a shortcut. I followed a police car with flashing lights for several miles until we came upon the reason for the detour – trucks or cars had rolled into the ditch, and there were several emergency vehicles there trying to help get the people out of their vehicles. I did a U-turn and found another way to go. Hopefully no one was hurt seriously.

The rest of the weekend was sort of action-packed. I did see the group Celtic Woman on Friday night. I picked up tickets at Xcel Energy Center at lunch on Tuesday, avoiding nasty Ticketmaster fees. Sharon, her parents, and K all attended as well. Our seats were pretty close to the stage, considering I purchased them three days before the concert. The women were amazing as expected. Their voices are so pure and crisp-sounding. On a few songs they sang a cappella, and the harmonies were beautiful. They had backing musicians, including two percussionists. Here’s a sneaky picture I took:

The reviews in the newspaper were not so good. They mostly said that the group had not changed their show much from the last time they visited a couple of years ago, and that everything sounded un-spontaneous. I guess that is partly true, but since this was my first time seeing them live, I really enjoyed the singing and the spectacle of the entire performance. Sharon’s parents had never heard of the group and really enjoyed it. Even K, who is usually bored by this kind of music, thought it was a great show.

Saturday was mostly spent working in the basement. Sharon and I are beginning to finish one half of our basement, which will serve as an entertainment area for us, S, and our friends. Eventually there will be a big flat-screen TV, a dry bar and sofas down there. The first step in making that happen is building a few walls and a closet. We framed a couple of new walls on Saturday, and I purchased more lumber so Sharon can continue the process while I’m away. In the evening S went to a friend’s house for a sleepover and K had her friend N sleep over at our house. Sharon and I watched a few new episodes of EastEnders. I talked to Dan, who called on Saturday because he knew I was leaving home today. His life has been quiet lately. He’ll be spending Thanksgiving with his friend G in Fort Collins. He was also complaining about having to drive from Milwaukee to the Twin Cities at Christmas time. This from a guy who used to live in western Kansas and regularly drive to Denver every weekend, a 500-mile round trip! I told him that he’s got nothing to complain about. Between today and next Saturday evening I will have driven about 1,400 miles.

This morning before I left, S came home, K’s friend left, and we worked in the basement some more. Sharon measured some more lumber that needed cutting, and I cut it with the circular saw. Then Sharon and I picked up the rental car and I had lunch with the fam before I packed and left town.

The rest of the week was pretty boring. There was another underwhelming orchestra rehearsal Tuesday night. I talked to China on Thursday night, and to Mom. She was reminiscing about what was happening at this time last year, and about Dad’s final days, and getting upset about it. Hopefully by us visiting her for Thanksgiving, we will make it more enjoyable.

Finally, this week I decided to join the “365 Days” group on Flickr. Members take a picture of themselves every day and post it to the group. I have two reasons for doing this. One is to document my life in pictures for the next year, sort of like what I do on the blog. The other reason is to become a better photographer, now that I have a decent camera to work with. It’s not a DSLR but it’s one of the better pocket cameras, with many adjustments possible. By the end of the year I should be much better at capturing good images, of me, anyone, or anything.

Also, yesterday was the blog’s 3-year anniversary, so happy blog-a-versary to me! Be sure to check out Flickr.

Whack for the toora loora laddy

2007-11-12T12:09:00.000-06:00

I’m so tired today. I haven’t slept well the last two nights, and I’m not sure why. Maybe because the weather’s been warm, and our bed is outfitted with a comforter suited for colder nights. When I’m tired at work I eat too much, surf the Net a lot and don’t get much work done. This afternoon will be more productive, I’m sure.

Sharon and I are thinking about seeing the singing group Celtic Woman, who are coming to St. Paul on Friday night. I enjoy their concerts that have been shown on PBS, and also the ads that appear daily on KARE 11’s morning news. Sharon thinks her parents might also want to go, since they’ve also seen the PBS concerts. I’ll probably get tickets to see them today or tomorrow.

Not much has happened lately. We resumed orchestra rehearsals last Tuesday night. As predicted the orchestra members were not happy about our small crowd and short concert length. Our conductor does not seem to be too concerned. In fact, for the upcoming Christmas concert, she has only programmed four pieces to rehearse, or less than 20 minutes of music! We are performing with a choir group which will provide the remainder of the music, but it hardly seems worth showing up for a concert if we’ll only play for 20 minutes. Most opening acts at a rock concert get to play longer than that! I’m seriously thinking about sending an E-mail to the conductor expressing my fears and disappointment about her musical choices.

On Wednesday evening I spent time polishing up my work contributions form for 2007 that I reviewed with my supervisor Thursday afternoon. He liked what I wrote and just had me make a few small changes. Our department’s management reviews everyone’s forms in the next few weeks, and we’ll find out our individual rating for 2007 sometime in February. Thursday night was spent talking to China, trying to speed up the design process and answering questions. With any luck we’ll be able to start working with the external company later this week. I also talked to Mom, who was doing OK. She keeps busy with the church and with friends.

Saturday was a slow day. Sharon met with her college friends for breakfast, to celebrate some of their birthdays, while I worked at home picking up and updating Quicken. In the afternoon we drove up to White Bear Lake to St. Croix Saddlery, so that K could purchase a riding helmet to wear during horseback riding lessons. We found a stylish one that she will enjoy wearing without us nagging her to put it on. Later we went to church and had Chinese take-out food for dinner. S didn’t go out or have a sleepover Saturday night, which was unusual.

The combination of warmth and sunshine on Sunday made it a great day to work around the house. S mowed the lawn while I put up the Christmas lights. Although we won’t be turning them on yet, I wanted to put them up while it was still warm. Later I did some grocery shopping, Sharon made a roast for Sunday dinner, and laundry was done. Mom called, since she hadn’t used any minutes on her cell phone lately. She talked to family friends recently who had been on a cruise to the Caribbean and South America. We also talked about upcoming plans for Thanksgiving, which made Mom think about last Thanksgiving. She said that was the last good time that Dad had with the family, before his health got even worse and he eventually died. I’m sure the upcoming holidays won’t be easy for any of us, but it will be better than what we went through last year. Dad’s in a better place now.

I haven’t heard from Dan in the last two weeks, although he has talked to Mom. Maybe I’ll call him tonight.

Mom was pretty happy about the outcome of the Packers-Vikings game yesterday, being that she’s a Packers fan. I couldn’t believe that a team that played so well last week could self-destruct the way they did. Besides losing 34-0, they also lost Adrian Peterson for a while with a knee injury. I never watch the Vikings games all the way through. I have better things to do on Sundays.

There is still plenty to do at work. Besides China, I have three other projects locally that are currently under construction to keep me busy. Next week I will be traveling to our plant in Illinois for three days of meetings relating to the China project. Several of the U.S. people helping with the project are from that plant, and we’ll be doing a safety review. The meetings will be boring but I’ll enjoy the drive down there and back. It will be fun to travel and still be in the same time zone as at home.

That is all.

Get back to where you once belonged

2007-11-05T12:28:00.000-06:00

Did everyone enjoy their extra hour of sleep yesterday? I did. I didn’t get up any later (dogs that want to go out in the morning don’t understand the concept of Daylight Saving Time), but I got to be lazy for one more hour before it was time to do homeowner chores.

Since there was no orchestra rehearsal this week, the highlight of the week was Halloween on Wednesday night. S hung out with friends but for the first time did not wear a costume. I think he and his friends did some trick-or-treating but didn’t take home much candy. Sharon took pity on him and bought 50% off Halloween candy at Target the next day. K was dressed as Cleopatra and looked pretty authentic. I’d post a few pictures but they’re still on the camera. Look for them soon. K went trick-or-treating with two other girls and a parent, and came home with a pillowcase full of candy. Sharon and I both stayed home for the first time in many years. Our doorbell was ringing frequently. We counted the number of kids at the door. There were 80, which I think was about the same as previous years.

Over the weekend, we had no major events planned. On Saturday Sharon went clothes-shopping with K, and later Sharon and I went to Menards to purchase closet doors. While I was in China Sharon and S began finishing off a portion of our basement. Sharon has laid out where walls will go and completed a portion of one before I returned. The closet doors are for a future basement closet. Now that we have them, we can start building the frame around them. I anticipate many evenings spent working in the basement this winter.

Also this weekend, our neighbor B visited. She works at a hospital and recently had to do a PowerPoint presentation for the first time. She’s not very computer-literate but knew that I was, so she stopped by before for help with PowerPoint. This weekend she did her presentation, which went well, but now needed help creating spreadsheets for work. Having used Excel for 15+ years, I helped her with creating and formatting the spreadsheet. B likes to talk and tell you more details about a subject than you’d care to know. On Sunday, the spreadsheet help took about 15 minutes, but she stayed to visit for over 1½ hours. She visited so long that I missed all of Adrian Peterson’s touchdown runs in the second half of the Vikings’ game.

Sharon and I didn’t mind too much, because it was a welcome break from the yard work we were doing. We took down the gazebo from our deck for the winter, stored the patio furniture, and blew and vacuumed leaves from the yard. It took about 3-4 hours, which was most of the afternoon except for the time B was visiting. Overnight the winds picked up and it got colder, and when I looked outside this morning you could not tell that I had done any leaf cleanup yesterday, since so many leaves fell overnight. I’ll be doing more leaf blowing and vacuuming next weekend, I guess.

Recapping the rest of the weekend, I took off work a little early on Friday, and Sharon and I had a few drinks to celebrate the end of the week. S had a friend sleep over. I had my own sleepover – on the couch after 10 PM. Sharon said something about going to bed, and I said I’d be up in a few minutes. Next time I looked at my watch, it was 2:20 AM. Then I finally dragged my lazy butt upstairs for the night. On Saturday night S went to the movies with friends. They saw “Bee Movie,” a choice I’m sure was made by the girls in the group. I gave S and the girls a ride home, and Sharon and I watched more EastEnders.

On Sunday night Sharon made bangers and mash for dinner – Irish for sausages and mashed potatoes – and it was gooood. I also spoke to Mom on the phone. She was crying again, this time about the All Souls’ Day Mass she attended on Friday night. They sang one of the hymns that had been sung at Dad’s funeral, and some of the words the priest said during the Mass hit close to home for Mom. She lit a candle in Dad’s memory during the Mass. She was also worried about a friend whose birthday celebration was held this past week. Mom drove a bunch of older women to the restaurant for the celebration, and was concerned there might be a medical emergency while there, since the birthday lady wasn’t in good health. The dinner turned out OK, though. She got better over the weekend, keeping busy with yard work and visiting with friends. With the holidays coming up, I wonder how she will hold up.

At work, I caught up with projects I had neglected while in China. An engineer from Ohio came to visit the plant on Tuesday and Wednesday for some last-minute corrections to the project drawings, and to meet with the other project members. We will be doing some installation work on that project in December. I also had a phone conference with Chinese engineers on Thursday night. There were still a few details that had to be resolved before we could start working with the external engineering company there. If I was still in China, I’d still be waiting for them to get moving. Grrrr. Later this week I meet with my supervisor to review my performance for 2007. I can’t wait.

Well, lunchtime is over so I’d better go. Blogging was a better use of lunchtime today than setting foot outside the office. It’s cold, windy and dreary out there.

Zaijian China

2007-10-29T12:28:00.000-05:00

Hi! I’m back. I arrived home at MSP airport on Saturday afternoon, slightly after Governor Pawlenty returned from his trip to China and India. Sharon and the kids were waiting down by the baggage claim area for me, and saw Pawlenty give his press conference nearby. By the time I had cleared immigration and customs, the governor was gone, but I did see some of the press packing up their equipment.

During the second week of the China trip, some progress was made. I managed to get the purchasing people in China to complete their evaluation, although they managed to ignore most of the E-mails I had sent them regarding my preferred choice for the system design. They chose another company based primarily on price. I did have a meeting with that company on Thursday before I left, although we still couldn’t discuss many details with them because of contracts not being signed. It was another reminder that doing business in China is much different than in the U.S. Much of the work I had hoped to accomplish there will have to be done by teleconference, E-mails and the Internet.

Today when I came back to the office here, fortunately my managers understood the situation and weren’t upset that the other work didn’t get done. They thought that at least I had moved the project forward by going there, and that we had achieved one milestone, choosing the company to work with that everyone agreed on. That made me feel better.

On the social side of the trip, there were many more fun events. You can see pictures from them in the post below and on my Flickr page. On Saturday the 20th A and I did a walking tour of the Pudong area of Shanghai near the hotel. We walked by the Oriental Pearl Tower, along the Huangpu River, and other areas. When we were getting hungry, we got a taxi to take us to Bubba’s again. That day they were having their 2nd Annual Chili Cook-Off. For 50 RMB (about $7) you got to sample many different kinds of chili, some made by expats, some made by the local Shanghaiese. It was all good. A and I met several people, some who worked for my company, others who didn’t. They were all very friendly and we had many drinks. More than I had planned. Somehow when you’re paying for drinks with Chinese money it doesn’t seem like you’re spending a lot.

