Saturday, June 09, 2007

On the road again

I'm settled - well sort of but not really. Yesterday I woke up at 7:00 a.m. - late for me - but then again yesterday was the day scheduled for me to drive from Regina to the Twin Cities - so of course I will sleep in so that I get a late start!! When are the stars ever aligned properly??

I finally hit the highway by 9:00 a.m. and made it to Winnipeg in record time - the tail wind helped with speed and gas consumption. But then the traffic in Winnipeg was incredible - over an hour to get from the transcanada to Pembina highway.

The border was worse - I waited close to an hour to get to the little kiosk only to be told that I need to park and be 'processed' I am coming into the states on a J-1 visa which allows me to work but also requires me to be processed.

Being declared legal I finally headed south

I am staying in the same apartment building as I used when I was here on sabbatical in 2oo4 but as it turns out I am in the 'other' tower. So last night well after midnight I had parked my car in the underground lot. I found that the fobs to get me into the elevators didn't work in that building. It took forever to find the security guy but finally I was in the apartment.

It is actually quite nice - I will post pictures - I am on the 26th floor with a great view of the Minnesota capital building.

The class I am here to teach begins on Tuesday but the real reason I am here is to work with Judy Lambrecht so that we can complete our Delphi research project and that will probably start tomorrow.

I am excited about both of these things. The class will be a challenge - 6 contact days to deliver some pretty complicated content (it is the introductory grad course on research). But I am also anxious to get into the data that Judy and I have gathered. I have fiddled with it over the last few weeks but Judy has the complete data set so we will do serious analysis over the next little while.

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