Not the way I intended to spend Father's Day

It's Father's Day. 
Instead of being at home in Corvallis with G and S, my two incredble kids, I'm sitting in a Hilton Garden Inn at Maple Grove, Minnesota.  I'm here on business, and I'm not knocking the purpose of the trip, it's a good thing that I'm here.  I've been here for the last two weeks, and I have one more week to go before I go home.  I'm just not sure if there is a lonelier place to be than in a hotel room by yourself in the middle of the Minneapolis suburbs, when you could be at home having fun with your kids. 
I probably could have flown home on Friday night, had a Saturday with the family, then flown back on Sunday afternoon.  But, as my previous post indicated, airplanes have taken on a new form of punishment for me.  It's a tradeoff.  I'm sure my family would have been happy to see me and all, but my leaving 30 hours later would probably have made things worse than they needed to be.
It may have been easier to get through this weekend if I had something to do, but because we're doing a code and data drop today, I can't get on our system to do any testing.  I'd much rather be doing that, it makes the days blur a bit.

Yesterday was the first day 'off' I've had in a while.  A co-worker, Nate, and I went to the Mall of America.  It was as expected, a huge mall.  It was more like an amusement park with a mall wrapped around it.  The Lego store was cool.  They had some huge Lego scuptures - a helicopter, a 20 foot Transformer, that kind of thing.  Very crowded place, and I dislike crowds.  We had lunch at Dicks, which is an experience of sorts.  Nate got sick from the food.  My hamburger was quite 'pre-processed' and not very good.  I guess I have an iron stomach.
Later, I got a haircut as I was getting a lot 'shaggy', then went to the Russian Orthodox Church of the Resurrection of Christ, which was essentially the front of a house in a neighborhood.  It was a very small church, they had bench seats (which is unusual for a Russian Orthodox Church, but that was probably due to space constraints.  I had a good talk with their Deacon, John.  I got to have a couple of minutes of peace, which was a quite welcome respite from the week.  I'm going to have to return before I leave.
I then went to J Cousineaus for dinner.  Buzztime had it highly rated, so time to give it a try.  It was a pain to find, but once I got there, it was definitely a 'quirky' place.  They had a sign on the door about how they had a #1 bar in the country score a couple of weeks ago.  That's a good sign for a trivia-bar.  The clientelle were an older-than-me type of crowd, and most were playing trivia while watching the US Open.  Nick, the barkeep, was very friendly.  I'm used to walking into strange bars and beating people at trivia.  This crew gave me a good challenge.  One game, I got 12th in the country, and for getting my name / bar name on the 'board', I got a token for a free drink.  Ahhhh... that's why this place is so popular for trivia.  :-)  I had an interesting bacon/cheese/peanut butter hamburger.  It was sweet-salty in a good way.  I really didn't want to leave J Cousineaus as the hotel room has become a very lonely place to be.  But, it was best to check in with e-mail and make an effort to get some sleep.

A lot of co-workers are coming back this week, I suppose that's a good thing.  This last week was rather empty, except for our COO who was there all week.  I'm not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.  He's a nice enough guy and all that, but he also adds a stress level to all of us that isn't really needed.  I'm hoping that my co-workers who were here last week got some much needed time away from this project - they both needed it quite badly.  I'm hoping I can find a quick resolution to the lingering problems.  I'm sure it will be found, but the solution may not be the prettiest in the world.

Confinement

I don't know if it's claustrophobia or some other classification, but I really hate being confined. This is why I want the aisle seat at a movie, concert, or airplane. I want an escape. Operas or classical concerts where you really can't leave your seat for an hour may as well be torture for me. Airplanes are hell - especially from the time I get on the plane until it takes off. Once the plane is in the air and I know I can get up, I'm fine again. Then from the time the plane starts to descend until it parks at the gate is painful. It's not that I dislike flying or planes, quite the opposite actually. I just hate not being able to move freely. It's not a sitting thing, because standing on a subway train or in a line is bad as well. Meetings at work are bad. I can last about 20 minutes and then I need to *get out now*. I have the same reaction in large crowds of people. Close-in spaces don't bug me like a traditionally classified claustrophobic, which is why I think it is more of an issue with confinement.
I wish there was an easy cure for whatever this is, but I doubt it. I know it's all in my head. It's gotten worse as I've gotten older, too. Odd, eh?