August 28, 2011

We are enjoying a beautiful weekend as hurricane/tropical storm Irene pummels our former state.  Our thoughts are with all our friends living in CT and hopefully any damage caused by the storm is minor.  Although, we do have to admit to being somewhat glad we are not living in our forest with trees just feet from all the windows on our former house.

We both had a nice week as the weather in Milwaukee has been almost perfect.  In the 70's during the day and cooling down to the low 60's at night.  This has made our evening workouts and walks very pleasurable and is almost perfect sleeping weather.  It is hard to believe that summer is already coming to a close especially as the nights get darker so soon now.  On the home front, I continued the pursuit of repainting the entire house by finishing the first coats of paint in the dining room.  This looks quite different as it was wallpapered before with a relatively dark brown patterned paper.  The room looks much brighter now, although I still need to tackle the relatively complicated trim painting which might just defeat my patience.

For the weekend, we biked to a local restaurant on Friday and enjoyed sitting outside enjoying a few drinks and a nice dinner.  In honor of the end of summer, I enjoyed a Pimms (something I learned from my British friends) and managed to stay upright on my bike all the way home.  Although we did encounter our first flat tire on the bike.  After our dinner we returned to our bikes to find my front tire completely flat.  Fortunately, it held enough air after a quick pump-up to get us home.  It was a quick fix once home, but did make me glad I carry an air pump and spare inner tube with me.

Saturday we went out sailing with Kathy and John leaving from Manitowoc, WI.  The weather was perfect although a bit windy.  This meant the boat really flew through the water and there were some not to gentle waves to run through.  You can see I contributed by staying away from touching anything and instead found a comfortable spot where I could rest my eyes and enjoy the sun's rays.  You couldn't ask for a nicer time and it was great enjoying lunch out on the water in the peace and quiet with only the sound of the wind and lapping waves.  John proved to be a great pilot (sailor?) and managed to keep us all dry and delivered us back to the pier right on time to have time at the local ice cream shop for a quick couple of scoops of ice cream and a photo op with their large cow out front.

Saturday evening we headed to a party welcoming us to Milwaukee hosted by Jo's boss.  It was just up the street a bit so we walked over and I got to meet a lot of the people that Jo works with.  A really nice group of people and since the house sits right on the lake front, spectacular views.  Today consisted of our morning exercising and then catching up on some reading and blogging.

August 21, 2011



Amazing how fast time flies by. Already, I'm behind on this post and it just seems like yesterday that I posted last. So to catch up. Two weekends ago we enjoyed a visit by Joann's ex-boss from Pfizer, Sylvia, along with her husband. They stopped by on their way to a canoe trip in Canada. It was nice catching up since we hadn't seen them in quite a while and we certainly did spend a fair amount of time discussing our old work place, certainly in light of the recent Fortune article. 



Cow Judging

Then on Sunday, Kathy and John joined us for a day at the WI State Fair. We saw all the animals so that Jo and Kathy could relive their agricultural roots (or at least their perceived roots since they grew up in a city like I did) and did enjoy watching the judging of the cows and pigs (not sure how you train to be a professional cow or pig judge, but someone does). Unfortunately, we weren't able to see any sheep since they seemed to all have gone home already. And as with any State Fair we sampled the many tasty foods - Jo and I shared a hamburger with a Krispy Kreme doughnut as the bun. It was an interesting mix of sweet and burger - and while quite tasty not something I would need to eat again for a while. This was coupled with a cream puff - a State Fair speciality - and giant "Suzy Q" like dessert. We had all had our fill and while I didn't get a corn dog, I'll always have next year.



Cream Puffs in Preparation

We saw continued destruction of our two bathrooms and they are now just about completely gutted. They started doing a small amount of reconstruction on one of the bathrooms - mostly just laying in a temporary floor so they don't land up falling through into the kitchen. It was quite interested to see the 100 year's worth of work that was underneath the walls and to try and guess the purpose of all it. This week the plan is to start getting the framing in place. It will be nice not having all trash hauled through the house all day. Needless to say, the house is in a complete state of mess, and for those that know us, you can imagine how well we are dealing with it.



The Master Bath Destruction

To add to the overall mess and feeling of destruction, I started the repainting of the dining room (this was mostly as this was the only room that didn't have someone traisping through it on a regular basis). The first step of which was my favorite chore, removing the wall paper. While the outer layer of wall paper came down fairly easily, the wall paper layer under is proving a bit more challenging. But the job is on its way and hopefully paint will be going on the walls by the end of the coming week.



Master Bath Destruction Almost Done

This weekend was our first without major plans or visitors since early June. We took the time to catch up on some local shopping we needed to do and relaxation which is always nice. We had a beautiful Sunday morning today so we hopped on our bikes and toured a local bike trail for 2 hours and then home to a robust lunch since we had worked up quite the appetite. Next up is some naps and then getting ready for another exciting week.

August 12, 2011

We were off to Omaha for a long weekend to visit with Jo's oldest sister, Mary, and her family.  Two of our nephews live in Omaha and our niece came in from Arizona with her husband and our grand niece.  Jo's other sister, Kathy also drove in from Madison with her son.  So a crowded house but it was a nice to be able to catch up with everyone all at once.  The pool out back was a centerpiece for the weekends activities especially given the warm, humid weather.  Jo and I particularly enjoyed jumping in after our morning run - in our running clothes.  Was a great way to cool off fast.  I also enjoyed pool games with my nephews although they have all grown so much that I'm dwarfed in both height and size.  We also got to visit our two nephews new homes.  Jo and I were quite jealous of all the closets and the fact that the walls were straight and there was an electrical outlet every 6 feet.  The weekend came to too quick of a close and it got us talking about fitting a pool into our backyard - sure is nice when it is hot.  Understand that an inflatable kiddie pool from Target would fill up most of our backyard, so it isn't likely to happen soon.

