Life with Lindsey

Question of the day from Lindsey:

Dad, how do you say McDonald's in German?


Today's painful conversation with Lindsey:

In the practice for tomorrow's children's program in church, when asked how she could best help her family, Lindsey spontaneously ditched her scripted line, "Help clean up," and went with her ad-libbed line, "Help Dad do my hair." When I had a discussion with her off to the side about saying what she's supposed to say, she replied, "But I want to say 'help Dad do my hair' because you do it so bad when Mom's gone." Ow.

Lindsey's to-do list

On Saturday, as I sat down with the kids to plan the things we needed to do during the day, Lindsey also decided to make her own list. Here's what it contained:

1. KLENBU
2. EKSSPN
3. WRKONMIPRJEK
4. PLAWSDAD
5. WOJAMVE

Want the translation? Here it is:

1. Clean up
2. Exercise (granted, the spelling on this one's a little mystifying)
3. Work on my projek (or "project," as we say in English)
4. Play wiss Dad (or "play with Dad," as we say in English)
5. Watch a movie

Stace Marie, High-Powered Business Executive

So, at the moment, Stace is sitting in the business lounge in the airport in Amsterdam waiting for her flight to Detroit, which precedes her flight to Salt Lake. Some of you know that for her birthday, I upgraded her flight to business class. I didn't tell her. (I almost posted it to the blog, knowing that she likely wouldn't read it, but I didn't want to tempt fate.)

She finally figured it out when she checked in for her flights in Zurich this morning. Flying business class entitles her to get into some of the lounges in the various airports, including the Air France lounge in Zurich. When I talked to her on the phone after she had figured out what was going on, she told me about her experience with the Air France lounge.

As difficult as it is to imagine, Stace apparently doesn't strike people as your typical business traveler; at least, she certainly didn't strike the lounge attendant that way. Stace got a somewhat skeptical reception from the lounge attendant until producing the magical boarding pass that said she was entitled to be there. The attendant's attitude immediately changed and Stace was welcomed in.

I just wish that I had a video camera on Stace when she gets to her business-class seat on her overseas flight. It would be priceless watching her try to figure out how to adjust her seat (which has about ten different adjustment options), how to choose her movie and get the screen to flip up, how to set up her dinner tray table, and all of that good stuff. She's pretty excited about it. I just hope she can pull it off convincingly without bringing too much shame to the Wood name.

The end . . . .

In discussions with many of you, I've occasionally mourned the fact that given my advanced years, it won't be long before print in books and newspapers suddenly becomes so small that I can no longer read it without glasses. People warn me that it's coming.

Well, I got good news and bad news from the eye doctor yesterday. The good news, I thought, was that the vision in one of my eyes had actually improved slightly from where it was two years ago. The bad news, according to the optometrist, is that the ability to see long distances often shows a slight improvement right before one starts having trouble with reading.

So if I read between the lines (which I won't be able to do much longer), what the optometrist was really telling me is that my life is pretty much over. Bummer.

Musings from Amsterdam

So, here I am sitting in the airport in Amsterdam waiting for my flight to Minneapolis. Here are some random tidbits.

First off, here's the snack I had on my KLM flight from Zurich to Amsterdam: "Antelope skewer and aged goat cheese offered with grilled courgette and beetroot potage." (As usual, I don't even know what most of that means.) For dessert, "ginger lime dessert served with caramel cream sauce." I'll say again that I love eating on airlines that aren't U.S. airlines. Try to imagine that menu on the last Delta flight you took.

Second, I'm sometimes struck by the insanity of all of this worldwide travel. It's about 12:30 p.m. as I'm writing this. My flight leaves Amsterdam at 2:30 p.m. I left the house at 7 this morning to haul my luggage down the stairs and then haul my luggage up the stairs to catch the bus that took me to the train that took me to the plane from Zurich to Amsterdam. When my plane to the Twin Cities finally pulls away from the gate in Amsterdam, I will have already been gone seven and a half hours. You'd think that's a pretty full day of travel, wouldn't you? Nope. In that time, I will have gone a grand total of about 350 miles, an average speed of worse than 50 miles per hour.

And the adventure is just beginning. I then get to sit in a metal box for nine and a half hours, seven miles above the ground or the ocean (in relatively comfortable conditions, granted). My reward at the end of this journey is to hope that my luggage made it with me, to face the scrutiny of a U.S. customs agent desperately looking for something interesting to happen, and then to get to bed at what my body considers to be around 6:00 the next morning, more than 24 hours after I woke up.

I'm not complaining. I knew what I was signing up for. I just sometimes marvel at how nuts it all is. Someone needs to invent a teleporter.

Third, Tanner and I have decided to take a quick trip back up to Paris over the holidays. We didn't get to experience Paris very much when we went to Disneyland earier this year. We're going to take three days to soak it up, visit the Louvre, visit Notre Dame, probably go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and just walk around. That's what's really fun about visiting a city, and that's what you don't get through the window of a tour bus. We'll be staying about a ten-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower. It should be a good time.

Where's Dad?

The kids and I have discovered a fun new game. They're among the first kids picked up by the school bus every morning. The bus starts at the top of our hillside and more or less works its way down, switchback by switchback, until it has everyone, and then it heads to the school. When I walk to work, I pretty much walk straight down the hill on the stairs. If I leave at the right time, I can run into the kids a time or two as they go on their rounds. It's now gotten to the point where they look up and down the stairs when they drive past to see if they can catch a glimpse of me.

But alas, the game must be suspended for now while I head to Minnesota in the morning. This one will be a quick trip, only about a week. I'm going to check out the new University of Minnesota football stadium. Should be fun. I'll blog about what it's like to sit in an outdoor stadium in Minnesota in November watching a terrible football team (Minnesota) play a game against a ferocious opponent (South Dakota State). Needless to say, I was able to get a pretty good seat. Must not be a huge demand for tickets to that one.