June 20, 2011

Just thought we should start out with evidence that Jo and I can dress up and look sharp, at least for one evening.  Saturday we had the opportunity to attend the Milwaukee Urban League's Black and White ball.  So I got to wear my new tuxedo for the first time in public and Jo pulled out all the stops with her gown (or dress, not sure when a dress crosses into gown territory).  After our champagne cocktail upon entering, we headed to the silent auction, where we were successful in bidding for a couple of items before the dinner.  After dinner and the speeches, we got to enjoy listening to the band "War".  Must admit that I only new about three of their songs - could be my limited musical repertoire.  It was a nice evening that supports a good cause in Milwaukee and as we attended with several of Jo' Northwestern Mutual colleagues gave me a chance to continue to getting to know them better.

Along the theme of meeting Jo's Northwestern co-workers, Friday evening we worked with several Northwestern folks helping at the Milwaukee Guest House serving dinner.  The Guest House helps homeless men get back on their feet, find jobs, and secure an apartment or home.  We had the opportunity to serve them dinner and see the hard work that the Guest House staff and members undertake to get folks back on their feet.  It certainly makes one appreciate the different paths lives can take and how fortunate many of us really are.

The rest of the week and weekend was taken up with the ongoing work on getting the garage organized and able to finally park the cars inside.  I spent most of the week installing storage cabinets on the back wall of the garage.  As the garage wall is brick this required a bit more work than just screwing the cabinets into the studs.  After some online research (the Internet is great!) I decided to bolt 2x4's to the wall and screw the cabinets into that.  Of course with an older home, I got to enjoy figuring out how to deal with my perfectly straight 2x4's and my crooked walls.  By the time I was done, I probably now have cabinets that will be standing long after the wall falls down, especially since I tend to over-engineer things.  Anyway you can see that we now have a nice row of cabinets as well as pegboard to get things off the floor. 

Then after a trip to Goodwill to donate the unsold garage sale items and clear the last bit of space, we can now park both cars inside.  Of course, we still have too much stuff in front of the cars - but we are hoping a shed outside will alleviate some of that problem. That was pretty much my week along with the usual mix of exercising and keeping the yard in shape.  Although, I did spend some time doing some consulting work so I can now feel I'm officially working as a consultant.  Jo's week was fairly quiet at work although it is apparently time to be preparing next year's budget - always a fun event. 

Our tomato plants are starting to grow, but that will be the subject of a future blog.  I need to space out the garden news this year, since it is just the 2 tomato plant.s

July 15, 2011

Joann attended the management meeting for her new company and as with many of these affairs there was an afternoon of recreation.  You got to choose from among a tour of the local area, golf (naturally), a grueling bike ride, or skeet/trap shooting.  Since Jo's golf game leaves much to be desired, and the bike tour was described as tough, she selected to pick up a shotgun and blast clay pigeons to smithereens.  She discovered how tough skeet shooting really is hitting only 3 out of 10 targets.  Plus got a really healthy bruise on her shoulder from the recoil.  But with all that, she had a great time - the bruises aside - but a lot of her enjoyment was getting to know her new co-workers in a non-work venue.  I don't think we are going to be shotgun shopping anytime soon.  For me, I was just happy she didn't shoot herself - or someone else.

The big event this past weekend was our garage sale.  As we had unpacked the house from the move, we decided it was finally time to eliminate some of the items (nice way of saying junk) that we had accumulated over the years, especially since everything didn't fit into our new house.  So as we unpacked, we moved anything for the future sale into a room and watched the pile grow.  I then spent this week getting everything out of the room and onto the first floor (for easy moving outside), priced, and sorted (cleaned would have been nice as well, but there just wasn't time - and as it turned out apparently not really necessary).  Unfortunately, the weather Saturday was less than ideal with overcast skies and a lot of damp/wet air.  But no rain which we counted as a big plus.  The lousy weather fortunately didn't stop the shoppers.  The first began coming at 7:30, even though we had listed a 9:00 start time, and last few came around 3:30.  So we had folks throughout the day.  The largest crowds were up to about noon and they seemed to be the people most ready to buy things - sometimes lots of things.  The good news that we sold about 80% of the items which was far better than we had hoped.  Most importantly we got rid of all but one of our really large items that would have been hard to transport to Goodwill.  After putting everything away that didn't sell and cleaning up, we ordered pizza and collapsed onto the couch.  We were in bed and asleep by 9 that night - it takes a lot out of you being on your feet moving around all day.

The upside of removing all the junk, is we finally were able to get one of the cars into our garage.  After installing some shelves this week and carting the unsold items to Goodwill, we are hoping to have both cars into the garage by the end of the week.   

