Parking, Football, and Sightseeing in New York

Last week I had the opportunity to take a business trip out east to the New Meadowlands football stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey; home of the New York Jets and New York Giants. This is the stadium's first year of operation, and has recently installed a parking management system from my company. Having worked on supporting this site's parking system, I was sent out with one of our developers and one of our testers to install some updates to the system and to see how well everything operated as nearly 80,000 fans showed up for a football game looking for a place to park.

We arrived on Sunday October 9th and got to work on the handheld computers in the attendant booths throughout the complex, and made some updates to the server as well. We were able to take care of most of the work Sunday, and complete the updates on Monday morning.

With the major work done, we had some preparation for the game and ensuing parking traffic. Double checking things, getting security credentials for the stadium, etc. After a busy morning we broke for lunch, and spent a little time touring the stadium in the daylight, checking out the view of the field from the front row at the 50-yard line.


Happy to say our parking system worked very well overall, which made our evening fairly easy. As thousands of tailgaters flowed in and fired up their grills, we drove around to the various parking entrances and checked on everyone as the evening progressed. I carried a two-way radio to keep in touch with the parking staff if something came up. At one point shortly before game time we ended up stranded out in a downpour, and got pretty soaked until we could make our way to shelter underneath a pedestrian footbridge for awhile. Aside from being wet I was having a great time!

With things running well, our remaining job for the evening was to monitor the system and send out reports every hour or two on how many transactions had gone through. Since this could be done with a laptop and internet access, we brought one with us and headed into the stadium hoping to see some of the game. As luck would have it, the game we went out there for was a MN Vikings game.

Once in the stadium, the rain really came down hard. They wouldn't let anyone into the seats until the rain and lightning let up, and the start of the game was delayed. Our security badges allowed us into the back areas of the stadium, so we could get out of the crowds of fans trying to stay dry. While roaming the halls we saw the entrances to the team locker rooms, and happened to come upon a tunnel down to the field. After chatting with security for awhile, he told us we were welcome to come down and watch the game once the rain delay was over. Until then we had expected we'd have to find some open seats in the upper decks. Sure enough, we came back later and walked right down by the field. It's surprising what wearing a badge and carrying a two-way radio can accomplish. We walked up the ramp to the handicapped seating area, pulled up some folding chairs, and took a seat front row in the end zone. If I were a real football fan I may have appreciated this more, but it was still an amazing experience to be watching a football game in the front row with 80,000 fans cheering around you.




The game was blast. We got rained on a few more times, but could at least duck into the tunnel if it got bad enough. We kept checking on the parking system and things continued to run well as the game started. It was a long day and long night, but overall a great success and a great time. We headed out just before the end of the game to beat the crowd, and turned in at the hotel around midnight, picking up some dinner in the hotel lobby.

Tuesday morning we slept in after a long day, and met with some coworkers to go over the details of the day before. With business & breakfast out of the way, we had a few hours until we had to get to the airport, so we took the rental car and made the most of our time... Manhattan or bust!

I've never been to New York before, so to spend two days just over the border and NOT go into the city would be a shame. We entered Manhattan through the Lincoln tunnel, and took a driving tour to see whatever we could see, including Times Square and the Empire State building.



We headed for Ground Zero and had about 20 minutes we could get out and walk before we'd need to head back. Of course, we had to stop for a hot dog from a New York street vendor, and it was good.



Ground Zero itself was under a lot of construction and was difficult to see from where we were, but there was a small opening in the wall by the subway entrance where I could get some good photos of the area. Pretty amazing how much of the space is still empty a full 9 years later.



After our brief tour of the city, we headed back to Newark airport and back to Minneapolis. All in all it was a great trip.

Camping 2010 at Lake Louise State Park

This year's annual camping trip with friends brought us down near the Iowa border to Lake Louise State Park. This was also Nathan's first camping trip. Camping with a 9-month old was certainly a change, but overall I think we adapted fairly well. Thankfully one of our friends brought the our bins of camping supplies this year, otherwise there would be no way we could have driven down in one vehicle.

