Made it into the week.  At least it has not snowed yet.  But the temperatures are in the single digits at night.   That is supposed to get better by the end of the week.

Chris doesn’t have to worry about that.  We got her up at 3:30 am Monday and to the Green Bay airport by 5 am.   Her flights went well and she made it to Albuquerque just fine.  The weather is much better there!

Marie’s surgery went well   There were able to tie the intestine together with a fairly minimal surgery.  Fairly.  The surgeon still had to stitch up some muscles that are giving her a lot of pain.  Saturday she felt great,  but I think the drugs were still working well.  By Sunday the healing has started,  which brings the pain.   but each day is a little better.   She is on liquids and jello, which she is not happy about.  But they need to keep monitoring and waiting for everything to start working properly.  So just have to keep waiting for now.

I go down Thursday morning,  for a long weekend, coming home on Monday.   Hopefully we have Marie home then,  but will wait for what the doctors have to say.  I do the same flights Chris did,  so will be up early again.   I can’t wait for the warm weather though, and hope to spending that with Marie in the sunshine.

So hope you all get through the week and weekend OK.   Enjoy

So other than I get a check from a company here, is there a reason I live in Wisconsin?   Spring has started, I guess we are not to April showers yet.   But we did have some showers starting yesterday,  sleet, snow, hail.        Today has been very windy and the temp now says 23 degrees as it continues to drop.   I tried to clean the drive, since it is not going to get above freezing for the next week it won’t melt soon.  And that slush at the bottom will freeze into a real mess.    But plowing a gravel driveway with slush on it is no fun.  I set the plow up to try and not dig into it.  I spent part of the last week trying to distribute gravel that was pushed off the drive over the winter,  back on the drive.   Oh well.   Looking at the pictures can you imagine most of the snow was gone from the drive a couple of days ago?

Even the turkeys kept coming around today trying to find the gravel.  I stayed home today.  My boss said I can work from home some days, since I won’t get a raise he can let me save some gas money, which is good of him.  And today was a good day not to bother trying to drive in.  And I worked more hours today than usual!

So I just did a cleaning, and brought enough wood in for the night.  This weekend Chris and I will spend some time together, she leaves for Albuquerque Monday morning.   Marie has surgery on Friday,  we are praying for an easy successful surgery.  And she will be home and ready to travel soon.

Wow, already a weekend coming to an end!  Time to start thinking of preparing for Monday morning,  well maybe I will need a beer before then.   And will try to catch the Marquette game tonight.   So the weekend NOT over yet.  the Wisconsin team came through and lives for another weekend,  let’s hope Marquette can pull another upset.

Last week went quickly also.   Last weekend we had some fun and relaxing.   Went to a great local restaurant in Borth last Saturday night,  and then listened to some good live music.   Tuesday night was more good live music in Milwaukee.   Willy played like he was much younger than 78, and c’mon Wally he never crooned a song!   I am glad we went, there was some issues with the Riverside’s sound system, and the band did not sound like they had it all together at the start;  but it kept getting better and they worked their way into a groove.  And it was an interesting crowd.    We had started the night with a nice dinner at John Hawk’s Pub with John and Mary.   The only downer of the night was driving home at the end!

Short sleep Tuesday night I decided to skip the homebrew meeting Wednesday night.  Sounds like I missed a good one.   But Thursday I stopped at O’Marro’s to have a couple to St Patrick.   Forget that green beer stuff though,  had a great Belgian La Choeff on tap and another great beer from the Breuery in California.     Then headed home for some of Chris’s super corned beef and cabage, as after 2 they would have been way too easy to continue.

Friday night brought another fish fry at St Rapheal’s.   This was a very busy week, as per history for them.   They served until 7:30 and it took most of that time to catch up with orders.   Before the end we had run out of baked potato’s, baked Haddock, macaroni and cheese (for the kids), and cole slaw.   So it was a bigger night than the historical data would say!  Chris and I ended up stopping at Culvers on the way home to pick up a couple of fish fries!   So hopefully that continues for them through lent.

Saturday I spent some time on the computer.  We have used Outlook at home for our e-mail client and as our Outlook version has become older we have had more issues.  And we have never liked Charters web version, even though they have made improvements.  At work they are moving our Corporate e-mail to G Mail, and I am on the early adopter team to check it out.  I like what I see.  So also knowing we will move out of this house at one point and lose Charter anyway, I decided to switch my e-mail address now.   So I opened a G-mail account,  rtomb78@gmail.com .   And started work on importing my contact list and cleaning up years of contacts.   And listing as many companies that I can think of that have my e-mail address and deciding whether to unsubscribe or change the address.    There is a lot of them to think of!  But no hurry as the other account will remain active so I can go back and check for things I have missed!  And Chris will eventually change over, and I will upgrade Word Excel and not worry about Outlook.

