It Might Be Fall

The weather took a turn towards fall this last week.  Our temperatures late in the week fell into the comfortable low 70's and leaves have started to fall from the trees.  Now wether that is due to the fall temperatures or our lack of rain this summer, I sure don't know.  But regardless of the cause, it is time to pull out the rakes and start moving the leaves around the yard.

As you might guess, we were in Madison again this weekend.  Jo had a board meeting for the chemistry department and I spent the day working on projects around the condo.  This meant getting up a new drying rack in the laundry room, installing some shelves in the closets, and doing a general overall cleaning to get rid of the last of the construction dust.  Fortunately on this visit we didn't have any of our appliances squirting water everywhere, but I realized we haven't tried out our new grill - so maybe we have a chance at a fireball in our future.  Kathy and John came over for dinner - bringing my favorite Rocky's sausage pizza - and to enjoy eating at our new dining room table that came that day.  So in case you are keeping track, we now have living room, dining room, and family room furniture - almost becoming a real house.

Saturday morning dawned bright blue and comfortably cool.  After hitting the Farmer's market for Jo's weekly gallon of apple cider and a few ears of sweet corn, we headed out for a lovely stroll along the lakefront to Picnic Point.  Great walk, but it did us leave us a bit sore later since it was about six miles - and that doesn't count the three miles we walked later in the day.  We also had tickets to a volleyball game, since we wouldn't want a weekend to pass without attending some sporting event.  It was a great game with the Badger women defeating the Rutger Scarlet Knights in three sets.  We decided then to come home early so we could spend a weekend day at home.

Sunday we decided on a bike ride in the morning, mostly to justify heading to Culver's for a concrete mixer (their version of a DQ blizzard) for our lunch time treat.  We then spent some time catching up on reading the numerous newspapers that have accumulated and preparing BBQ ribs with mashed potatoes and our farmer market's sweet corn for dinner.  Great way to end the week. 

Trip Back Memory Lane

It was another weekend of Wisconsin sports, although not a very cheery one.  We packed up the car with another load of books and other odds and ends for the condo and headed over early Friday afternoon.  We went over early to see the ground breaking ceremony for the new Chemistry building.  The Chemistry department is building a new (as if you could build an old), nine story building to house teaching labs and classrooms.  Turns out that 60% of students graduating now need to take a chemistry course - who knew that chemistry had gotten so popular.  The department had been struggling to provide enough course options when crammed in to their current facilities.  What this means is that the main entrance, old teaching labs, and lecture halls where we spent many an hour will be torn down.  We reminisced about the seminars we had to present in the lecture halls, the fun of teaching undergraduates in the labs, and caught up with a few professors.  Fun times especially finding the chart of all the graduates where our names are listed (you can now find us displayed in two buildings in the US - quite the stars).

Saturday we got up early and took a nice long walk to see some of the flooding that occurred on the east side of Madison and to pretend we got a little exercise.  That helped us justify picking up a cinnamon roll at the Farmer's Market to add to our breakfast.  We tried to be good by not getting the morning bun we usually add - we're sure we were calorie neutral between all that walking and the one cinnamon roll.  We then headed out to do a little more furniture shopping - coffee tables where on our list this weekend - before the football game.  Afterwards, it was back home for a quick lunch before lathering on the sun screen and spending three hours baking in the hot sunshine watching the Badgers lose to Brigham Young.  Great way to lose about 15 pounds of body weight through sweating as the day was very warm and very humid.  Wisconsin is supposed to be cool and dry this time of year.  But, even though we lost and had completely sweated through our clothes, we had a great time cheering on our team, watching the band, and spending the day outside.  We also tried to keep reminding ourselves that we will miss this heat come the November football games.

We headed home early on Sunday so that we could finally get to the gym on a weekend and also so that we could catch the Packer's game.  Another not so great game and coupling that with the Brewer's losing to the Pirates, you can see why it wasn't a very cheery weekend for Wisconsin sports.  Nothing too exciting planned for the week, the usual mix of work, exercise, and home chores.  Oh that and packing up another load of boxes to continue the transfer of stuff from one house to the other.