Anyway, we ended up spending the whole afternoon there. A few beers and a few margaritas later, I wasn’t feeling so great:

I didn’t get sick but I was happy to let a taxi driver take A and I back to the hotel. I immediately lay down on the bed in the room and didn’t move for about 3 hours. By 10 PM I was in better shape and could talk to the fam.

During the day on Sunday the 21st, I took it easy. I stayed in the room until early afternoon, and then did some walking down Pudong Ave. east from the hotel. In the evening A and I went down to the Super Brand Mall, near the Oriental Pearl Tower, to eat dinner. After dinner we walked all over the mall to see the stores. The mall is huge, probably having over 200 stores (bigger than Rosedale but smaller than MOA for those of you in the Twin Cities.) The difference is that since there is less land available to build on in Shanghai, the mall is vertical, having many floors, compared to 2- or 3- floor malls in the U.S.

By Tuesday last week I was tired of eating Chinese cafeteria food for lunch, so A and I took a taxi to the Flying Fox (Irish pub) for lunch. We did the same on Wednesday. I also discovered there was a Starbucks Coffee stand in the building I was working in, and although I don’t drink coffee, Starbucks sold some pretty good toasted sandwiches.

We also went to a couple of new restaurants for dinner. One night A and I visited a British pub, where we met a co-worker from the U.S. who is on temporary assignment in China. Fish and chips and a couple of Guinness beers on tap were consumed and enjoyed. Another night we invited a few of our Chinese colleagues to join us for dinner at a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant in the No. 1 Yaohan Nextage store in Pudong. Everyone got to choose a different item for the chef to grill in front of us. Most of it was great. I passed on the eel. (Pictures from these dinners are in the previous post.)

The trip home on Saturday was uneventful but long. The flights coming into and leaving Tokyo were bumpy due to an approaching tropical storm which I had not been aware of prior to flying. However, the storm did not delay landing or takeoff. I had time on the way home to watch many EastEnders on the computer so I would be caught up with what Sharon had been viewing at home. I also watched “Mr. Bean’s Vacation” which was one of the movies being shown on the airplane. If you have heard of Mr. Bean or Rowan Atkinson, you either love him or hate him. I happen to think he is hilarious. It’s really stupid, goofy physical humor and I loved it.

I was totally useless the rest of the weekend. I forced myself to stay awake the rest of the day Saturday so I’d get used to Minnesota time faster. I was so tired I was like a zombie. I did manage to call Mom and let her know I got home. On Sunday both Sharon and I played in a concert with the orchestra. The concert went OK but the orchestra has problems. We had to hire more than the usual number of “ringers” because of a lack of string players. The attendance was bad – we had no more than 60 people, about the same number of people in the orchestra. And finally, there was not enough music programmed for the concert. Including a 10-minute intermission, the concert lasted only 55 minutes, the shortest concert I can remember playing in. Sharon thinks we would get more people to play and attend if we got a new conductor. As president of the orchestra, it would be difficult for me to let her go. I guess that’s why I’m not in management. But something has to be done to improve the orchestra’s situation.

China in pictures

2007-10-26T11:11:00.001-05:00

You asked for more pictures of China? Here’s some more:

Everywhere in Shanghai there are people selling things on the street. Many have a large tricycle with a big wooden box in the pack. This guy had all the ingredients for a salad. Another guy nearby had two woks, all fired up and cooking stir fry. He must have been using a propane torch for the heat.

This guy was good. We ate at a Teppanyaki restaurant last night. The guy was good with his kitchen tools. The food was delicious. The only thing I didn’t try was eel.

They had snake on the menu. My Chinese colleagues said it was misspelled and should have said “snack.” I still found it funny.

A, the U.S. colleague traveling with me, knew where many of the Western restaurants were, so we went to the British Bulldog Pub one night. It’s very authentic and looks the same inside as the pubs in England that we visited two years ago.

This bar was down the street from the British pub. We didn’t go in but I liked the neon signs for a picture. It was a “meet” market, I was told.

We went down around the area next to the Oriental Pearl Tower several times. I never got tired of looking at it or taking pictures of it. This is one of the better ones.

We walked through a large supermarket where this was for sale. It might have been green beans, fried worms, I don’t know. I took this picture and left immediately before I’d have to throw up.

This was a garbage canal I walked by, with lots of old boats. The opposite of what you usually see in Shanghai.

A and I walked down by the Huangpu river on Saturday and took lots of great shots of life along the river. There was an old boat going down the river, directly in front of the
many fancy skyscrapers. Nice views.

There I was, standing like a million other tourists, having their picture taken in front of the tower. Someday maybe I’ll actually pay the fee to go in the Tower.

We also went back to Bubba’s. They were having their “chili cook-off” There were a lot of foreigners there. It felt like I was home in America, until we walked out the front door and we were back in China.

On the weekend, A and I walked around the city streets nearby.
We got down to the river and walked all the way along the boardwalk. We saw the Shanghai World Financial Center, under construction, which is almost finished. It will be the tallest building in the world (for now), topping out at 1,615 feet.

That’s all for now. I’ll have more pictures later.

Spinning my Chinese wheels

2007-10-19T01:40:00.000-05:00

Why is it when you’re half a world away from home, people try to slow down your progress or have no sense of urgency, thereby wasting your time?

I’ve been in China for five days now, and I still haven’t done any technical training of the design engineers here, my main reason for coming here. They happen to work for another company and I’ve explained many times why they are the team’s choice for the work, but I still don’t have permission to start working with them, because the financial people from my company in China are not happy with their proposal. That’s about as much detail as I can reveal.

Many of my company’s co-workers in China have no sense of urgency, either about the project schedule or about my time. I’m only here for two weeks, and my management is paying lots of money for me to be here. You’d think that after the several E-mails I’ve sent the last few days that someone would get things moving. But it hasn’t happened. It’s Friday afternoon here, and I think most people have blown off the rest of the day. I’m very frustrated.

I can’t complain about everything that’s happened here. The Chinese engineer from my company assigned to the project has been of top of things technically, but due to his lack of experience, has not been able to move the project forward. I think he’ll learn a lot and be a very good engineer in the future. There is also another U.S. engineer, A, who is here with me. His job is different than mine, but it’s nice to have someone from home to talk to and to go to dinner with. He does much more international work than I do and is older than me, so he has lots of interesting stories to tell.

A and I have been out to a couple of restaurants together. He’s not as fond of Chinese cuisine as our project leader “Steve,” since he’s gotten sick a few times while eating local food. Because of this, his choices for dining have been Western style. On Tuesday night we went to a restaurant called the Blue Frog, which featured sandwiches, mostly burgers. They also had Guinness, and it was 2-for-1 drinks at the time, so I had two. Last night (Thursday) we took a long taxi ride through rush hour traffic to a place I visited on my last trip here, Bubba’s Texas Bar-B-Que. The food was excellent, even if it wasn’t Chinese. The place would make a Texan proud.

I finally have adjusted to China time. It usually takes me 3 days to adjust after arriving in China. Jet lag is crippling when you’re trying to get work done in the evenings and when you want to call home but have to wait until 9 PM because everyone at home is sleeping until then. Last night I was up until almost midnight, loading pictures onto Flickr and writing E-mails, and I didn’t feel too tired.

The Internet is goofy here. In July when I was here, Blogger and Flickr were blocked by the Great Firewall Of China. That apparently has changed. All the Blogger sites I usually visit are now open. Much of the boiler-plate text on Blogger is in Chinese, so I’m guessing that Google created a censored version of Blogger just for China. New photos on Flickr are not blocked any more, but the older ones, before a couple of months ago, are still blocked. I wonder how they filter them. I was always able to get around the GFOC by using my company’s VPN, but then I was subject to the blocking policies of my company. So one way or another, you’re being restricted. Another bit of filtering that happens, not by China, though: you cannot watch certain video clips from NBC outside of the U.S. NBC has made available some of their prime-time shows for viewing on their website. But if you try to watch them here, you get a message saying that the clip is not available in your market. I’m sure they don’t want Chinese video pirates downloading the shows and printing up DVD’s from the downloads, but this is about as bad as putting region codes on DVD’s so you can only play them in certain countries.

Weather in Shanghai has been great, although it’s a little smoggy today. The temps have been around 70 F during the day and 60 F at night, and it’s been sunny every day I’ve been here. Much better than back home in Minnesota, where it’s rained every day since I left. The leaves are still green on the trees here. I heard that they don’t change color until sometime in November.

I’ve been in touch with the fam every day, thanks to one-cent-per-minute calls on Yahoo Messenger. The kids and Sharon are off Thursday and Friday this week due to the MN teachers’ convention. Sharon went shopping with S yesterday and picked out some new snowboarding equipment for the season. The cost was partially offset by the used equipment we sold at the Afton Alps Fall Fest last weekend. I also talked to Mom today. She was surprised and happy I called and was in good spirits.

I’m not sure what I’ll do this weekend. Maybe I’ll visit a museum or take another tour. There will be a chili feed at Bubba’s on Saturday that A has invited me to. Some of my company’s U.S. employees living here may also be there.

Well, I better continue to prepare for training meetings that had better happen early next week. That’s why I’m here, at least I think so.

The lonnnng road to China

2007-10-15T00:49:00.000-05:00

It’s Monday morning, about 7 AM Japan time. Why Japan time? I was supposed to be in China by now, getting ready to go to work in Shanghai. Instead, I’m still traveling. I’m on a flight from Tokyo to Shanghai, which just left Narita airport about 15 minutes ago. Let me explain.

Everything was normal Saturday morning, although I had not done any packing Friday night. We had breakfast, and Sharon took K to the clinic for a flu shot while I showered, shaved and got dressed. When Sharon and K returned, we talked to our neighbor B outside. B can talk forever, so eventually I had to cut her off and tell her I needed to pack. At that point I had 2 hours before it was time to leave for the airport. It took me about 1 hour to pack clothes, and over 1 hour to pack the remaining items I needed to bring. I should have done more packing the night before.

It’s time for a brief interruption. I have been on numerous trans-Pacific flights over the last two years, and I never get tired of watching the Northwest in-flight video called “Airobics,” which is now playing on this flight. It shows three attractive women demonstrating exercises you can do in your airline seat. I’d like to get a copy if one was available.

OK, back to the story. The whole family came to the MSP airport to drop me off, and we got there in plenty of time. I picked up my boarding pass at the PAF room, which had more people waiting than on any previous trip. The line to get through security was relatively long as well, at least 25 minutes. I didn’t wait long at the gate before it was time to board the airplane.

Then the waiting began. For various reasons, our plane didn’t leave the ground until 50 minutes after the scheduled departure time. I was concerned that we wouldn’t make the connecting flight to Shanghai. We were given some dinner, and then I dozed off. I awoke a short time later to discover the plane had changed course. We had been over the Northwest Territories of Canada somewhere, and the plane took a turn directly south towards Edmonton, Alberta. It turned out that a woman in the front section of the plane was having a heart attack, and Edmonton was the closest major city. It took us almost an hour once the plane changed course before we landed. A medical crew came aboard the plane and took the woman off. It must have not been a major heart attack since she was still conscious when she was evacuated.

After we landed, the pilot told us we would only be on the ground for thirty minutes. Thirty minutes became one hour, and one hour stretched into two hours. By the time we left Edmonton, it was dark and stayed that way for the rest of the trip. I tried to get some more rest but it was difficult. Three movies were shown, but I didn’t watch any of them. I didn’t even listen to music or read. I woke up in time for some breakfast. We finally landed at Tokyo Narita airport at about 9:50 PM Sunday night Japan time, or 7:50 AM Sunday morning Minnesota time. That was about 17½ hours on the same airplane.

It turned out that the Tokyo-Shanghai flight had waited for us to arrive, but then could not leave because no flights were allowed to leave the airport after 10 PM. Everyone was shuttled to a nearby Radisson hotel for the night. We didn’t get our checked luggage because the airline wanted to have it loaded for the flight in the morning. Eventually I found my way through security and immigration to the Radisson bus, got checked in once we arrived, and was in my room by 11:25 PM.

There was Internet available in the room, so I tried using Yahoo Messenger to call home. No matter what I did, the call would not go through. I finally had to put more minutes on the AT&T phone card so I could call home. It was a joy to finally hear Sharon’s voice. She had no idea about the delays. I just wanted to call her then because I’d promised to call when I expected to arrive in China, and it was already past that time. It was Sunday morning at home, and she was reading the Sunday newspaper. My mom had called her a short time before that, wondering if I’d arrived. I told Sharon to let Mom know what had happened. After that I sent an E-mail to my co-worker in Shanghai to let him know I’d be late. Then I went to bed. It was 12:15 AM, and I had to be up by 4 AM.

