Saturday, 11 February 2012
I spent a good chunk of the day at the Water Park of America.
This is not the sort of place that I usually attend. But it was my son’s friend’s birthday and, well, his parents decided to celebrate at the water park.
And I’m glad I went, too. I always feel intimidated by those big tourist attractions – what with their overwhelming size and ability to extract exorbitant fees from my wallet. Actually, my current employer has been great in this regard – for department outings, I have frequently been treated to fun activities around the metro area. This has given me some exposure to these events, and made them seem less foreboding. For example, I probably would have lived my whole life without going to a Saints game, but thanks to my employer, I’ve been to two. Same goes for a boat tour on Lake Minnetonka, a day at Pinstripes, and a Timberwolves game. Even if I do try something outside my element, I insist on doing so during a downtime. Like when we visited the Foshay Tower, we did so on a Wednesday afternoon. My first trip to Underwater World was on a Tuesday at about 10:00 in the morning.
So, today, I was at the Water Park. I gotta give it two thumbs up. There was plenty to do and, even though it’s a Saturday. In the few hours I was actually in the water (and even though I was watching Isla for half the time), I was able to ride the Lazy River, play with Owen in the kids’ area, and go down the water slides – even the gigantic 10-story slide.
Best of all, the birthday celebration is a sleep-over for the birthday boy, so Owen, as one of his friends, gets to spend the night at the hotel and get in some more swim time tomorrow afternoon.
Sunday, 12 February 2012
Today, even though I could have used the time to sleep in (see above: I was tired), I showed up at AM950’s station in Eden Prairie. The plan was that I would be conducting an interview on Atheists Talk, live from 9:00 – 10:00 this morning.
I conducted the interview once before, as you may recall, back in December, I interviewed Glenn Kleier, author of The Knowledge of Good and Evil. I was nervous to be live on the radio, but I didn’t totally suck at it, so about a month ago, I contacted the show’s producers again and said, “Hey, here’s another author you should interview. I read his book and loved it. I’m willing to conduct the interview, if you’d like.”
The book I was talking about was The Matter With Us, by John Rawles.
Well, today, I was supposed to interview Dr. Rawles but, as you can likely surmise from my word choice here, it didn’t happen.
There was trouble making the connection to Dr. Rawles, who lives in the Olde Country. I think the specifics of the trouble would be boring, so I won’t detail them here. But I was sitting in the studio, with papers on table and headphones in hand, chatting with the host. I looked up at the clock and, noticing it was 9:01, I leaned back and called out into the control room, “Are you guys having trouble getting a hold of John?”
Indeed, they were.
They had the good thought to play more of the commercials up front (normally they’re scattered throughout the show) in an effort to buy time. When the commercials ran out, they began playing a show from a few months ago. They said we could break into the show once we got a hold of John. I didn’t like that idea, but it wasn’t up to me.
Finally at about 9:12, John was on the line. The host, however, insister this was too late to begin the show.
I guess they’re gonna reschedule. I was pretty annoyed – having waken up, driven across town, and prepared an hour long interview. Also, whenever I do activities like this, I try to bring Owen with me as much as possible so that my wife isn’t back home with both kids (like she often is). So this morning was perfect, since Owen was at the above mentioned sleep-over.
Anyway, I’m glad they’re rescheduling. Dr. Rawles and I put a lot of work into planning this interview. Also, he wrote an amazing book and it deserves as wide exposure as possible.
The Olde Country