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.  

Out of the Surgical Wrapping and Into a Cast

We are now the proud owner of our family's first cast.  Well, Joann is the proud owner, I just get to take lots of pictures (I have pictures of the incisions under the cast, but decided to not post them.  If you want to see the cut, let me know).  Neither one of us has ever had a cast before and it was very interesting watching her arm being casted.  Very different from what we thought it would be - they use a fiber glass tape that has a water activated crosslinking polymer embedded in it to form the cast.  I was thinking they would be whipping up some plaster of Paris and ripping up some cloth strips to dip in it.  Nice thing with the new technology, it sets up really fast compared to waiting for a plaster cast to set.  The technology aside, Jo is now the proud owner of baby blue cast.  She is making progress on her healing and the cast feels more protective of her arm so she is a little bit more aggressive with using it, but it is still another four weeks before the cast is removed.

To keep Jo occupied we fired the kiln last week - well we were ready to fire the kiln independent of her surgery, but it seemed like a good thing to take her mind off of her hand.  This was just a bisque firing to prepare our works for glazing, so not quite as exciting since there is still another step before we are ready to display them.  But it is always fun to see something get up to 1,900 degrees F - glowing red hot.  Most of the works this time where clay luminaries - think rectangular boxes, into which you put candles, with Christmas themed cut-outs in the side (I hope to post a picture of them lit up sometime in the next few weeks).  The rest of the kiln was filled with various pots and other works.

The first snow shoveling also happened this week as we got about 3-4 inches of snow over the weekend.  Fortunately, the weather is turning warm this week so I didn't have to do a really good job.  I toyed with the idea of just leaving it and waiting for nature to get rid of it, but I just couldn't get my head around leaving snow un-shoveled, try as I might.  Our last fun event for the week was the Milwaukee Art Museum reopened their new addition this weekend.  They added a new section and had the permanent collection has been closed since the start of the construction.  They did a nice job on the addition and rejuvenated all their displays - they are now displaying an additional 1,000 works of art which is good.  After the museum, we had a lovely lunch at our favorite barbecue place - the Smoke Shack - nothing like pulled pork sandwiches on a cold winter day.

One Less Bone to Worry About

 

 Last week Jo finally decided it was time to decrease the pain she has been experiencing in her hands.  Over the last few years she has had increasing problems with the joint at the base of her thumb leading her to have to modify everything from how she holds a pen to opening jars.  So last Monday she went under the knife again - yes it is becoming a yearly event - to have Resection Arthroplasty of the Thumb.  That's the technical term (I think), what it consists of is removing a bone near the base of the thumb (the CMC joint) and filling the space with a tendon from her wrist (turns out many people, but not all, have a spare tendon in their wrist - if you are curious I now know how to tell).  She came through the surgery fine and spent the week with her wrist elevated and in a really large splint/bandage.  The pain was pretty intense for the first two days but after that it leveled off to something she could manage without any painkillers.  The hardest thing was she needs to keep the hand elevated all day and night.  She is getting tired of sleeping only on her right side.  But, she gets a more permanent cast later this week, which I'm hoping to be able to sign with something witty, which we're hoping provides her a few more options for using her left arm/hand.

With Jo laid up on the couch most of the week, we didn't do too much else.  But we did manage to take in a UW-Milwaukee women's volleyball game on Saturday in which they played UW-Green Bay (in case you are curious, there are 26 UW campuses).  It was fun watching some good volleyball and most importantly it was good to get Jo out for a few hours.  Although, clapping is really hard when you only have one hand.  She has definitely hit the point where she really wants to move her thumb even just a little bit.  But as you can see, they immobilized it really well.  Next up sometime next year is the right hand.  Which will be really interesting as my right handed wife has to do everything with the wrong hand.  Can't wait to go through this all again - but it does continue her streak of yearly surgeries.  We are welcoming ideas for the 2017 operation.

By the way, the first picture is not Jo trying to reenact scenes from the Virgin Mary's life, the post-op area was really cold and the nurse was trying to keep her warm.  

Our First Admirals Game of the Season

Jo spent part of the week enjoying the warmth in Phoenix on business while I puttered around the house enjoying our unseasonably warm weather in Milwaukee.  El Nino is certainly giving us a wonderful late fall/early winter as we had several days in the 60's which for us is positively balmy - especially when compared to the last few years.  And according to the weather reports the nice weather may continue into next week.