A few hours later, I was awake again. The airline paid for the hotel room, but I had to pay for using the Internet. A bus picked us up at 4:45 to take us back to the airport. Once we arrived, we stood in a long line, since the airport security people didn’t start working until 5:30. Look!

We were whisked through security and immigration again and proceeded directly to the gate. Upon boarding, I was given a voucher for $200 off future travel or 25,000 frequent flyer miles. Being delayed wasn’t all bad, I guess.

We’ve now been in flight for about 1 hour and 20 minutes, and I’ve had some breakfast. Once we arrive in Shanghai, I’ll be going directly to the hotel. I may just take the maglev train, since it will be operating by the time I arrive. If the hotel will let me check in early, I’ll change my clothes, shower, and maybe go in to the office. I’m feeling pretty good right now. Hopefully the rest of the trip will go smoother.

P.S. I did take the maglev train. It was so fast that it seemed like an amusement ride. Once I figure out how to post video, I'll post one of the ride. Here are a few pictures for now:

She caught the Katy, left me a mule to ride

2007-10-09T12:59:00.000-05:00

Man, I’m tired. Sharon caught the cold I had and is feeling miserable. She coughs a lot at bedtime and I couldn’t fall asleep for a while. I still got up at 5:15 AM today.

Today we’re having typical October weather in Minnesota. It’s cloudy and windy, with temps in the mid 50’s. Brrr. I haven’t acclimated to those conditions yet so I’m staying in for lunch. It’s a big contrast from the weekend, when it was hot (80’s) and humid.

Saturday morning, just before I went to get a haircut, the new Canon SD850 camera arrived. It’s just like the SD600 we used to own, except it is better. It has image stabilization, which should mean less blurry pictures. I’ve been playing with it a lot, and I thought a self-portrait for the blog was overdue:

In the afternoon on Saturday, we went over to Sharon’s parents’ house and picked up their old mattress set. They recently purchased a new mattress set, so we asked if we could have the old set for S. It required two round trips to their house, since we borrowed their neighbor’s trailer to haul the mattresses. By the time we were done, it was dinnertime. I took S over to friend N’s house for a sleepover. Sharon and I watched “Blood Diamond” on HBO, an excellent movie about the African diamond trade. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly starred in the film.

We were lazy on Sunday morning, but in the afternoon Sharon, K and I went to Afton Alps’ Fall Fair. There were games, hayrides, chair lift rides, and a used equipment sale. We had hoped S would come along to pick out a new snowboard, but he wasn’t interested. K got a new pair of ski boots, but that was all we purchased. The chair rides were fun and gave me another chance to use the new camera to capture the autumn leaves changing at Afton:

I didn’t talk to Dan on Sunday night, but I did talk to Mom. She seems down again, mainly because she’s bored, lonely and the colder weather means she’ll be spending more time indoors. I’m at a loss on what I can do to help. Maybe there is nothing to do. Mom’s also not thrilled that I’m going to China again. I wish she wouldn’t worry about it, but that's what moms do.

I had two good things happen at work yesterday. We had a group meeting, during which I was presented with a pollution prevention award for one of the local projects I did last year. It was a surprise because I’d forgotten that the project leader even applied for the award. The other good thing was finding out I received a larger-than-expected merit increase in salary. More money is always welcome. This week I’m trying to catch up with all my local projects and prepare for the work in China. Not much local work will get done once I’m in China.

That is all.

Buffalo Wild Wings - not so good

2007-10-05T20:54:00.000-05:00

Sharon, K and I went out for dinner tonight, since who wants to cook on a Friday night? Our first choice for dining was Joey's Only Seafood, a moderately priced restaurant near our house. I guess we haven't been there much lately, since the sign on the door said they had closed on June 30th.

Next choice was Red Lobster. They're not known for fine dining, but we just wanted a casual meal and some halfway-decent food. It was still only 6 PM so I thought we had a decent shot at a short wait for a table. The doorman informed us it would be 45-50 minutes. Sorry, that's too long to wait for Red Lobster food.

Our third and final choice was Buffalo Wild Wings. I've seen many locations of this place but had never been inside one. The wait is only 15 minutes so we decide to stay. I ordered ribs and boneless wings, Sharon ordered a basket of popcorn shrimp, and K had a kids' meal.

We waited a long time. It was busy and loud, with TV's everywhere you looked. Finally the food arrived. We were all amazed at how little the portions were. The ribs I ordered, a half-pound, were four small rib bones with little meat on them. The boneless wings looked like Chicken McNuggets. Sharon's popcorn shrimp were more breading than shrimp. Even K's kids meal was small. It wasn't bad, but I couldn't believe how incredibly average it was.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but if I have to put up with all the noise and a long wait, I expect better food. We have other sports bars nearby - Champs comes to mind, as well as our Irish pub, O'Malley's. Both are loud and their decor compares to Buffalo Wild Wings. But the food and drinks are much better.

Don't go to Buffalo Wild Wings unless you like lots of noise and mediocre food. As SCTV once said about a fictitious restaurant, Grumble's on Route 41, "Nobody who comes here likes it; you won't too."

Spinning my steel wheels

2007-10-05T16:03:00.000-05:00

I’m feeling frustration. I need to get drawings marked up ASAP, but I need some answers from another engineer to finish the drawings, and of course he’s not available. I tried both of his offices and his pager, but no luck. Grrrr. I’ll have to work on other tasks instead.

In weather news, I’ve woken up to thunderstorms at 2 AM twice this week, so it was difficult to sleep. Wednesday and Thursday were nice weather days, but I was stuck in all-day meetings both days, so I couldn’t get out at lunchtime. It rained on Monday, Tuesday, and this morning, with more predicted for the weekend.

It has been an uneventful week. No horsie riding for K on Monday, since the instructor was involved with the horse show on the weekend and needed a break. There was an orchestra rehearsal on Tuesday, during which we spent a lot of time playing the overture from “Susanna’s Secret.” What is her secret? She smokes. Scandalous in its day, I’m sure. Wednesday and Thursday evenings were spent doing housework. I talked to Mom, who is not very happy right now. She’s concerned about the big (30%) jump in her Medicare supplemental insurance premiums, and about getting the house and snowblower ready for winter. The rainy weather lately hasn’t helped her mood, either.

About the only exciting thing happening this week was that I purchased a new Canon Powershot SD850 digital camera from Amazon.com, so that I have a good camera to take with me to China soon. We previously owned a Canon PowerShot SD600, which was a great camera. I took it everywhere and got excellent photos. I also took it to the beach in Hawaii in April, where it met an untimely demise. It was on top of a beach towel I was laying on when a large wave came up the shore, up to where I was laying. I not only got a little water on the camera, but in the rush to get the camera away from the water, I pushed the camera into the sand. No good. After returning from the trip, I cleaned it up and sent it to Canon’s service center, but they declared it “economically unrepairable,” which means “throw it away and buy a new one.” I’ll be much more careful with this one. The SD850 costs less than what we paid for the SD600, has 8 MP instead of 6 MP, and has image stabilization which the SD600 did not. I think I’ll like it. It should arrive by Monday next week.

At work I still have plenty going on. I sat in a long 2-day meeting this week. Luckily there was wireless Internet in the room so I could do other work while the meeting was happening. All the approvals for my China trip are complete, so I’m all set to go on the 13th. Next week I’ll be doing much preparatory work for the trip.

Our wedding anniversary is on the 14th, but we plan on celebrating before I leave town. I think we will be going to see the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. We haven’t seen a professional orchestra perform live for several years, so it should be fun. We haven’t yet decided if we’ll go out on Thursday or Friday night.

Thirty more minutes and I am done for the week. The engineer I was trying to call finally called back. Now I can finish the drawings.

Where's the beef?

2007-10-01T11:10:00.000-05:00

Today is going to be a good day. The sun has revealed itself, after hiding all weekend. My boss is in Texas, so there will be no surprise visits from him. The people in China have formally invited me to visit, so the pre-trip approval can be submitted. It will be nice enough outside for a lunchtime walk. It’s a new month. All is right with the world.

The weekend was extremely dreary, especially yesterday. It was so dark outside that we had the lights on in the house all day. My major accomplishment for the day was watching the Vikings/Packers game on TV. As I predicted, the Packers won, and Brett Favre set the new record for most touchdown passes in a career. However, the game was much closer than I had thought it would be. I also picked up S and K from friends’ houses. In the early evening I spoke to Mom, who was happy that the Packers won. She spent the weekend dining out with friends and painting the back porch of her house. After speaking to her, Sharon, K and I went to see the African Children’s Choir, who were performing a concert at our church. The choir consisted of children from Kenya and Uganda between the ages of 7 and 11. They performed traditional African music as well as Western choir songs. The group has toured all over the U.S., UK and Canada, and has made several national TV appearances. The kids were very energetic and talented, and we really enjoyed their performance.

After the concert I went to get some dinner at Arby’s for the family since we hadn’t eaten before the concert. I ordered a bunch of sandwiches and some fries. A few minutes later, I was told by the girl at the counter that they were out of roast beef. No roast beef at Arby’s? You’ve got to be kidding. They might as well shut the restaurant down for the evening. It was only about 8:15 PM, not near closing time. I asked for my money back, and then went to Chipotle and Burger King instead.

It rained a lot on Saturday, but the sun peeked out a few times. I got oil changes done on the car and minivan in the morning. In the afternoon Sharon, K and I went to yet another horse show at the MN State Fair Coliseum, the MAHB Fall Festival. This one was more interesting than the last few, since more people entered each class and prize money was involved. The quality of the riding and showing was higher. One of the people who rides at the stable where K takes lessons was in one of the events, but didn’t win any awards. We stayed there about two hours. Later on Saturday K was invited to a sleepover at a friend’s house, which is unusual for her. S had friend J over for the evening. Sharon and I caught up with new EastEnders.

The rest of the week was not too exciting. We did watch a number of show premiers, including the new season of “Heroes,” Sharon’s favorite, and “The Bionic Woman,” which stars Michelle Ryan, who played Zoe Slater on EastEnders for five years. In fact, she is still seen on the TPT 2 EastEnders episodes, since the shows currently on TPT 2 are from 2002. Now America will find out what a babe she is. I also recorded the latest Ken Burns epic, “The War,” for viewing at a later time. K had horsie lessons on Monday evening, there was an orchestra rehearsal on Tuesday night, and K had religious classes on Wednesday night. Thursday night was my weekly phone call to China and to my mom. I will definitely be going to China again on October 13th, returning on October 27th, just before the orchestra’s concert. All of China is on holiday this week to celebrate China National Day, which commemorates the communist takeover on October 1, 1949. I’m glad I’m not there now.

Sharon loves to tour expensive homes in the Parade Of Homes, so that’s what we did Friday afternoon. I took the afternoon off from work. We went to see this home first which was beautiful. Several bedrooms, large downstairs entertaining area, set on a great lot. At $1.75 M, it had better be spectacular. Then we visited this home, for only $859K. It was OK but not decorated the way we’d like. It was sort of a letdown after seeing the first house. You don’t get as much for your $859K anymore.

It’s lunchtime now, and the sun went to hide behind the clouds. What the ...? What happened to my sunny walk around the lake? I’ll still go for it, but I’m disappointed.

220, 221... whatever it takes

2007-09-24T15:32:00.000-05:00

This morning I passed 4,000 page views on that little counter on the sidebar. And in only 2.65 years! I’d say at least 2/3 of those page views were from me. Well, I’m not writing this thing to become popular or famous. Still, I like the occasional comment I sometimes receive.

It seems that several of the blogs I read are shutting down or going private lately. I’m bummed, but I’m sure I’ll find my “fix” somewhere else eventually. There are many good writers out there.

Last Thursday night I was on the phone with China and my Mom. The China phone conferences tend to occupy my evening since I spend an hour before the call preparing for the call. Vendors’ bids will be returned soon, so the engineers in China were asking when I would be making a return visit. My managers haven’t approved anything yet, but more than likely I’ll be going to China during the 3rd and 4th weeks in October. For project timing October is ideal, but for my personal life the trip timing stinks. Last year I was in Korea in October, and I missed our wedding anniversary and the kids’ 4-day holiday from school for teachers’ convention. Looks like the same thing will happen this year, although I hope to leave on the 13th, so we could celebrate our anniversary close to the actual date (the 14th). Mom was OK on the phone, although near the end of the call she was talking again about how lonely she is, and that she had another dream about Dad still being around, only to remember that he’s gone. It’s hard to know what to say.

