What a week this has been, and I got the easy part of it. At least so far. Here’s a quick round-up of things that have happened since last Thursday’s blog: Barbara and Todd both got on planes at Heathrow Airport to fly home on Sunday, with Barb flying nonstop to Minneapolis while Todd had to connect in Atlanta to get back to Orlando. Yes, they had a great time.

I went to MSP on Sunday afternoon and waited for Barb outside the exit for international arrivals. She was right on time. The problem then was simply one of getting home without ending up in a ditch or in the path of another out-of-control driver. We had quite a bit of snow, and it was still coming down heavily on the ride home. We made it, but a bunch of other not so intelligent drivers (otherwise known as idiots) who were pretending it was June while all the slippery white stuff swirled around, were not so fortunate. We saw cars in the ditch, cars in the guardrails, and even one car facing the wrong direction right ahead of us, on I-494.

We’d thought about going to dinner, but by the time we inched our way to Woodbury all the jet lag and long flights overcame that desire for Barb, so we just went home. I made a frozen pizza.

The hardest part for my wife was the fact she was zonked from the jet lag but had to get up and fly out again on Monday, to get back out to Spokane. Plus, she first had to do a day’s worth of work in her home office here, and she had to go to Minneapolis to teach the final class of the semester in the Master’s program she runs at St. Mary’s University. Then, she had a 10:00 p.m. flight to Spokane through Salt Lake City (I think) after class. I don’t know how she does it.

I helped by doing her laundry but mostly just stayed out of her way. I can’t do her work for her, I most certainly can’t teach her class, and her need to be in Minneapolis to teach and then hustle to MSP to fly left me out of that equation, as well.

So here’s what we did. She left on time to get to school, in her own car. After the class, she drove to the airport and parked it in the short-term part of the garage so that she’d have the shortest walk to get to her gate. They were about halfway through boarding when she got there.

On Monday, I called the cab driver we always use. His name is Israel, and he gives us a special “flat rate” fare for being regular customers. Plus, we know him, trust him, and like him a lot. He never lets us down. He picked me up and drove me to the airport, with the second set of Barb’s keys firmly planted in my pocket. I followed the directions she had given me, and walked directly to her car. Fortunately, Barbara had the presence of mind to actually get a parking ticket when she got to the airport. About 95% of all the people who park at MSP use the system where you swipe the same credit card both entering and exiting, and you then never have a ticket or have to see a cashier. Had Barbara used her credit card, I couldn’t have gotten her car out of the lot unless she left the card in it. She left the ticket, and I was out of there in a flash and back home just an hour after Israel picked me up.

So now it’s Thursday and tomorrow I’m on the 11:00 a.m. nonstop from MSP to GEG (aka, Spokane.) We have a private Christmas party, hosted by friends, to attend on Friday night and her company’s official holiday party on Saturday night, and we’re staying at the new Grand Hotel in downtown. Then we fly back together on Sunday, so my car will be waiting for us when we do that.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, our first cold snap of the year is now officially a Polar Vortex event, with this frigid air coming directly to us from the North Pole. There’s no word on whether or not Santa was involved in this.

The other day we got about six inches of snow, maybe a little more in places. Then the bottom dropped out of the temperature, the skies cleared, and the wind picked up. The clear skies are important because A) They make it colder with no “blanket” of clouds over us. B) Even when it’s in single digits a sunny day melts some snow on the roads and when the sun sets a lot of that refreezes.

Yesterday, with a temp of 8 degrees we had 20 mph winds, so it felt like -120 degrees. OK, not quite that cold, but it was frigid. I had to scrape the driveway again because the wind blew two inches of old snow right back on the asphalt I’d already scraped earlier. It’s fun to live in Minnesota!

So here’s hoping I can get to the airport on Friday. The current forecast is another 6-10 inches of new snow starting tonight, ending on Saturday. That’s just spectacular!

