Post Traffic

I just checked and Malaysia and Poland have surged into second and third place in viewing the blog.  Still not sure why, but that is what Google says is happening.  Not sure why I'm no longer that popular in Russia.

Really Short Basketball Game

We had tickets to see the Milwaukee Bucks play a pre-season game last Friday using Northwestern Mutual's suite at the Bradley Center.  We snapped a few pictures of their new playing floor and we were enjoying watching the beginning of the game with our pizza and chicken nuggets when all of sudden play stopped.  Players milled around on the floor for a little bit before the entire opposing team headed for the locker room.  Everyone started wondering if it was some kind of crazy TV time out or the team needed some weird equipment repairs (blown out shoe bottom anyone?).  Next up, the Bucks head for the locker room - still no announcement on what is happening and why all the players are gone.  Finally after about 20-25 minutes, they announce that the brand new floor (just installed this year!!) is too slippery for the players to safely play on.  So instead of a nice evening watching some basketball live, we got to see 10 minutes of play, enjoy the food and company in the suite, and get to bed by 10.  Not exactly how we thought the evening was going to go.  We have apparently gotten another set of tickets for this Saturday's game to make up for the lack of a game on Friday - but they don't come with complementary parking, free food, or the nice padded seats in the suite (do I sound a wee bit spoiled?).  I continue to maintain that football remains the most dedicated sport - they play in any kind of weather on a too hard (think Green Bay in the winter) or too soft field.  And the fans remain despite the weather. 

The rest of the week for us consisted of trying to overcome the jet lag we both suffered - this was due not only to the time zone changes but also the fact we were no longer on vacation (mostly the latter cause would be my guess).  We also adjusted our schedules back to our home routine.  This meant getting to the gym a couple of times and starting back up our running after a two week break.  Amazing how hard it is to keep in shape and how easy it is to lose any endurance and conditioning. 


Since we had several frosts last week, it was time to get the flower and vegetable beds ready for the winter.  So we harvested the last of the onions from the garden and cut off the dead plants.  We still have rutabagas in the ground and we are waiting a while to pull our parsnips and Brussels sprouts.  Time soon to start thinking about what next year's garden will have in it.  Since we aren't going to do cucumbers next year, that opens some space for something new.  I might put in some potatoes next year - although I'm not too sure how they will do in our raised beds.

For the rest of the weekend, we took it somewhat easy.  Saturday after the gym we walked to a deli for lunch that we hadn't tried before and had great sandwiches (a club for me as I continue my clubs across America campaign) followed by hiking up to the frozen yogurt shop.  We figured we could afford the calories since we walked about 1.5 miles to get there.  Sunday we spent some time winnowing our safari pictures down to about 240 photos that capture the highlights of our trip (this is what you will be shown if you ask to see our photos - unless you volunteer for the full 1,300).  I'll continue to post a few new photos for the next several weeks before you tire of hearing about our trip.

More Pictures from Botswana

I was informed that I didn't post enough pictures by you know who.  So to show my responsiveness to feedback (which is always a gift), here are a few more photos from our trip.  Hopefully this will meet the expanded picture needs by the boss.  Hope you enjoy.

Carrots, Carrots, and more Carrots

We came home to wonderful Wisconsin weather - cold.  We went from 95 degrees in Africa to 40 degrees here.  Quite the change to your system.  As there are multiple nights below freezing predicted we decided to harvest anything from the garden that wouldn't survive the frost.  That meant bringing in the last of the tomatoes, carrots, squash, cucumbers, and onions.  This lead to quite the harvest, we brought in over 10 lbs. of carrots alone.  While most of our carrots have unusual shapes (not exactly sure what is causing that problem) they still taste great and we enjoyed a delicious and warming carrot soup on Sunday night.

We are trying the trick of ripening green tomatoes in a paper bag in the house that Jo read about in our local paper.  Hopefully this works and don't just land up with a whole lot of rotting tomatoes in the basement. 

We are all nestled into our blankets at home and will be changing over to our flannel sheets for the chilly nights to come.  Quite a re-entry back into the part of the world that enjoys a winter.