College Room Mate Weekend

Another cool temperature week has gone by.   We are barely making it into the low 70's lately and it is looking likely we might have to actually turn the heat on before October is even here.  I usually don't like to start the heat until Thanksgiving (just to be clear, I've never been able to convince Joann to wait that long, it is just what I would like to do).  Our garden continues to pump out cucumbers and we harvested our first acorn squash this week.  We are in the midst of enjoying carrots from the garden along with summer squash.  Our freezer is full with green beans and we have sun-dried multiple batches of tomatoes.  So after a rocky start this spring, we are ending pretty happy with our garden's output.

We had a busy weekend starting Friday night when enjoyed dinner at Greg and Rhonda's place.  Dinner was a pepper flavored roast with whipped sweet potatoes.  I overate a bit since I haven't had a roast in a long time.  On Saturday after our morning exercising we headed down to the Chicago area to see our college room mates.  The main driver was Jo's college room mates deciding to hold a reunion in the Hinsdale area (she lived with 9 girls at one point, you can't imagine the mess - I can since I got to see it first hand).  Since John and Linda live right next door in Elmhurst I came along and we spent some time with them (John was my college room mate).  As you can imagine there was a lot of discussion of our long ago college years over the last few days.

Sunday we headed home to catch the tail end of the disappointing Packers game (fortunately the Badgers won, and the Illini were idle so not a complete blow out for football this week) and to prepare ourselves for another work week.

The squirrel was just catching some sun while we were out walking in Elmhurst.  It couldn't even be bothered to move when we came over to check out whether it was alive (it was, it blinked).

Crayfish - Yum?

We had a very quiet week and weekend - for once.  During the week we did our usual exercising and I puttered around at a couple of small chores, none of which involved picking up a paint brush.  Although, I'm already starting to plan my winter indoor painting as several new cracks have appeared in a few walls since last winter's repair work.  We did enjoy a mid-week dinner at Sala (a local Italian restaurant) with our neighbors Josh and Lisa.  The food was excellent - especially my extra large cheese ravioli.

Our big event for the weekend was a party at our neighbors across the street.  He is originally from Sweden and apparently Swedish Crayfish parties are all the rage in Sweden.  So they decided to hold one in Milwaukee.  It was amazing how many people who originally came from Sweden were at the party since the population of Sweden isn't that large (must be like people of Irish decent in the US as compared to the population of Ireland).  Anyway, the main course was as advertised boiled crayfish (or crawdads as we called them growing up).  I must say these probably won't be showing up anytime soon in my cooking repertoire, they were delightful.  Although, it is way too much effort for how little meat there is in a crayfish.  Why not just eat lobster - more meat, looks about the same, and tastes way better.  Anyway, it was a fun party as most of the neighborhood was present and the aquavit was flowing liberally.

Sunday was a rainy day so we enjoyed watching our WI Packers win and got caught up on some future vacation planning - always fun.

Fun note, Google provides statistics on blogs.  Right now Russia is the second leading country accessing/reading this blog after the US.  Didn't know I was so popular over there.  Of course, when you only have about 10 people reading it a week, it doesn't take a lot of people to accidentally find the blog to move a country up high on the list.

Fall Football Season

Not much news to report from last week.  The weather has been on the warm side as the end of August/beginning of September is trying to make up for all the cool weather in early August.  We are still plugging along with our daily runs and exercise and Jo has been relatively busy at work.  Most of my outside projects have finished up so I' have been concentrating on getting the gardens cleaned up for the coming winter and a few chores inside.  Otherwise nothing too exciting happened in Milwaukee last week.  Our garden continues to chug along and is producing copious numbers of cucumbers right now and the green beans keep on coming. 

We spent the weekend in Madison enjoying a Badger football game.  Kathy had some friends who were tailgating before the 11 AM game so we joined them bringing along some excellent monkey bread (thanks to Linda and John - mostly Linda - for introducing us to this quick to make dessert).  Since we aren't likely to get a picture with the actual Wisconsin mascot, we settled for his blow-up version.  I must say that some tailgaters really get into these before game festivities - such as bringing along a generator to blow up your inflatable Bucky.  But that paled in comparison to the person who purchased an ambulance, redecorated the outside in Wisconsin colors and emblems and used it as a mobile tailgate. 


We had a great time at the game although it was incredibly hot throughout the first two quarters as the temperatures was in the high 80's-low 90's and naturally, the humidity was high.  Fortunately, some clouds built in later in the game to cool the fans down a little.  Wisconsin won which is always nice when you attend the game.  For those who haven't experienced it, Jo made a video of the Wisconsin student section rocking out to Jump in the third quarter.  The video doesn't do justice to seeing all those students just jumping up and down in person.  After the game we enjoyed some Rocky Rococo's pizza which is my favorite U of W pizza (although it can't hold a candle to U of I's best pizza - Papa Del's).

Cucumbers, the gift that just keeps on giving

I'll start with garden news this week.  As you can tell from the title, our cucumber plants (of which there we only put in four this year) continue to pump out new cucumbers.  We have already canned 5 batches of pickles so far this year and I just harvested another 10 pounds of cucumbers yesterday.  As we don't eat that many raw cucumbers (maybe one a week at most) and there is a limit to how many jars of pickles in storage one family needs, we are in the usual home gardeners state of having to give some of our produce away.  Thanks goodness Jo is still working so we can tap into her co-workers to help consume our garden's output.  Along with the yesterday's cucumber harvest we got another batch of beans which we froze for this winters consumption and near the last of our tomatoes, which will be sun-dried for pizzas and pastas.

On Thursday, I had a visit from my sister up from Chicago.  We got caught up on all the family gossip, which for some strange reason we both love to do, and then took in the latest art show at the Art Museum.  Our plans had to be modified a bit since the Harley Davidson 110th anniversary celebrations had already started and there were motorcycles parked everywhere (just a small example parked by the Art Museum).  We finally found a place to park on the street but it limited our time in the museum.  After touring the show and seeing an exhibit on a Milwaukee tattoo artist (who was extremely talented), we had a great lunch at Beans and Barley.  The afternoon was spent lazing around the house and then after dinner we headed over to Copps for frozen custard - yum!  Then it was back downtown to struggle through all the motorcycles to get my sister to the train.

We spent the long weekend primarily in Madison with Jo's sister (it was our week for sisters) and several of our nieces/nephews who were in town for a wedding or just to visit.  We didn't venture out too much but there was lots to do chasing around the kids as their energy easily exceeded the sum total of all the adults present (and we outnumbered them by a factor of almost three).  I also learned that shucking corn is a treat for kids who think it is actually fun.  As opposed to a pain for adults who just want to enjoy sweet corn without having to tediously peel away all the silk.  Also, picking up hickory nuts can be turned into a game to save my sister-in-law from having to break her back getting them all up.    We enjoyed a nice run on Sunday morning with our niece, Christine, and were joined by John who has recently taken up running.  We came home Sunday night and then spent Monday exercising, puttering around the house to catch up on things since we've been busy the last few weeks, and getting ready for the upcoming week.