I worked a full day on Friday (maybe I'll take the afternoon off next year), and after our usual evening routine at home, we headed out just before Nathan's bedtime so he could sleep on the way down. We arrived around 9pm and despite our hopes, Nathan didn't sleep through our unloading of the car and instead got to play with our friends while we unpacked and set up the tent with the help of our car's headlights. We stayed up for awhile around the fire and Beth put him down to bed. He had trouble sleeping each night but we think it was mostly due to teething issues lately.

I love our new tent. It's huge. We knew we would need space for us and a pack & play this year so we upgraded to a new big tent. It took a little troubleshooting to get it set up just right, but it worked out great. There were even poles for each door so we could have doors that swing open. A little hard to get used to, but very nice.




Saturday was a beautiful day for camping. Our friend Amanda brought a portable highchair that hooks on the edge of a table, and we used it to feed Nathan at the picnic table and it worked great for every meal. While he enjoyed his pureed food, the rest of us had fruit, bacon & eggs (a new addition to this year's menu) and my fried donut. I fry up biscuit-dough donuts on the camp stove each year and coat them in sugar. They're always a big hit.


My sister let us borrow her baby backpack and we used it to go on a short hike with Nathan later Saturday morning. He loved riding on my back and checking out the scenery. We stopped at the beach for snacks, and headed back for his lunch. After he ate rest of us had our Tacos in a Bag using a bag of Doritos, taco meat, and taco fixings all mixed up in the bag.


In the afternoon we played with Nathan on a blanket with his toys, and I went for a hike with a couple friends while Beth and Nathan went down for naps. The highlight of our hike was an unexpected river crossing. The trail was marked as a horse and hiking trail, and all our our previous river crossings were over bridges... except for one. We ended up stopping and enjoying the cool water for awhile, and then kept hiking until our feet dried so we could put on socks and shoes again. After the hike we took some much-needed showers and got ready for dinner.


Like previous years we made our "Hobo Dinners" (aka Foil Dinners) consisting of meat, cheese, and veggies roasted in a packet of foil on hot coals in the firepit. Nathan slept well for the first part of the night while we enjoyed s'mores and good conversation around the fire. He had a rough time sleeping later that night, though.

This year a bunch of our group had tickets for Wicked on Sunday and had to leave right away in the morning, so Sunday was a quick scramble to pack up first thing in the morning. We managed to take down the tent and stuff all our gear back in the car and made it back home before lunch, with a brief stop at a rest area on the way home.

As always, we had a great time camping with our friends, and I think our first attempt at camping with a baby was a success!

Wet Basement Adventures

Let me tell you a story about our basement... First, we love our basement. It's nice, spacious, unique, and a fun place to hang out. However, we've had the occasional problem with water. Usually this showed up below our chimney, which happens to be the wall between our family room and the furnace room. During a really big storm, we might see some water show up in the furnace room, and maybe a little wetness in the carpet on the other side of the wall. Not much usually, and it would dry up and we never thought much of it until one day we came downstairs to find these:

Yes, those are mushrooms. Big, brown mushrooms growing in our carpet. I even found mold growing up the wooden leg of an ottoman out in the middle of the room. We knew there was some water damage there but never realized the extent of the problem. Our mission was clear, the mushrooms must die ASAP, but not until they could be properly examined by water damage professionals. We were preparing to go on vacation for a week and didn't relish the thought of these things growing down here for another week until we got back. We ended up calling a couple cleanup companies to see if we could get it cleaned up right away. There were some delays as we figured out that nothing was covered under insurance. One company looked over the whole basement with an infrared camera and could see water in the walls as high as 6 feet around the affected area, but otherwise the rest of the basement was dry. Metro Restoration, the company we ended up going with, helped us feel better about leaving for a week and sprayed everything with a disinfectant when they came out to inspect the basement. This killed the mushrooms right away, and by the time we came back from vacation they were shriveled up and black. Thank goodness for that, and thank goodness for subscribing to Angie's List, which made finding good contractors a great experience.