I actually don’t mind the snow. I think it’s pretty and it makes winter interesting. I just don’t like it when it becomes a serious nuisance in terms of travel. I don’t even mind the driveway scraping. It’s good to get outside and get some fresh air while you’re doing something physical. It feels good to come back inside with your cheeks all rosy and a little sweat going underneath all the layers you went out there in. Layers! Always wear layers!

If all I had to worry about was sitting in the house looking at the snow flutter down, with a fire in the fireplace and chili on the stove, it would be awesome. This was my view from my office this week.

So fingers crossed the roads are clear when I need to get to that huge place where all the airplanes are.

Then, after we get back on Sunday, I sure hope my wife has the chance to stay in one time zone for a while. And preferably it would be the Central time zone. As in, here. In Woodbury.

And it’s about to be Christmas, too.

We decided to NOT have a big Christmas in terms of buying each other gifts. We’ll leave some new treats and a few new catnip-infused toy mice in the stocking for the boyz, but for us we’re just going to savor the time together. That’s far more valuable than new sweaters.

We are planning to buy ourselves one actual gift and while it’s utilitarian it is still much anticipated. We’re going to buy a Roomba iRobot. Todd and Angie have one down in Orlando, and it’s masterful. Barbara and I do the best we can keeping this place looking nice, but with two boyz in the house it’s a never ending battle to keep the hardwoods and the carpets really clean. Even with our Dyson, the coolest vacuum in the world. I’m going to let the Roomba take over the upper level, and then maybe next year we’ll buy another one for down here. Pretty romantic gifts, huh?

As for “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” we’re almost done with the final edits. My editor Greg is now on Chapter 21, going over it all one last time, and he’s averaging about 3 chapters per night, three nights per week. Once he’s done, it will be shipped off to the publisher and a whole new slew of things will have to take place.

I very much like the fact Greg has emailed me to let me know the edits I made, before handing it back to him, were great. So, through this lengthy year-long process, I not only became a better writer, I also became an editor. That’s a good thing.

While he’s doing his last once-over, I took on the process of selecting photos for the book. And then I got word from the publisher that any person who appears (and is recognizable) in a photo that ends up being in the book, must sign a release form to allow that photo to be published. In other words, I have a lot more work ahead of me than I realized.

I’ve started the process already, and the first person I heard back from after my initial flurry of emails was Fred Turner. As in Fred Turner from Bachmann-Turner Overdrive. On my first day on the job with Team Wilkerson, in West Palm Beach for testing in January of 2009, Fred happened to be driving through the area in his motorhome when he happened upon the track and saw all the NHRA big rigs. He pulled in to see if I was there and we spent some great time together before he got back on the road. We also had a photo taken, so I’ll need his release form to publish it. Only about 15 more to go!

In addition to all the releases I can get, our Option B is PhotoShop. There are some pics where people I don’t even know are in the background, and they’re too tight to the main focus of the shot to be cropped. So they will have to “vanish” via the enormous skill of my graphic artist, Todd Myers. There’s one of Del Worsham and me, arm in arm, walking down the return road with huge smiles after he won the Skoal Showdown in 2005, but two Skoal girls and two Indiana State Troopers are also in the shot. I wouldn’t have a clue as to how to track those four people down, so we’ll have to edit and crop the photo. This is all the stuff that goes into making a professional book. I had no idea about all of this, when I started.

And now I just got my alert to check-in for my flight tomorrow, so I’ll wrap this up. This will be my second trip back out to Spokane since we moved in June, and I know I’ll enjoy seeing a lot of familiar places and friendly faces.

I’ll leave you with this photo. Once you’ve strung some Christmas lights on a few shrubs, bushes, and a window-box planter, your house looks more festive. Then, when you get six inches of powdery snow, it looks festive plus awesome, as the lights make the snow glow.

Fortunately, the winds have calmed down so I don’t have to re-scrape the driveway and front walk today. Unless I just want to do it. Well, it’s actually minus-3 degrees right now, so maybe I’ll take a pass this time.

Gotta get more of these photo release forms in the mail!

Bob Wilber, at your service attaching stamps to envelopes.