We are slowly working our way through the Milwaukee sports offerings - this last Friday it was the Admirals turn.  The Admirals, for those that have forgotten, are the farm team for the Nashville Predators.  And for those that really don't follow sports - we are talking about a hockey team.  We were joined at the Northwestern suite by several of Jo's HR team so not only did we get to watch a fun game, I continue to slowly learn more about the people who work with Jo.  It was an exciting game since apparently these two teams don't like each other since they spent a good part of the game fighting - something I still believe should be eliminated from hockey.  For those keeping track - the Admirals won so we are a complete jinx for the Admirals like we are for the Bucks.

Saturday after our usual morning workouts, we were joined by Kathy, Drew, and several of Drew's groomsmen to watch the Badger football game.  They were all in town to get the tuxedo shopping out of the way for Drew's upcoming nuptials.  Afterwards we headed to Benji's diner where I continued my club sandwich's  across America campaign.  And yes, I thoroughly enjoyed the bacon on the sandwich, despite the WHO warnings.  If I go, at least I'll go happy.

Sunday we walked up to City Market for our favorite cinnamon rolls before Kathy headed back to Madison afterwords we worked on a few chores around the house.  Also, sorry about the blimp shot - but I just love the Admiral's blimp floating around inside the Bradley arena.

Our First Bucks Game for the Season

We were home for the entire weekend for the first time in a long while.  Our weekend started off with going to see the Milwaukee Bucks at the Bradley Center on Friday for our first game this season.  Unfortunately, we brought no more luck to them this year as we did last year as they lost the game after leading for almost 80% of the game.  The game aside, we enjoyed the food in the suite (when else am I going to get chicken nuggets to eat) and talking with several of Jo's HR team.

Saturday, we worked out and then watched our Badger's win while hopefully waiting for some trick and treaters to brave the cloudy and wet weather.  Not much luck as we only had about 8-10 brave souls which means we have bags and bags of candy left over since we normally have a much greater turnout.  Good eating for us as long as we don't mind gaining 50-75 lbs. - each, although I think Jo is searching for an organization in Milwaukee who needs extra candy.  We spent the rest of the rainy Saturday catching up on deciding our 2016 health care plans and, more excitedly, planning our next big vacation since we always like to have one (or two) planned.

Sunday, Jo headed off to Phoenix for a business meeting and I lazed around the house trying to make some progress in a computer game I've been working through.  The only real problem is I can only play for about 20 minutes before the game overheats the Intel chip inside my computer and it all shuts down.  I've gotten it down to a system to keep the computer crashes to a minimum, but I'm thinking it might be time for a new computer to join the ranks.

The weather this week in Milwaukee here has been phenomenal with temperatures in the 60's and 70's so far (our usual would be the high 40's).  I've taken advantage to get outside and get the various flower and vegetable beds ready for their long winter sleep along with getting in a couple of nice walks.

Back to Champaign-Urbana

We spent the weekend at the University of Illinois with our good friends, John and Linda.  It was homecoming weekend and the Fighting Illini played our other Alma Mater, Wisconsin.  Fortunately for us, one of the schools we attended one and unfortunately, one lost.  In case you don't rabidly follow college football, the Badgers were the winning team.  On the fun side, we both made the Jumbotron during the third quarter Shout (the Illini's equivalent to the Badger's Jump around), we figured the camera person was amazed to old people like us to actually jump up and down, either that or they liked our matching sweatshirts.

We arrived in town Friday night just in time to enjoy some Papa Del's pizza - which we both realize we are little fanatical about.  But since we don't get that nuts about too many other things, might as well be pizza.  On Saturday, we had a great time walking around campus before the game; enjoying the views on the Quad, walking through the Union (where we first met each other), and reliving old memories (which are much better now since we have colored them with lots and lots of time).  We purchased a few Illini themed clothing items since we are working at having every piece of casual wear we own to have a college logo on it somewhere.  We also toured the Noyes Chemistry building (for those who aren't chemists in the know, we always pronounced it No-Yes Labs) and found the laboratory where I took introductory organic lab - the summary, it needs some serious renovations (it probably needed the same renovations when we were there because I don't remember it as being a cutting edge facility).  We also took the obligatory picture with Alma Mater which is still one of the coolest college statues around.

