The Comfort of a Good Nap

Another relatively cool week here in Wisconsin.  Amazing that March was warmer than April and now it just won't get warm.  As a result still no good pictures of our sprouting peas although a few of them have begun to poke their heads above ground.  Maybe next week.

Nothing too spectacular about the week.  Jo off to her job every day dealing with all the usual HR crisis that hit a company.  Me at home puttering around finishing off some chores that were on the low priority list.  I replaced a outside faucet that didn't manage to make it through the winter without developing a small leak.  Then to continue the plumbing theme, I installed a new kitchen faucet that required multiple tries since the directions sent with the unit didn't exactly match the actual pieces that came with the unit and it took a while to figure out the fine adjustments necessary to get the handles to work properly.  All said what should have been about a 2 hour job became a 5 hour adventure (not including a trip to Home Depot since naturally the old water lines wouldn't reach the new fixture).  Next up was moving outside to expand our future fruit crops.  We decided to replace some rose and holly bushes in the backyard with raspberry and blueberry bushes.  Plus what would house of Jo's would be complete without some strawberries planted somewhere.  So I spent a couple of days moving plants around the yard to make room for our future fruit crops (although I think it might be 3-5 years before we see any blueberries) while dreams of future jams and cereal toppings swam in my head.

For the weekend, we hibernated Friday night with a good, homemade, barbecue chicken pizza and caught up on some taped shows.  Saturday was rainy so to make good use of it, after exercising and a wee nap, we headed to the movies.  We saw "The Five Year Engagement" which while a pretty standard romantic comedy (boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy loses girl, and then boy and girl get back together) was still very enjoyable.  We would recommend it to any fan of romantic comedies.  Afterwards we headed to the east side for dinner at "Trocadero".  The cosmo's where delicious and the brie sandwich and seafood tacos filled us up nicely.  Today we are enjoying some sun and I think Jo will be enjoying a good book, a sun beam, and a really nice nap.

Weekend of Sports

I was hoping to post pictures of our sprouting peas this week, but unfortunately the weather has turned cooler in April, and while we have one pea sprout it would take a camera with a tremendous lens to do it justice.  Hopefully, next weekend we can start the photo spreads of our vegetables (I know you just can't wait).  Instead the photo montage this week is from our weekend of enjoying Milwaukee sports. 
Friday night we attended the Milwaukee Admirals hockey game (the team is in the American Hockey league - I think it is a farm team for the NHL, but I couldn't seem to find that information on their web page).  As at most sporting events, any more, the entertainment between the periods/quarters was fascinating.  I personally like the human sling shot event and would love to do it myself.  And of course, it wouldn't be a WI sporting event without involving food somehow - while we didn't get the racing "port cheeses" this time we had to admit pushing a hamburger on the ice with your head comes in a close second.  Saturday night we headed back to the Bradley Center to watch the Milwaukee Bucks play the NJ Nets.  We also got to compare the Bucks indoor blimp to the Admirals one (the Buck's win since they apparently can afford a much bigger and fancier blimp).  The other highlight, at least according to several of the ladies joining us, was Chris Humphries plays for the Nets (that's Kim Kardashian's ex - I only include this fact to increase the number of hits this web page gets in search engines!).  We had a great time both nights meeting people from Jo's team at Northwestern Mutual (we were using their suite at the Bradley Center) and enjoying the games.  For those keeping track we went 50% this weekend, with the Admirals losing and the Bucks winning.

For the remainder of the weekend, we spent Saturday morning exercising and reading the paper.  Then Saturday afternoon, I tackled a new book and computer game while Jo also worked on her computer skills by working on a game she has going on her IPad (yes that is a new IPad since the other one has yet to be turned up by United).  Today we are planning to go to Parade of Homes like event where several houses that where either newly built or remodeled are open for visits.  Also, Jo's sister is joining us for the tour and dinner.

The rest of the week was relatively quiet for both of us.  Jo's week was busy, but nothing out of the ordinary, although she did have an after work event with some folks from Professional Dimensions (a local group of business women that she is joining).  I puttered around the house knocking off a few of the smaller chores that needed to done.  I also put a little more time on our raised beds although hit a few snags that required some parts from online stores to get past. 

Peeps and Nothing but the Peeps

 I'll start with some humor today.  Jo and I headed to Racine, WI yesterday to see the Peep exhibit at the Racine Art Museum.  This is the third annual showing of what you can do with Peeps and it was really pretty funny.  The creativity and detail in the various constructions was amazing.  I've highlighted a few with photos of  our favorites for your enjoyment.  We are giving serious consideration of entering next year, as long as we remember.  We did learn that many of the contestants buy their Peeps this year for next year's entry so that they are nice and solid for their entry.  We didn't plan that far in advance but we'll see next year.  We spent the rest of the day walking around Racine which we hadn't seen as yet and enjoyed lunch at a pub right in downtown.  It seemed like a nice downtown area although pretty quiet on a sunny Saturday in April.  It reminded us both of our own Midwestern hometowns in Illinois.

