I don't get to travel all that often, but come January that will change. I have two trips planned almost back to back to one another. The first trip is to Las Vegas to visit my dad for about four days. My dad moved to Vegas a little less than a year ago in an attempt to find a job. I'm not sure how well his attempt has paid off since he's now laid off from the job he had, but I think he would agree that he wouldn't be doing better in Toledo if he were still there. At any rate, I found some cheap plane tickets from Detroit to Vegas the other night and called him to see if he was up for a visit. After my phone conversation I felt a little bad, however, because I realized that having Alex and I visit when he currently has no money could be a bit of a burden. I gave it some serious thought though, and I decided that I would go by myself because I really did want to see my dad, and he's also in a place where he doesn't know anybody so he probably also wants to see me. As much as I would love to take Alex along, I think it'll be easier on my dad if it's just one visitor this time. What made my day yesterday was when I called my dad to tell him I would definitely be coming. He said he was excited, looking forward to it, and I made his day. I know I made the right decision to visit.
Then a few days after I get back from Vegas, Alex and I will be driving to Toronto for about four days. I'm really psyched about this trip too! Alex is sort of being recruited to a lab at University of Toronto for a post-doc, and he'll be visiting that lab next month to check out what they do. Since there's about a 90% chance that we'll be living there I thought I should really go along and check out the city. I've never been to Toronto, let alone Canada, but I've only heard wonderful things about the city. Last night I started making a list of the places I wanted to go, I'm totally in the tourist mode at the moment. I don't mind either; we don't do the tourist thing much. We'll get some geocaching in, probably on the drive there; we definitely need to add a new country to our list. One day Alex and I will sightsee together and then the day that Alex is visiting the lab, I'll be on my own. I personally love roaming around new cities by myself so I'm going to take full advantage of the opportunity. I didn't see a whole bunch of shows that looked interesting (can somebody please produce an original musical and not repurpose old rock songs) so I think we'll go to Second City one night instead. Our main day there together is on a Sunday too, so I don't expect a lot going on that day. I'm also amazed that it's only a four hour drive. Compared to the seven or so hours it usually takes us to get to Wisconsin, four hours will be a breeze! Now I just have to find our passports, they're buried in my office somewhere (eek!)