This weekend, Sharon was invited to a cabin in northern Minnesota, near Longville, by one of her college roommates. It was a “girls-only” weekend so the guys stayed home. There were seven women that made the trip. They have been getting together regularly since college almost 30 years ago. Sharon drove to her parents’ house and was picked up by the other women there. Sharon said they went on several walks, walked into the town to shop, and some of the women went canoeing on the lake. She also said it was hard to get a good night’s sleep while there, since she slept on a sofa, and because she had to listen to a few of the other women snoring! Apparently the snorers were not in unison, and they each had their own unique pitch, so there was continuous noise. The weather was fabulous up there, sunny and a high in the 70’s both days. I enjoyed hearing the stories and gossip from the trip. Unfortunately, although Sharon took our camera along, the memory card went missing, so there were no pictures taken.

Meanwhile at home I was “Mister Mom” with S and K. I did some shopping Friday afternoon before K got home from school, but I stayed close to the house most of the weekend. S went to friend L’s house after school on Friday, and a planned sleepover with friend J fell through. I spent Friday night and Saturday night transferring more old VHS tapes to DVD. Pure excitement, huh? I probably should have planned an activity to do with the kids, but I was so excited that I’d have time to myself with Sharon gone that I didn’t plan anything. I spent 2-3 hours during the day on Saturday getting organized with family finances on Quicken. More excitement! S slept until almost 2 PM but eventually went over to L’s house again, then in the evening went over to friend N’s house for a sleepover. K spent most of her weekend on the computer or playing in the back yard. I’m such a doting father.

The house was a mess by Sunday morning, so I spent some time cleaning up Sunday so Sharon would be pleasantly surprised. S went over to a friend’s house Sunday afternoon, who happened to be a girl. Of course my first questions to him were “Will a parent be home?” and “Whom else will be there?” Now that he’s older, S is starting to attract the attention of several girls and I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t make any mistakes he’d regret later. I remember what it was like being a teenage boy, although I never had to worry much about girls coming over regularly to see me. It didn’t happen.

Late in the afternoon, I heard from Dan. He received the DVD I sent him with the Bob Saget comedy specials, and enjoyed it very much. He finally went somewhere to get his recent photos printed, so he could send a few to Mom. Sharon arrived home around that time, and we had a pizza for dinner. I also talked to Mom again later in the evening, and she was in a better mood than on Thursday. She filled me in on the latest news about my aunts, uncles and cousins, since she had spoken to some of them in the last few days.

I could not sleep well last night, since I’m coming down with a cold, so as a result I was very tired at my desk this morning. Instead of my usual walk around Lake Phalen at lunchtime, I brought lunch with me, parked the car in a parking lot next to the lake, leaned the seat back, and took a 30-minute nap in the car. After 30 minutes I ate lunch and drove back to the office. It must have worked, since I’ve been much more productive this afternoon.

That is all.

Practice makes perfect

2007-09-19T23:59:00.000-05:00

I’m not going to bed until I complete this post. I’ve been a slacker lately.

Orchestra has begun for the season. I’ve been to two rehearsals since the last post. We are seriously lacking in the violin section. We need to get more violins so that the orchestra doesn’t sound like a band. The music so far is pretty easy. Since the orchestra is celebrating its 50th anniversary, we will be playing pieces that the orchestra has done over the years for our first concert, which will be on October 28th. Another interesting fact about the orchestra is that our concertmaster is now a TV star. He is a member of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and currently on TPT there is a show entitled “From Budapest to Berlin,” which documents the SPCO’s Eastern European tour last January. One of the stops on the tour was in Warsaw, where our concertmaster is from. He spoke at length on the TV show about his childhood and about the concert hall, the same one he had played at as a child. It’s an interesting show.

On Thursday night last week I started a weekly phone conference with the engineers in China. I need to talk to them at night because of the time difference. I think that I’ll have a better idea of project progress and get questions answered faster by having these weekly discussions. Even though the controls engineer in China speaks English well, I’m always worn out after talking to him because I need to speak slower and communicate in simple terms. That really wears you out after an hour on the phone.

On the weekend, we went to Milwaukee to visit my mom. Mom had put the memorial money after the funeral toward having a Mass dedicated to him on Saturday, which would have been his 70th birthday. We’ll talk about the Mass later. I took a half-day vacation from work on Friday so that I could drop off Jessie at Sharon’s parents and get the van packed before K was done with school. We picked up K from school and rushed down I-94 to Milwaukee, only stopping once in Tomah for dinner food. Mom was happy to see us. We didn’t do anything in the evening other than chat.

Saturday was a busy day. Mom wanted some caulking done, where the house foundation meets the driveway. I accidentally removed another part of the driveway seam sealing, so we had even more to do. After a couple of trips to Menards and Home Depot, we had all the correct supplies. Sharon did the caulking and crack filling, while I swept sand into the gaps in preparation for the caulking. We got it finished about an hour before it was time to go to church.

Then we went to the Mass. It was nothing special, except that during the intercessions the speaker asked people to pray for the soul of Dad. My parents’ friend D also attended. As it turned out, the cantor (song leader) for the Mass was M, a friend of mine since junior high. We waited for a short time after the Mass because I wanted to hello to M and D wanted to talk to the priest. M is doing fine. She teaches junior-high level English, and her daughter will be attending the University of St. Thomas next fall.

After the Mass, we drove out to Waukesha to have good barbeque at Famous Dave’s. It was a hit with the kids. D also came along and told us all about his recent trip to Alaska. Mom paid for the meal, which made it even more fun. After the dinner, I drove back to Mom’s house via Greenfield Ave. just to see all the new development along the road. Later in the evening I showed Mom our most recent photos on the computer, including my China pictures.

Sunday was a traveling-home day. After packing the country music CD’s and an ancient Evinrude trolling motor, we said our goodbyes and left about 10:15 AM. We hoped to avoid the traffic, so we took I-90 west at Tomah and traveled north on US 61 along the Mississippi River. We stopped at La Crosse for lunch at Culver’s. Near Winona on US 61, we noticed some flood damage. At Minnesota City, the damage from the August rains was very obvious, as the river banks were eroded away and a bridge had collapsed. Most of the recent flood damage was located further west and south of the Mississippi, so we didn’t see a lot of it. After arriving home about 5:00 PM, I called Mom to let her know we made it home OK. Not much got accomplished the rest of the evening.

The cable company stopped by on Monday to fix our low signal-level problem. Their solution? Replace the box and lay new cable between the street box and the entrance to the house. Whatever was done fixed the problem. Sharon hates having the cable TV repairmen come into our home because they ask her a lot of questions that we don’t want to answer. But, one new cable and cable box later, our service is back to normal. Yay. There were orchestra rehearsals last night, and this evening I folded and put away clothes before I started blogging.

The weather has been a rollercoaster lately, as it usually is in September. Last week the temps were mostly in the ‘60s, but this week it has been hot and humid, with temperatures in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Hopefully there will be more sun in the future. Recently we had almost 2” of rain in my hometown, and it needs to be over with.

Work has been extremely boring lately. “It’s not that I don’t have enough to do,” I’ve said to myself, “it’s just that all my tasks are boring.” I will once again talk to China tomorrow night.

Sharon is going away this weekend without me. She and five of her college roommates are having a “women-only” weekend at one of the friends’ cabins away from the city. I’m looking forward to it since I’ll be free to do what I want, although I don’t know what that is yet. I’m also glad that she’ll get a break from running the household.

In car repair news, we found out that the condenser near the engine in the front of our van is leaking, and that we’ll need to purchase a new one. Cost $800. There has to be a less-expensive solution to this problem. I also noticed that my Hyundai’s brakes are worn out and need to be replaced. That will also cost between $200-$300. Just when you’ve dug yourself out of a financial hole, car repairs throw you back into that hole.

I think it’s time to go to bed. Blog writing takes longer when you’ve had a few drinks, as I did this evening. Does this make any sense? See you soon.

Many rivers to cross

2007-09-11T11:06:00.000-05:00

I’m sitting in a boring 4-hour seminar at work. Good time for a blog, since it’s preferable to falling asleep.

I took the day off last Thursday to go with Sharon to the clinic, where she had a medical test. No problems were found, so she won’t have to take this test for another 5 years. Mild anesthesia was used during the test, so I drove her home. On the post-test literature, besides warning the patient not to drive after the test, one of the warnings I found humorous was “do not sign any legal documents.” It’s probably something you shouldn’t do, but it’s still funny. The anesthesia didn’t affect her too much, but she did nap in the afternoon.

Sharon felt good enough in the evening to go with me to S’s school’s open house. He only has four classes, so we met with four teachers. Most of them seemed normal. S had told us he didn’t like his biology teacher very much, and after meeting him at the open house, I could understand why. The guy bragged about all the things he’d done in his career, including being at Three Mile Island during the nuclear accident and working at my company. He didn’t mention why he was qualified to teach biology. It also doesn’t help that there are 38 kids in the class. Hopefully S won’t have a rough time in his class.

Sharon went to K’s school on Friday to interview for the new job. She’ll be working as a substitute until the job has been posted for a week, and then hopefully be hired permanently. She started working yesterday and it seems to be less stressful work than she did last year at the school. On Friday evening S went to the movies with friends, and Sharon and I watched a lot of old and new EastEnders.

Saturday was pretty laid back. We had the air conditioning repaired on the van again. I did laundry while copying more VHS tapes to DVD, while Sharon drove over to Minneapolis to pick up items that didn’t sell during a friend’s garage sale. S slept over at a friend’s house. Sunday was more of the same. Sharon, K, and I went to a local outdoor horse show just for fun. Afterwards Sharon and K went shoe shopping, and I shopped for groceries. I also stopped at Best Buy and purchased a 500 GB external hard drive, which was on sale. I plan to store my entire MP3 music collection on it, as well as many video files. I spent a few hours Sunday evening copying MP3 CD’s onto the hard drive.

I also spoke with Mom on Sunday night. She attended a friends’ 50th wedding anniversary party on Saturday and had fun. We spent most of the time discussing what food she’d need to buy for us when we visit this weekend, and some of the tasks she’d like help with during the visit. We’re visiting this weekend because this Saturday would have been Dad’s 70th birthday, and Mom is having a Mass said in his honor on Saturday evening. I didn’t hear from Dan, but I’m not surprised since he’s busily preparing for the Nan Desu Kan in Denver this weekend. He’s responsible for printing the programs and for being the DJ for the dances on Friday and Saturday night.

Last night we cooked burgers on the grill, and I spent much time answering many work questions from China. It took much longer than I thought it would. Speaking of work, something interesting happened last Friday. When I arrived in the morning, there was a pile of drawings and folders on my chair. It turns out that the engineer that had been working with me on two projects recently was suddenly gone! His cube was cleared out and there was no announcement of his departure. This means either he got frustrated and quit without notice, or he was fired. He had told me in the past that he didn’t want to be doing project work, so maybe he was unhappy. I guess I won’t know what really happened unless I happen to see him again.

Tonight is our first orchestra rehearsal of the new season. I’ve still got a few orchestra tasks to complete before this evening. I hope the music will be fun.

There is a break in the seminar and I think that’s my cue to leave early, since the subject material isn’t what I had hoped for. See you later.

How to spend lots of money on nothing

2007-09-07T16:15:00.000-05:00

Worry that your dog (Jessie) has serious internal problems. She started vomiting last Sunday whenever we fed her, and also did the same in the middle of the night on Sunday and Monday night. There also appeared to be some blood in the vomit on Monday night, so Sharon took Jessie to the vet Tuesday morning. We conveniently forgot that we had gone through this situation before, but this time seemed worse.

Jessie had a few tests, including a blood test and X-rays, and the vet couldn't find anything wrong with her. She just has a sensitive stomach, which we already knew. The vet gave us some high-priced can food and pills to coat her stomach. Cost of all this: $400. This is in addition to the $800 we spent on Jessie earlier this year to have a cyst and bad teeth removed, and another $200 when she managed to pull the stitches out. It's a good thing we love her.

Of course, since she's been to the vet, we've fed her the regular food mixed with the canned food, and she hasn't vomited once.

I'm glad Sharon's going back to work to help pay for these kinds of expenses.

School days

2007-09-05T23:26:00.000-05:00

Busy, busy, busy. Finally I have a chance to update. Sadly, though, there are no pictures this time.

S and K are back in school as of yesterday. S is now in high school. This makes me feel old. He has to get out of bed at 6:15 AM to catch the bus, shortly after I get up. Tonight I helped him with his biology and geometry homework. His work is advanced enough that I have trouble figuring out the questions. K is starting the 5th grade and soon will be done with elementary school. Kids grow up really fast.

