Back to Reality

Jo is out enjoying her first Sunday morning bike ride since last fall and I thought it would be a great time for me to write my weekly blog.  We continued to enjoy unseasonably warm temperatures this week which allowed me to get outside to trim back some trees and bushes, in shorts no less (for those who know the family tree will realize that it is a genetic predisposition, passed on from my father, to ruthlessly prune bushes every spring - we must have had a Neanderthal ancestors who had a passion for an orderly hedge outside their cave).  I got the backyard mostly completed but still need to tackle a few trees in the front and cut back some bushes for where we are planning to install our vegetable garden.  I also ordered some fruit bushes from Burpee this week so that felt like we are just around the corner from having fresh berries to eat.

The rest of the week was mostly adjusting to being back from vacation.  I tackled getting all the laundry from our trip done along with painting the master bedroom closets.  With this painting completed the entire first and second floors are now done.  I only have two more items to paint in the attice before I can declare victory and put away my paint brushes for a little bit (although, the outside of the house beckons!).  Jo had the vacation backlog to get through at work and her usual crush of meetings, but all things considered not too busy of a week. 

My sister, Cheryl, came up on Friday for the day and although the weather wasn't too cooperative we had a great visit mostly sitting around talking and solving all the family and world problems.  So everyone should rest easy that all those issues are behind us.  We headed out to dinner in the Third Ward, Cafe Benelux in case you where curious, where we had a great dinner but over-indulged during dessert.  Then it was hustling her to the train station for her trip back. 

Then came Saturday and our cooking adventure.  We were having Sandy and Scott over for dinner (Jo works with Sandy) and decided to try some new recipes (or as we like to refer to it, experimental food).  We started with making dessert, a caramel cake.  Unfortunately, the recipe failed to mention that the cake was actually the incredibly expanding cake batter.  Everything seemed fine untile we put the filled cake tins into the oven and went to take a shower.  We came down to our kitchen filled with smoke and cake batter flowing out of the cake pans all over the oven where it was promptly charring.  After doing some quick salvage work in the oven, we then spent the day trying to get rid of the smoke itself and the smoke smell (house still smells a little smoky today).  Then we forgot to marinate the chicken for the main course or get our ice cream maker into the freezer early enough.  It was a day of cooking challenges, but in the end everything turned out tasting fine, as you can see in the photo above, and we had a lovely evening with Sandy and Scott.

Today we are going to kick back and relax, try not to cook anything, and prepare for the following week.

Curacao

We took a mid-winter break and headed to the Caribbean to enjoy some fun in the sun.  I'm going to keep the text light so I can fill in more pictures.  After a day of flying from Milwaukee to Chicago to Miami to Curacao we joined Jo's sister, Kathy, along with her son, Drew, and boyfriend (or is it significant other), John, for a week of island breezes and warm temperatures. The weather was warm all week although we had some clouds and a brief rain (usually only for 15 minutes) each day. We spent our days lazing on the beach, doing a little snorkeling, reading on our deck, or exploring the island.

We did enjoy a day exhausting ourselves by hiking to the top of Mt. Christoffel (mountain is fairly relative on a Caribbean island, it was only 1,200 feet) which was a nice hike until you hit the last 300 feet which was mostly straight uphill and required a bit of climbing skills.  We also did several other of the hikes in the Christoffel National Park.  Which meant by the end of the day we had 5 tired people reading to kick back and relax.  This led to us heading home to enjoy rum punches on the deck while playing increasingly rowdy games of Yahtzee.  It also eventually led several of us to regret the power of a well made rum punch (or I should say punches) on the following day.  But the views from the top were spectacular along with getting to spot two of the white tailed deer that live in the park.  We also saw many local birds and a few large iguanas.

Naturally, no tour of Curacao would be complete without checking out the capital, Willemstad.  Although we didn't help the local economy with many purchases, just a small Christmas ornament for us and few T-shirts for Kathy and team, we did get to see many of the local attractions including a wonderful lunch at the Old Market where I sampled the local speciality of stewed goat.  It was delicious and I would highly recommend it for anyone traveling to Curacao.  We also made a few dinners at our villa where we would eat on the deck along with our resident geckos who we assumed were enjoying the various bugs for their evening meals.  Of course the bugs where enjoying us for their evening meals.  Oh, the circle of life.

The end of the week came way too quickly and too soon it was time to get back on the plane to return to reality and jobs (for some anyway).  But we had a incredibly relaxing trip and came back well rested which really was the goal.  It was amazing to land back in Milwaukee where the temperature was 66 degrees.  Made for a much easier transition back from the islands. 