After the game we followed the Marching Illini (John and Linda's daughter is a proud member of the band's saxophone section) to the Education building for a post-game concert.  Just a side note for all those Illini graduates reading this, the Marching Illini are going to be in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade this year and have managed to get the coveted spot right in front of Santa - don't forget to set up your DVR's.  After the concert we headed out for a nice dinner and a little warmth since while the start of the game was comfortable we were all chilled by the end.

After brunch on Sunday we ordered our three party size Papa Del's pizzas to go (it is about 15-20 lbs of pizza) and headed home to stuff our freezer with a couple of months worth of pizza slices - yeah, we know it's nuts but we have fun doing it and we have great pizza until sometime around February.

Birthday Girl

We celebrated another birthday last week.  I decided to go a different way for Jo's cake this year and baked baklava to help remember our recent trip - although it is a lot harder to stick candles into baklava than icing.  In addition to the usual mix of presents, we also enjoyed a wonderful dinner downtown at Bacchus for which I even donned a a suit and tie.

I promise, this is the last posting for today.

Trips to Madison

Since we returned from our trip, we have made to visits to Madison and our home away from home.  First up was a short trip so Jo could participate in her chemistry department advisory board.  It was nice for me since I had an entire day to hang around the condo and do some future renovation planning as well as catch up on some sleep after our trip.  No trip to Madison is complete without Bucky Badger somewhere.  Saturday morning we were up early to get some breakfast at the Farmer's Market along with fresh apple cider for the week at home - before heading back to Milwaukee to continue to resettle from our vacation.

This last weekend we headed over to Madison to take in a Badger football game.  Friday we were able to attend the Badger basketball teams practice (one of Jo's colleagues at work is a former player and nicely offered to get us in).  We met the coach, Bo Ryan, as well as toured the facilities and coach Ryan's office.  It was very interesting listening to the challenges of coaching a bunch of young players to get them to play basketball your way.  It will be fun to watch some of these players in the upcoming season.

Saturday morning it was time for another stroll around the Farmer's market for breakfast and more apple cider before bundling up for the game.  The weather cooperated nicely by dropping the morning temperatures into the high 30's to really provide the full fall football experience.  Fortunately, the sun was out for the entire game so we didn't freeze.  The Badgers held up their end of the experience by winning over Purdue - although it was a bit close at times.  After the game, we headed over to Kathy's to celebrate John's 50th birthday with some of their friends.  Sunday it was time to get home and catch up on some chores around the house before the work week starts up.

Fun Signs

We just wanted to post a few of the funny signs we saw during our recent trip.  These just made us laugh.

At least they're honest about it

When you really have to go

We never figured this one out

Istanbul to Athens

Suleyman the Great Mosque

We recently enjoyed a vacation and cruise in Turkey and Greece.  We flew into to Istanbul, after a long overnight flight from Chicago, to spend several days touring the town.  Jo had previously been in Istanbul for work back in May 2009 (you can check out the blog post from that time here) but it was my first visit.  I hadn't appreciated how large Istanbul was - over 16 million people call it home - and it was fascinating to hear about its diverse history from ancient times, through the Roman empire, Byzantines, Ottomans, and finally the independent nation it is today.  Some of the highlights of our visit was touring the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque, the Topkapi palace, seeing the whirling dervish's, and snacking on baklava - which our guide insisted was invented in Turkey - not Greece.

Whirling Dervishs

Roman Cistern

Next up was boarding our cruise to several of the Greek islands.  We had stops at Kavala (to see the ruins of Phillipi - which was the site of one of the pivotal battles in the Roman civil war, but got very little discussion from the guide), Rhodes, Santorini, Crete, and Mykonos.  We also stopped in Turkey to see Ephesus.  Along the way we saw a lot of ruins which always leave me overwhelmed by the ability of people 3,000-6,000 years ago to construct massive buildings without the use of motors or hydraulics as well as the exquisite sculpting that was done on columns and statues.  Also, left us both with a feeling about how often wars result in the destruction of cities, homes, and people since many of these cities were abandoned as a result of a battle.  We also enjoyed seeing the beautiful white and blue cities of the Greek isles, especially Santorini where people decided to build their homes perched on the side of a cliff in an earthquake prone zone.

