The Start of Summer

Memorial Day weekend certainly let us know that summer is here.  Temperatures soared through the week such that we started the week in sweatshirts and long pants and ended it in shorts and T-shirts.  It was nice to know that it can get warm in Wisconsin, but it would have been nice to have it warm up a bit more gradually.  Anyway, we had a nice three day weekend that included firing up the grill for the first time this year by grilling up some brats (how Wisconsin is that) on Friday while enjoying cocktails on our back porch.

Saturday morning we headed out for a day of furniture shopping for our place in Madison.  As the work is in the final stages we figured we could start thinking about what how we might like to decorate the place.  We spent about 9 hours hitting the local furniture stores working through all the options for the pieces we need (and we need a lot) and we were successful in finding a few pieces that we think will work in our new place - although we still need to confirm sizes for our space and of course, getting the furniture piece inside the elevator.  We will admit that when you are in your fifth or so store looking at yet another sets of sofas, that all sofas begin to look alike.  We had a lot of fun and we were both surprised that we found several items that are likely to make the final cut - we had both figured we would just spend the day looking.  The one piece of great news was that Jo was able to find a sectional with recliners built in that I'm probably ok with.  The reclining sectional versus standard sectional had been shaping up as the big furniture battle between us - also led to the philosphical discussion of when do you pick function over style (you have a lot of discussion time you need to fill when shopping for 9 hours).

After a nice long walk Sunday morning, where we spent a lot of time discussing the furniture from Saturday, we got out our bikes and headed down to the Third Ward for brunch at our favorite BBQ place in Milwaukee - the Smoke Shack.  Jo enjoyed some sweet potato pancakes while I had Eggs Benedict with smoked brisket as the meat filler, instead of the usual ham slice.  Quite tasty for both and the complimentary cinnamon roll certainly didn't hurt.  Afterwards we hit a few boutique furniture places in the Third Ward and then headed home for some naps as we hadn't fully recovered from our shopping extravaganza the day before.  Monday morning we tended to some chores around the old homestead before hopping back on our bikes to ride over to the Brewer's game.  Beautiful day for a ball game and the home town team continued it's recent winning streak.  Unfortunately, we came out to a flat tire on Jo's bike that necessitated a tire change on the way home - we had a spare inner tube so not a major catastrophe.   All in all, a fun filled weekend - oh, and did I mention Jo found a reclining sectional she liked?

Sunny Albuquerque

I spent last week visiting my parents in beautiful, WARM, sunny New Mexico.  It was nice to get out of the rain and drab skies for a little bit and enjoy some warmth down south.  I had a nice visit (hopefully, my parents would say the same) with several visits to Mexican restaurants for my favorite burritos and sopapillas.  I also managed to get through three books on my visit although to be fair, one of them was a pretty short read.  It was Stephan Hawking's "Grand Design", which posed some interesting theories.  Not sure I can really get my head around ten dimensional space (or eleven, I can't remember exactly which - it just was a lot of dimensions).  Also, the fact that you can have single quanta objects pass through the double slit experiment and actually appear to go through both slits at the same time.  Kind of makes my head hurt and seems weird that small atomic material doesn't have to behave by the same rules large clusters of those particles have to - guess that is why I didn't become a physicist.

Anyway, since it was warmer in New Mexico their spring was further along and the cacti were blooming and I got to enjoy them while walking - we are just having our daffodils finish up - so that became the photo of the week.  Unfortunately, while the trip out was smooth as glass, the way back reminded me the fun of air travel today.  I was delayed out of Dallas on Friday night due to crew and mechanical issues and didn't get home until a little past one in the morning.  That meant the weekend was spent recovering some sleep and lazing around the house - the fact that it was grey and rainy helped provide a nap conducive environment - and I only needed four dimensions to accomplish that, leaving me 6 or 7 spares to use later.

Buy Me Some Cracker Jacks

Last Saturday we enjoyed our first baseball game of the season.  The weather couldn't have been better, sunny and just cool enough to need a light jacket.  We were joined at the Brewer's game by our friends, Patty and Rob, and we all got to enjoy seeing the Brewer's win with winning runs coming in the eighth inning (helped keep the fans in the seats).  While we all enjoyed the game, we did spend some time finding ways of speeding up the game without loosing the things that make baseball a national past time.  For instance, do they really need to warm up between every change of sides?  Basketball and football teams don't come in a either shoot a few free throws or run a few passing routes every time a player is substituted.  We figure just with that change alone, the games could be brought down to about 2.5 hours.

Anyway, enough old man grousing.  For the rest of the weekend we toodled around the house.  We planted our flowers in the front of the house, got our herb garden going, and put two tomato plants in.  The vegetable beds are all ready, just need the temperatures to get a bit warmer.