I'll start with some humor today. Jo and I headed to Racine, WI yesterday to see the Peep exhibit at the Racine Art Museum. This is the third annual showing of what you can do with Peeps and it was really pretty funny. The creativity and detail in the various constructions was amazing. I've highlighted a few with photos of our favorites for your enjoyment. We are giving serious consideration of entering next year, as long as we remember. We did learn that many of the contestants buy their Peeps this year for next year's entry so that they are nice and solid for their entry. We didn't plan that far in advance but we'll see next year. We spent the rest of the day walking around Racine which we hadn't seen as yet and enjoyed lunch at a pub right in downtown. It seemed like a nice downtown area although pretty quiet on a sunny Saturday in April. It reminded us both of our own Midwestern hometowns in Illinois.
Jo earns the spotlight for the most interesting week although it was for the disasters that befell her and not for the exciting fun. She was in Charleston for the week at a conference of insurance HR leads (yes, there is a conference for HR people who are only in the insurance business - can you say conference specialization!). Unfortunately, on her way there she left her IPad in the seat back pocket of her flight from Milwaukee to Newark. She didn't discover this until she was in Charleston. While she contacted United and informed them of where it was, it has disappeared from sight. So either someone is now enjoying a free IPad (although locked with a password) or it is sitting in United's lost and found to ultimately be sold.
But wait, this is only the start. Later that week she managed to snap her reading glasses in two simply taking them off. Since she can't read anything without either strong sunlight (not usually found in hotel conference rooms) or her glasses this precipitated a quick trip out to find a drug store for some new ones. Then for the icing on the cake, United lost her luggage on the way home. While promising to deliver it later on Friday, we had heard nothing by Saturday morning. Fortunately, we decided to stop at the airport on our way to Racine and low and behold there was her bag. After her week, she is spending today decompressing.
My week by comparison was relatively calm - besides having to go in and change our passwords on multiple sites that the IPad had access to. I worked on our new garden beds to install watering systems and organized the basement a little more. The big accomplishment in the basement was finally getting a work bench constructed. And in the spirit of helping the environment I constructed the bench out of lumber that came from the various destruction projects around the house - old shelving pieces, crates from our move, etc. This meant making a few compromises to get everything to fit right, but the bench seems solid and does give me a place to do some work along with having my vice finally set up.
Friday night we attended the Milwaukee Admirals hockey game (the team is in the American Hockey league - I think it is a farm team for the NHL, but I couldn't seem to find that information on their web page). As at most sporting events, any more, the entertainment between the periods/quarters was fascinating. I personally like the human sling shot event and would love to do it myself. And of course, it wouldn't be a WI sporting event without involving food somehow - while we didn't get the racing "port cheeses" this time we had to admit pushing a hamburger on the ice with your head comes in a close second. Saturday night we headed back to the Bradley Center to watch the Milwaukee Bucks play the NJ Nets. We also got to compare the Bucks indoor blimp to the Admirals one (the Buck's win since they apparently can afford a much bigger and fancier blimp). The other highlight, at least according to several of the ladies joining us, was Chris Humphries plays for the Nets (that's Kim Kardashian's ex - I only include this fact to increase the number of hits this web page gets in search engines!). We had a great time both nights meeting people from Jo's team at Northwestern Mutual (we were using their suite at the Bradley Center) and enjoying the games. For those keeping track we went 50% this weekend, with the Admirals losing and the Bucks winning.
For the remainder of the weekend, we spent Saturday morning exercising and reading the paper. Then Saturday afternoon, I tackled a new book and computer game while Jo also worked on her computer skills by working on a game she has going on her IPad (yes that is a new IPad since the other one has yet to be turned up by United). Today we are planning to go to Parade of Homes like event where several houses that where either newly built or remodeled are open for visits. Also, Jo's sister is joining us for the tour and dinner.
The rest of the week was relatively quiet for both of us. Jo's week was busy, but nothing out of the ordinary, although she did have an after work event with some folks from Professional Dimensions (a local group of business women that she is joining). I puttered around the house knocking off a few of the smaller chores that needed to done. I also put a little more time on our raised beds although hit a few snags that required some parts from online stores to get past.