Last Wednesday night we went to K’s school for “Meet the Teacher” night. It went pretty fast since K will have the same teachers this year as last year. But it was also an opportunity to drop off several bags of school supplies required for the year. As usual, I ran into a few of my co-workers, whose kids also attend K’s school.

Speaking of K’s school, today Sharon was offered a new permanent job which she plans on taking. It’s a Monday-Friday schedule, but only 3-4 hours per day instead of 7, so it will allow Sharon enough free time at home to keep up with errands and other projects. The extra money will be good to have again.

Last Thursday night I spent time doing work for China and talking to Mom. I also spoke with her on Sunday. She finally had the large (3 ft. diameter) tree trunks in the back yard removed on Saturday. She’s also been going out for dinner with friends as well. She seems to be in pretty good spirits lately.

I took Friday afternoon off from work. S was having problems with his cell phone again, so we went back to the Verizon Wireless store to get it fixed. Once again the phone needed to be replaced, and fortunately it was still covered under the warranty. This phone only has to last 6 months, since our service contract will end in February, when we can get another phone for a free or discounted price. While there I also found out that Verizon is offering a 19% discount to employees of my company, so I signed up for it. I’m sure Verizon offered the discount because our company’s exclusive cell provider is Sprint, which offers an 18% discount for employees. I also spent some time transferring old VHS tapes from the early ‘80s onto recordable DVD’s.

Saturday we took S, K, and their friends to Valleyfair, our local amusement park. Sharon asked them if they wanted to go to the Minnesota State Fair, but they thought they’d enjoy Valleyfair more. Once we got there, S and his friend J went on their own, while K and her friend S stayed with Sharon and I. S and his friend love all the extreme rides, such as the Wild Thing rollercoaster and the Extreme Swing. K and her friend did more mild rides which were more my speed.

The girls’ favorite activity was the Foam Ball Factory. Once you walk inside the building there are foam balls shooting at you from everywhere. There are machines that vacuum the balls up to the second level, where they can be dropped from a wire cage, or used as ammunition in air cannons. There was also a foam ball fountain that shot the balls out the top of itself. After a while I couldn’t take the noise inside the building any longer, so I went outside to wait, where I was treated to a show by the Sqiggles, five energetic teenagers singing pop songs for kids. I though they were pretty good, but at the end of their 15-minute show, no one applauded! What a lousy crowd. We were at Valleyfair from noon to almost 7:30 PM, and I think everyone had a good time.

On the way home I knew of two things that everyone might want to see, and they were along our route, so we drove by them. The first was the Extreme Makeover Home Edition house in Minnetonka, which is now finished. It looks great. On the front lawn there is a sign that states “ABC / No Tours.” I’m sure the show producers don’t want people to see the inside of the house before the show airs on November 25th. The second thing to do was to cross the 10th Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. It parallels the collapsed 35W bridge and was recently reopened to traffic for the first time since the collapse. Others thought it was a good idea, too, because the traffic was terrible. It took us almost 30 minutes to get across the bridge, and it was difficult to see the damage since we were several feet and a traffic lane away from the edge. But what we could see was unreal. The wreckage appeared much larger in person than it did on TV. The bridge pedestrians had the best view. We dropped off S and K’s friends and finally got home about 9 PM. Sharon and I watched new EastEnders the rest of the evening.

Sunday morning we spent a lot of time reorganizing on bookshelves and file cabinets. In the afternoon S went to a BBQ party while Sharon, K and I visited her parents. We took Sharon’s mom to a furniture store where she picked out a new mattress from Serta, designed by Vera Wang. Vera’s putting her name on all kinds of things these days, not just costumes for figure skaters. The mattress’ insides are made of latex foam, which contours to your body when you sleep. Sharon and I preferred the Tempur-pedic beds, which seemed to do a better job of supporting you, but we won’t be the ones sleeping on it. We had also planned on helping Sharon’s mom purchase a large flat-screen TV, but Circuit City closed before we had time to go there. We got Culver’s butterburgers to go for dinner at the parents’ house, where Sharon’s dad and K were waiting.

Monday, Labor Day, was a nice day, but I ended up staying indoors almost all day sorting important and unimportant papers to be filed. I also transferred more old tapes onto DVD’s, this time focusing on first season SCTV episodes. In the evening I talked to Dan for the first time in almost three weeks. We discussed his new Flickr pictures here, his weekends, and his new apartment. His job still sucks, but now he can again walk to work. Nothing of interest happened last night, and tonight I’ve mowed the lawn, helped with homework, and blogged.

At my job, there are still a lot of tasks needing my attention. Almost every day I receive E-mails from China asking for answers to technical questions. Today I spent the day at our local plant, working with two other engineers from Ohio that flew in to gather more information. I’m hoping they will complete much work once they return to Ohio tomorrow.

Well, I had better get to bed soon. Tomorrow morning I am taking the day off to accompany Sharon to the local clinic, where she will have a medical test done. It’s a routine test and everything should be fine. It’s just a precautionary test for people of our age. She will need someone to drive her home and stay with her for 24 hours, which is why I’m taking off.

Signing off!

Extreme celebrations and home building

2007-08-27T17:05:00.000-05:00

Last weekend it rained. And rained some more. We were not in as bad shape as the people in southeast Minnesota or southwest Wisconsin, who were flooded out of their homes. But it was enough rain so that we stayed indoors a lot. Sharon and I got out last Saturday afternoon (8/18) to look at furniture. We’d like to get a smaller wooden filing cabinet with a bookcase on top. Only one store we visited had a decent selection, and their prices were too high. The rest of the weekend was spent painting the kitchen green. I haven’t taken any pictures of that yet, but I will post one soon. There was also the usual conversation with Mom, EastEnders viewing, and downloading of music.

The weather this week really didn’t improve until Friday. Not much happened in the evenings because of that. I got in a few walks at lunchtime with Sharon. Thursday was K’s 10th birthday, so Sharon took her and S to the Mall Of America for the day. They had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe, built a cougar at Build-A-Bear Workshop, and went to Hollister (S’s choice). In the morning, S went to the high school for new student orientation. He’ll be entering 10th grade this year, and classes start Sept. 4th. In the evening there was a meeting at the high school for the parents of the new students. It was just the assistant principals talking on stage about rules, activities, and other things we should know. One good thing was there will be no parking permits for the 10th graders, so S will not be asking us for the car to drive to school this year. His 16th birthday isn’t until May 29th, though, so I guess it wouldn’t have been a problem this year anyway.

Work this week was productive. We had an all-day meeting with an equipment vendor on Tuesday and got a lot of details from the company rep that came to visit. On Friday morning I held a 3-hour design review on another of my projects that went well. Items were addressed and design things got fixed. It was a major milestone for the project, since we can now wrap up the final details and begin construction by mid-September.

K’s birthday celebrations continued through the weekend. Friday night was spent cleaning the house in preparation for the party on Saturday. On Saturday afternoon K had two friends come over for the party. We all went bowling at Maplewood Bowl. I haven’t bowled in a few years, but before Sharon and I were married, I was in a weekly league for 7 years, so I know how to roll a few strikes and spares. Look at that form!

Sharon’s not a bowler, but she joined in the fun this time.

Of course, K and the girls had fun too.

The girls used the gutter bumpers on their alley. Otherwise there would have been many gutter balls. Sharon and I bowled on the other normal alley. She didn’t do too well during the first game, but after I made a few suggestions, greatly improved her score during the second game. I had scores of 132 and 151, which I was a little disappointed with. But since it’s been years since I’ve bowled, I guess that’s OK. We had pizza and pop at the bowling alley, then came home where there was a bowling pin cake waiting. The girls stayed overnight, munching on popcorn, watching movies on pay-per-view and sleeping in the family room. The girls got up late on Sunday morning, with just enough time for a waffle breakfast before their parents came to pick them up.

Another big event this weekend was our suburb’s annual city festival, “(Suburb Name) Days.” S went with his friends on Friday and Saturday night, where he met nearly all the local junior- and senior-high students. Sharon, K and I didn’t get over there until Sunday afternoon. K went to ride the carnival rides, and Sharon and I looked at several of the vendor booths, and we both enjoyed deep-fried cheese curds.

We rushed through the grounds because Sharon’s parents were coming to our house, where we had yet another birthday celebration for K. I cooked brats and hot dogs on the grill, along with beans and powdered-sugar-covered strawberries. We ate out on the deck since the weather was so nice. K got a few more gifts from her grandparents and a new video game from S. Sharon and I still owe her a gift!

Sharon’s parents didn’t stay too long, because we had told them about our plans for the evening. Sharon has been a big fan of the ABC TV show “Extreme Makeover – Home Edition” for a few years. It’s one of the few shows she makes sure to watch every week. This week, for the first time in Minnesota, a family here is getting an “Extreme Makeover” on their home. Read the article about it here. So Sharon and I figured we’d drive over to Minnetonka, about 35 minutes away, and see how the construction was going. We didn’t think there’d be a lot of people watching the construction on a Sunday night. We were wrong.

Minnesota’s governor, Tim Pawlenty, couldn’t pass up the free publicity, so he came to see the house as well:

Later the stars of the show, including Ty Pennington and the designers, came out of their trailers to make an appearance. The house was turned over by the builders to the designers, and everyone posed for a group shot.

There was a “moment of silence” for the house’s family, which lasted over five minutes while the boom camera panned the group and the crowd. We left around that time so that we’d beat the traffic. Sharon didn’t get to meet Ty in person, but she got her picture taken with him anyway:

We got home pretty late, especially since we weren’t planning on staying at the house for TWO HOURS. But we both had a good time. I called Mom. My uncle, Mom’s brother, had successful cancer surgery on Thursday, and got home from the hospital that day, Sunday. Right now the doctors don’t think he’ll need chemo. I hope not. We’ve had enough cancer in this family lately.

There were unexpected thunderstorms for a couple of hours last night while we were trying to sleep. We’re supposed to get more severe weather tonight. I hope it’s over with before 11 PM, so I can get a decent night’s sleep tonight.

Mellow yellow

2007-08-16T23:14:00.000-05:00

Today was a very productive day at work. I attended two meetings, got some critical information at the plant site, sent it off to consulting engineers in Ohio, and ordered control panels for our plant in Illinois. Not bad for an eight-hour shift! This week at work has been relatively meeting-free.

After all the excitement of the weekend, the week has been pretty mellow. I’ve spent evenings folding laundry and catching up with the HBO series “Big Love.” I’m recording all the episodes to DVD so we can view them later. Sharon has been spending time redoing the kitchen. We’re removing the wallpaper and borders (they’re so ‘90s) and painting the walls green. S has been helping since he has lots of free time and wants the extra cash we’re paying him. Look!

On Monday night we spent most of the evening waiting for severe thunderstorms to hit our house. The first line of storms came close but veered to the east. The second line, which didn’t arrive until 11:25 PM, gave us a dose of heavy rain for 30 minutes but fortunately no wind or hail damage. The weather is starting to cool off, making it more pleasant to take walks around Lake Phalen at lunchtime.

I talked to Mom this evening. She's doing fine. It sounds like she's running out of household things to keep busy with, but she did attend her exercise class and mow the lawn this week. The weather is improving so she'll be able to work more outside.

Tomorrow I think I may take the afternoon off from work. Our plans for the weekend so far include the possibility of going to Canterbury Downs, which I’ve only been to once before. Sharon wants to know what it’s like to throw away your money on horses. We also may invite our neighbors the R’s over to our house for some senseless drinking. We haven’t done that with them all summer.

An event 80 years in the making

2007-08-12T22:47:00.000-05:00

We had told Sharon’s mom that we’d be at their house by 11:30 AM. This meant no leisurely Saturday morning, sitting around doing nothing. We didn’t get up very early, since we were awoken by severe thunderstorms at 3:30 AM. After breakfast I began to assemble Cliff’s birthday gift from us – an office chair from Office Max. It seemed simple enough, but since the instructions were not clear, it was a guessing game as to the order of assembly. After redoing more than a few steps, I finally completed my work, but it took an entire hour, which cut into the remaining time left to get ready to leave. Sharon was behind on getting all the food items we were bringing, and our son S decided it was OK to stay in bed until 10 minutes before we had planned on leaving. We also had to stop at the grocery store to pick up a cake and some candy bars, which took forever. We didn’t arrive at Sharon’s parents’ house until 12:30 PM, one hour late. Fortunately we got there before the open house/party for Sharon’s dad started at 1 PM.

Once we arrived, things went better. Sharon’s uncle and aunt were a big help setting up food and cleaning up the dishes. Ron, S and I did have to make a grocery store run for more dinnerware and lemonade during the open house, but we had enough of all the other items. Over 40 people came during the three hours to wish Cliff a happy 80th birthday. It was a good time.

After most of the crowd had left, we brought in the office chair, which replaced a broken-down behemoth of a chair he had been using. I think he liked it.