 

Warmth in San Diego

As expected, winter just won't let go even though it hasn't been that cold most of the winter.  We had more snow come this week, but fortunately, as you'll read below, we were in San Diego soaking up some sun and warmth.  We are starting to think about how we might maximize the amount of vegetable gardening we can do both in terms of finding space as well as the light since the houses tend to be pretty close here.  This really helps both of us deal with the winter blues that always seem to hit in late February and early March.

Jo had a business meeting in San Diego so I tagged along to enjoy a few days with temperatures above 30 and the sun actually providing warmth.  We flew in on Wednesday and I spent the next day touring the town and the famous San Diego zoo.  The zoo was a delight, although very expensive to get into, especially with how close to downtown it was.  I really enjoyed seeing the usual cast of zoo characters (lions, tigers, elephants, and giraffes) but more so the really unusual animals.  For instance, the okapi which looks like a cross between a horse, zebra, and giraffe.  You have to wonder what natural pressure led to such unusual markings.  Balboa park was also amazing with several spectacular trees plus having all the museums clustered together like that makes it easy to see several in one day.  I only wished I had more time to see them as I really wanted to tour the Natural History museum as well. 

I was pretty worn out from all my walking so I took it easy on Friday and got caught up on some reading and then Saturday after a morning business session, Jo and I decided to see how much of San Diego we could walk in one afternoon/evening.  We stopped to see the USS Midway which I would highly recommend to anyone going to San Diego (of course, I would always recommend people seeing anything having to do with military history).  They did an excellent job of having a lot of the ship open to see and it was interesting to imagine the lives of the 4,500 sailors on board.  Afterwards, we walked over to "Old Town" to tour and have dinner.  We enjoyed a great Mexican meal before hopping into a taxi back to the hotel to soak our tired feet.  All told we figure we walked about 6 miles that day. 

 Sunday it was an all day trip home, but everything on the home front was still standing.  I should mention that we had to punch several holes in our living room ceiling to try and find a small water leak.  We were unsuccessful and now figure that there must have been some water leaked during the bathroom renovations.  We are now in the process of getting the holes patched up and then I get to paint the living room ceiling and trim again - oh yeah!  I'm working on painting one of the second floor closets leading me ever closer to having the interior all painted.

A little more skiing and Cedarburg

Winter decided to let us know it wasn't quite done with us as yet.  We had a 7 inch snowfall Thursday night into Friday morning.  This was enough to justify hauling out the snowblower so I got some enjoyable time flinging snow far and wide.  Unfortunately when your driveway is only about 30 yards long you don't get to enjoy it as long as you would like.  The snow won't stick around long since we are supposed to go up into the 40's today and possibly get some drizzle.  With the new snow, we got up Saturday morning and headed to Lake Park to get in an hour of cross country skiing.  This provides some nice cross training from our usual running and without all the pounding on our 50 year old joints.  It was cold enough though to make us enjoy the warm shower right afterwards.  The other good news is we found another park this morning during our run that we could try out for skiing so you can get some pictures with a different background.

I spent the week cleaning up the house from the aftermath of our party and then doing my usual painting.  I have now finished the entire first floor of the house - well at least I had it finished, more on this below.  It is time to move up to the second floor and finish off two closets in the master bedroom and Jo's study and then that floor will be done as well.  Although, we just decided to redo the banister which is adding more paint work - will it ever be done.  On top of that we are experiencing a small leak from our master bath which is causing some spotting in the living room ceiling.  We have the contractor who did our bath renovations out trying to the find the source and fix it, but this is going to mean some demolition of the living room.  Leading to, you guessed it, more painting - oh yeah!  My other big accomplishment for the week was finally getting the pottery studio completely set up in the basement.  All that is needed now is to order some glazes, find a local supply of clays and supplies, and get the kiln hooked into the electrical system and we are ready to generate more pots no one really needs (but you have all been to kind to say no to receiving).

Jo had a lot of evening dinners with work this week as she is trying to hire some new folks for her team and had a professional women's dinner to attend.  Then she had a one day conference out of town so I was a bachelor for an evening.  All her travels went well but she didn't have much downtime this week.

Saturday morning after our skiing and lifting, we headed up to Cedarburg, WI which is supposed to be a cute historic town somewhat like New Hope, PA or Mystic, CT.  It was certainly a lovely town and we had a great lunch of delicious hamburgers.  We stopped in several of the stores, mostly just window shopping although Jo did find a necklace and earrings for $20 - quite the deal.  After taking a picture of the Interurban Bridge (was used for a train from Milwaukee to Green Bay with a stop in Cedarburg) we headed home.  We caught up with Sheri and Bruno in CT, via Facetime (again what cool technology) and a dinner of broccoli/cauliflower stir fry (which used up leftover vegetables from our party).  Today we plan to laze around the house and catch up on a few chores.