Shortly after we came home we had the water damaged material ripped out of the wall, and had all the carpet in the room removed as well. What we found was a likely culprit... the "ash pit door" which is where you would clean out ashes dropped down from a wood-burning fireplace. Our fireplace has since been converted to gas, so this door was concealed behind sheetrock. All the water was centered around this door. While we've essentially lost the family room for awhile, at least the nasty stuff has been properly cleaned up and we can move on with finding solutions. As an aside, we could tell that previous owners had fun down here. We found hopscotch courses and children's names painted on the floor, and chalk drawings on the block wall.

At this point we didn't know if water was coming down the chimney, and finding it's way down due to a roofing or flashing problem. We had people look at it, and we even went outside during a rainstorm to look at the chimney area. The most telling thing we saw was water dripping off the underside of the gutters (but not overflowing as far as I could tell) in front of our chimney, and hitting the ground right next to the chimney foundation. We also noticed that some of the landscaping near the house doesn't slope away from the house very well. Our gutters have always been in need of repair... rust, holes, cracks, etc. We've managed to keep them going with caulking in the worst spots, but there's only so much you can do. My dad came up with a good way to test out our theory... run the hose on the ground in front of the chimney. If we see the same results, we know it's not likely a chimney/roofing problem. I turned on the hose and ran it slowly for about an hour, and we saw the same thing we've seen before. I set up my camera for some time-lapse photography to capture the leak:



At this point we've decided to go ahead and fix up the gutters and the water damaged soffits & fascia like we've talked about doing since we moved in. We're also going to fix up the landscaping so water is directed away from the house better. I haven't decided if I want to dig in front of the chimney to look at the foundation, but if we direct water away from it, a foundation crack wouldn't be so much of an issue anyway. The chimney itself has some deteriorating brick above the roofline, but that repair/expense may have to wait, and at least we know it's not the source of our water problem.

Nisswa Family Vacation 2010

We just came home Saturday morning from our annual Nisswa vacation with Beth's family. We've managed to get unpacked and settled back in at home again after a nice relaxing week with the family. Thank you to Beth's parents for making the trip possible.

This was our fourth year at the Good Ol' Days resort in Nisswa on Lower Cullen Lake. The resort has recently changed ownership, so the original husband and wife team that used to run the resort are no longer there. Everything is basically the same... nice amenities, great activities for kids, but it doesn't have quite the personal touch that it used to. Still, we had a great time and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Because of the larger families now we rented two adjoining cabins and opened the door that connects them. Beth and I took a big room upstairs in one of the cabins that had a queen and a twin bed, and space for Nathan's pack and play. It worked out very well for the three of us. This was also the first year I was able to take the whole week off work and didn't have to come home early, which was an added bonus.



Nathan enjoyed his first family vacation, and especially enjoyed playing with and laughing at his cousins, and swimming with Beth and I almost every day. He also seemed to reach some developmental milestones during the week. He slept through the night without needing to eat a few times, started pulling himself up on the couch while sitting in my lap, and started eating solid foods instead of gagging on them. He also started rolling front to back a lot more often than before. We can tell he's starting to getting up on his knees to crawl.




Beth and I brought our golf clubs and managed to get out for a game mid-week. Our first attempt was a bust however. We left during Nathan's morning nap, and drove up to the clubhouse and there were 30+ boys under 12 with their parents all waiting to golf. The guy running the front desk said it would be at least an hour. We figured it must have been some kind of junior golf league. So instead of golfing in the morning we came back and watched our nephew win 2nd place in the Worm Races back at the resort. We went back later that afternoon and got right in for 9 holes at Wild Wedge in Pequot Lakes. This was my first game of golf since my surgery almost 4 months ago, so it would be a test to see what my range of motion was like. Much to my delight, it felt great to golf again. After a little coaching from Beth on my swing, I had some awesome drives. On one hole I even landed on the green 125 yards away with my first shot, and made par for the hole which is rare. It ended up being one of my best games in a long time.