Santorini

We ended our cruise in Athens and spent a couple of days there touring the Parthenon and acropolis buildings along with many other of the ancient ruins scattered about town.  This was the first visit for both of us to Athens and we really enjoyed the city, sites, and food.  We came home exhausted but with lots of great memories - along with another 800 photos to sort and store.  I've included just a few photos here, if you want to see all of them you have to visit.  I also tried to talk Jo into taking a vacation without any photo capturing device just to see what it would be like - she didn't seem convinced, yet.

Doors Open Milwaukee

We were actually in town for the weekend which was a nice change of pace.  We started it out with taking in one of the last Brewer's games for the season.  Thank goodness since they have not had a very stellar year.  The Friday night game continued the bad news as they lost again.  But we had a good time with our friends, Patty and Rob, chatting about work (Jo and Patty) and about baseball/life (Rob and me).  Certainly enjoyed our ballpark meal as we decided to not do the traditional ball park frank and had milkshakes and burgers instead.

Saturday after some early morning exercising, we were joined by Kathy and Drew to participate in Doors Open Milwaukee.  This is an annual event, that we never seem to be in town for, in which buildings throughout Milwaukee provide tours and access inside their buildings.  This is a great chance to see rooms and buildings that are normally closed off to the public.  They also held a scavenger hunt with it to help motivate you to find certain items across the city.  We had a great time going to the observation deck of the US Bank building, the Milwaukee Historical Society building (which was originally a bank complete with the multiple safes for viewing), City Hall to see the Mayor's office, Turner Hall, and trying to complete some of the scavenger hunt items.  It was a busy day that we finished off by catching the second half of the Badger football game and finally a beer and pretzel at our favorite beer garden in Estabrook Park.

Sunday we headed out to brunch at Benji's with Kathy, Drew, and Amy. Afterwards everyone headed home while Jo and I puttered around the house knocking off some chores.  We finished the day watching our Packer's continue their winning streak this year.

On Wisconsin

September is here and that means the start of the fall college sports season.  We took full advantage and trekked over to Madison to watch the first home football game.  First up though was enjoying the women's volleyball match against Kent State - yes they apparently do easy warm up matches in volleyball as well as football.  We joined Kathy and John for pizza on Monroe street before heading over to the Field House for the game.  The arena was packed full - well as full as you can get it since it isn't structurally sound enough to use the upper tiers (it is definitely time for the Athletic department to part with some of those big bucks and improve the Field House) - and the crowd got to enjoy a great game as the Badgers won in three straight sets.

Saturday morning we got our breakfast at the Farmer's market around the square which was a pastry and some fresh apple cider (which has to be non-pasteurized to meet Jo's strict criteria for good apple cider).  Kathy then joined us as we walked over to a tail gate party with some people Kathy knows before we hit the stadium for the 11:00 kick off.  It was nice to be able to walk everywhere taking advantage of our new downtown digs.  It was a perfect day for college football - blue skies, temps in the high 60's - especially since the home team won.  We enjoy seeing Bucky doing his pushups after the multiple Badger scores, the 5th Quarter with the Band, along with the game (I personally find it fascinating that the wave is still popular in stadiums - you would think in the last 20 years someone would have come up with a new stadium activity for everyone).

We finished the day with dinner at Kathy's place and then watched some of the Michigan State/Oregon game.  We were up early Sunday for the drive back to Milwaukee where we did a little harvesting in our garden, took in a couple of open houses during a nice walk, and got ready for another fun week of work/home maintenance.

Labor Day at the Lake

We spent all of Labor Day weekend with our good friends, John and Linda, at their place near Lake Geneva.  We had a perfect weekend with very warm temperatures which encouraged us to jump in the lake to cool off and to keep the boat moving when we weren't in the lake to enjoy some cooling breeze.  It was a very busy weekend on the lake as it appeared many other folks had the same ideas.  On Saturday we were joined by their daughter and fiance, Katie and Michael, who fortunately were willing to sit in the sunny seats near the front of the boat while the older folks (that's me now) took advantage of the shade at the back.

