Made it to another Saturday.  Although a grey and wet one.  And yes,  those are snow flakes blowing past the camera.   So there won’t be a lot of outdoor activity today.  But I have plenty of projects to work on.  Have to change a tail light on the car, and will put the hitch back in the truck.   This weather reminds me Enders will be coming home soon,  this is usually what the weather is to welcome  them home to Wisconsin!  Time to move their trailer and charge up the batteries.  Good news,  no mice this year in either trailer.    And I will have to make a run to the dump to take in our recyclables in.  It has been several weeks, and even without Chris here the bottles keep adding up.  The neighbors must bring them over.

It sounds like Marie continues to improve.  Still a lot of pain when she over does it some days,  but she is trying hard as she said on the last post.   She is doing great and looking great.   She just has to keep her patience and stay with it, and she will.  It will be good to get them both back to Oshkosh,  but neither want to come home to this weather!

Work has been interesting,  our plant remains the busiest in our division.  And just found out one of my co-workers is taking a month medical leave.   So it will remain interesting.   I will have some opportunities to put some extra hours in,  but it looks good on the resume!

Tonight a local establishment, O’Marro’s, is having a crawfish boil.  I missed it last year but will partake tonight.  And Chris is going to be sorry she will miss this!   Some Irish music their tonight also, or another local band at Kodiak’s I may stop at with a friend.

And looking forward to Sunday,  when we are supposed to see some sun.   Temperatures still won’t get back to normal,  but things will continue to green up after the rain.  Have your self a great weekend!

Looks more like a scene from Titanic?    But this is Wisconsin.   So believe it or not last night we had thunderstorms and the lake level has risen.   The ice from the shorelines have risen and are drifting out in the gusty winds.  And the temperature is in the 70’s.   It won’t last long, but the windows are opened after a too long winter, and the fresh air blowing through.  But don’t worry I have some  firewood in the breeze way, because I am sure I will have more fires yet this spring.

But it does feel wonderful.   Yesterday when I made it home from Mom’s I spent the rest of the day in the yard.  Cleaning up our gravel driveway, working in some of the gardens.  It is good to see new growth the sign of good things to come.  So perfect for the coming Easter, new life rising, new hopes.      Would I miss this if I didn’t live in Wisconsin year round?  Well not really,  I could come back when the weather really gets nice.  But for the moment I will revel in it.

Marie and Chris have a doctor appointment tomorrow, and hopefully more good news.   Enjoy!

New life

Another week going by quickly,  well maybe because I started out on vacation.  And I have not gotten caught up at work yet.  But the good news it has gone by quickly!   Now if I can slow it down for the weekend.    Flights home were good and uneventful.   For a change!  I brought brother in law John home with me.  So he and I are batch’ing it.  The girls are in New Mexico.   Marie still gets discouraged she is not healed already, and I remind her she just had major surgery.   I think she is still doing great.  They have been out and about, and she pays for some of that the next day.  She is healing and stretching.  They did not take the staples out this week and wanted to wait until Monday,  so they go back to the doctors office then.   Otherwise things are working well!

Unfortunately it has been dry in New Mexico for several years now, and they have some fires already this spring.  So we hope they can get some rain.   There is a couple of pictures from Rio Rancho looking at the Sandia mountains.   Rio Rancho is up on a mesa,  and Albuquerque is in a bowl between the mesa and the mountains.   So from either side you can look down on the lights of the city.  Very pretty country.   And see if you can tell which picture is from home?  Actually there was someone out fishing Tuesday afternoon when I got home.  but by today there is a lot of water out there and the ice is very black.  So with some rain this weekend that should be the end of it.  There has not been much wind, and that is OK.  We don’t need it crashing into shore.

So down to Milwaukee Friday night.   Stay with Mom and do some shopping for her.   She likes that.  And then get home and try to clean up in the yard Saturday afternoon.   It should be nice and warm here.  but lots of rain on Sunday.   Enjoy your weekend.