Each family takes at least one night to cook dinner for everyone else. Ann & Mike made us some chicken on the grill covered with bacon and cheese, mashed potatoes, bread, etc. Beth and I made a variety of pizzas (my personal favorite being chicken teriyaki) and foccacia breadsticks. We also hit a couple restaurants while we were there, Rafferty's Pizza and Ganley's, which has two of my mom's prints hanging in their dining room.




We filled the time with lots of activities for the kids, and activities of our own... ladderball, swimming, playing on the beach, playing cribbage, phase 10, fishing, taking walks, touring the lake on a rented pontoon, trying some new beer and sharing homemade wine, and taking advantage of the wireless internet access. I also brought a small hobby electronics project to play with when the kids were sleeping. All in all, it was great week and I look forward to next year.

My old trunk lives on in film

We've been getting rid of some old stuff on craigslist lately, mainly old furniture as a result of redoing our office. Among these items was my old trunk. My sisters had similar "foot locker" style trunks they used in college, so when it came time for me to start college, my parents found me one at a garage sale. We painted it black, filled it with stuff, and I hauled it out to Wisconsin for college career. As a central part of my dorm, it served me well as junk drawer, foot rest, coffee table, step stool, extra desk space, kitchen table, the list goes on...

In the years since college it remained mostly unused except for holding the occasional odd item I needed that was stashed away in there. So when we were looking to clear out some things from the house, we decided to post it up for sale on Craigslist. Similar trunks were going for $20 to $30, so we posted mine for $25. About a week later I was contacted by someone interested in the trunk and we set up a time on a Saturday afternoon.

He was very interested in the trunk and had asked a lot of specific questions about it on the phone earlier in the day. The man that arrived showed up with his dog, excited and barking. After putting the dog back in the truck, he then tells me they are shooting a world war 2 movie and they need an authentic foot locker. The producers had managed to borrow one from a member of the MN Red Bulls unit to shoot some trailer footage, but the owner wouldn't let them paint over some of the Red Bulls insignias and the like, so they needed one of their own on a limited budget. He was very happy about the handles on my trunk. Apparently he had looked at several trunks that day and most had broken or missing handles. This was important because he said there was an important scene where a young boy was supposed to pick up and carry the trunk by the handles. By this time I was pretty impressed with the story and was happy I apparently had the "perfect" trunk. All it needed was some repainting for their movie. He gave me the cash and started going on that his producers would want to know what he spent the money on, and how he would need to write up a bill of sale for the must-have $25 Craigslist trunk. He was thrilled with my tough old trunk and hauled it away.

After leaving, I wrote back to him by email and asked if he could tell me more about the production. The movie is called "Souvenirs". As I read about the movie and read some articles about the production everything made sense that my buyer had told me earlier. The movie is the fictional story of a Minnesota boy who finds his grandpa's old army foot locker full of "souvenirs" of the war, which gets his grandpa to open up about his experience. The grandson then grows up to fight in Iraq. While some of the press I read made it out to be a relatively low budget film, they still managed to bring in a notable actor James Cromwell due in part to his son (also in the movie) living in MN himself, and they'll be able to get some authentic army drills and equipment on film due to some cooperation with the local armed forces.

Since selling the trunk I've been keeping an eye on the production, and have started noticing stories about the movie showing up on local news. While obviously I have little to do with the movie, as a community theatre actor & singer I think it's really cool to have played even a small part in a serious film. I wish them good luck with the production and hope to see it when it's released, if for no other reason than to see my trusty old college trunk. Filming starts soon.

Links:
Official Souvenirs Website
Souvenirs Facebook page

The new home office takes shape

Several weeks ago, Beth and I were discussing what I could do in the future to keep up my exercising habit as was recommended by my doctors. I loved getting out for long walks, but that meant Beth would have to stay home with Nathan until I returned if he was in bed. Bad weather (especially winter) would hinder my ability to go out for walks. I don't want to take on the monthly expense of a gym membership, and even if I did that would take more time for each session due to travel time, prep time, etc. I had wanted to try a treadmill at home, but we couldn't think of a good place to keep one, and didn't want to take up space in the common areas of the house. I knew I liked the treadmill from using them at cardiac rehab, and I like mentally disconnecting while I listen to my favorite podcasts or an engrossing audio book.

