fair play...

tommorow we take our annual trip to the great minnesota get-together a.k.a. the mn state fair. we plan to get an early start and go pretty much all day or until the exhaustion starts to outweigh the fun. the weather is supposed to be great so it should be an ideal day to go. as the fair is mostly about eating we have a few must-have items that i know we'll try to find including, but not limited to, breakfast pizza and perfect pickels in the food building, sweet martha's cookies and the all you can drink milk booth. we always hit up the giant slide and the kids will no doubt want to check out the rides as well. then there's the swine and horse barn, 'lil farm hands, etc. it's always a flurry of activity from start to finish. one of the best parts of the fair for me is that the people watching is truly phenomenal. i'll report back soon...

holding pattern...

nothing too substantial to report on the employment front. other than my offcial employment with t-systems will conclude this friday, august 31st. still hoping to get an interview\offer from deluxe in the coming days\weeks. working from home has gone really well. i have painted my kitchen, washed the cars, and gotten some yardwork done during the week. aside from a couple of conference calls, i have a few other things on the to-do this week as well. we have the mn state fair this week and i have a potential round of gold golf planned. trying to take advantage of the down time because if all goes as expected it will be ending fairly soon. more news when there's more news...

fantana...

yesterday i took the family to the twins game where we witnessed a record-setting performance by twins ace johann santana. "mantana" struck out a club record 17 batters, and gave up only 2 hits (both to sammy sosa) in eight innings. for a baseball aficionado like myself, it was fun to sit back in my usual seat in section 123, row 12 behind the dish and watch this masterful performance. the twins anemic offense managed only 1 run (a solo shot by michael cuddyer) but it was enough to win and take the rubber game of the series vs texas.
on a side note, we had a slight brush with fame as my wife found herself directly under the left armpit of local and national celebrity, writer, and radio personality, garrison keillor, on the train ride back to fort snelling. i had a spectacular view of his ample ear hair as well. i tried to snap a discreet picture from my phone.
more soon...

things to do today...

many people have been asking if i have secured new employment yet and the short answer is, no. i do however, have several pending applications, most with my old company deluxe corp. things are moving excruciatingly slow, and i keep having to tell myself to be patient and take a deep breath. i am trying to think "big picture". that said, my last official day in the office is tomorrow. my boxes are packed and i'm ready to turn in my badge and secure key fob for remote access. unless anything happens, i will be working (on my tan) at home until the end of august. be sure that if anything changes, i will update here as soon as is humanly possible. more to come..

hazel...

congratulations teri! born Thursday 8/2 at 6:23 am, 8 lbs, 2.2 oz, 21.5 inches long

unreal...

on my way out of the twin cities on thursday our plane banked directly over downtown minneapolis and i got a first hand glimpse of the i-35 bridge that had collapsed. surreal is probably the best description, overused as it may be. you could see the river where the bridge had always been and where every one just assumed it would always be. when i think of the hundreds and hundreds of times, that not only i, but pretty much everyone i know have been over that bridge it's just incredible to realize that it could have been any one of us on it when it collapsed. i sent a text message to jeff due to the clogged cell circuits and he said he had been on the bridge an hour earlier. one of my friends wives took an alternate route to the twins game that night that would have put her on the bridge at roughly the time it went down. nearly everybody i know has a story. it's amazing that there weren't anymore fatalities than there appear to have been although there are still several missing at this point. there are talks about rebuilding soon with a target completion date of late next year.

oh, there's a lot of opportunities...

there has been a recent major turn of events in regard to my current career. the company i have worked for for the past 4 years has severed the contract that it has with the company we provide services to. as a result, we will no longer be providing technical services to it as of the middle of august. this fact, in turn, has facilitated my kicking my casual job search into high gear. i have hinted in the past about "riding it out" and "seeing where this takes me" and it appears i have both rode it out, and have seen where this has taken me. it's unfortunate on many levels, but such is the nature of the business, especially in the area of IT and how contracts work with outsource providers. that said, i have several "irons in the fire", "plates in the air" or whatever other cliche' one might want to use. i'm looking inside, outside, high, and low to try and determine what makes sense for me and my family. i'm definitely not one to panic, and i'm not, however, you can imagine the anxiety and stress that one endures while trying to maintain a professional demeanor at work while continuing with a business as usual approach, and looking for a long term employment at the same time.
i'll also be heading to michigan this week to participate in a rather ill-timed IT all-hands meeting with my current employer.
much more to come