Jo earns the spotlight for the most interesting week although it was for the disasters that befell her and not for the exciting fun.  She was in Charleston for the week at a conference of insurance HR leads (yes, there is a conference for HR people who are only in the insurance business - can you say conference specialization!).  Unfortunately, on her way there she left her IPad in the seat back pocket of her flight from Milwaukee to Newark.  She didn't discover this until she was in Charleston.  While she contacted United and informed them of where it was, it has disappeared from sight.  So either someone is now enjoying a free IPad (although locked with a password) or it is sitting in United's lost and found to ultimately be sold.

But wait, this is only the start.  Later that week she managed to snap her reading glasses in two simply taking them off. Since she can't read anything without either strong sunlight (not usually found in hotel conference rooms) or her glasses this precipitated a quick trip out to find a drug store for some new ones.  Then for the icing on the cake, United lost her luggage on the way home.  While promising to deliver it later on Friday, we had heard nothing by Saturday morning.   Fortunately, we decided to stop at the airport on our way to Racine and low and behold there was her bag.  After her week, she is spending today decompressing.

My week by comparison was relatively calm - besides having to go in and change our passwords on multiple sites that the IPad had access to.  I worked on our new garden beds to install watering systems and organized the basement a little more.  The big accomplishment in the basement was finally getting a work bench constructed.  And in the spirit of helping the environment I constructed the bench out of lumber that came from the various destruction projects around the house - old shelving pieces, crates from our move, etc.  This meant making a few compromises to get everything to fit right, but the bench seems solid and does give me a place to do some work along with having my vice finally set up. 

Garden Beds

With painting finally done, I now have time to start getting to other chores around the house.  My big project was to construct raised beds for a vegetable garden on the side of the house.  First I had to clear out some bushes that were in the way and then mix up soil to fill them.  This week I need to install a watering system to make keeping them watered through the dry parts of the summer.  I'm borrowing from our friend's, Sheri and Bruno, watering approach and using soaker hoses but those all need to be cut and fitted into the small beds we put in.  Jo and I did plant some peas on Sunday so hopefully in a few weeks we will have some green shoots - assuming that warm weather returns.  Since we are now starting our vegetables again you can expect to see many pictures of our attempts to grow green leafy plants - stay tuned!

I also installed motion sensor outdoor lights by the garage so that it isn't so dark when we pull at night.  When the wood for the raised beds was delivered, I also got wood to construct a workbench in the basement (my big project for this week).  Lastly, we installed a honeycomb blind on our bedroom window to try it out.  All-in-all, the house is coming together.  Fortunately, the number of really large chores is winding down.
For the weekend, we spent Friday night relaxing at home as Jo had a relatively busy and stressful week at work.  Then Saturday morning we got up early and headed over to Madison to spend the weekend with Kathy.  While there we looked at a condo on lake Mendota as a possible place to live down the road.  Unfortunately, it wasn't right for us but it was fun to see it and caused hours of speculation on what we could do with the place if our money was infinite (as you can tell from the recent news reports, we didn't when the Mega-Millions jackpot, although we tried).  The rest of the weekend was visiting with family and several of Kathy's friends.  All to soon it was time to head back home late Sunday.  But we had a great Easter brunch. 

Monday, I headed to Chicago (hence the reason this blog is a little later than usual) to visit with my Mother and sister.  We caught up on all the family news and gossip - well my sister and I gossiped, my Mom doesn't believe in participating (what fun is that).  We enjoyed a great lunch at Water Tower Place before heading back on the train to home.

Painting is Finished

 I have to start this week's blog with the fact that I have finally finished painting the interior of the house.  It has been a long process with many interruptions but I dug in this week to finally get it all done.  This involved, putting the finishing touches on the upstairs bathroom and the spindles on the stairs leading up to it.  I do want to point out that I really don't like painting spindles - your hands get coated with paint and you have to constantly watch what you touch, what a mess.  I'm planning to take the upcoming week off and relax a bit before I dig into some of the other chores that have languished while I focused on painting.

The other interesting item of note this week is that I cut the grass for the first time.  I can't remember ever having to start grass mowing in March before.  What a extremely warm year so far.  Although our weather has dropped to more seasonable norms we continue to have the occasional really warm day.

Friday night instead of our usual pizza and a little TV, we decided some culture would do us good.  So we headed to downtown Milwaukee for dinner and a play with Adam and Sarah.  We started with dinner at Louise's on Jefferson which was a nice, although not spectacular, Italian place with great service and reasonable prices and then headed to the Reperatory Theater to see the play "In the Next Room".  Th play was very well acted although we where all somewhat confused around the plot and message the playwright was trying to send about treating hysteria in the Victorian age.  Yesterday we took care of odds and ends around the house and then had our nephew and niece-to-be, Chris and Angela, over for dinner.  We managed to not fill the kitchen with smoke making dinner this week and after catching up on their wedding plans they taught us a new dice game, "Farkle" (you can look it up on the web, although it appears to have many, many scoring variations). 

Today we are heading out to do a little shopping as we need to find several rugs to fit bathrooms and the entrance ways to the house.  Then it is off to work for another week starting tomorrow - but at least no painting for me, yipee!