Number 400

That last post hit a key milestone - the 400th post on this blog.  Seems like cause for a celebration.

And yes, this was a shameless attempt at padding my blog numbers for the future.

College Sports start another Season

So we were off to Madison yet again as we continue the process of nailing down the renovations to our home-away-from-home.  This week it was fireplace surrounds and lighting.  Fortunately, most of our lights are going to be recessed lights so we didn't have too many actual fixtures to decide on.  Much like tile stores, I find lighting stores to be just overwhelming - just too, too many choices.  I asked the lighting lady, they had 80 catalogs from lighting manufactures all of which are roughly the size of the old New York telephone book (for those that can remember what a telephone book looked like).  We did manage to find the lights we needed and hopefully they will amaze you the first time you visit the finished condo.  If not, just fake it for us.

After that is was off to find fireplace finishes.  Not much luck at the first store, but we had success once we moved to a stone retailer.  Found a really cool stone for the mantle in the family room and something that will work for us on the surrounds and the hearths - again remember to ooh and aah the first time.

After all those conversations and selections, we needed a break that included some fun.  So Friday evening we hit a Thai restaurant and then headed over to the UW Field House to watch the Badger's women's volleyball team beat Louisville.  It was a great match and we particularly enjoyed sitting on our names (yes, we broke down and actually bought season tickets this year and don't ask me why no one can ever get Joann's name right - especially since I always spell it and I'm pretty sure I'm not so senile yet that I'm adding an e at the end in my spelling).  Saturday morning after a quick stop to do a little more shopping for another renovation item, we hit the Pancake Cafe to enjoy a hearty breakfast (hearty at our age, means we really didn't need to eat the rest of the day), we then spent the day measuring, debating, and remeasuring various items around the place as we continue to try and figure out this renovation.  We also found some time to get a few more pieces into the puzzle we have ongoing in Madison.

Then it was off to La Hacienda for some Mexican with Kathy and a quick catch up on her happenings - one of which included the Lady Gaga concert in Chicago (pretty cool).  After a very good dinner we headed for round two of  Women's volleyball where our Badgers downed North Carolina in straight sets.  Two for two at the beginning of the season.  Then it was a long drive home to wake up Sunday morning to gray skies and off and on rain.  We spent most of Sunday catching up on reading newspapers and searching for a tub - yep, we are living the wild and crazy life.

Finally Open

Northwestern Mutual's new office tower is finally officially open.  All thirty two floors will begin to be occupied starting early next week.  Next time you are in town, make sure to ask Jo for a tour.  We had some rain storms this week and Jo snapped this beautiful shot of the rainbow with the new office tower on the left and the art museum in the middle.

Boating Madison

Another week and another trip to Madison as we continue to try to select items for our renovation project.  We focused a lot on tiles this week and there are just too many tile options.  Between trying to find a color you like along with a style and then compounding this with trying to decide what to use in each room along with what to do in the bathrooms for tile insets and what should be used as backsplashes in the kitchen and do you want to do the same thing in each room or change it up room by room or floor by floor and what should the pottery space have in it so that it is easy to clean and oh make sure it all these choices work with the countertops, flooring, and cabinet colors.  Well, you get the idea that we were a bit overwhelmed on Friday.  But we are making progress as we are about 90-95% of the way there on our kitchen layout and cabinet choice.  Tiles - still a work in progress.

After that fun, we joined John and Linda at the Memorial Union to imbibe just enough to relax and then a bit more.  They had brought their boat up to Madison in John's ongoing quest to boat every lake in Wisconsin (just googled that - 15, 074 documented lakes in Wisconsin, so he has a few to go).  We enjoyed a pitcher of beer while enjoying the ambience of the Terrace at the Union and the views of the lake, before getting on their boat for a short tour of Lake Mendota.  Afterwards we enjoyed burgers and sandwiches at DLUX downtown before ushering them into our construction zone.  Fortunately, they were troopers about the state of the condo and the fact that there aren't actually any real beds in our unit - only air mattresses (we take the AirBnB message seriously).

Saturday morning dawned sunny and cool; perfect weather for a stroll around the Farmer's market where we picked up some fresh peaches, apple cider, and a few breakfast treats.  After getting our calories we headed to Skipper Bud's marina to pick up the boat for a day on the lake.  We cruised around the entire circumference of Lake Mendota seeing Madison really for the first time from that view (we had rented a canoe about 20-25 years ago with Kathy, but only covered a small portion by the University).  It provided a new perspective and, as you might imagine, there are some spectacular lake houses on the lake to enjoy.  After another brief stop at the Terrace for some Babcock Hall ice cream and to meet friends of John and Linda, we braved the Yahara River lock to cruise around Lake Monona (remember John's lake quest), before moving back up river to Mendota and packing up the boat for the trip home.

We decided to drive home late Saturday night and enjoyed a bike ride early Sunday morning before putting up another two batches of pickles (that is nine batches so far this year - and even though the cucumber plants are quitting any time soon, we think we have had it on pickles) and catching up on things around the house.

