Cast Free

It must be the final week before Christmas as the roads aren't as busy for Jo going to work, the hallways are emptier, and the work day ends a little earlier each day.  The big news for the week was Jo finally getting her cast off.  Now starts the fun of rehabilitating a wrist and thumb that haven't moved much in six weeks, but everything looked good under the cast (swelling is down and the incision is healing) as long as you can ignore about ten layers of dead skin peeling off her arm.  Hopefully the video works since we were fascinated to watch her cast being sawn off - fortunately they left her arm attached.  Next up will be her right hand sometime in the spring.  Sort of hard for both of us to look forward to doing this process all over again - ok, it is much worse for Jo I just have to provide moral and material support.  Will be really hard for Jo since she really isn't very strong using her left hand for stuff.

For the weekend, we attended an Admirals game on Saturday with some of Jo's HR team.  It was an exciting game with a final score of 7-5 with the hometown team winning.  The real fun came with the game tied with 30 seconds left to play when the Admirals executed a picture perfect pass through the crease followed by a score.  Not sure we had ever seen that many goals scored in a hockey game.  Sunday we went for a nice walk to enjoy the warm weather we have been enjoying and then in the evening we attended Jo's holiday work party at her bosses house.  It was a nice evening talking with people Jo works with and their spouses but, for me at least, the highlight was the phenomenal desserts.  You can always tell the quality of a party by the desserts they have - at least that's how I rate parties.

Wisconsin Family Brunch

This weekend we hosted the second annual Wisconsin family Christmas brunch which involves having over all the family members that reside in Wisconsin.  This included our Milwaukee based nephews/nieces (Drew, Amy, Chris, and Angela) along with Kathy and John from Madison.  We spent a good part of Saturday afternoon preparing food so that we didn't have to work so hard Sunday morning.  All the food turned out great in my opinion, including our second try with our now favorite, creme brulee french toast.  Unfortunately, it decided to rain most of the day on Sunday so we couldn't get in a post-brunch walk to help make more room for a second (or third) helping.

For the rest of the weekend, Jo spent Saturday morning finishing off her Christmas shopping while I hit the gym.  Jo still has another week left before her cast comes off and she can start sweating during her exercising again.  Kind of frustrating for her to have to bike so slowly as to not break a sweat - no easy feat for her.  Friday night we enjoyed some of our frozen Papa Del's pizza while watching Holiday Inn - one of our favorite Christmas classics.

A Sports Weekend

We finally put out the luminaries and tried to snap a photo.  Unfortunately, I chose to use electric candles in them and could only find tea candle sized lights.  This left them a little dark, but it will have to do for this season - I'll look for some bigger, higher wattage candles in the new year.  So sorry for the poor quality shot, but it was the best my phone could do at night.  The poor picture aside, we are quite happy with how they turned out, now I just need to get all of them glazed and fired after this holiday season so they are all ready for next year.

As you can tell from the title of this week's posting, we spent most of the weekend attending sporting events in Madison.  We headed over Friday evening and managed to squeeze in dinner with Kathy and John before the volleyball match.  We met them at our condo and then headed down State Street for some pizza - it is nice to be able to walk to a wide variety of eating establishments, although it did lead to Jo and I discussing whether we will actually ever cook again once we live here full time.  Then it was over to the UW Fieldhouse for the Badger's women volleyball regional match.  They played Iowa State and won in three sets.  The Fieldhouse is a fun place to watch volleyball since it is relatively small and there really aren't any bad seats.  There was some absolutely phenomenal rallies during the match and the Iowa State band kept it entertaining with humorous phrases they yelled whenever the Badger's were serving.

Saturday morning, after breakfast at the Shortstack (rapidly becoming our go to breakfast place in Madison, Jo loves the chocolate chip pancakes and as I'm trying eggs Benedict around the world, their's rates a gold star) we headed out for a nice hike over to Lake Wingra in warm, sunny weather (a novelty for Wisconsin in December).  Then it was over to the Kohl Center to catch the men's basketball team play Temple.  We decided to buy tickets on the street from a ticket broker (often referred to as a scalper).  We have never, ever done this before and were a wee bit apprehensive.  But it turned out great for us, we showed up 15 minutes before the start of the game and were able to secure first level seats at a significant discount - guess he really didn't want to be stuck with the tickets.  Even better than the good deal on the tickets was the Badger's winning.

After the game, Jo headed out to do some Christmas shopping with Kathy and I puttered around the condo (OK it was mostly a nap and measuring a few items, I did attempt to fix one of the sinks though so I officially puttered).  We then finished the day with dinner at Kathy's.  After dinner we headed back home to Milwaukee.  Sunday we took it easy although we did take a nice long walk to lunch and did a little shopping at Boswell's bookstore on the way home.  And as you can tell from the photos, Jo still has her cast on - another two weeks to go.  She is really ready to have complete use of all her fingers - and I'm ready for her to stop clunking me in the head with it when she sleeps.

Thanksgiving in Madison

As I'm writing this, the snow is slowly falling outside making everything all white.  While having snow fall in Wisconsin in December isn't exactly rare, having it come down slowly without a gale force wind whipping it into your face is.  We have actually had an unusually warm winter so far with most days reaching into the 40's - my thanks to El Nino since we could really use a less brutal winter once.

We spent the long weekend enjoying Madison.  Our condo is working out great as a place to stay although we did find that an air mattress doesn't keep you quite as warm on cold winter nights as an actual mattress.  We took a couple of nice hikes while there, one along the shores of Lake Monona and the other down through campus to see some of our old haunts as well as taking in all the new construction that has happened in the last 30 years.

Kathy and John hosted Thanksgiving, and we were joined by Drew and Amy, Mike, and Sean.  Food was fantastic and I ate entirely too much for dinner and then decided to see if what was possible to stuff pie and ice cream on top of all the food and not explode.  It was, but it was a tough evening as my stomach let me know what it thought about being stretched that much.  We didn't do any Black Friday shopping, but did head out to the Cottage Cafe for a brunch before everyone dispersed to their various homes.  I personally love the diners in the US and my goal is to try all the different ways of making eggs Benedict.  The Cottage Cafe's were ok, but really overloaded with the Hollandaise sauce.  For our contribution to the retail economy, Jo and I hit the University bookstore on Wednesday - not that we needed anything, but because can you really have too many articles of clothing with a college logo on it.

We came home on Saturday and spent the weekend puttering around the house.  The weather cooperated so that we were able to get outside on Sunday and harvest the last and final crop from the garden beds - the parsnips.  Now we just need to be home to enjoy some roasted parsnip dinners.