Sunday morning Jo, John, and I took out the jet skis for a tour around the entire lake.  Since there were only two jet skis I toured the lake clinging madly to Jo as she tried hard to throw me off the back end.  The woman does have a need for speed sometimes although I'm happy to report I managed to hang on for the entire tour around.  Afterward we all got in a little exercise, mostly to make up for the two fruit pies from Elegant Farmer that happened to show up for dessert, hiking for Jo's favorite breakfast of pancakes at Daddy Maxwell's.  Then it was out on the boat for a dip in the lake to cool off from our exertions.

Sunday evening we ordered a take-out pizza and ate it on the lake while watching the sun slowly slip behind the trees on the horizon.  It was a beautiful evening as the temperatures had moderated a bit with a nice breeze blowing - what could be better, good food, good scenery, and great friends to enjoy it with.  Monday dawned cloudy and stormy looking so we helped get their boat and jet skis stored for the winter and then headed home to some chores and catching up on three days of newspapers before getting a good nights rest from our busy weekend.

Nothing but Sports

We spent last weekend catching up on Wisconsin sports.  We attended games at the Brewers and our first ever Packers game.  Quite the exciting weekend.

First up was the Brewers for a Friday night game.  We were invited by Greg and Rhonda (Jo works with Greg).  We had a great time hearing about their new home purchase - they are upsizing as they near their retirement to have sufficient size for their ever growing family.  We decided to have dinner at the Stadium Club so I wasn't able to partake in my usual ballpark frank, but it made it much easier to have a nice conversation as we watched the start of the game.  We eventually made it to our seats where we had another nice plus - the Brewers won the game, something that hasn't happened too often this year.

Saturday we were up early to get in our workouts before making the 2 hour drive to Green Bay and our first ever visit to storied Lambeau Field.  We were able to find some free on street parking not too far from the game - of course that might having something to do with arriving 3 hours before the start of the game.  We spent the time walking around enjoying all the tailgating, sports bars, and overall show that happens outside of the Packer's stadium.  We then settled into our seats in the NM suite that they arranged for the first time this year.  We were joined by several field reps from Philadelphia office (it was a Packers/Eagles matchup) that Jo had the chance to get to know a little better.  It was great to catch up on a place we lived for 16 years and some of the folks even knew about Rohm and Haas (a company that will all stay near and dear to our hearts since it was our first real job).  Unfortunately for us, but fortunate for them, the Packers didn't look particularly sharp and lost the game (they had pretty much lost the game in the first quarter) but since it was a preseason matchup didn't hurt their Superbowl chances.

After the game it was 2 hour drive home along with a lot of disappointed Packers fans, leading to us spending most of Sunday morning in bed catching up on some sleep.

Wide Open Skies of Boulder

Jo had a board meeting in Boulder that spouses were requested to attend.  So I took one for the team and packed up and joined Jo for a couple of days in Boulder. We landed to bright, sunny skies to really enhance the mountain views.  We stayed right in downtown Boulder with a great view of the Flatirons right outside our window.  While Jo had several meetings to attend they did schedule some downtime for the group and we took advantage of a group hike on the Royal Arch path in perfect 70 degree weather (it was 88 degrees the next day, so great/lucky planning on that one).  It is always fun to hike in the mountains although not sure how it might compare to our lofty Lapham Peak hike from a couple of weeks ago (remember that was all the way up to 1,200 feet - or so).

While in Boulder we had the time to see our sister-in-law, Pat, and her two boys that are in the Boulder area (Karl and Nick).  Karl and Nick had us over for dinner one night and prepared excellent kabobs on the grill with home baked cookies for dessert, courtesy of Pat (notice that was home baked, not home made!).  We finished with Limoncello that Karl had made which was the best that I had ever tasted.  Fortunately, he was willing to share his recipe and we plan to try and reproduce it since it was quite tasty.  It was fun catching up on all the Colorado family doings since we don't get out to Colorado all that much.

We came home on Friday and spent most of Saturday settling back in and having Jo fight a slight cold she caught somewhere on the Boulder trip.  Sunday we decided to see the birds at the Audubon Nature Center and spend the afternoon hiking their trails.  We saw a Barn and Barred owl that were just amazing.  Very interesting to see these birds up close like that.  We actually had a Barred owl at our house in Connecticut that we saw once but never quite that close.  Then it was home to catch up on chores and preparing mentally for another work week - well at least Jo had to do that.