I've Got Blisters on My Fingers

Been in Stewartville, a "city" outside of Rochester in Minnesota, for the past couple days. We are staying with Dad and Megan, and having an awesome time. Stewartville has just over 5,000 people, but I think I have seen 3 of them. The airport in Rochester is called the "Rochester International Airport", but I have seen motels that are bigger. There was one baggage carousel, a desk with 3 people "working", and about 6 chairs. Not quite as small as the airport we flew into on an island in Belize (San Pedro), which was just a landing strip (read: gravel thrown over some weeds) and an outdoor sign promising that you were at an airport. At least Rochester has a building.



Dad and Megan's house has a huge wooden deck that overlooks a park and some cornfields. Quite different than what we are used to looking at when we smoke outside.

I did get to play the cello for the first time in many, many years. It was great to play again, but I was only able to practice for about 30 minutes before my fingers and thumb started to blister. Today we are heading in to Minneapolis for the day.

The Art of Packing

Our plane for Rochester, MN, leaves in about 7 hours. We just started packing. Here is the secret to successful packing for any trip:


1. Invite both brother-in-laws over to play Call of Duty.
2. Take lots of cigarette breaks while formulating half-thought out lists of what to pack, i.e. "clothes" and "maybe something to do on the plane".
3. Watch an episode of "The Tick".


Today I helped Zhang Nan, son of our future boss in Jiaozuo, find a place to live in Louisville for a couple months. He is in town visiting his mother's college friend. We had a good time showing him around Louisville last week, and letting him play some Starcraft 2 (which, btw, should have made it onto our "how to succeed at packing" list). Here are a photo of us tearing up Louisville.

VPN

Doing some research on which VPN to use. Used GoTrusted while I was there last semester, but it was slow at times (anyone remember Martin's crazed behavior when it came to our internet access?). So far, Witopia keeps coming up as a good, solid VPN service, and it runs about $40/year, which seems decent.

Any other suggestions from those who have used one?

Heading to Minneapolis

Tomorrow we are heading to Rochester, outside of Minneapolis, to see Dad and Megan. Excited to see their new home, from the pictures it looks like there is a huge porch. We will be heading in to Minneapolis for a day also, and are really looking forward to seeing them and relaxing.

Kim and I in our regalia. Notice my ode to Doctor #10 with the burns.

Also, finished watching "The End of Time: Part 1 & 2" last night -- the last of Season 4 Doctor Who, and the last of David Tennant's role of the Doctor. Kim, Robert and I were impatient to watch season 5, which comes out in the US while we are in China, so I checked a favorite Chinese "youtube" type site, and we found the 5th season, subtitled in Chinese. Hooked up the laptop through HDMI to our TV, and we started the 5th season. Kim may disagree, but atm my favorite Doctor is David Tennant.

Making Preparations

Where am I? In my kitchen making cedar satchels.

We are going to have to put a lot of our belongings in storage including many clothes and my yarn stash! We are going to store these items with cedar satchels to protect them from bugs that may think stored clothes are an awesome place to live.

Lets hope it works!

(For fun, try saying cedar satchels ten times fast.)

Where's Pippin?

Pippin is staying behind with Robert, Kim's brother. Pippin and Robert have a long history, mainly consisting of Pippin eating Robert's shoes. We know that Pippin will be in safe hands with Robert watching over her (and our home!). However, we also know that Robert will never read this blog. Hell, he still doesn't have a cell phone. Let's hope he fixes this while we are gone!

Be sure and take our "Should Robert join the 20th century and get a cell phone?" poll!