Quincy is Lovely in the Summer

Maid Rites

A certain, special someone celebrated a milestone over the weekend.  It has been 40 years since Jo graduated high school and left her hometown to see the bright lights of the big cities in the world.  Her high school class got together over the weekend to see how much everyone changed, reminisce about old times, and catch up on what is happening today in their lives and families.  I had the opportunity to attend along with Jo and chat with some of her classmates to find out about the Jo before I met her - cheerleader, brainiac, and chem nerd.  Fortunately, my high school hasn't had reunions (or they decided there wasn't any need to invite me) so I haven't aged at the same rate as Jo - I mean really 40 years since high school.  Jo seemed to have a good time since we didn't leave until 11:30 PM and her voice was all crackly the next day from talking so much (yes, it actually is possible for Jo to talk too much.  I know - it surprised me as well).
 

We spent the rest of the weekend visiting places and restaurants from Jo's childhood.  This involved eating Maid Rites at Maid Rite (a maid rite is ground hamburger piled on a bun with mustard, onions, and pickles - it is different, but a Quincy institution, at least the shakes were delicious), pizza at Cassano's, breaded tenderloin sandwiches at Elder's and hitting the Knights of Columbus BBQ.  Wasn't the best weekend for our diets, but it was all "comfort food" - at least for Jo.  We also spent a morning walking around town which included a visit to the house Jo grew up in that her father built himself and her high school where I think she had cheerleading flashbacks as she seemed to want to break into cheers.

Elder's

We also had time to catch up with her good friends, Mary and Tina, along with her cousin Jim, to find out what has been happening to them since she last saw them in person - which has been years and years for all.  All too soon it was time to pack up and hit the road for home.  On the way home we stopped in Lake Geneva (since the route from Quincy leads right by it) and spent an afternoon on the lake with John and Linda.  Their youngest daughter was their, along with her beau, so we caught up on her summer adventures while enjoying a great day cruising the lake.  It was a nice way to relax from weekend and get mentally prepared for another work week (well at least for Jo).

Pickle Time

The cucumbers are coming in fast and furious now - especially since I put in four plants this year.  So it was time to put up some bread and butter pickles this last Sunday.  We canned three batches and could probably do another three or four this weekend.  We just have to decide how many pickles can two people eat in a year.

Might be time for Jo to start taking some cucumbers into work instead.

A New View of Milwaukee

Another whirlwind weekend.  We started off on Friday in Madison meeting with some of the renovation team to begin making some of the selections needed for our condo redesign.  We managed to get most of the kitchen designed in terms of what cabinets are going where, but now we need to figure out the fun details of what countertop and tile floor to install.  Since we are both such great color mavens, that is sure to be easy - NOT.  We have found that we tend to gravitate to brown cabinet colors with green colors in our counters and tiles.  No idea why those colors speak to us - but most of our selections seemed to be moving in that direction.  And just to make our color choices even more complex we found out late Friday night that we can change the color of our wood floors - oh fun, since that now means another color we have to select.

We came home late Friday night so that we could be up bright and early for a bike ride out to the State Fair grounds for another visit to the Wisconsin State Fair.  We enjoyed a beautiful, sunny day and started off with a fresh Danish kringle for breakfast.  Then it was time for Jo to get her annual dose of cows with the obligatory petting of a few of them (being a city boy, I find cows a bit scary and very smelly - why would anyone want to actually pet one is beyond me, but it seems to touch some deep peaceful part in Jo).  We spent some time watching the cow judging trying to understand the subtle rules that makes one cow better looking than another - something to do with the size of their haunches (or loins, or some other cow part) along with how straight are their spines.  Not sure what school gets you an degree in cow judging but since you spend a lot of time around the wrong end of the cow lifting their tails, I'm very sure it is not in my future.  

Since we biked to the fair we felt virtuous enough to enjoy some deep fried, bacon wrapped tater tots.  They were really, really good (but then what deep fried thing isn't tasty) and not all that large so we we didn't fall too far off our diets (we saved that for later in the day, see below).  We spent the rest of our fair time checking out some of the other animals (almost got run over by a pig for the second time at the fair), the 4-H projects, and the expo hall before heading back home.

Later on Saturday, John and Linda came up to Milwaukee with their boat.  John had always wanted to cruise the Milwaukee river and this was finally the time.  We launched out of McKinley marina which is quite close by and cruised around town enjoying the sites from a completely different view.  We did go outside the breakwater so we can officially say we were on Lake Michigan proper and went up both the Milwaukee and Kinnickinnic rivers.  Lots of other boaters were enjoying the nice weather along with us including quite a few kayakers.  After boating we tucked into a pasta dinner (you know boating burns a lot of calories - even if it is a motor boat) followed up with a visit to Kopps for frozen custard.  There isn't too many times that John is in Milwaukee with out finding him at a Kopps.  Of course, it isn't exactly like he had to twist our arms to get us to go.

Sunday we headed back out on the river picking up John's friend from grade school, Chris, and his wife, Sandy.  We cruised the river some more enjoying the solitude, since it wasn't anywhere near as crowded, before boating to Lake Front Brewery for lunch.  After that, it was time to cruise home and pack up the boat for their trip back to Lake Geneva.