Post Traffic

I just checked and Malaysia and Poland have surged into second and third place in viewing the blog.  Still not sure why, but that is what Google says is happening.  Not sure why I'm no longer that popular in Russia.

Really Short Basketball Game

We had tickets to see the Milwaukee Bucks play a pre-season game last Friday using Northwestern Mutual's suite at the Bradley Center.  We snapped a few pictures of their new playing floor and we were enjoying watching the beginning of the game with our pizza and chicken nuggets when all of sudden play stopped.  Players milled around on the floor for a little bit before the entire opposing team headed for the locker room.  Everyone started wondering if it was some kind of crazy TV time out or the team needed some weird equipment repairs (blown out shoe bottom anyone?).  Next up, the Bucks head for the locker room - still no announcement on what is happening and why all the players are gone.  Finally after about 20-25 minutes, they announce that the brand new floor (just installed this year!!) is too slippery for the players to safely play on.  So instead of a nice evening watching some basketball live, we got to see 10 minutes of play, enjoy the food and company in the suite, and get to bed by 10.  Not exactly how we thought the evening was going to go.  We have apparently gotten another set of tickets for this Saturday's game to make up for the lack of a game on Friday - but they don't come with complementary parking, free food, or the nice padded seats in the suite (do I sound a wee bit spoiled?).  I continue to maintain that football remains the most dedicated sport - they play in any kind of weather on a too hard (think Green Bay in the winter) or too soft field.  And the fans remain despite the weather. 

The rest of the week for us consisted of trying to overcome the jet lag we both suffered - this was due not only to the time zone changes but also the fact we were no longer on vacation (mostly the latter cause would be my guess).  We also adjusted our schedules back to our home routine.  This meant getting to the gym a couple of times and starting back up our running after a two week break.  Amazing how hard it is to keep in shape and how easy it is to lose any endurance and conditioning. 


Since we had several frosts last week, it was time to get the flower and vegetable beds ready for the winter.  So we harvested the last of the onions from the garden and cut off the dead plants.  We still have rutabagas in the ground and we are waiting a while to pull our parsnips and Brussels sprouts.  Time soon to start thinking about what next year's garden will have in it.  Since we aren't going to do cucumbers next year, that opens some space for something new.  I might put in some potatoes next year - although I'm not too sure how they will do in our raised beds.

For the rest of the weekend, we took it somewhat easy.  Saturday after the gym we walked to a deli for lunch that we hadn't tried before and had great sandwiches (a club for me as I continue my clubs across America campaign) followed by hiking up to the frozen yogurt shop.  We figured we could afford the calories since we walked about 1.5 miles to get there.  Sunday we spent some time winnowing our safari pictures down to about 240 photos that capture the highlights of our trip (this is what you will be shown if you ask to see our photos - unless you volunteer for the full 1,300).  I'll continue to post a few new photos for the next several weeks before you tire of hearing about our trip.

More Pictures from Botswana

I was informed that I didn't post enough pictures by you know who.  So to show my responsiveness to feedback (which is always a gift), here are a few more photos from our trip.  Hopefully this will meet the expanded picture needs by the boss.  Hope you enjoy.

Carrots, Carrots, and more Carrots

We came home to wonderful Wisconsin weather - cold.  We went from 95 degrees in Africa to 40 degrees here.  Quite the change to your system.  As there are multiple nights below freezing predicted we decided to harvest anything from the garden that wouldn't survive the frost.  That meant bringing in the last of the tomatoes, carrots, squash, cucumbers, and onions.  This lead to quite the harvest, we brought in over 10 lbs. of carrots alone.  While most of our carrots have unusual shapes (not exactly sure what is causing that problem) they still taste great and we enjoyed a delicious and warming carrot soup on Sunday night.

We are trying the trick of ripening green tomatoes in a paper bag in the house that Jo read about in our local paper.  Hopefully this works and don't just land up with a whole lot of rotting tomatoes in the basement. 

We are all nestled into our blankets at home and will be changing over to our flannel sheets for the chilly nights to come.  Quite a re-entry back into the part of the world that enjoys a winter.

