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.