Saturday afternoon we headed to Milwaukee.  Did some shopping for Mom, and met Skip and Claire for a nice meal.   I bought a certificate for a restaurant on a MPTV online auction earlier in the year.   Mia Famiglia on Forest Home ave.   Very good Italian,  nice place and well presented.  We all enjoyed.   We will go back.   And we all went back to Mom’s to spend some time with her.  And Skip and I got to watch the end of the Wisconsin game.     This morning a few things for Mom and she took Chris and I to brunch at her place.  After too much good food Chris and I headed home.    And now you here from me here.  The fireplace is going, taking the cold dampness out of the air.  Luckily it is not raining buckets here like it was a good part of the way home.  The water draining out of the woods is barely staying below the road the way it is!   The snow piles are continuing to get smaller.  But there were a lot of people on the ice yesterday,  so I think there will be ice on the lake for a number of weeks to come.  So I sit here with a glass of Bloody Mary Meade made by a friend of mine.  Spicy and warming.  So I won’t be overly productive the rest of the evening,  but what the heck it is the weekend.

Enjoy!

Hey,  we made it to another Saturday!   Always feels good.  Ok, I know you retiree’s lose track of the day of the week.  Congratulations Mary Koss on deciding to join that group.  I can’t wait to get there!  Guess I should spend more time deciding how I will pay for that!

It was an OK week.  No major issues at work.  We had a SOB board meeting this week, which is always a fun night.  I wish I could remember all the good beers we tried!  The weather does seem to be getting better.  Had a wet heavy snow but it did not drop to zero the next day.   The sun was out Thursday and the car even felt warm when I got in it. Today cloudy, a few snowflakes and temp is 37.  but a cold wind 37, blowing strong out of the west.

Our driveway is a mess though.   I scraped off some gravel plowing snow, and the frost is out of the upper crust so it is full of moisture.   When they did the water piping a couple of years back the trucks got a lot of dirt in our gravel, so it is rather muddy.   I really need to have an excavator come in and scrape out a number of inches and put a good gravel base down.   I can’t keep just adding gravel to the top, I want to keep a decent grade flowing away from the garage.  so another project on the horizon.

We have planned a trip to New Mexico to see Marie.   They had told her that her next surgery would not be until May, which was very disappointing.   So we were going down to give her a break.   the day after we made our reservations the doctor’s office called and said they managed to move her surgery up to March 25th, which is great!  And it works out well,  Chris is going down March 28 and I go down March 31.  Now Chris won’t come home with me though,  she will stay with Marie and see how this recovery goes.  So something to look forward to for all of us!  And hopefully it won’t be long and Marie can travel!    She also bought a new computer, a lap top.  And is getting internet access at home, rather than dial up!    I was just setting up Skype on Chris’s computer so they can talk!

Tonight we will go to church.  We won’t have to get up in the morning, since we set the clocks ahead tonight.   And  a friend is playing with his band
SNB at a bar the other side of Omro tonight and we will stop there for awhile.    Sunday I am looking forward to some relaxing and some sunshine.  It will probably be a good morning for bloody mary’s.

The week ahead we go to Milwaukee one night to see Willie Nelson with Koss’s,  I have a homebrew club meeting, and will have to decide whether to stop for a beer on St Patrick’s day.    I used to do a whole afternoon and evening out on St Patricks,  must be getting older!  And before you know it I will be welcoming another weekend!

Enjoy!

We made it through a pretty good week.  Work went well, the weather is not terrible.  Not great mind you,  I would easily take New Mexico or Florida right now.   But I need the check to keep coming in every week so Wisconsin is where we are at!  Today is supposed to be cloudy,  it is 29 degrees right now which is warmer than I expected for today.   We are supposed to continue with below normal temperatures the next week,  and the normal should be in the upper 30’s right now.  The good news  to that is if we are below the average,  we should get some above normal temps coming up,  if I remember my math class that’s what those averages are supposed to be about.  Of course you could say that they average over 50 years,   but we will think per season.   Winter is too long here.

My daughter found my camera cord that I left in Florida,  so I was able to download a few pics from my camera.   Mom’s 90th birthday and a few snow pictures.  I will put a few on the album page,  click on albums at the top of this page.  The view as slide show doesn’t seem to work, so click on a picture, then at the bottom of the picture you can click on the arrows to see the rest.

I didn’t get a lot of replies on my political rant,  I won’t subject you to more today.  Wisconsin continues to stay in the National news.  I think the short term outcome is already decided, so we may as well get it over with and can see something else on the news.  Let’s focus on the UW Wisconsin basketball team.   Much more positive.   They are playing Ohio State Sunday in what should be a good game,  and will likely meet in tournament play, which should be even a better game!

So we are heading to Milwaukee this afternoon.   We will stop by Al Miller’s tonight, and have brunch with Mom on Sunday.  And I look forward to some sunshine tomorrow!   For now I better go check my fire, and I will have to bundle up against the north wind and bring some firewood up from the wood pile.   Have a great weekend!