We stayed until early evening, and were lazy the rest of the night at home, watching more episodes of EastEnders.

On Sunday morning, Sharon looked on the Internet for boat cruises we could take that day. Most of them were lunch cruises which left about 11-11:30. We couldn’t make it to those boats at that time, so Sharon kept looking. She found that the “Pearl Of The Lake” riverboat in Lake City, on Lake Pepin, left at 1 PM, and we could probably get there in time. S decided he wasn’t going, so Sharon, K and I left by 11 AM, picked up the rest of Sharon’s family, and managed to arrive at the boat dock by 12:50 PM. The weather was perfect – low 80’s and low humidity. Everyone else thought it was a great day for boating and sailing, too, as there were many boats on the lake.

Sharon’s uncle Ron, as you might remember from this post, is a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary back in California, so he had to talk to the boat’s captain. He was up in the captain’s area for over a half hour.

After we left the boat at 2:30, we decided to drive around the lake and cross over to the Wisconsin side, which is more scenic. Our first stop was in Nelson, to visit the Nelson Cheese Factory for some good Wisconsin cheeses and cheese curds. There were dozens of motorcyclists stopped there as well for ice cream cones. Many of them drive along either side of Lake Pepin and the Mississippi on weekends. Our next stop was for a meal, since we hadn’t had lunch yet. Our choice was the Harbor View Cafe in Pepin, Wisconsin.

I had read about this restaurant in the Twin Cities newspapers a while ago, so I knew they served gourmet food. But I couldn’t help myself when I walked in and saw the menu board. Almost all the entrees were priced between $25-$35, so I blurted out, “Oh, this is a fancy place!” The man behind the bar, possibly the owner, heard me and said, “It’s not so fancy that you have to dress up to eat here.” How embarrassing. Obviously he knew I was not used to eating at finer restaurants.

The food was very good and worth the additional cost. I had the mixed grill entree, which was several different kinds of meat and onions on a metal skewer. There was buffalo, beef, pork, lamb, lamb liver (ugh), veal, and a few others. It was more than I could eat, but I did manage to finish most of it. Sharon had the same thing but ate less. We brought home enough leftovers for another dinner.

After dinner most of the group went over to the gift store down the block from the restaurant. K and I waited in the van. We finally left Pepin about 5:30, and stopped at a few scenic overlooks for more photos.

We got back to Sharon’s parents’ house about 7 and stayed around for coffee and cake. I called S a few times on the way back to see what he was doing and to let him know we’d be getting home late. After saying our goodbyes to Sharon’s uncle and aunt, we arrived home about 9 PM. I called Mom, as it was Sunday, and updated her on the weekend. Not much was new with her, good or bad.

It will be good to get back to work tomorrow so I can rest.

Let's go cruising!

2007-08-10T22:46:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a bad blogger again. It’s tough to remember what happened last week, but I’ll try.

All I really remember about last weekend is that I was pretty lazy. My only home project was repairing the outdoor water faucet that I broke a couple of months ago. It required a couple of trips to Home Depot and included a few choice words I said to express my frustration at the progress. I did complete the repairs, but at the end realized the faucet was sticking out about an inch too far from the house. I’ll need to take most of the connections apart and cut more of the pipe back, then reassemble everything again.

The 35W bridge collapse story drags on. There are a million people on TV theorizing why the bridge fell down. I have to laugh at the reporters who speculate every time a new piece of information is released. They’re a bunch of amateur engineers. The politicians are just as bad, blaming our governor for opposing a gas tax that ultimately “caused” the collapse. I say let the real experts, the NTSB guys, do their job and wait for the real cause to be determined. There is so much data to analyze, and it will take a while to get to the root cause.

Sharon and I have watched a lot of EastEnders in the past week. We built up a large backlog of episodes while I was in China. The latest episodes were pretty exciting. Max Branning and family returned from six weeks in Spain, and Max continued to pursue Stacey Slater, his son’s fiancée. In addition, Phil and Stella’s marriage was interrupted by Phil’s son Ben, who finally let his dad know that Stella was abusing him. Phil flew into a rage, but Stella jumped off a building to her death before Phil could get her. Many of EastEnders’ storylines drag on for months before something interesting happens to resolve the situation. We’re only about one week behind the current shows now.

On Tuesday evening I was invited on a Lake Minnetonka boat cruise. One of the companies that does a lot of business with my company invited all the people in our department to cruise the lake on Al and Alma’s boat, the Avant Garde. The boat ride was preceded on shore by a performance by the Mound Westonka Pop Singers, a show music high school chorus. The other company’s representative’s daughter was one of the Pop Singers. They sang and danced to three songs and were fantastic. We boarded the boat and each received two drink coupons. Later dinner was served aboard the boat, which included prime rib, red potatoes, salad, and other items. Lake Minnetonka is a huge lake with many bays and coves, and I’m not sure what part of the lake we were in, but it was a lot of fun. There were many other boats out on the lake, as well as the million-dollar homes along the shore to view. The weather was warm, but being on the lake made the temperature just right. Sharon would have loved to go, if spouses would have been invited. We returned to shore about 9 PM, shortly after the sun set.

Last night (Thursday) I attended an orchestra meeting. Some of the members have been meeting this summer to plan a celebration for the orchestra’s 50th anniversary. It was nice to attend a planning meeting and not have to organize and run the meeting. I did volunteer to help with a few tasks, but they will be pretty easy to complete. We’re meeting again just before Labor Day.

I also talked to Mom on the phone last night. She’s had a lousy week. Her car wouldn’t start when she was out running errands. It was towed to the dealership and the alternator needed to be replaced at a cost of $600. Her cordless phone is also not working. Hopefully things will improve for her.

Sharon’s uncle and aunt, Ron and Nancy from California, flew into the Twin Cities late Wednesday night. They came to our house this afternoon, which meant that I took the afternoon off from work to help Sharon with some last-minute house cleaning. After spending about an hour here, we drove to Stillwater to look at a couple of shops, walk along the banks of the St. Croix River, and eat dinner at the Dock Cafe. Sharon and I have dined there many times, but this was the first time we had dinner on the outdoor deck right next to the river. Again the weather was perfect, there were many boats to watch on the river, and the food was excellent.

It’s going to be a busy weekend. Tomorrow is Sharon’s dad’s 80th birthday party, and we will probably do some outdoor activity on Sunday, since Ron and Nancy will be in town until Monday. Bye for now!

35W is falling down, falling down

2007-08-02T16:56:00.000-05:00

It’s a tiring day today. Sharon, K and I were eating dinner last night and had the 6 PM local news on the TV. We usually turn the TV off during dinner, but I left it on to see the local news. It was almost over when “BREAKING NEWS” flashed across the screen, and we saw the first pictures of the bridge collapse on I-35W. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A major disaster was happening in our city.

I had to leave right then to pick up S from a friend’s house, but once I returned I watched the TV news reports all night. There was continuous live coverage on the four local network stations (4, 5, 9, and 11), as well as Fox News Channel, CNN, and MSNBC. I also turned on my scanner radio to see what I could hear. Since Minneapolis and much of Hennepin County is on a new digital 800 MHz radio system, my scanner couldn’t pick up much of the conversations. However, I did hear some of the suburban fire departments, including some cities near us, which were heading down to the bridge site to offer their help. I kept flipping between all the channels covering the story until about 11 PM, when I realized that I’d better clean up dinner dishes and the kitchen so I could go to bed. Most of the stations ended their coverage at midnight, since there was nothing more to report overnight.

Fortunately for our family, we live and work in the East Metro area, St. Paul and its eastern suburbs, so we normally don’t commute over the bridge that collapsed. I have been on the bridge in the past, though, and the traffic in that area at 6 PM is almost always heavy, as it was last night. I know there has to be a lot of people still waiting to find out about their loved ones. There were so many cars tangled in the twisted steel and concrete, and probably several more that are underneath all the rubble. My heart goes out to them.

So far I haven’t run into anyone at work that was affected by the collapse, so I’m happy about that. My mom and brother both called last night to check up on us, although they knew that we probably wouldn’t have been in that area. Mom said that she received the photos I sent, and that she’s preparing for her company. Mom’s brother, sister, and sister’s husband are coming down from Minnesota to visit her today, and will be staying until Sunday. Dan told me about the move to his new apartment and the battles he’s had at work. He was called in to help during his vacation days off. His employer sucks.

Sharon called her brother Brian in California to let him know about the collapse. He had already seen it on the TV at his work, and had tried to call us, but had trouble getting through. The long-distance phone lines were jammed. He called my cell phone but of course I didn’t have it with me at the time.

The rest of the week hasn’t been too exciting. Sharon has been continuing her renovations of the landscaping around the house. S has been helping her, since we’re paying him to help. I’m OK with that since I hate digging holes and trenches in the ground, and it’s nice to see most of the work completed when I get home from work.

At work I’m trying to get a large piece of equipment ordered that should been ordered a long time ago. I’m not looking forward to next week’s meeting when I’ll have to tell the other project people that it will be a few more weeks before their equipment arrives. I’m also trading E-mails with people in China, trying to hurry them along to complete their specification so that we can bid the controls portion of the project. I’ve also been taking walks at lunch time, but not today, since there’s a lot of work to do.

Let’s hope that the bridge recovery efforts conclude in the next few days so that things around the city can start returning to normal.

Welcome back

2007-07-29T22:52:00.000-05:00

It’s been a long time since I returned from China. Better capture those memory cells in this post before they float away into the ether.

Sharon and the kids met me at the airport last Saturday. We were all happy to be together again. On the way home from the airport we stopped at my office to pick up the spare power supply for my laptop, so I could use it over the weekend. As a welcome home meal, Sharon got a Von Hanson’s steak to cook on the grill. I was very tired but made sure to stay up until at least 10 PM so I could get my body adjusted to Minnesota time again. I watched TV in the evening and called Mom to let her know I had made it home safely.

Sunday was another lazy day. I laid around a lot while Sharon worked in the yard outside. In the afternoon she bought more bushes at Buell’s, and we returned one bush to Home Depot. I talked to Dan on the phone, who told me about his preparations for his upcoming move to a new apartment in the Denver suburbs, about 4 miles from where he lives now. He also got the used car his friend had fixed up and gave to him. It’s a ’96 Toyota Corolla with a rebuilt engine, new tires and a new stereo. He’s fortunate that he has generous friends.

During the week at work, China was never far from my mind. On Monday the director of my company’s China branch gave a speech locally that I attended. Some of my management and our project leader “Steve” were also there. Our project was mentioned a few times in his speech. I also was sending E-mails back to China to make corrections to the specifications we hoped to send out this week. There were still pieces missing as of Friday so it hasn’t been sent out yet. On Thursday I met with another engineer from one of our company’s plants in Illinois who’s also helping with the project. I also got a lot of “Welcome Back” messages from other co-workers who were anxious to have me back to complete work on their projects.

At home, it was hot most of the week. I spent some time putting more pictures on Flickr, shopping at Sam’s Club and being lazy in the evenings. Sharon spent a lot of time watering the grass and moving bushes and plants around. She’s redoing the landscaping around the house to make it more attractive, and changing the edging to make it easier to mow nearby. One of the casualties of the roof replacement was an arborvitae that was next to the garage. It was much taller than the garage and interfered with the roof, so we cut it down to the ground and will replace it with new plants that shouldn’t grow as tall.

This weekend I tried to tackle a few more household tasks. I replaced the window well cover on the north side of the house, and also moved the wireless outdoor temperature sensor to a more protected and shady location. The sensor had been exposed to more sun since the bushes nearby had been removed. I also stopped by Best Buy to get two more memory cards. One will be dedicated for use with our digital picture frame, and one will be used with our future compact camera. I loaded all my China pictures onto the first memory card and plugged it into the digital picture frame. I still need to learn more about the operation of the frame. I’d like to load several sets of photos onto the card and be able to choose which set to view on the frame.

In other weekend news, S had a friend sleep over Friday night, and K had a friend stay over Saturday night. We went to church Saturday evening, and I picked up a huge take ‘n’ bake pizza from Sam’s for dinner. I wasted most of tonight (Sunday) looking for the best deals on Canon Powershot Digital Elph cameras. All the best prices are from dishonest Internet businesses located in NYC. I guess their prices aren’t for real.

It was a very average week. Just what I needed.

Coming home and final thoughts

2007-07-21T20:01:00.000-05:00

Placeholder for the trip home.

China, week two

2007-07-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

Placeholder for my second week of work in China.

Shanghai city tour

2007-07-15T09:27:00.000-05:00

This will be where I talk about the Gray Line tour I took on Sunday 7/15. Stay tuned.

