September 6, 2010

Happy Labor Day and in honor of the day we did as little labor as possible.  Although the garden did need harvesting as we collected more beans, cucumbers and tomatoes.  The lima beans also were ready for picking and we enjoyed them for dinner tonight.  The garden is winding down for the year and we will probably only harvest another tomato or two along with the potatoes and sweet potatoes at this point.  This was our most successful year so far and helped us feel the effort we have spent over the last few years was worthwhile.  We are already starting to think about what to plant next year.

Moving backward in time, we decided to extend the holiday weekend and headed off to the Midwest to see family on Wednesday last week.  Each of us went to visit our respective sisters after landing in Chicago.  Jo headed to Madison to see her sister, Kathy, while I trundled off to downtown Chicago for time with my sister, Cheryl.  We both had a great time and fortunately the return flights all worked and we met up in Chicago's Ohare for our return to CT.  The weather was lovely in Chicago with a cool front coming through that made the early morning runs very pleasant - especially as for one of them I completed a 13 mile run.  Unfortunately, I needed to run a lot since I ate way too much - but as you can't get a good deep dish pizza on the East Coast, I dug into a Chicago style stuffed pizza one night.  I got to see my sister in action at her job at Macy's.  It was fun to see her dealing with customers and handling all the technology involved in a large department store; plus she can actually fold clothing without a table in front of her - something I'm unable to accomplish without adding more wrinkles than if I just threw the clothing into a heap.  One of the days, while my sister was at work I caught up with my college roommate, John, and his family.  We spent the entire time just sitting and chatting about our families, work, live, aches and pains (it is what old men do at our age) and naturally, retirement.  As we only get to see each other once every 2 or 3 years it was really nice to have the time to see how well his family is doing.

Jo meanwhile enjoyed catching up with her sister and the fun events in Madison - and since she had the camera the photo montage for the week is all captured there.  The annual "Taste of Madison" was going on during her visit and she particularly felt the all things cheese booth was a fitting commentary on living in WI.  Although you certainly might wonder why you need to fry a cheese curd, but it does seems we fry everything these days.  The rest of the weekend consisted of shopping, catching up, and a watching a couple of movies with her sister.

We were both sad to be heading home but work does call and at least one of us has to have a job to keep paying for the weekend get-aways.  But at least the upcoming week is a short one!