Thirty Three and Counting

Jo spent several days this week on the road as part of the Forbes Women's tour giving talks in North Carolina, Hartford, CT, and Cincinnati, OH.  The goal is to help empower women and she is having a great time meeting a wide range of people both outside and inside the Northwestern Mutual community.  She traveled and presented with Moira Forbes (daughter of Steven Forbes) and Ingrid Vanderveldt (a well known tech entrepreneur) and it was great chance for her to get to know two exceptional women.  During this she has to survive professional make-up sessions along with media interviews.  The fun thing with Jo is she disliked the make-up sessions more than the interviewing.  You can catch what Business Week online had to say at the following link.

We celebrated our 33rd anniversary on Friday.  We decided to enjoy dinner at the Lake Park Bistro with its view of Lake Michigan - which unfortunately was less than spectacular due to fog rolling in over the still very cold lake.  It was a lovely dinner with a bit too much champagne as we reminisced about the things we have done over all the years and marveled at how fast it all seemed to have happened.  We both decided to sign on for another 30 years and then stop and see how it is going.

Saturday morning dawned to another cloudy, foggy, and slightly raining day and after our morning exercising we packed up the car and headed to the Chicago area.  First stop was a visit with Jo's brother, Bill, who lives in St. Charles.  It was our first time to visit his house and it had been a long time since either of us had seen St. Charles.  We had a great visit catching up on his plans for an upcoming retirement and a fun lunch at the local Blue Goose Market.  Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to see our nephew, Kurt, as he was sleeping the entire time we were there - oh to be young again and to be able to sleep into the wee hours of the afternoon!

After our visit we headed to Elmhurst for the high school graduation party of Jenna, John and Linda's youngest.  We talked about her too-soon-for-her-parents departure for college and it was fun listening to all her plans and her excitement for heading off to one of our favorite schools in the nation - hint, it has the best pizza on the planet, a big, refurbished Alma Mater statue, and Jo and I are rather fond of it.  The party was copiously supplied with lots of tasty treats which we obviously enjoyed since as our full stomachs constantly reminded us on the drive home later that evening.  We also had a few moments to catch up on the latest doings with John and Linda as they prepare to enter their empty nest years

Sunday was reserved for strawberry picking and jam making.  We started first thing in the morning to be sure to get to the local berry patch before it was all picked out - a real risk this year with our cool, raining weather we have been having in June.  Then it was home to begin making four batches of fresh strawberry jam.  There is nothing better than warm jam fresh out of the pot on bread.  We then enjoyed peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches for lunch.  The afternoon consisted of a four mile hike down to the lake to see the airshow.  Unfortunately, the fog ruled again and the airshow was cancelled so we just had a nice walk.  Then it was home for a dinner of  grilled tuna steak with roasted vegetables and catching up on our backlog of newspapers.

Brewers sink again

We must be bad luck for our home town Brewers.  It seems every time we attend a game this year they get blown out.  Fortunately for them we don't attend that many games and they can remain in first place in their division.  The obligatory photo of the sausage race is included although our next door neighbor's daughters were not inside the costumes this week.  For those keeping track, Polish won, but Italian is leading the series this year (11 wins to Hot Dog's 8 in second place).  We went to the game on Sunday with Kathy and John and enjoyed a somewhat brief and unadorned tailgate prior to the game.  We have never really gotten into the whole tailgating event since it always seems easier to just eat at home before the game and not have to lug it all to the ballpark to then lug it all home - I'm probably missing the true allure of tailgating.

Friday, Jo walked to work and we then met halfway on her way home to enjoy dinner out at the Pizza Man restaurant.  Not my favorite kind of pizza as it had a really, really thin crust - I'm more a Chicago pizza style, big thick crusts!  Jo has been trying to walk to work once or twice a week to continue to strengthen her knee and get some exercise since she isn't running any longer.  Friday night we caught up on some backlogged TV shows while planning out the weekend.

Saturday morning we enjoyed yoga in the park after our early morning aerobic exercises and although the day was chilly, being in the bright sunshine made up for it.  In the afternoon Kathy and John came over and we strolled up to Atwater Park in Shorewood for a chicken dinner hosted by the Shorewood Men's club.  While the views of the lake were spectacular since it was a nice crisp evening - that same crispness made it a wee bit chilly for a Saturday in June.  We didn't linger too long since people were starting to shiver.