Saturday shopping in Shanghai

2007-07-14T10:10:00.000-05:00

About 10 AM, Steve called and asked if I was ready to do some shopping. He stopped by the hotel and we took a taxi to the Yuyuan Shopping Village. It’s part of old Shanghai that has been renovated for tourists.

Everywhere you walked, sales people would jump out in front of you and try to sell you something. The most common items they sold were watches (fake “Rolex” and a Mao watch with Mao’s arm acting as the second hand) and purses (fake Gucci and Louis Vuitton). Steve took me to a store selling genuine pearls and other jewelry. He’d done business there before so all the saleswomen knew him. Because people from our company had been there before, we automatically received an 85% discount off list price, with no haggling. I found a beautiful strand of salt-water pearls for Sharon, and also two sets of earrings – one with pearls and one with jade stones. The total cost was less than US $100.

We also visited an arts and crafts market, where everyone had a blanket on the floor with their wares:

I found a nice Chinese fan for K at a reasonable price here.

We were getting hungry but decided not to eat at this dumpling restaurant:

Instead we wandered around some of the adjacent neighborhoods. It seemed like everyone was selling something. Many people were selling food, including watermelon. We found a place called a “hot pot.” You selected the ingredients you wanted from a counter. Everything was grouped on skewer sticks. You placed the skewers in a basket, and gave them to the cook. They put the skewers in a large hot pot, containing soup flavored by everyone else’s ingredients, and cooked the ingredients for 5-10 minutes. The soup was so hot that no germs could survive in it. It was delicious, and was only 6 RMB ($0.80 US).

We walked some more and took the ferry across the Huangpu River. As we were leaving the ferry on the other side, I saw a little dog and stopped to take its picture. The dog’s owner noticed what I was doing and wanted me to pose with him and his dog. So I did, even though I wasn’t looking my best.

We made our way back to Steve’s apartment. He lives in a beautiful apartment complex, which has 3 towers, each over 40 stories tall, overlooking the Huangpu River. It also features a garden maze:

Steve had some Tiger beer, a Singapore brand, in the fridge, so we had a few while watching his big-screen TV. He also had cable TV, including many English channels that weren’t available at the hotel. He offered me the use of the apartment the following week while he was gone, but since I wasn’t familiar enough with the city yet, I declined. Maybe I will use it during the next trip. It’s large and comfortable.

Eventually I said goodbye to Steve and left. He was returning to Minnesota the next day and I wouldn’t see him again until I came back. I took a taxi back to the hotel. I ordered a sandwich and Coke from the hotel deli for dinner. I also made reservations on the Internet to take a Shanghai city tour on Sunday.

China - end of week one

2007-07-13T10:08:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, July 11th – At work, I prepared for vendor visits and met with engineers to update the specification. In the evening our project leader “Steve” and I met another gentleman from our company (I’ll call him John) who has just moved to Shanghai to work for one year. His wife came to live here also. They have a car and hired driver, so they stopped by my hotel to pick me up. We stopped by another building in Shanghai to pick up Steve. John’s wife is just getting familiar with the city and finding the places to shop, eat, etc. I mentioned to them that I’ve figured out how to call back to the U.S. using Yahoo Messenger Phone Out, and it’s only $0.01/minute. The wife is very interested and asked if I could come by their apartment to set it up.

Eventually we arrive at the restaurant for dinner. The name of the place is “Bubba’s Texas Style Bar-B-Que and Saloon.” A rib restaurant, in Shanghai.

After you walked in the door, you felt like you’re in Texas, with a few slight differences: 1) the waitresses were all Filipinos; 2) the menu prices were in RMB instead of dollars; and 3) there was cockfighting on the restaurant’s many TV’s via satellite from the Philippines.

The food was great, and we all had a good time. John’s driver gave me a ride back to the hotel.

Thursday, July 12th – Three of my company’s engineers, myself, and one of the project’s hired consultants visit two Chinese companies that may do controls work for us. The first company was a German company with a branch in Shanghai. The only non-Chinese person working there was a German engineer who spoke English well. I was impressed with the company’s experience in China. Their offices were in a new, fancy building, leading me to believe that they might be a little expensive. We went to Sabatini again for lunch.

The second company we visited was hard to find. It was in an old warehouse building in the middle of a residential neighborhood. No one spoke much English there, and it turned out that the company’s expertise didn’t match what we needed, so it was a short visit. In the evening I stayed near the hotel.

Friday, July 13th – The same people as yesterday went to visit two more Chinese control firms. The first was in a building that needed more elevators – there was always a line of people waiting to get on. Their office was very small, but they did have the right experience for the project. We also visited their machine shop. We ate at a McDonald’s for lunch, where the Double Cheeseburger meal cost RMB 14.50, about US $1.93. The second company we visited had larger offices and did lots of controls work, but didn’t have experience in our process type. We also weren’t sure they could give us English documentation. I went back to the office to let Steve know that we’d only seen two companies that were qualified. He hoped we could visit a few more next week.

In the evening, Steve met me at the hotel. Our first stop was the Carrefour store, China’s answer to Wal-Mart. There is a Wal-Mart in Shanghai, but I didn’t get to visit it. Steve needed a SIM card for his new cell phone. I wandered the aisles to see what could be purchased. There were many food items I’d never seen before.

We left Carrefour and walked down the street. There were many street vendors, some selling counterfeit DVD’s for 3 RMB (about US $0.40). I saw many recent movies for sale, including “Spider-Man 3” and the latest season of “The Sopranos.” I didn’t purchase any. We walked to yet another unique Shanghai restaurant, The Flying Fox. It was an Irish pub. There are an endless variety of restaurants in Shanghai.

They had Guinness on tap, so I had to have one. There were many non-Chinese items on the bar menu. I chose fish and chips, deep fried, with malt vinegar poured on top. Mmmm. Steve and I took a taxi back to the hotel, where he dropped me off.

Dis-Orient-ed

2007-07-11T04:05:00.000-05:00

Hello from the other side of the world! It’s Wednesday afternoon in Shanghai, and I couldn’t think of a better use of my time than blogging. Actually, I have to work in my hotel room in the evenings anyway, to keep up with the remaining projects, so what’s the harm in taking a short break here?

Today I think I’ve finally conquered jet lag, now that I’ve been here three days. Trying to do anything after I’ve returned to the hotel in the evening has been impossible because I was thoroughly exhausted. I could barely keep my eyes open enough to watch episodes of Seinfeld on DVD.

I’m staying at this hotel in the Pudong area of Shanghai, on the 42nd floor. That sounds pretty high, I’ll bet, but in this city, where many buildings are 20+ stories, it’s just high enough to see above the other buildings. I’m in a corner room, which means I have views to the north and east. The Huangpu River, with its many large ships, is visible to the north.

Unfortunately the best views are to the west, where the Oriental Pearl Tower (1,535 ft. tall) and the under-construction Shanghai World Financial Center (1,614 ft. when finished) are located. I can see them from the hotel lounge on the 48th floor, but so far haven’t got a good photo of them. It is pretty cool to see the construction cranes up in the sky.

After enduring more than 15 hours of flying, I arrived here Sunday night, China time, and was met at the airport by our project leader, who is also from Minnesota. He has been in China more than 50% of the time for the last several months and has an apartment here. We got a taxi and rode for about 40 minutes before arriving at the hotel. He helped me check into the hotel and then left. I was totally exhausted so all I did before sleeping was give Sharon a call to let her know I had arrived and was fine.

The next morning I ate breakfast in the hotel’s 48th floor lounge and admired the views while having french toast, sausages and bacon. How’s that for a Chinese breakfast? They had a large buffet of Western food, and I figured I would be eating plenty of Chinese food elsewhere, so why not eat Western? I met our project leader, whom I’ll call Steve (not his real name), in front of the hotel, and we took a taxi to the offices of the engineering firm that is helping us design the new plant in China. I met numerous people from the engineering firm and some from the China division of my company. I spent much of the day reviewing specifications and setting up a schedule for my time here. At the end of the day I took a taxi back to the hotel and stayed in for the evening.

This trip is different than my trip to Korea in one major respect. In Korea I was escorted everywhere by the Korean engineers I was working with. They picked me up from the hotel in the morning, went to lunch with me, took me back to the hotel at night, and sometimes we went out for dinner together. Here in China I’m pretty much on my own. After the first morning Steve figured that I could get my own taxi back to the hotel at the end of the day. I know zero Chinese, so the only way you can communicate to taxi drivers where you want to go is to hand them a card with the name and address of the hotel in Chinese. This method has worked well so far, although I haven’t ventured far from the hotel yet. The taxis are so cheap here that it’s the most efficient way to get around town. For short rides of 2-3 miles, the fare is usually less than $2.00 US.

On Tuesday morning it was raining. Steve met me at the hotel at 6:15 AM so that we could ride over to our company’s offices on the other side of Shanghai, a 15-20 mile ride. There was a project review meeting with my company’s China engineering managers. The manager of China engineering was a man that used to work in my building in the Twin Cities many years ago. It was fun to see another person from the past. After the meeting we walked around the building, where they had an impressive display of my company’s products, usually shown to outside visitors. I had to laugh when I saw a display of the same brand of roofing shingles that were going to be installed on our house soon. We also met with my company’s China engineers that do the same job as I do in Minnesota. By the end of the meeting it was time for lunch, and we all went to a nearby Chinese restaurant named Sabatini.

Steve bought lunch for the four of us, and the total bill was $10. All I could think about was that the restaurant was named after Joe Pesci’s character in “My Cousin Vinny.” My memory was faulty, however; his character’s name was Vinny Gambini. Close but no cigar.

We took a taxi back to the other side of Shanghai. It was a long ride and it rained hard. I spent the rest of the afternoon at the office and met with more engineers. Steve and I made plans to meet for dinner later at – you guessed it – Hooters China. Not my choice, it was Steve’s.

At the hotel I asked the concierge to give me taxi directions to Hooters. He had never heard of the place. I had to spell it for him. I told him it was a bar and restaurant. He couldn’t find it in the entertainment directory. I picked up the directory and found it immediately. He wrote the directions in Chinese, which I gave to the taxi driver. He took me to a shopping mall directly across from the Oriental Pearl Tower.

Hooters was on the first floor, but darned if I could find it. I finally found a mall directory that said it was at location 1F21. There was no 1F21 on the first floor. Eventually I figured out that there were restaurants on the OUTSIDE of the mall facing the street. After walking around for a while, I finally found Hooters. I prayed that I was at the right location, since there are two Hooters in the area. I walked in a half-hour late, and Steve was there. Hallelujah! We had sandwiches and a couple of beers, and called it a night. I went back to the hotel and called Sharon.

Today at work I sat in a process review meeting all morning, which included some of my company’s engineers back in the U.S. Steve and I ate lunch at the building’s cafeteria, which had only Chinese food and chopsticks. We both had a meal with what looked like a meatball, tasty noodles, eggs, and rice. It was pretty average but only cost $1.25. This afternoon Steve took off again to get his computer working again – it had a virus and he couldn’t log in. I’ve been preparing for tomorrow’s meetings with Chinese system integrators that will help us design the controls for the new plant.

Meanwhile, at home, Sharon found out on Monday that the roof shingles would be replaced on Tuesday, a lot sooner than we thought. It was a good thing I removed the antenna last Friday. We decided to replace the antenna tripod with a mount that is more aesthetically pleasing to Sharon. She bought it and the roofers installed it along with the shingles. The work is now complete and Sharon is supposed to send me pictures of all the action. I also successfully fixed my son S’s wireless network card problems over the phone from China.

Time to end this manifesto. The next two days should be interesting, meeting all the companies looking for our business. Steve’s leaving town over the weekend and I need to figure out where I can shop for gifts and groceries without being harassed by the salespeople in Chinese. We’ll talk again.

Hello from Shanghai

2007-07-08T21:17:00.000-05:00

It's Monday morning here, and I'm at work. Just thought I'd share the view from my hotel room. So far, I'm comfortable here. I don't feel as out of place as I did in Korea. More later.

My head is spinning

2007-07-08T10:46:00.000-05:00

I’m writing this post from 34,000 feet. I’m on my way to China. When you finally have 15 hours free to do anything, you might as well blog. It’s been two weeks since the last post. Much has happened in the past week.

During the week of June 25th, not a lot went on. I received my Chinese visa on the 28th, and was pleasantly surprised that China granted me a multiple entry visa for 1 year. The project manager had told me that most people going on business to China usually receive a visa for a single trip. Since I’ll probably be making multiple trips, now I won’t have to worry about applying for another visa until next June.

On Friday of that week, my last day in the office, I had a mid-year review with my boss. He’s happy with my project work, but would like to see me take more of a leadership role in the department. I would do that if I could spend less time on projects. I feel that if I took on more department work, I would get even further behind.