We are in wonderful New Mexico.  The weather has been fantastic.   I am hoping the top of my head does not start peeling from the sun burn.  Very windy today but still warm.  Unfortunately some fires in New Mexico, as they have been badly in need of rain.  And the winds are fanning the fires.

The great news is Marie is home.  A little longer than we would have liked, a lot more pain than Marie would have liked.  But she has been through a lot of cutting, and has a lot of healing to do.   She is doing great.  Today was much better than yesterday.    The body is working well, and the healing is taking place.   It will take some time.  She commented this on my last post.

mtdroz says:Hi all   Finally got home from the hospital Sat. afternoon.  This surgery may have been the easiest for the surgeon but definitely not for me. It was the most painful. And what can I attribute it all to, not so much to the surgery as to dreaded GAS GAS AND MORE GAS. At least that’s what the people in the know told me. I still have a lot of incision pain. I thank you for all of your prayers all along the process. I hope this is the end of this journey for me. Hoping I can travel soon. Talk to you again soon Marie

My bad news is I head back to Wisconsin on Monday.  Looks like it had been raining and flood warnings at home.  Hope everyone is doing well and staying dry.  And I don’t have to clean any snow off the car.

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!

Almost to the end of February,  and a few weeks until Spring! Things have got to be getting better, right?  But we must have had another 4 inches of snow yesterday.  It was coming down hard and heavy when we went to church last night.  Actually light and fluffy.  So it was easy to move.  But the roads became slippery quickly.  I cleaned it up this morning and it cleaned up well.  And yesterday was a cold day in the the teens,  and today is warming up to the upper 20’s.  This week looks to be decent temperatures as well.

I am happy to have my wife back.  She got in Thursday night, and even though the first leg of her flight was behind schedule she did get into Appleton early.    So we have been getting reacquainted!   And spending some time at home.  Although we were out to church last night and then out for a bite to eat at Fratello’s.   And we ran into some friends there which was a nice conversation.

The National news continues to spotlight Wisconsin, for better or worse.  While I do believe the public unions need to  get with reality and give in to retirement and healthy pay ins as most of us have,  I still think it sucks the way our Gov has gone about it.  And it seems much more about payback to the unions that did not support him in the election.   I have never been a union member, and for most of my life have thought the unions were too strong and out of control.  But I have always acknowledged it was because of the unions that I was paid well and given good benefits,  because the companies I have worked for had to compete against the union shops.   And the recession confirmed for me that many companies’ management unchecked will let their own greed take over.  Are we in for a better world if we break the unions?  Is our life today better with lower wages, more health costs, and 50+ somethings getting their jobs cut in favor or younger employees at less cost:   rather than the careers of our fathers who put in long careers but had a relatively secure employment, pensions and health insurance in retirement?    Some how I think our children’s future is not for the better.  There was fan fare last week about 160 jobs being added in the area – tele marketing.   Some how I don’t think they replace the many paper mill jobs that have been lost to China.  It is acknowledged that our economy is driven by consumer spending; if 75% of us our left with $10 per hour jobs without benefits who will keep the economy going?  Oh well.  Enough ranting.    I do have to thank our assembly man Dick Spanbauer, one of our old neighbors.   While he wants a balanced budget  he could not go along with taking back collective bargaining from public employees and voted his heart, one of the few Republicans in the state to vote against the bill.  I have to give him credit for that.

So this week will include a ride to Milwaukee Wednesday night for a stock club meeting.  With our aging members we decided to take some months off during bad weather so they would not have to drive.  I am not sure our hiatus was long enough,  but we will start up again for March.

Other than that more fun at work.  And I think we work at church Friday night.   St Rapheal’s has fish fries for Lent and we normally put a couple of nights of work in.  They do a nice job and serve around 1000 dinners.  Food is good!

So I hope your week is good!  Enjoy life!