Welcome to Winter

Winter decided to finally make its grand entrance this week.  Starting off with dumping about 6 inches of snow last Saturday into Sunday.  After getting this all cleared off, the second round of winter fun came with bitter cold temperatures.  While I'm sure there are countless photos of thermometers hitting every type of social media, I decided to add mine to the mix (Jo was the one being creative with the photo making sure my smiling mug was included).  While driving to Madison this last Saturday, we managed to hit -28 degrees on the car's thermometer.  While I'm not climbing this is the most accurate measuring device on the planet, it is still pretty impressive to see a reading that low.  The really concerning part of all this is the forecast calls for the next several days to be even colder.  With a high on Wednesday of -10.  Time to pull out all the warmest clothes from the closet and hunker down with some hot chocolate and a warm fire. 

Just to clearly demonstrate we are real Wisconsinites, we headed out to several sporting events during our cold snap.  We got to see the Bucks play again on Friday night with Jo hosting several of her team members in the Northwestern Mutual suite at the Fiserv Forum downtown.  We were up then bright and early on Saturday to enjoy taking pictures of the frigid temperatures as we headed to Madison to see the Badgers play Northwestern (there is a theme running through there).  We spent a fun evening then in Madison starting work on a 3,000 piece jigsaw puzzle (although they probably should now be called laser puzzle, since I'm pretty sure they aren't cut with a jigsaw anymore).  We are pretty sure this one will be on the table through to the fall.

We came early Sunday morning to get to the gym and then spend a bit of time organizing the house, reading the newspaper, and prepping for another snow storm and cold, cold, temperatures.

Similar Photo - Different Week

We were off to Madison again last weekend.  We headed over early to beat our first snowstorm of the season.  Lucky that we did as it dumped around 4-6 inches and travel would have been a nightmare.  This gave us a little extra time to hang out and relax.  Although, lately relaxing seems to be tied to falling asleep.  Whenever I just try to relax, such as read a book, that seems to send a signal to my brain that it is time to get in some quality napping time.  Anyway, we had brought over pizza to heat up and had a lovely night sitting around talking about our exciting and stressful week, watching a fun movie, and heading to bed a bit earlier than usual.

Saturday morning we decided to forgo our usual morning walk since the sidewalks and streets where still snow covered.  This provided some time to finish a few work items around the condo - bolting down some shelves and installing a drying rack under our upstair sink.  All exciting things, I know.  Then it was off to the Wisconsin versus Michigan basketball game.  It was quite the thriller with the Badgers hanging on to defeat the undefeated Wolverines.  At the buzzer, the students (and a few student wanna-bees) rushed the floor.  There was a tremendous energy in the stadium and hardly anyone left for 20 minutes.  You would have thought we just won the NCAA final four championship - not just a regular season game, but then it was Michigan we beat.

Later that day we had dinner with our friends, Jim and Judy, at the Tornado supper club.  Supper clubs are scattered throughout Wisconsin it seems and range from upper end establishments (with prices to match) to places you would want to think twice about entering.  Fortunately, Tornado is on the upper end side and we had a tasty dinner with excellent cocktails - we were celebrating so there might have been more than one cocktail consumed.

Sunday we joined Kathy and John for a great broccoli and bacon egg frittata thingy (you really can't go wrong by simply adding bacon to almost any breakfast dish), before heading home.  We did stop at the Container store on the way home to do a little shopping - I really think I could go there every week, it really speaks to the organizer inside of me.  On MLK day, Jo had the day off and the NM suite at the Bucks arena, so we got to see the hometown Bucks beat the Dallas Mavericks and complete our basketball bookends to our weekend.

Condo is Still There

We finally got back to our Madison digs this past weekend.  We hadn't been there for over six weeks and we missed the place.  Fortunately, everything was fine - no water leaking, all the appliances were still running, and the heat was still on (which is critical this time of year).

We were in town for a basketball game and a show at the Overture Center.  Friday night after a tasty meal of lasagna from  Gino's deli, we headed to the game.  While the game was a both exciting and a bit disappointing.  The Badgers were behind most of the game, but managed to tie the score as time ran out to force the game into overtime.  But the extra five minutes of playing time, while pleasing the crowd with free extra basketball, didn't help the Badgers get a win.  Anyway, Jo managed to score a free mini-ball so aren't we lucky!!  If you play your cards right, it could be in a present coming to you soon.

Saturday we slept in a bit and then headed for a nice stroll to the Curve diner for breakfast.  We think they have some of the best omelets in town and their french toast is pretty good as well.  After that hearty meal we needed to walk further to burn off some calories and Jo got to try out my new heated gloves - needless to say with the cool temperatures and wind, they were a hit.  Now I just have to figure out how to get them back.  Before our show, we celebrated Kathy's birthday at Blue Agave.  We both learned that two margaritas and a full Mexican dinner just before a show isn't the brightest of plan for staying awake through the performance.   We did enjoy helping Kathy turn the clock on another year and the show - Finding Neverland - was both well performed and an interesting subject (based around the life of the author of Peter Pan, James Barrie). 

Sunday we got up early to get back to Milwaukee so we could squeeze a work out at the gym in before spending the afternoon watching some football.

A New Mexican Christmas

We spent a wonderful five days in New Mexico over the holidays visiting my folks.  The weather cooperated by being sunny and reasonably warm.  Living in Wisconsin we certainly miss the sun during the winter, so having several days with the sun out was a real treat.  We were able to get in several nice long hikes in the hills surrounding my parent's house and while the wildlife was fairly absent (although my parents claimed they saw a coyote just before we got back from a hike), the solitude and the chance for us to chat was nice.  Days were spent reading, putting a challenging puzzle together, and lots of card playing.  Fortunately, for a second visit in a row, my Mom and I emerged victorious with the overall winning record.  Partly it comes from our very wise playing and some from good luck with the cards - but, I'm mostly putting it down to our deeply insightful bidding and card playing.  Our opponents might disagree, but as I've said before - I write this blog, so I get to decide on the outcome. 

We came home to enjoy a few days of vacation before Jo had to head back to work.  We spent these goofing off and enjoying watching a lot of college football bowl games.  One of which was our hometown Badgers winning the Pinstripe Bowl - yeah!  We also were able to take in this year's TSO concert at the new Milwaukee arena with family and friends.  They gave another great concert with flames shooting everywhere, people being lifted into the air while playing guitars and violins, and lasers galore.  For New Year's Eve, Kathy and John joined us for a pretty quiet night of playing some games, sipping Prosecco, and watching the NY ball drop at 11 PM.  It was off to bed for us so we didn't technically make it to the official central time zone midnight.  But we then we are getting up there in years.