Breaking the Spring

I have been on over 10 hours of conference calls today. We are walking through the entire ERP system design for the IBM project on which I am one of the project executives. It has been a looooong day. But that is work – you just have to do it! I did have an embarrassing moment when the battery died on my phone. It caused the phone to lose connection with my call. Then the call waiting picked it up and rolled it over to my answering machine. This call with over 30 people was going on and my answering machine message starts going off. Agh – can you say I was embarrassed! The good thing about a day like today is that it did give me a few moments to work on finalizing Spring Break plans for Zack and me. I really wanted to go overseas with Zack for Spring Break, but given what happened last week I just feel it is too soon afterwards. If the infection were to re-occur, then Zack would have been in France with me in the hospital. That would not be a good scenario! So here are our plans: We are going to go to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and a few other national monuments in the Arizona. We will leave on March 28 and fly to Las Vegas. We’ll stay at the Venetian – one of my favorite hotels in Vegas for 2 nights and see the kid-friendly sites of Las Vegas. (No – I won’t be going to Pure!) We will stay away from the casinos obviously and concentrate on the lights and shows. I am sure we will spend countless hours walking up and down the Strip seeing the lights, the fountains and all the other things that make Vegas - Vegas. I haven’t scored tickets yet, but I am willing to pay a fair amount to get tickets to Mystere (a Cirque de Soleil show). I think Zack would really like seeing that.

On Monday March 30th, we will pack up and head out early with our first stop at the Hoover Dam. We are going to do the “big tour” and see every inch of the dam that you can see without working there. I think Zack will be fascinated by this and will really enjoy it. After the dam we will head to the Grand Canyon. Along the way we will stop and see everything that we can see. I have done the drive through some of these sections of Arizona before and I remember the desolation and solitude of the desert. I am sure we will seek out some quiet out-of-the-way place to have a picnic lunch along the way. There are a ton of places along the way from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon that will be cool to stop. I’ll have to sort them all out and figure out the best ones. Some of the places I am considering are Grand Canyon Caverns, a milkshake at the “Snow Cap” in Seligman, the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff and cruising on the longest remaining stretch of Route 66. We will spend the next 3 days staying near the Grand Canyon. I am still working on which hotel near the canyon at which we will stay. I don’t have any plans for us to hike to the canyon floor or anything like that, but we will definitely spend a lot of time hiking and exploring. Given its price tag and obtrusiveness into the natural settings of the Canyon, I am planning to avoid the “Grand Canyon Skywalk”. Additionally, I don’t think that I would get Zack out on it anyway. We'll head back to Las Vegas on Thursday April 2 and spend another night there before we fly home on Friday morning. It won’t be a huge vacation or anything, but it will be part of my goal to let Zack see the world! Our day today has been nightmarishly busy. I had almost 10 hours straight of conference calls. I had to take Zack to and from school while doing conference calls from my cell phone. Zack’s day at school left something to be desired as he got into trouble today. I think he is still emotionally dealing with the issues of last week. This evening I had another conference call that ran from 6:00PM to 7:00PM concerning a project of mine that is just starting up in Kuala Lumpur. During that time Zack had science club in which he was giving part of the presentation on black holes and gravity. Dr Science (Gary Berkowitz) has always sought to include Zack in any of the presentations that have to do with space or physics. Zack gets a kick out of it so I really appreciate Gary including Zack in these presentations.

(Zack and Gary Berkowitz aka Dr. Science)

We were going to go out to dinner after science club, but I forgot to take my 6:00PM antibiotics and so we had to go home after science club. When we got home Zack decided he would rather stay at home than go out. We had grilled cheese and ham sandwiches and a bunch of fruit (honey dew and watermelon) for dinner. It wasn’t planned but it was still a good and filling dinner. I am glad that the day is at an end and I can spend a few moments trying to get things done that need to be done here at home before the whole thing starts all over again. Tomorrow is even busier (don’t even ask all the stuff that is going on!) – but we will soldier through and try and have as fun much as we can!

Thanks and peace to all!