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My Weekend in a Nutshell

Friday: Worked til 5:30, picked up Adam, biked home, worked until 11:30pm. Then played Wii Sports until after midnight. Hurt shoulder (pathetic, I know) playing Tennis, Baseball and Bowling.

Saturday: Planned on sleeping in, taking it easy and doing more work. Maybe improving Wii baseball and tennis games.

Saturday, actual:
Up at 8:00 a.m. Cleaned dining room and part of kitchen, cleaned living room.
Did more work.
Drove in Amy’s van (thank you, Amy!) to Chicago with Adam, his best friend from daycare, friend’s older brother, and their mother to the Allstate Arena in Rosemont to see The Wiggles!

Car ride down: minimal drama, going pretty well. Thinking that this will be pretty easy.

Fresh Garden Produce

Last night I had a craving. I wanted nachos. I had red onions, cheese and tortilla chips. I needed more. I braved the ferocious man-eating mosquitoes and headed to my garden where I plucked 2 red, ripe, delicious Roma tomatoes and a fresh jalapeño.
I chopped up the veggies and scattered them on a bed of chips, covered with freshly shredded cheese. Pop in microwave for 1 minute et voila! Tasty nachos.
The tomatoes were sweet and delicious, the jalapeño hot, but not too hot.

Tonight I thought my dinner was missing something. So, once again, I braved the mosquitoes and plucked 2 more red, ripe tomatoes from the garden.
I chopped the roma up in slices, drizzled olive oil over them and lightly peppered them.

Neverending Battle of Home Improvements

Often times people display a startling lack of intellectual curiosity. I am as guilty of this as anyone else.
The facts before us:
1)Our hot water heater has serious trouble generating hot water in the winter.
2)The vent in the living room between the sofas blows cold air in the winter.
3)A few, er, mice found their way into our house this spring.

These things are all related, but it took #3 for us to actually tie them together.

A detailed search in the back recesses of our basement where we seldom venture led to a curious discovery. The window back there was missing half the pane of glass. Lest you think we’re incredibly stupid, there was something else in it’s place – the previous owner had set up some venting tube for doing wood working ventilation.

Western Vacation

Our vacation out west photos are now up here.

I may try and turn some of the shots I took into panoramas. If that’s successful, those photos will go up there as well.

High Water Photos

A few weeks ago, I took some photos around Monona Bay of the high water. I put some of the best up here.

Missing Books :(

It came to my attention late last night that we’re missing 2 books from our little library. We have the distinct feeling that we may have loaned them out to someone at sometime, but don’t know who or when.
So here are the books:
London
Russka
both paperback, in the 1000 page range, and by Edward Rutherford.
If you happen to have then, we don’t need them back immediately, but would like to know where they actually are. If no one has them, well then we’ll have to buy new copies.

Back from Vacation

In 7 days:
Badlands
Black Hills (incl. Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse)
Eastern Montana
Beartooth Pass (a road climbing up to 11,000 feet – a scenicly terrifying way to get into Yellowstone)
Yellowstone
Sleeping outside under the stars (no tent, long story)
More Yellowstone
Eastern bits of Idaho (incl. Victor, ID which is on the west side of the Tetons)
Jackson Hole, WY
Grand Tetons Park
Yet more Yellowstone
Return to Eastern Montana
Back through South Dakota and terrifying but brilliant storms.
Home.

I love mountains and the west. I haven’t been out west since 99 and really forgot how much I love the fresh smell of pine forests. I even enjoyed our second night of camping that actually involved sleeping in a tent.

The Drive From Hell

Ordinarily when the authorities say things like “avoid unnecessary travel” I do just that. Oh, sure, in the middle of winter when there’s just been a huge snowstorm it’s fun, no it’s mandatory, to put on the winter clothes and test your driving skills in ridiculous amounts of snow.
Saturday, unfortunately, I HAD to drive, up north to retrieve Adam from his week of camp Grandma and Grandpa, Spooner site.
I left home at 9:18am on Saturday and finally hit the opened portion of 90/94 at 12:20pm. It was bloody awful. And it wasn’t just the stop and wait bits. No, it was the idiot guy in front of me driving his teal Honda civic with a really loud, huge muffler. So everytime we got to inch forward, he of course, had to make a loud, annoying vroom vroom noise.

New and Exciting Medical Terminology

Costochondritis.

“Costochondritis is an inflammation of the cartilage that connects a rib to the breastbone (sternum). It causes sharp pain in the costosternal joint — where your ribs and breastbone are joined by rubbery cartilage. Pain caused by costochondritis may mimic that of a heart attack or other heart conditions.”

It’s pretty damn uncomfortable.