McBlunder

I have been on the road for 5 straight weeks; Kansas, Spain, Kansas, West Virginia, then Louisiana. No, that is not a common occurrence but I seem to have at least one “Travel Season” each year. Yes, it does wear on me and it is very difficult to spend that much time away from my wife and children. Often I try to find ways to reconnect with my family in those short weekends I have at home.

During the corresponding 5 week period, McDonalds has been running their Monopoly promotion that they do, it seems, at least once a year. If you are not familiar with the game, you get 2 monopoly property cards (or instant wins of fries/drink/etc) with the purchase of your drink, fries, certain sandwiches, and hash browns. The little cards also have a 10 digit number on them that you can take to www.playatmcd.com, type in, and see if you win a lesser prize in their online version.

While on the road I typically avoid McDonalds like the plague because of my affinity for vanilla shakes and their non-alignment with my current weight loss efforts. But, always one for a good game, I decided that I would eat primarily McD’s during the promotion. And as to my willpower, I have not ordered a single shake and have ordered my chicken sandwiches sans mayo 90% of the time as well.

At the end of the first trip I discovered a way to share my travels with my daughter. She would jump on my lap and read off the codes to me to type in. You can only do 10 codes a day so this has become a bit of a ritual for us on my weekends of late. Could I have done it faster and not mistake a Q for a 6 every single time? Yes, but the time with her quickly became my greatest motivation to keep playing. When you do the math 4 weeks of meals (one of the five weeks was in Spain, no McD’s to eat there), 5-7 meals per week, and 4-8 game pieces per visit, I quickly accumulated roughly 150 game pieces.

I have a smattering of free fries and breakfast sandwiches, about 15 Best Buy bucks accumulated, and now have every property except the “winning property” for every monopoly for both the paper and online versions of the game. Over the weekend I finally hit pay dirt, not once, but twice online. I won two free cell phone ringtone downloads! Both times, rather than print out the certificates I just told myself I would redeem them from the emails McDonalds said they would send me.

This morning at work I checked my Yahoo email folder and deleted the classmates.com, walmart.com, and the plea from the RNC to send in last minute election donations. Normally I ignore the Bulk email folder and let Yahoo delete those files after they have been in there for 2 weeks. (It averages between 700 and 2000 spam emails for any given two week period) For some unexplainable reason this morning I clicked the “Empty” button next to the Bulk folder! It was 30 minutes later when the implications of that decision hit me… Yahoo had filed my ringtones in the Bulk folder and… poof… I had killed them.

Was it the $5 million dollar grand prize? No. Was it even the $100 minimum online prize for the Baltic/Mediterranean combination? No. Does my cell phone even let me download ringtones? NO! What I deleted was the symbol of the time together with my daughter, a reminder of a high five from my princess after entering over 100 codes and finally winning, and it was a smile, kiss, and a hug when we won the very next night on the first code. All of that was bought and paid for with a patient wife and lonely nights in a hotel room growing ever more convinced that Bill Maher is the most conceited, disillusioned, and spiteful man on the planet. OK, technically it was my Corporate American Express Card but have you ever forced yourself to watch “Real Time”?

Ultimately my reward was that reconnection during the short precious days I had with my family over the weekends. Hopefully the last 20 codes will have a winner or two in them as well. But if you are reading of my blunder, I ask only one favor, don’t tell Michaela what her dumb old dad did…

Baptism of my Eldest

For eight years I felt that this day would and should never come. We have passed many milestones in the last eight years, a first step, a first word, a first book, his first day of school, and countless pride filled and embarrassing moments. This was a boy that has seemed to take a different road from day one. Born almost 9 lbs he was challenged with numerous allergies, milk, egg, and most challenging, peanuts. Two bouts of RSV as an infant landing him in the hospital a couple nights and leading to weakened lungs. Behind those challenges (not to mention small genes on his mother's side) his growth slowed to the point where we debated if we could ever turn his car seat around.

Small but bright, reading at four, very analytical, tender heart, but be careful if he looses his temper! Pretty good big brother, typical eldest child, a bit bossy. He has a hard time taking turns because he knows he can do it better. I think that is true at both home and school. There are countless stories of his individuality but 8 years was not enough time to prepare me for his baptism last Saturday.

I baptized many people on my mission, I baptized my nephew before I left, I baptized a 300 lb high school buddy. None of those events prepared me for taking my little guy into the font last weekend. The ward found the smallest jumpsuit they make and we still had to roll the pant legs up 4-5 rolls. As he came into the font, the water reached his armpits. I said the prayer and put him under the water and then realized I was putting him so deep into the water that if I brought him up too fast he might get the bends. Of course, knowing some of the things that boy is done, I just knew he had to be down there for a while.

But it didn't really hit me until we were in the changing room, he was dripping and shivering. I was drying his head off and he stopped me, looked up at me, smiled from ear to ear, and said, "Daddy, that was GRRREAT!" Now it may have been a delayed reaction to the frosting his Uncle Dave fed him during his baptism talk but I think he was feeling the warming glow of the Holy Ghost. The realization that my son had recognized the spirit for the first time was overwhelming! That moment surpassed any other for the last eight years. I know there will be more powerful ones in the future, but for now, that moment, just me and my son, was the most special I have had.

A week in Spain - but not as fun as it sounds...

First of all, if you visited recently and noticed by blog was offline, I am sorry, your guess is as good as mine as to what was happening. I clicked the "republish" button and everything seems to be back up and functioning.

For the last several years we have participated with our parent company's annual Environmental Coordinator's conference in Phoenix. Due to the distance, we held a smaller conference for our European coordinators last year in Hungary that I was able to attend. This year my company has been spun off as a stand alone company under new ownership. As such, we were able to hold our first global Safety Health and Environmental Coordinators Conference. We hold these in close proximity to one of our 12 plants spread throughout the world. This year we were in Santander, Spain, on the northern coast.

The building in the middle was the hotel we were in for a week. The beach was a nice place to visit in the evenings (I didn't visit during the day due to the "more liberal European culture"). They did have a nice sidewalk that ran the length of the town along the beach and was a great running path.

A few things were hard to get used to. The Spanish culture doesn't eat dinner until late in the evening. Most restaurants don't even open until 9pm. Then, it usually takes between 2-3.5 hours to eat dinner. All week long I returned to my room sometime between midnight and one, called Jamie, and went to bed. Sleeping on a full stomach was fun...

Most of my tourism came during my evening runs. I would carry my camera and run along the beach to the various sites I could run to in under 30 minutes. I visited the Marina, a lighthouse, a small free zoo, a boat display of three boats they built in the 70's to recreate Columbian era Atlantic Crossings, and probably the most impressive site was the Castle of Magdellena. The castle was built in the 1700's as a gift from the town to the Spanish King as a place to stay whenever he visited Santander.

While at the castle taking pictures a young couple came up to me and said, "CAN... YOU... TAKE... OUR... PICTURE...?" with all the volume and hand gestures you can put with that question. They were a young couple from Iowa on their honeymoon and were quite excited when I answered in English that I would be glad too. From the way they talked they hadn't encountered another English speaking person for a week.

Ultimately, other than my hour long runs each evening, I spent the daylight hours of the entire week in either a conference room, a restaurant, or touring our plant nearby. Not exactly vacation but certainly a place I would recommend to visit if I had more time.

We also planned the next two conference locations. 2007 will be the Canadian side of Niagara Falls close to our Hamilton, Ontario facility and then in 2008 we will find a location close to our Trecate, Italy plant. My wife is already talking about ways to accompany me to that one. I'm sure I have more than one brother that will offer to come along and serve as tour guides / interpreters for that one as well...