Urban Hiking

A fairly standard work week without many surprises.  Jo had a business trip to Kohler, WI for three days during which she had some free time to spend riding Sam - I think Sam looks a lot more comfortable that Jo does.  Apparently though Sam was more in control of direction and speed than Jo as there were a couple of times in which he fell behind the other horses and suddenly decided it was time to catch up - regardless of Jo's feelings about the speed at which he was doing that.  She came through it unscathed and did find a little time for a nice soak in the Jacuzzi in her room.  I spent the week tending things around the house including putting in another crop of beans in the garden and replanting some of the beds that didn't sprout robustly.  Lastly, we had new metal doors put on our screened in porch in the back since the wood ones that we had installed a year ago just kept warping.  This naturally involved me having to do some more painting, my favorite task.

 Friday afternoon we headed to our favorite beer garden in a park to partake of some Hofbrau beers and a soft pretzel with cheese dip, which is the real reason we go.  We were joined by our nephew, Drew, and his significant other, Amy.  They were just finishing up with their teaching duties for the year and looking forward to a summer of rest and relaxation.  As always, it was wonderful to catch up and hear the activities that 20 somethings are engaged in.  We decided to keep with our summer tradition this year and after having our beer/pretzel combo we headed to Culvers for their version of a blizzard - a concrete mixer.  Seemed to us the perfect Friday evening dinner - beer, pretzel, and a concrete mixer.  Fortunately, we biked to the park and Culvers so we are sure we were calorie neutral for the evening.

Saturday after a morning run for me and elliptical for Jo, we biked to a park near the Milwaukee Water Tower to do some yoga with a teacher we met earlier this year.  She has decided to do Saturday yoga outside for the summer and we are looking forward to re-engaging in a little yoga practice.  The weather was beautiful with the sun shining and a cool breeze coming in off the lake.  Afterwards, we headed to the gym to complete our morning of exercise with a little weight lifting.  As you might expect, the afternoon was spent relaxing around the house and planning some 2015 vacations - because you can never have too many vacation plans in the works.

After our trail hikes over the last few weeks, we decided to do an urban hike this week through some of the neighborhoods north of us.  We started out first thing Sunday morning in 52 degree weather.  We hiked about 12 miles total with an enjoyable stop along with the way at Benji's diner for brunch - chocolate chip pancakes and a spinach and cheese omelet.  Then it was back home to nurse our sore feet, again, and catch up on several days of newspapers that had accumulated.

Ice Age Trail Hike - Holy Hill Segment

Busy weekend for us as we entertained, took in some baseball and hiked ourselves into blisters on our feet.  But to start, I felt it was time to start including some vegetable garden photos.  Our lettuce, spinach, and Brussels sprouts are starting to work their way upwards.  Although the cool temperatures we are experiencing this year is slowing down everything.  Friday started with us having over Jean and Ed and Marcia and Daryl.  Jo worked with Jean and Marcia before they both retired within the last year.  We whipped up a vegetarian pasta along with our favorite French bread (yes, we make it a lot, but it is so simple and easy to make -just yeast, salt, water, and flour - and delicious hot out of the oven).  It was interesting to hear how the two couples are adjusting to retirement and we got to hear some funny stories about their work history that they hadn't shared while working.

Saturday morning we did our usual exercising to try and stave off the ravages of aging and then headed over to Miller Park to take in a Brewer's game, with some of Jo's HR team, in the Northwestern Mutual suite.  We decided to try something new and biked to the stadium which worked out really well and certainly made handling the post-game traffic a breeze.  It was a perfect day for baseball with temperatures in the 70's and sunny but unfortunately our Brewers couldn't generate enough offense to win.  We enjoyed the usual sausage race and in keeping with my Milwaukee baseball posting tradition - a picture of the famous racing sausages is attached.  Our neighbor's daughters are inside two of the sausages, the Polish (that is the one with the red striped shirt) and Italian (the one that looks like a chef). 

Sunday morning we rolled right out of bed and after a short drive we hiked one of the segments of the Ice Age trail (a 1,000 mile trail across Wisconsin).  For this week we did the Holy Hill segment which is an ~6 mile hike to the namesake, Holy Hill.  We started out with cloudy skies and cool temperatures and by the end the skies cleared and the temperatures/humidity shot up.  We got to see the monastery on Holy Hill although there were services going on when we got there so we weren't able to see inside.  The trail was interesting with multiple kettles and moraines (kettles are depressions and moraines are small hills both made from when glaciers covered Wisconsin) along with a mix of hiking through forests and open grassland.  Also some very nice vistas at various points along the trail.  After about four hours we made it back to the car although each with a few blisters on our feet.

The remainder of Sunday was lazing around reading the newspaper and nursing our sore feet and legs.  Then all too soon it was time to start thinking about the week ahead.