October 23, 2011

Our week was the usual exciting week that we always have.  I painted, Jo went to work, we exercised, and a little bit more of our house renovation was completed.  My big job for the week was painting the family room.  This was the one room we are changing the least.  So the only major painting was to redo the ceiling.  We had several recessed lights added to provide more light and I needed to prime around the lights and then repaint the entire ceiling.  Other than that, there was just a few places to touch up where we removed some doors and other nicks and bangs.  After that, I started to prepare my study for painting once the construction efforts move out of that area. 

On Jo's work front, she had several evening affairs and had to travel to Washington DC for a quick trip in on Thursday and home on Friday.  As this got her on a plane and a stay in a hotel, she was a happy camper.  She was attending the Executive Leadership Council (I think that was what it was called) and during the evening dinner got to hear Diana Ross sing.  She had a great time and also managed to catch up with some old Pfizer colleagues who were attending the same meeting.

Our renovation made a big jump forward as the bathroom vanities where installed in all three of the bathrooms.  They look great and are starting to make it feel like this project might actually be coming to an end.  However, our house has reached its peak messiness, in our opinion.  As anyone who knows, I deal with this much clutter oh so well.  However, we can finally start to see the end in sight.  In case you are keeping track on the tiling, while we have tile on the floors, it remains to be grouted and no progress on the showers.  This is one slow tile guy.  Hopefully, by the end of the next week we will have all the tile installed, that is a big hope.  We aren't sure when the granite counter tops will be ready which will dictate the final finishing touches.  Hopefully only another 2-3 weeks before we have a functioning second floor bathroom.

We had a nice active weekend with some new friends in Milwaukee.  Friday night we went to Adam and Sarah's condo down in the historic third ward.  They just moved in at the beginning of October and have a lovely view of the river and downtown.  We enjoyed a delicious lasagna dinner while discussing settling in to Milwaukee as they moved here about the same time we did.  Saturday night we went to dinner and a play with Tim and Rosalie, once again in the third ward (it is the happening place in Milwaukee - at least according to us).  Dinner was at Swig's, where we had taken my sister before, and it once again excellent.  The play was "Gorgons" at the Broadway Theater.  A great performance by the two actors although we were expecting a comedy and it was a bit more dramatic, plus the plot twist at the end was unexpected (now you'll have to see it to know what the plot twist was).  Today after our morning exercising we caught up on some sleep and reading.  All ready for another week - painting the kitchen is up for me.

October 18, 2011

Our big event last week was celebrating another birthday milestone for Jo.  We started with dinner at the Lake Park Bistro which has a beautiful view of Lake Michigan and then drove over to Madison to enjoy some home made birthday cake with Jo's sister.  Saturday morning after our morning run we bundled up and headed to Camp Randall stadium to enjoy watching our alma mater Badgers.  The weather was perfect for a fall football game.  Plus, the Badgers were on their game and beat Indiana.  We stayed for the fifth quarter and really enjoyed the WI marching band's antics.  We walked through the campus a bit reminiscing about our time on the UW campus.  Afterwards we headed back to rake a view of Kathy's leaves and enjoy a movie before heading home to Milwaukee.

To continue our sports theme for the weekend, Jo managed to get us invited to use the Northwestern Mutual suite at Miller stadium.  This was the first time I had ever been to a baseball playoff game.  It would have been much more enjoyable if our Milwaukee Brewers had played better and won the game, but it was still a nice evening out.  We were pretty tired from our weekend and looked forward to our work week to relax a little. 

I was hoping to post pictures our newly tiled bathrooms.  However, the tile guy is working slow so that will have to wait until a future posting.

October 9, 2011



Amazing how fast the time flies by. We flew to Boston last Friday and then spent five days visiting old friends

Cider doughnuts - Yum

in the Connecticut area.We stayed with our good friends, Sheri and Bruno, along with their two cats and dog. This meant allergy medicine for me, but Jo got a little caught up on her cat petting time that she needs to have every year. We went out for apple cider and cider doughnuts and then to make up for eating all those calories hiked Barn Island. We also made sure that we found time to visit our favorite lobster shack for some hot, buttery lobster rolls and clam shack for fried clams. Not good for the arteries but oh so good for the soul. So as you can see the visit was as much about seeing friends as it was about eating a lot. We then drove back up to Boston for Jo to attend an HR conference while I toured some of the sites.





Fried clams - Yum

We had great weather in Boston and I enjoyed seeing the Science museum and Aquarium.  I hadn't been to either as our previous Boston visits focused primarily on the historical sites.  The Science museum was great with lots of interactive displays and a great show on electricity - can't ever go wrong shooting large bolts of electricity across the room.  I also revisited Bunker Hill and Paul Revere's house since they are two of my favorite Boston sites.  Always amazing how battles were fought back in the Revolutionary days.  Not sure I could have walked bravely across an open field with people firing at me.

Lobster rolls - Yum

Jo's conference finished on Thursday and we spent Friday doing a mini-vacation in Boston.  We toured the MIT museum which was fascinating and well worth a visit anytime someone is in Boston.  It highlights the accomplishments of MIT professors, students and alumni.  And as you might imagine they have had some pretty famous people pass through their doors.  We also walked around the campus to check out the architecture.  We both agreed that the University of Illinois campus in Champagne is more architecturally attractive - although we are a bit biased.  We finished our day with a ferry ride around Boston's harbor and dinner at an Italian restaurant in the North end.  All in all a great day, plus informative with the museum visit (we really liked the T-shirt at the museum that had on the front of it: E/c2, square root of -1, and PV/nR - figure it out).  Saturday it was time to board the airplane and return home to see the progress on our house, but that is the subject for next week.

September 30, 2011

I had planned to post this during our recent vacation, but alas the technology on Jo's new IPad wasn't consistent with that required by Google to publish on their blogging site.  So this was delayed until our return.  To continue the recent theme on our bathroom renovation.  We moved from having walls to having painted walls this week.  Since I'm doing all the painting, it felt like quite the accomplishment to finish off the three bathrooms (along with our new second floor laundry closet and one of the bedroom closets) this week.  In case you are keeping a tally here is what has been repainted so far: living room, dining room, third floor living space, one of the bedrooms, and now all three bathrooms.  Still a lot of the house to go though - ugh!  Next up in our bathrooms is the tiling.  Stay tuned.

Nothing else too exciting for the week besides Jo traveling to Lake Geneva for some business meetings.  I held down the fort at home with the usual evening excercising and reading.  I've several good books backed up right now and I'm looking forward to getting through them.  At the end of the week we were off to the Northeast to visit friends in Connecticut and for Jo to attend a conference in Boston.