One interesting note, was to see all the flooding around Omaha especially from the airplane on the way in and out.  Amazing that it is still that flooded this late into the summer.  Apparently it will be another month or two before it begins to go down.  Almost in time for it to begin filling up again with the winter snows.

We came home to the beginning of our home renovation project.  I will begin posting pictures as we gut our 2 main bathrooms.  It has been interesting to see what lies behind our 100 year old walls (lots of bobby pins in case you were wondering is our biggest find so far - yipee).  The downside is we now have to use the bathroom and shower on the third floor so quite a trek especially in the evenings.  But afterwards we will finally have "modern" bathrooms and plumbing.  I'm especially looking forward to mirrors that aren't so tarnished so you can actually see something in them.  For the rest of the week, I've been continuing to tackle my painting and have finished the majority of the third floor.  I now to figure out what I can paint without getting in the way of the construction crews.  I also thought it was time for some vegetable photos.  This is one of the two tomato plants on our back patio and as you can see some of tomatoes are beginning to get ripe.  Although we are experiencing a lot of spots on our tomatoes - might be that disease that was hitting all the tomato crops recently.

Unfortunately, we aren't the only creatures enjoying our fresh tomatoes.  I found a tomato hornworm on each plant.  These are really large caterpillars and really squirt when squished.  I'll will admit that I put on gloves before I was willing to grab one of them.  They are voracious eaters and really did a number on the leaves, before I found them.  Jo and I are wondering how they knew that we had tomato plants back there, but I'm guessing nature found some way to provide them a clue.  I passed another birthday milestone this week and my sister came up from Chicago to help me celebrate.  She treated me to lunch and we toured the Milwaukee Public Museum as I took a day off from renovating.  I do want to point out that my sister didn't volunteer to grab the hornworm off the plants - the love of of a brother only goes so far. 

This weekend we are looking forward to a visit from Jo's old boss at Pfizer, Sylvia, and our first visit to the WI State Fair in over 25 years.  Can't wait to eat all that decadent food!

August 1, 2011

Welcome to August and in keeping with what I always perceive as the hottest month in the year, the temperatures and humidity in Milwaukee are scorching.  I have never done well in hot temperatures and it hasn't gotten any better with age.  Thank goodness for air conditioning.

Northwestern Mutual's annual meeting started last weekend and ran through last week.  We started off with running in the 34th Roots and Wings 5K/10K road race (in case you are curious, Roots is the home office folks and Wings are the field sales force).  Jo and I opted for the 10K and turned in respectful times although we continue to get slower each year/decade.  But we came across the finish line together and not the last people to do so.  The race consists of just Northwestern employees, the sales representatives and their families.  With all of that they had over 7,000 runners/walkers participate - quite a showing for one company.  Afterwards Jo had some meetings to attend and I biked home.  Then later that day, we got to enjoy an evening at the Milwaukee Zoo where the zoo is only open for the annual meeting attendees.  It was a great way to see the zoo without all the usual crowds.  Plus the event was on Sunday evening so you got to see the animals late in the day when many of them are more active - plus I think it was close to feeding time.  We particularly enjoyed watching the elephants use their trunks to eat and the bears are always fun to watch.  After having too much food and way too many Sprecher root beer floats (they were free and it is one of the best root beers I have sampled), we headed home for some rest before the Monday morning opening event.

The opening of the annual meeting for Northwestern Mutual is actually on Monday and is open not only to the headquarters and sale representatives, but also their families.  The theme is to summarize the last year's accomplishments, lay out the plans for the upcoming year, and enjoy a little entertainment.   At the end of the morning's event the CEO interviewed Aaron Rodgers the quarterback for the Superbowl winning Green Bay Packers.  It was interesting to hear Aaron talk about the effort needed to bring together a season long set of victories.  Later that week, Northwestern brought in Earth, Wind, and Fire for a free concert for everyone - see photo.  It certainly took Jo and I back to our college days hearing those old songs.  So quite a week for all the Northwestern Mutual folks, especially those that had to plan it all.

The rest of my week consisted of continuing to work on the painting/wall paper stripping project.  This project is going to take months, so you might as well get prepared to hear about it a lot.  Especially, with how much I love painting and removing wall paper!  To relax a little, we spent the weekend at Lake Geneva with our good friends John and Linda and their family.  The weather cooperated by being hot and as you can see we enjoyed using their jet skis and overall just lounging in the lake.  The water temperatures was perfect for cooling you down without being too cold.

As you can tell once you get older you want something to keep you afloat rather than having to continue to tread water.  Also the rope we are all holding was so we wouldn't have to swim after the boat which was also drifting.  We were soo lazy that day.  Anyway, it was  nice was to decompress from the week and we were sad when it was time to come home Saturday night.  On Sunday in the interest of keeping the economy moving forward, in spite of the inability of our legislators to come to an agreement on the debt, we bought new lights for throughout the house.  We found many of the current fixtures to be on the dim side and wanted to get more light in most of the rooms.  So we purchased about 15 new light fixtures that I'll need to hang once they arrive.  Always seems to be a project just around the corner.