Safari in Botswana

We are back from our trip to Botswana where we enjoyed two weeks away from the hustle and bustle of our daily lives while seeing amazing landscapes and watching animals we had only ever seen in zoos before.  We stayed at four different camps with environments ranging from an inland delta to river front to dry salt pans.  We arose each day around 5:30 to head out for an early morning game drive then back around 10:30 for a short break before lunch.  The afternoon we spent lazing in the heat in our tent or around a pool before heading back out in the late afternoon for another opportunity to see the game with an evening cocktail in the bush watching the sun go down.  Then it was back for an evening meal, an occasional night game drive, and to bed under incredible stars.

  While there we many memorable moments during our trip, the one's that really stuck in our heads were as follows.  Elephants walking outside our tent at 2:30 in the morning.  It is really something to wake up in the middle of the night and see a massive elephant shadow pass by 3 feet away from your canvas tent.  Especially after seeing during the day the full grown trees that they had pushed over.  We had elephants around our tent 3 different nights moving around and eating, and I must say we never really got used to it.  It was a great experience but also a wee bit scary.

Sleeping out under the stars in the salt pans.  The camp had put out cots with just sheets and blankets for cover (that's the sunrise over the pans in the photo).  The complete lack of any man-made noise was amazing not to mention watching the full moon track across the sky along with the star display that you get to see when there aren't any lights.   Watching hyenas feed their young pups, especially when the female hyena passed right by my side of the safari jeep so close that I could have reached out to touch her (which I choose not to do since I really wanted to keep all my limbs attached). 

Enjoying a cocktail while sitting 6 feet away from two lionesses catching a nap.  Getting charged by a female elephant protecting her young.  Fortunately our guide had this well in hand, but not before both Jo and I felt our hearts in our throats.  Since having a multi-ton wild animal with big long tusks running at your side of the vehicle does tend to get one's heart racing.  And lastly, celebrating Jo's birthday under the stars with a private dinner, listening to the animals settling in for the night and enjoying a birthday cake and champagne.

I have included just a small number of photos from our trip and I'll have to leave it at that since we took a little over 1,300 pictures during our trip (a new personal best for us).  We also met a lot of interesting, well traveled people, were hosted by highly knowledgeable guides who were able to track animals through the woods, desert, and grasslands, and ate way too much great food 

The easiest way to express our trip, was it was probably the most memorable trip we have taken  Also, for anyone that visits us in the next year, be prepared to be bored to death watching countless photos of our trip - you were warned.

Quiet Weekend

I had a very quiet week since Jo was on the road traveling almost the entire week.  I simply puttered around the house putting the finishing touches on a couple of small projects, tended to the weeds and grass outside, and did a little bit of harvesting in the garden.  We now have tiny little brussel sprouts (emphasis on tiny and little!) growing which is a nice surprise since we didn't think we were going to get anything but plants this year.  We continue to harvest large amounts of cucumbers as our plants seem determined to produce 10 of them a week.  Jo is keeping her work colleagues well supplied.  The only big news for the week, is that the painters finally got around to painting the second floor windows on the north and south side of the house.  I decided this year to stop climbing really tall ladders and pay professionals to climb up and paint my upper floor windows.  That now completes all the windows on the house except for a few basement windows - which will be subject to a post next year.

As I said above, Jo was on the road this past week.  She spent most of the week in the LA area visiting sales offices in the area and attending some events for the Northwestern Mutual foundation which reports into her.  One of these events had some celebrities and she was able to meet Jimmy Kimmel and saw Bob Saget.  Didn't see any other major celebrities, or if she did - she didn't recognize them (which brings up the question, if you don't recognize a celebrity is he/she really a celebrity?  Sort of the tree in a forest making sound kind of question).  Anyway, she had a nice time on our western coast enjoying the warmer weather but came home very late on Saturday (really Sunday morning) and so Sunday was spent recuperating.  We did get in a really nice long walk around town on Sunday so we didn't spend the whole day vegetating.

All too soon it was time to head back to work, well for Jo anyway.  For those keeping track, Poland has moved into third place for viewers of this blog (after the US and Russia).  I don't know why this is so popular with Eastern Europe, but I'm just glad to have the readers.