More Sports

As mentioned before, we are now heavily into our fall sports schedule, so expect a lot of retelling of games and arena pictures.  We spent the weekend in Madison to attend our first football game of the season.  We got to check out our new seats which are at the 35-40 yard line so pretty good views.  It was an absolutely lovely day with temperatures in the low 70's and just enough clouds to give us a break from the sun now and then.  We were playing my parents home town team, the New Mexico Lobos.  It was an exciting game as the Badgers started out a bit sluggish and didn't really get going until the third quarter leading to the win.  Afterwards, we celebrated the win with dinner at a local Mexican restaurant and a few too many margaritas.  We weren't really celebrating the win, we were just hungry and wanted to find a place that wouldn't be crammed with Badger fans.  The margaritas were because we weren't driving - it's nice living downtown.

The other thrill for the weekend was we decided we should make sure all of the various new appliances were working which led to our first minor flood when we found that our new dishwasher's drain line wasn't hooked up correctly.  So we spent a bit of our Friday night sopping up the water as it trickled out from under our cabinets while trying to troubleshoot the source of the flood.  We got everything handled and our contractor will be back out this week to try and get the drain line connected using the right parts.  The good news is that the tub and all the showers don't leak.  So that should be everything.

Otherwise, we got a couple of nice long hikes in around town - mostly hiking towards food - and enjoyed watching the beginning of the Madison Ironman Triathlon on Sunday before heading back home (just to note, watching people do an Ironman really makes you feel like a slug).  We did do a little furniture shopping on the way home finding a bench for the end of our new bed at Ethan Allen.  Almost have all the new furniture selected - just need a couple of end tables yet.  The picture above is of a moth I found sitting on the house.  Very pretty - probably comes from a voracious caterpillar though that munched its way through my garden.  Used it this week mostly to break up the Badger photos.

Time for College Sports - Again

I headed over to Madison on Thursday to do the final close out on our condo renovations.  While not everything is 100% complete, we are close enough to consider it done.  So after nine months we can finally sleep in our unit and enjoy it on weekends.  To help in our enjoyment, we also received our new living room and some of the dining room furniture.  So not only do we have an actual bed to sleep in, there is furniture to sit on the living room besides folding chairs.  Quite the improvement.  And though we now have dining room chairs our table is still in progress so we are still using our kitchen island for dinners.

I spent the the rest of Thursday and Friday taking care of several chores around the place - installing blinds, cleaning the floors, doing the first bake out of the fireplaces and ovens (which also gave me the opportunity to find out the smoke detectors are operational), and doing the first load of laundry.  Jo joined me later that evening where we used our newly baked out oven to make our first actual meal since we owned the place.  Granted it was frozen pizza, but still we are counting it since it did involve turning the oven on - something we hadn't done before.  We then spent the evening watching the Badger football game.

Saturday we hit the Farmer's market for our favorite apple cider before getting our tape measure and notes together for another day of furniture shopping.  We are now trying to fill out some of the smaller items, like bar stools, rugs, and a few easy chairs.  It always amazes us that one: furniture shopping takes a really long time, and two: it is absolutely exhausting.  We got home in time for a bit of a rest before joining John for dinner at Mooyah (great shakes!!) and our first Badger volleyball game of the season.  Exciting game as the home town team beat the number two Texans.  I know it isn't a great picture - I still haven't figured out how to take a good photo when it is really light in the background.

Sunday we had a nice long walk around town before joining our friends, Jim and Judy, for brunch and we then spent the afternoon working on a jigsaw puzzle.  After a light dinner (brunch was an all you can eat buffet) it was over to the UW Fieldhouse again, for another volleyball game.  Afterward the game, we headed back to Milwaukee while enjoying a 90 minute drive in the pouring rain.  What fun.  Monday we got some exercise in along with a few chores around the house so we are prepared for the work week ahead.