June 9, 2011

We packed up the car and headed to Illinois for the weekend.  After fighting through the busy Friday afternoon Chicago traffic (it appears that Chicago no longer has rush hours, but rather rush days.  Boy do they have traffic), we arrived at my sister's place just off Navy Pier.  Unfortunately for me, Jo and my sister decided they best way to spend Friday was doing some serious clothes shopping so Jo could buy a few work outfits.  So off to Water Tower Place we headed where we proceeded to spend two hours looking at women's clothes - yipee.  To cap it all of, Jo never actually purchased anything.  I must admit the usual male lack of understanding on how you could spend two hours trying on clothing and come out with nothing.  Of course, the overwhelming number of choices in a typical department stores women's clothing area might have something to do with that.

After that we did settle in for some great Chicago style deep dish pizza which almost made up for two hours of standing around in a women's clothing department trying to act semi-interested.  Saturday we hit the lakefront for our morning run where we discovered it had become hazy, hot, and humid overnight.  After a cooling shower and breakfast at Yolk - great pancakes, don't bother with the bagels - we walked over to Printer's Row for a book fair.  Lots of books for sale, but between the crowds and the heat, not the most ideal environment for wanting to buy much.  Although, Jo and my sister each managed to find a few treasures - maybe that was to make up for the absence of buying anything during Friday night's shopping outing.  Afterwards, we walked back through Grant Park and then landed up at my sister's place to enjoy some air conditioning and water.

We capped Saturday off by attending a high school graduation party for the son of our good friends, John and Linda.  It was nice to meet John and Linda's friends and get a glimpse of their life in the Chicago suburbs.  Also, after a brief rain shower, the weather turned a bit milder and less humid.  After eating way too many desserts, we hit the road to arrive home, tired but glad for the fun weekend we had visiting everyone.  Sunday morning, after our run of course, we bought and planted some annual flowers to spruce up the pots at the front of the house and caught up on some needed sleep.  We also started to prepare for our upcoming garage sale this weekend, which will be the highlight for next week's posting.  Then all too soon it was time to get ready for another week of work - for Jo at least...

June 1, 2011

Well summer has officially started and we are finally experiencing some warmer weather.  We still have trees leaving out so we have had a very cold start so far.  Fortunately we decided to leap right pass spring into summer with temperatures hitting 80 degrees yesterday and a possible 90 degree mark predicted for this Friday.

We continue to work on putting our house into order with pictures starting to be hung and the start of planning some renovations to make the house a little more us - and to bring things into the 21st century.  We weren't sure at the beginning if we would be able to use all of our large paintings from my mom, but with some creative hanging approaches we found a way to put them all up on the walls.  It does make our living room look pretty dramatic - but everyone now and then you need to make a statement.  We have started to meet with contractors to discuss our changes and to say how painful the pricing will be to accomplish what we want.  The changes mostly center around updating the bathrooms, moving the laundry out of the basement, and adding some closet space so our clothes aren't scattered all over four bedroom closets.

For the long Memorial Day weekend, we took advantage of our new living arrangements - that is me staying home to take care of all the chores so our weekends are free to play.  On Saturday we drove over to Madison to spend the day with Kathy, John, and Drew.  First we hit the world's largest Bratfest (only in Wisconsin would this even be a contest and one does wonder how you can guarantee that you are largest Bratfest, who is keeping track and what are the criteria for claiming the prize of largest - number of brats served, people in the gate??), then up to the Farmer's Market on the Square, down to the Union, and then checking out some furniture stores for some ideas on filling a couple of spaces in our house.  After a great dinner of shish-kabobs we headed home very tired but content with everything we got accomplished.  Then after our morning run on Sunday, we hopped in the car again to travel to Lake Geneva to spend time with John and Linda and family.  Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate to allow us to cruise around the lake, but we had a great time solving all the world's problems and enjoying hamburgers on the grill.  On the way back to town we did stop at a farm store for some fresh asparagus and rhubarb along with a carrot cake to die for (or from, since the icing was about two inches thick).  Then to complete our travels, on Monday we drove to Kewaskum, WI to buy a bench that Kathy and Jo had found on Craigslist.  It was quite the deal since all the benches we had found during our furniture shopping was several hundred dollars - this one was only $35 plus the cost of gas.  Love to save money.  Plus we found a Woodman's grocery store during our trip - which allowed us to stock up on some key items missing from the local grocery stores!  All in all a very successful weekend.  This was actually our second time in Kewaskum as it was the center piece to an interesting travel adventure during graduate school and was key in Jo and I learning to never have two cars following each other without both knowing exactly where they are going.

Well that seems like enough news for a week.  Hope your summer is starting out with a bang.  I do miss my garden though.  Hopefully, next year....