Snow

I'm going to keep it simple this week - we are enjoying (?) lots of the white stuff this year.  Every three days or so, the weather gods decide to dump another 6-9 inches of snow on us.  We had about 9 inches in Tuesday and then last night - just for fun - we got another 5-6 inches.  We have had so much that it takes major effort to heave the snow off the driveway to the top of the piles.  We are also building a major ski hill in the backyard since half of the driveway snow needs to be pushed into the backyard.  Oh and a little hint - don't buy a house where you can't throw the snow to both sides of the driveway when you live in Wisconsin! 

I have considered turning the ski hill in the backyard into a snow fort - probably won't since digging in the cold, in the snow, just doesn't sound that appealing to my body.  But, it would be a really awesome snow fort - so maybe.

Pizza, Pizza, and some more Pizza

Another wintery weekend in February.  Fortunately, we spent it with good friends and hardly noticed the bone chilling wind - well we noticed it a little.  We headed to Chicago for a weekend of fun and frivolity with our friends, John and Linda.  We started off with seeing how lobster rolls in Chicago compare with those from Connecticut.  John and Linda had wanted to check out the Original Island Shrimp House so we came along to help in the judging.  The food was quite tasty, but it wasn't the right kind of lobster roll - it was a toasted bun filled with cold lobster salad instead of just hot buttered lobster.  To make up for it (or we could all have just been ravenous) we added plates to pass of crab cakes and fried clams.  Needless to say, no one left hungry.  But just in case we headed to their house to a belatedly celebrate my birthday from last year (nice of them to put the year on the cake in case I had forgotten).  While not exactly something you want to be reminded of, you can't argue with cake (well it is really the icing, the cake is just a carrier).  I did enjoy the rousing rendition of Happy Birthday since Jo, Linda, and John are all good singers!!

Saturday we filled the day with a Pizza Tour - hence the blog title this week.  The food reporter for a local Chicago TV station has organized a pizza tour of Chicago pizzerias, of which there are apparently several thousand (although some of them are just multiple sites of the same chain).  We hit four of the ten different kind of pizzas the food guy has categorized pizzas into.  Each stop we got the history behind the pizza, the history of the particular restaurant we were at, a slice or two of the featured pizza, and some tips on how the pizza was prepared.  Great way to spend a brisk, wintery day especially since we got to visit each of the kitchens and stand by the roaring pizza ovens.  The owners were all very open about how they make their pizzas and Jo and I learned some new tricks to try the next time we put together a homemade pie.  We came home stuffed with pizza and knowledge - a very good day.

Later that evening, after we managed to digest a bit, we did a murder mystery event at the local historical society.  While neither Jo or I guessed the right villain - John and Linda's son's girlfriend did and was the overall winner - we did have fun trying to figure it out from the clues provided and Jo got to do a little acting as one of the characters.  Again, a fun way to spend a winter evening along with enjoying some appetizers and desserts (notice the food theme for the weekend).

Due to the threat of a snow storm (which wasn't as bad a predicted) we headed home early on Sunday to get a little time at the gym  - got to do something about all that pizza - and then some more prep work for our upcoming move.  Also got to shovel a little snow to burn a few more calories.

All About the Weather

Last week was all about the weather - first it snowed another 7-8 inches, then came absolutely frigid temperatures, as in freeze the pipes in the house kind of cold (which fortunately didn't happen to me, but did to my neighbor), next up was a delightful warm up into the 40's just to melt some of the snow and then to cap it off was freezing rain this week.  So we are pretty much trying to cover all the weather options for a winter in Wisconsin - all in one week.  Either way, we made it through the arctic temperatures without too much trouble, especially as I pulled out my double insulated flannel shirt (it has a fleece lining inside a flannel shirt - very warm).  The photo was the snow piles prior to the warmer temperatures.  Thank goodness for some of it melting as the piles were getting higher than I could comfortably throw the snow.

We did made a quick over to Madison over the weekend to take in a basketball game Friday night.  We drove over saw the game, spent the night, and then after brunch with Kathy and John headed home all within about 15 hours.  Not the most relaxing trip to our condo, but it did allow us some time over the weekend to get busy around the house organizing and weeding through years and years of accumulated stuff.  Amazing how much junk you gather over time, especially as I think of myself as someone who regularly tosses things.  But the one true part of life, the bigger the place you have to store things, the more things you store.

That was about it for our so exciting weekend, besides a couple of nice long walks to enjoy the warmer temps, watching the fairly boring Super Bowl (although the nachos we made were quite the treat), and doing a little reading.  We are living large.