Phone drama and a wonderful visit

OK, so there's an end to the phone story. Saturday, just a few hours before I got on my flight, my Dad got a call from Northwest that they found a phone and his number was in it under "Dad". Apparently, it was in a green duffle bag and they were sending it back on my flight. Kindly enough, they had packaged it in a box inside the empty duffle bag so it wouldn't get damaged and I picked up my suitcase, a new pink duffle bag (which I had to buy - details below), and dug the phone out of the bag. Left the bag - it had lotion or something poured all over it. OK, good news/bad news when I visited the Verizon store. They took the phone back but couldn't put it back on my card or give me cash because they didn't have enough in the store (what???). Weird but whatever. the new phone is back and my "old" phone reactivated so I actually have all my contacts and cell rings and all that. So, overall, yeah!

Minnesota turned out to be a wonderful visit. I had a brand-new PT cruiser to drive around - just over 300 miles on the car. The work part of the trip was good and I got to do a few things I do best. Then I headed towards St. Cloud to visit my old TEC friend, Anna, and her husband and daughter. Sylva, her daughter, had just gone to bed so we headed out to run an errand and so Anna could show me the campus she teaches at - St. John's University is an extremely interesting place and her office is in the old church - it looks like a European cathedral and is very beautiful with a lot of brick. The new church is beautiful but very modernistic. Oddly enough, it is the largest monastery in the world. Who knew? OK, probably plenty of people - just not me. We also went by the sister school, St. Benedict's but it had gotten quite dark. We stayed up for a long while talking and had the early wake up call of a 21 month old! Sylva was a little confused that I was there. Eventually, it was back into the city to pick up Anna's mom, Bruce. I had spent many weekends in high school and college with these two and it was wonderful to meet up in a city so far from home! Lunch and shopping, IKEA, MOA (second day in a row), and then an amazing night in a suite at a beautiful hotel. Walleye for dinner (yum, yum!) and watching ducks in the middle of the hotel. Crazy! Next morning, I slept in. It was so nice! Had to repack in order to fit in a baby shower present, birthday presents for a 6 year old, various items for Beca, and fun little things from IKEA. So lucky I don't have one closer by. Eventually, we had to go our separate ways - Anna had a graduation ceremony to attend and I had a plane to catch. But first, I had to get to Target and buy a duffle bag to put all the extra goodies in. Airport leaving was routine until I looked up and another engineer from work was sitting in the terminal. Neither of us knew we were flying that day - weird. OK, then more weird. I had switched my seat the day before from 6A to 9A, then noticed 10A, which is an exit seat, was open. 6A, was next to a bratty 4 year old who spent most of the flight yelling at his elder statesman dad - whew. 9A ended up being my work buddy's seat. And a couple walked up to me and asked if I would like to sit in first class so the man could sit with his girlfriend. Crazy!!! Totally nuts - the room was great - I actually worked and could spread my stuff out a little. It made the flight seem so much shorter. Then it was home to an excited Beca and an excited Zoe. Overall, a god trip but as always, falling asleep on my pillow, in my bed, felt better than anything!