The insurance company approved our claim for the hail-damaged roof of our home, and mailed us a check. The man from Midwest Roofing and Siding came by our house this past Thursday to get the contract details, to get the contract signed, and to collect the deposit. Sharon is excited. I’m just happy that we won’t have to shell out over $8,000 for a new roof. They will do the work in 1-2 weeks, maybe before I get back from this trip.

Last Sunday I finally managed to put an ad for the Nissan on www.carsoup.com, which included 6 photos of the car showing it in its best light. (You won’t see the ad there anymore. I took it down today.) I was amazed at the response I got from the ad. I probably had at least 12 people call and ask about it. The first person whom I set an appointment with backed out, so I called the next person on the list. He came by yesterday to look at it. Right away I could tell he liked the car. He commented on how clean it was. I did a great sales job, pointing out all its great features, such as the sun roof, and also the not-so-great features, such as the rust and the non-working A/C. He took it for a test drive with his girlfriend. I saw her stick her hand out through the sun roof, a good sign that she liked it also. I had asked $1,500 for the car, but settled for $1,300. This morning, a few hours before I left for the airport, he gave me the cash, and we went to the license bureau near our home to transfer title. I’m excited that we finally got rid of the car. It runs great now, but who knows for how much longer. I hope the new owner doesn’t have any problems with it for a while.

On Monday this week, our family went down to Milwaukee to visit Mom. We went there by way of Illinois, to have the insurance check endorsed. The check could have been mailed for an endorsement, but we wanted a fast turnaround. Our mortgage company also owns many banks. However, none of their branches are in Minnesota or Wisconsin. The closest branch was in the northern Chicago suburbs. We stopped there, and the lady at the bank asked why I was having the check endorsed there instead of in Minnesota. I explained the situation, and she took care of it. After leaving the bank we drove through more Chicago suburbs and saw an endless string of big-box stores and strip malls, until just before we crossed into Wisconsin. We stopped in Lake Geneva for Culver’s and then finished the trip to Milwaukee. It was cool there. Mom made meat loaf for dinner, which was delicious as always.

On Tuesday morning, we ran errands around town, depositing the insurance check in the bank, and stopping at the local Target for stuff. Sharon, S and I went to Summerfest in the afternoon, while Mom and K stayed home. I found a spot in a parking garage downtown for $10. The lower east side of Milwaukee (south of I-794, east of the Milwaukee River) has really improved. It used to be nothing but warehouses. Many of the warehouses have now been converted to trendy restaurants and art galleries. Some have been converted into condos.

Anyway, back to Summerfest. We strolled around and saw bands at most of the bigger stages, and at the tiny stages as well. My favorite band of the day was an all-girl hard rock band called Catfight. I love women who can rock! We also saw a blues band, a band doing covers of Led Zeppelin songs, and a folk band from Ecuador. We rode the “Sky-Glider” above the grounds. We ate a lot of overpriced food. It was great. The crowds weren’t too bad. We left around 7, before many of the big names performed, since S was tired. We drove around the East Side of Milwaukee, including along the Lake Michigan shore, and eventually stopped at a Mexican fast-food place for dinner before returning home. When we arrived home, there was a lot of thunder and lightning, but it passed soon afterwards. The storms ended just in time so that Milwaukee’s fireworks show, “The Big Bang,” could go on. Instead of watching it live, we saw it on TV. It lasted for 1 hour, during which time 7,000 shells were fired.

We drove out to Union Grove Wednesday morning, the 4th of July, with Mom to visit Dad’s gravesite. The headstone had recently been engraved and installed. None of us had come out to the cemetery since the funeral in January. It was sad, but I’m glad we did it. The headstone looked very nice, and the cemetery grounds were beautiful. It’s a nice place for Dad.

After the trip to the cemetery, we had lunch at Oscar’s and stopped at Menards to pick up a new kitchen faucet for Mom. Her current faucet, a Moen, was leaking. We also had problems with the same Moen faucet at our house and couldn’t fix it, so we didn’t think it was worth trying to repair hers. The faucet installation took less than two hours, and Mom was happy. We went out for dinner to Balistrieri’s in Wauwatosa, and the pizza was good as always.

After dinner we had Mr. and Mrs. K come to visit us. The K’s live in Kansas City, as you might remember from previous posts, but were in Milwaukee over the holiday weekend to visit relatives, just like us. Mr. K ran in a 5K race in Moline, Illinois, which was on their route between Kansas City and Milwaukee. We sat in the back yard and talked until the fireworks show at the Wisconsin State Fair began. You can see those fireworks from the grade school a block away from Mom’s house. The K’s had their dog with them, so they drove to the school so their dog could hide from the fireworks noise in the car. It worked out fine. It was really great to see them again. They left from the school and we went home.

We left Milwaukee Thursday morning after Mom had returned from the doctor for a checkup. She was AOK. We only stopped once on the way home, in Tomah. In the evening the roofing guy came by, and Sharon and I watch many episodes of EastEnders.

Yesterday, Friday, I took down our outdoor TV antenna, since I don’t trust the roofers to not damage it. I also packed and prepared for the trip, showed the Nissan to the buyer, and ran some errands. We had Tinucci’s fried chicken for dinner.

This morning the new Nissan owner came by to close the deal, and I continued to make last-minute preparations for the trip. S let me borrow his new digital camera, since ours is still being repaired. I also packed lots of DVD’s to watch in China. I said goodbye to the kids, and Sharon drove me to the airport, where we said goodbye. I had no problems getting through security or getting on the plane. Highlights of the trip so far include crappy TV shows and movies to watch. Right now “Are We Done Yet?” is playing – need I explain further? I’m in an aisle seat, and the lady in the middle seat next to me has already gotten up 6 or 7 times. What a pain. Hope she’s not reading this as I type. She shouldn’t be.

Yay! “Are We Done Yet?” is over. However, there are still 7 more hours of the flight to go. I think we’re over Alaska by now.

There are still more work things to do before I get there, so I think I’ll take a nap now, and work later. Stay tuned for more updates with pictures!

Relay For Life

2007-06-23T21:52:00.000-05:00

Sharon, K and I attended the local American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life event last night. It’s a cause we’re very supportive of, since two of our family members have died from cancer this year and another one is battling cancer right now (Sharon’s brother B). The event gets larger every year. Many businesses donate food and supplies, and there are many fun fundraising activities for kids and adults to participate in. We had our share of free hot dogs, ice cream and water.

Each team has several members who walk around a track from the beginning of the event on Friday night until it ends on Saturday morning. Sharon and K decided to stay overnight at the event, since Sharon signed up to walk at 8:30 PM and at 3 AM. I came along to help set up their tent and to walk with Sharon at her 8:30 PM time. I went home after 9:30 PM. Sharon and K came home this morning about 7 AM, not having slept much all night.

One of the major features of the event is the lighting of the luminaria, which are placed all around the track. Each one represents someone who is battling cancer or someone who died from cancer. There were thousands of luminaria surrounding the track. I didn’t stay long enough to see them all lit in the dark, but this picture will give you an idea of the large number of people affected by cancer:

In other news, I applied for my Chinese visa on Friday, and should have it by next Friday. I’ve also made the flight reservations and received welcoming E-mails from the people I’ll be working with there. I talked to Mom on Thursday night. Her neighbor Ann sold her house and will be moving to Iowa soon. She’s also attending a 50th anniversary party for family friends on Sunday night. Mom and Dad knew them since they were newlyweds. Today was a pretty lazy day. S washed our cars, and Sharon and I cleaned the basement stairs.

I also packed up our Canon SD600 camera to be repaired. The camera didn’t like the sand and salt water it saw on the beach in Hawaii. We’re sending it to Canon to see if it’s worth the cost of repairs. Even though it’s still under warranty, sand and water aren’t covered. If it costs too much to repair, I’ll be purchasing a new Canon Digital Elph, the SD 1000, which is over $100 less than I paid for the SD 600, and is more capable.

Have a good weekend.

S drives!

2007-06-21T21:16:00.000-05:00

S passed the written driving test today. He and Sharon immediately went to the license bureau and got his learner's permit. (If we were in the UK right now there would be a big red "L" on our car.) Sharon took him over to the church parking lot to drive the Hyundai. He was still anxious to drive tonight, so we went back to the church tonight so he could drive the '93 Nissan. We practiced turns. He needs to practice his right turns more than the left turns.

Then I drove on the side streets near our house, pulled over, and let S drive the rest of the way home. He was a little nervous but did OK. Now begins almost a year of teaching. He should be a pro by the time he takes the on-the-road test next summer.

I command the lightning's hand

2007-06-20T22:37:00.000-05:00

The TV weather people lied. We were supposed to have a week of highs around 80. This morning I hear that the high would be 90. Any weather prediction for more than two days in the future is usually wrong, winter or summer.

We had some nasty-looking storm clouds near our house tonight. Unfortunately, they didn’t drop any rain at our house. We could use some.

S continues with drivers’ education. He goes from 7:30-10:30 AM Monday-Friday through June 29th. I believe that tomorrow will be the written test for his learner’s permit. He will be practice driving on the school’s parking lot course twice next week. After that it’s up to Sharon and me to take him out. He has been doing OK on tests, and we have been helping him do extra credit to raise his grade, such as listing the steps for filling the car with gasoline, calculating MPG when filling up, and planning a trip. S complained that if we had enrolled him in a private driving school, he wouldn’t have to work this hard. I told him that taking the course through the school district is $50 cheaper, can be claimed as a deduction on our state income taxes, and he gets one elective credit toward his high school graduation.

S also has been attending Summer Campus afternoons this week. The experience has been disappointing and I doubt he will continue after today. The school district described it as getting a head start on reading, writing, and math, and improving test-taking abilities. It turned out the skills being taught are far below S’s level, and seem to be geared for slow learners, more appropriate for grade-school students. It’s too bad because we fought S to attend, and it turned out to be a waste of his time.

K started her summer activities this week. She’s taking swimming lessons at the local YMCA on Monday afternoons, and starting clarinet lessons on Tuesday afternoons. Both Sharon and I are excited that she’s taken an interest in playing a band or orchestra instrument. Maybe if she continues she’ll be able to play in the orchestra with us. She will also be taking horse riding lessons on Thursdays, so she’ll have plenty to do the rest of summer.

I spoke to Mom last Thursday night and on Sunday. The second large tree in her backyard was taken down on Saturday. She’s not happy about the state of the yard but now is not worried about any more trees falling down. I also mentioned that we would like to come visit her during the week of July 4th, and maybe go to Milwaukee’s Summerfest. She surprised me by saying that she’d like to go as well. I don’t know if she’d enjoy much of the music, but I’m sure she’d just like to get out and do something fun. We’ll be happy to bring her along.

Last weekend was pretty laid back. We worked in the yard on Saturday. Sunday was Father’s Day, the first since Dad died. I thought about him but didn’t let it bother me too much. I suppose I would have felt worse had I visited with him on that day over the years. Since I’ve lived far away from my parents for many years, we’ve rarely seen each other in person on Mother’s or Father’s Day. I still miss him, though.

Our family celebrated Father’s Day by visiting Sharon’s mom and dad. Her dad was still recovering from minor surgery he had on Friday. Sharon and I brought over the food so everyone could build their own sub sandwiches. They were very good. Sharon’s brother Stu brought a pie for dessert. We also exchanged Dad gifts, and since Stu’s birthday is very soon, he got gifts too. Stu hadn’t seen S since his birthday, so S got a gift from him. The kids got me Seinfeld Season 8 on DVD, so now I’ll have shows to watch while in China. Sharon gave me a couple of nice shirts. After returning home our neighbor’s daughter and grandson took a test drive in the ’93 Nissan. They sounded interested in purchasing it, but we won’t know until Friday at the earliest, since the daughter is on a business trip until then.

Many of our neighbors have been getting their roofs replaced, claiming recent hail damage. We had a contractor look at our roof, and he thought there may be some damage, so we arranged for our insurance company to come take a look with the contractor. They were out at the house on Tuesday, and we’ll find out the insurance company’s verdict tomorrow. The cost of a new roof is at least $10K, and we will need to replace it soon anyway, so it would be nice if we can find enough damage to get it replaced by them.

Work has been very hectic this week. I’ve had significant work to do on several of my projects. Today an outside engineering contractor flew in from Toledo, Ohio to begin work on a project at the local plant. I escorted him around the plant today and will do so again tomorrow morning. He’ll leave after lunch, and then I can return to the office in the afternoon. We’re glad to have him visit, since now the detailed design work on the project can begin. I also now have enough information to apply for a visa to China and make travel reservations, which I should be able to complete tomorrow. I’m going to be staying at this hotel in Shanghai. Hope I get to ride the maglev train while I’m there!

Well, it finally rained this evening, but not for long. It’s just about time for bed. See you soon.