Madison Trip

We are officially down to only owning one house - yeah!  We sold our house in Madison last Friday.  The closing went smoothly and now we are no longer landlords or multiple house owners.  We are both relieved, me a bit more than Jo, as our rental has never gone smoothly and the challenge of maintaining a home you don't live near is gone.  We are still planning on being in Madison at some point, but have crafted a slightly different housing plan - more on that later, probably a lot later. 

Since the closing was in Madison we decided to spend Friday and Saturday there with Kathy and John.  Friday night we had a celebratory dinner at the Avenue Bar (memory lane alert, Jo used to play softball for the Avenue Bar back in our grad student days it hasn't changed much except it isn't smoky any longer) where we all had a delicious fish fry and enjoyable conversation.  Saturday we headed out for a walk in the arboretum where I had flashbacks of hitting the wall during the Madison marathon (the arboretum is right around 18 miles mark, where I always ran out of Wheaties).  While the weather was sunny it still hasn't broken into what would be described as warm temperatures so it wasn't a really long walk.  Lunch was Rocky's pizza and then the afternoon was spent watching the various NCAA basketball games.

Sunday, Jo had gotten tickets to the Milwaukee Buck's game against Atlanta in the afternoon.  We enjoyed pizza at the arena along with a visit by the Buck's mascot, Bango (I have no clue where that name came from and not enough interest to Google it), although the Bucks ultimately lost the game.  We then came home to watch our Illini lose to Miami.  Not a great year for our alma maters but at least they didn't choke in the first round. 

A little bit of warm, sunny weather

We spent the week in Florida enjoying some warm temperatures, the rolling surf, and sunshine (that's me at Randy's Seafood enjoying fish tacos and Jo below enjoying the selection of desserts at the hotel).  Even though the temperatures were somewhat mild, only in the mid-60's to low 70's, it was significantly warmer than home and there weren't piles of snow everywhere.  We were in Florida so Jo could attend a mix of HR association meetings and Northwestern Mutual meetings.  While I needed to attend a few of these, I got significantly more time in the sun and surf than Jo - good for me, sad for her.  We were in Naples at the beginning of the week and then Orlando at the end.  We did get a little time to walk around downtown Naples and we both agreed it is a lovely little town and could see why people would want to live there - especially during the winter.

Our other big news, which kept us pretty stressed for the last two weeks including our week in the sun, is that we have reached an agreement to sell our Madison house.  We had a realtor send a form letter asking if anyone was interested in selling in the location of our house and we decided why not try.  To make a long story short, after multiple negotiations and some heated discussions between Jo and I we came to what appears to be a workable agreement for all parties.  We have a few more details to work out, like the home inspection, but if all goes well we will be back to only owning one house.  There is a certain sadness on our part since we had a lot of fun planning the Madison house, but we had also realized that given the limitations on modifications to the house due to the historic district and what we really want in a home that it just wasn't going to work with the footprint of the house.  Hopefully the new couple will have a lot of fun in it.

Not much other news, we spent Sunday, after getting back from Florida, watching the Big Ten basketball finals and were sad to see our Badgers fall short.  But both Wisconsin and Illinois made it into the NCAA tournament so we should get to see a little more of our two teams (hopefully, both can make it past the first round).

Our trip to Quincy

We traveled to Jo's home town last week to attend her sister's burial.  The weather made it a bit of a challenge to get there for everyone since the Midwest had to be hit by a major snowstorm at the same time.  The service and funeral were nicely done with eulogies provided by her husband, Mike, one of her son's, James, and Jo.  Each eulogy did a wonderful job of capturing the feelings that each had for their wife/mother/sister along with those things that made Mary so special. Mary now rests next to her parents and has her favorite pet, Woody, with her and is probably already providing advice to those in heaven.

While we were in Quincy we had the opportunity, along with various family members, to visit some of the Steinkamp family's favorite haunts.  This included dinner at Elder's where they spent many an evening with their parents and Maid Rite for lunch.  For those uninitiated, Maid Rite is essentially cooked, seasoned, crumbled hamburger on a bun.  The Quincy natives love it and while it was ok, I struggled to find the deep love that others were obviously having for this sandwich. 

The family also had the opportunity to catch up with their cousins from the area since it isn't too often the entire Steinkamp clan from Jo's side of the family descends on Quincy any more.  The other interesting occurrence, for me, was seeing the next generation starting to fill the roles that Jo, her siblings, and spouses used to have - playing with their nieces and nephews, making meal decisions, and organizing who is going where, when. 

We drove home on Friday and spent the weekend hibernating since we were both under the weather a bit.  I picked up a cold - I'm claiming it was from Jo, and since she doesn't write in this blog, I can stick her with being the cause - and Jo had some mild stomach distress (probably from one of the meals and the stress of last week).  So neither of us had a lot of energy to do much.  We did manage a short walk since the weather was sunny even though we are covered with snow.

Speaking of snow, we already have piles of it (there are 5 foot high piles in some places where the configuration of my driveway forces me to move the snow - my snow blower almost can't shoot over it anymore) and more is forecast for tomorrow.  As is usual this time of the year, I'm ready to enjoy warmer temperatures and way less snow.