This led us to come up with a new plan for the house. Beth's office downstairs was a room she found she didn't like to use. It was secluded in a corner of the basement, was usually cooler than most of the house, and generally inconvenient, especially if she needed to run upstairs if Nathan started making noise through the baby monitor. The room downstairs can't be a bedroom due to the lack of a window, and would work better as an exercise room anyway. My office upstairs would have room for two people if we could clear out some items.

We started going through our things, cleaning and organizing, and ended up selling my old desk and an old bookshelf on Craigslist. We also sold my old storage trunk on Craigslist which I have an interesting story about, but that's for another post. Once we sell off Beth's old desk I think we'll have offset most of the cost of the new office.

On Monday we headed down to IKEA with Beth's dad to help us haul stuff home while her mom watched Nathan. We had made up a plan for the office and picked up almost everything that day (we had to go back for some items that weren't in stock on Monday). Of course, we had to partake in the Swedish meatballs with lingonberries for lunch at the IKEA restaurant before we left. We picked out a series of VIKA AMON tabletops and VIKA ANNEFORS table legs with storage that would come together in the form of a large T-shaped desk for the two of us. I also picked up a SIGNUM cable organizer to mount under each desk to keep all the cords tidy and up off the floor. We also came home with a new wall clock, desk lamp, and a few other small accessories. Now that everything has come together we absolutely love the new space. We have more workspace than before and the room feels bigger to boot!

We figure the room will stay an office for a long time. This room was part of an addition to the house, and it doesn't have ductwork for air conditioning; just baseboard electric heat. The best way to keep things comfortable is to keep the door open and the ceiling fan running. Plus the vaulted ceiling means there is no attic space above to insulate from the outside temperature. Overall, it works well enough as an office, but we wouldn't want Nathan or other future children to live in a bedroom with this relatively poor climate control.

Now the downstairs (former office) room is our next project. Beth has moved out of the room, and now we just need to sell off her old desk and get rid of some more items. Once it's cleared out we can look for a deal on a low-cost new/refurbished/used treadmill and set up a little exercise space. The cool temperature downstairs should lend itself well to working up a sweat. Having the ability to exercise my heart and body year-round at home will be great. I'll be able to keep up a relatively consistent habit, and be more available as a husband and father. I want to keep my heart healthy and I don't want to become the person who has a treadmill that never gets used. Granted I have more of a reason than most to use it. At least for now I'm able to get my exercise walking outside, and assembling and moving furniture!

Fourth of July 2010 - Boating & Cherry Wine

The family enjoyed a fun Fourth of July this year on Mom & Dad's boat. The day started out rainy and windy as we made the 90 minute drive down to Red Wing, but the weather slowly turned around as we floated in the marina eating our lunch below deck.

Nathan enjoyed his first boat ride, much of which was spent sleeping thanks to the dark bedroom and slow rocking of the waves. He slept almost 2 hours for his afternoon nap. Once awake, Grandpa let him help steer the boat. He had a blast!



After we returned to the marina mid-afternoon, Dad and I went out to pick some cherries from some trees on public land not far from there. Dad had been there already to pick some for making wine and had also started picking some for me. By the time we got there, most had been picked already, but we were able to scrounge up maybe another pound, giving me about 10 lbs total, enough for at least 3 gallons (15 bottles) of wine.

We headed home at Nathan's bedtime so he could sleep on the car ride. This happened to be his last ride in the car seat since he's big enough now for the upright car seats. After putting Nathan to bed we enjoyed a relaxed evening, and I stayed up late to start processing my cherries for wine. The new batch is now fermenting away in the basement. Can't wait to try it!