Trip to Chicago

Jo is in the middle of her regional meeting tours and so last weekend we headed to Chicago for the central version.  As this is the only regional meeting I'm making this year, it was good to catch up on what has happened at Northwestern Mutual since last year's set of meetings.  I met some more of the representatives scattered around the Midwest and it was great to see that more and more people are getting to know Jo.  The first couple of years these meetings were difficult since we didn't really know anyone and spent a lot of time talking to each other trying to figure out how to break into other people's conversations.

While there we enjoyed dinner one night with my sister, deep dish, Chicago style pizza - one of our favorites, catching up on all the latest events in her life and trading information on the family's happenings.  On Friday, Cheryl and I took in the Pritzker War Museum which had a very interesting exhibit about the Navy Seals but not much in the way of a permanent collection.  Not the best museum we have enjoyed in Chicago.  Cheryl and I are slowly working our way through all the Chicago museums and are pretty much in the second tier at this point.  Next up, is the surgery museum whenever my next visit happens.  Then it was back to her condo to do a small repair job - what are brothers for if not to keep their sister's condo mechanical systems running smoothly.  Saturday, Jo and I headed to Elmhurst to spend the rest of the weekend with our friends, John and Linda.  We spent a large part of the time planning our winter vacation and making sure we had a plan to see all the sights.  Nothing like a meeting four Myer's Briggs J's to work out a detailed and probably overly ambitious plan!

Fortunately, our trip to Chicago didn't disappoint as it starting snowing on Sunday as we headed home.  Equally fortunately, there wasn't any snow back here in Milwaukee it all stayed to the south or apparently on the east coast if you have been tracking winter storm, Juno.  On a side note, when did we start feeling the need to give winter storms names, I thought doing it to hurricanes was sufficient.  I do wonder if we will start naming tornadoes next.

Warm Weather is Always Nice in Winter

We experienced a heat wave over the weekend with temperatures soaring into the mid-30's (yes, that is soaring in Wisconsin) so Jo and I headed walked to a local movie theater to watch "American Sniper".  Very good movie with great acting, but it is a wee bit intense in some of the scenes.  Before that we tried a new Mexican restaurant that opened up and serves primarily tacos.  These are, of course, designer tacos which were very tasty.  It didn't hurt to slug down a pitcher of margaritas before hand.

The rest of the weekend we caught up on chores around the house as we have been traveling over the weekends recently.  Otherwise, we took some long walks to enjoy the warmer weather, caught up on some TV shows we had taped, watched the Packers lose a close game,and made some great home cooked meals.  Our big highlight was to start a 3,000 piece puzzle - yep, we are living the large life.  It is amazing how many hours can be easily spent working on a puzzle.

A Warmer House

We spent the weekend with new friends that we met on our Peru trip: Anne, Steve, Amy, and Dean (Anne and Amy were on our trip).  They invited us to their family's lake house (ok, frozen lake house this time of year) for the weekend.  They have a lovely cabin on Crystal Lake which is about 90 minutes north of Madison.  We spent the weekend learning about everyone's family, doing some cross country skiing, assembling a puzzle, and playing sheepshead while consuming Peruvian Pisco Sours.  Given how complicated sheepshead is, consuming alcohol wasn't helping us during the game, but did make it a lot more boisterous.  While the weather was colder than desired, we had a nice roaring fire to keep out the chill and the wind died down during our cross country ski trek to make it livable.

On Sunday we headed to Madison to do a little condo shopping and then headed to Kathy and John's to watch our hometown Packer's squeak by in their playoff game.  Afterwards we had a little birthday cake to celebrate Kathy notching another year.  Then it was home to collapse and ready ourselves for the new week.

Our big excitement for the week was getting a new boiler.  Our old one had developed lime deposits (sort of arthritis for boilers) and wasn't keeping the house very toasty anytime the outside temperature dropped below ten - which happens a lot in Wisconsin.  So it was time to retire it for a new system and an improved circulating pump.  So I spent the day watching the temperature in the house go from 66° do to 58° when they finally finished.  Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in the somewhat warmer basement that day.  So our new system is in and has managed to stave off the cold in the house - but it is still nippy when you step outside.  You can see the old boiler on the left below and the new one on the right.  And yes, they do look almost the same, but the heat difference between them is noticeable.  Fun fact from the installer - boilers go through color schemes just like appliances and is a good way to judge the age - especially since there is no discernible date on them.  We are apparently in the taupe generation now.

New Pottery Toy

I finally got the bench together ro hold one of our Christmas gifts.  We got a pug mill for our pottery studio so that Jo's wrists won't take so much of a beating when preparing clay.  For those that don't know the story, I purchased this without completely checking all the specifics and while it is perfect for our clay use, it is a wee bit oversized in general - it weighs in at a hefty 140 lbs.  But it is now sitting on the bench it will stay on until we should ever move and we deal with having to move the beast at that point in the future.  It is functionally a small extruder, which I've worked with multiple times in my chemistry past, so I'm thinking that if this clay thing doesn't work out, I might start making some cool thermoplastics in my basement.

For the rest of the week, I completed my yearly attack on cracks in the plaster around the house and I am now enjoying not having to scatter plaster bits and dust everywhere - at least until next winter.  I'm slowly evolving my skills at repairing plaster but haven't as yet figured out how to do it more neatly.  If anything, I'm moving in the other direction of just making whatever mess is necessary and dealing with the clean up later.

The other fun this week is surviving the frigid cold temperatures.  We have had several days where we stayed below 10 degrees and this coupled with high winds has made going outside a real adventure.  But I braved the cold one day to run but the rest of the week have chosen the warmer approach of working out on a bike or elliptical inside.  Supposedly next week we are supposed to get up to the 20's which sounds tropical compared to this week.  The weather has also taken a toll on the heating plant in the house, but that is a tale for next week.
 

First Snow of the New Year

Mother Nature didn't wait too long to get us some snow on the ground.  We woke up to about 3 inches on the ground with more coming down through the day.  Not enough yet to break out the snow blower or the cross country skis, but there is hope since it is supposed to keep snowing into tomorrow morning.  Unfortunately our temperatures are supposed to plummet starting tomorrow with a high of 4 degrees predicted for Tuesday.  Not as bad as it has gotten in some parts of the country, but still provides a lot of fun during a run when you eyelids freeze shut every time you blink.

Jo headed to New York bright and early this morning for a regional meeting and in honor of her having to work, I spent the day working on repairing cracks in more of the walls of the house - I think they form at roughly 3/4 of the rate I repair them.  Quite the way for us to spend the first weekend of the new year, but we always did live on the edge.