Week 5: Yellow

This week's theme was Yellow.

At first, I thought this will be hard to do. It's Wisconsin, in the winter. Everything is grey and blah. Until I started to look around more and try to find some color. Street signs, school bus. I have yellow plates. My fruit bowl on the counter is yellow. I almost posted a picture of beer. It is yellow and I had not seen any other beer pictures in the group. In the end, I went with flowers.

I bought some tulips at the store this week and picked out the yellow and yellow/pink ones for this project. Over the course of two days, I took over 100 pictures. Some with my camera and some with my phone. I did some in the morning and some at night.

In the end, I liked this close up picture the best. I cropped it a bit but otherwise didn't use any filters.

Tulips!

Next week's theme is Black and White.

Week 4: My Favorite

Week 4: My Favorite

Meet Rufus. He is my 14 year old Shih Tzu. Don't tell his brothers, Riley and Boomer, that Rufus is my favorite.

Rufus

I took this picture last summer. I had just got my new camera and was testing it out in the backyard with the dogs. I was laying on the ground and Rufus was walking towards me.

While the picture is not very good. It's slightly out of focus, I wanted to use to to keep a diary of how my skills improve over the year.

Week 3: Rule of Thirds

Week 3/52: Rule of Thirds. This one was a bit challenging. I had never heard of this before so I did lots of Googling. I think I captured the essence of the theme. I set the camera on my phone up with the grid to make it easier to remember to try and use it.

I started this project wanting to use my camera more but with the weather in Wisconsin being rainy, grey and foggy for the past week I had to snap a picture whenever I could and this week it was with my phone.

Milwaukee River, looking south

This photo was taken from the foot bridge over the Milwaukee River looking south towards the city. I love being along the river and thought the frozen river with the boats on one side and the tall, Milwaukee Center building on the other side looked interesting.

Week 2: From Above

This week's theme in the Everyday Eyecandy Project 52 is From Above.

I had all sorts of ideas on what I wanted to do but time and weather had other ideas. I wanted to go out to Seven Bridges and shoot the creek from one of the bridges. Another idea was to use the marsupial bridge over 794 and get a picture of the traffic.  Sadly, neither of those happened.

I was kinda starting to stress about it by Thursday and pulled out one of my coloring books and pencils. I spent an hour relaxing and coloring while watching tv. I had left everything on a tray when I was done. Friday morning, the light in the living room was pretty good and I thought what the heck.I will take a picture of the mandala I colored. It was pretty and colorful and I basically had no other ideas.

This was my original picture

I used my phone to take a bunch of pictures and I set the focus at different spots to see how they would look. I liked how when the focus was set to the pencils the mandala kinda blurred. When getting ready to post it on Instagram, IG always ties to crop the picture for you and it was then that I noticed the details of the pencils really came through. I like how you could see the grain of the wood in the pencils. So I went back to that photo and used my phone to crop the picture the way I liked it. I posted it to Instagram and the facebook group as is. I didn't use any other filtering or editing other than to crop it.

This was the final result.

While it was not the picture I wanted I was happy with the result.

Next week (which is really this week) is the Rule of Thirds.

Everyday Eyecandy Project 52

Last summer, I finally bought a decent camera. The Canon Rebel T5. It is nothing fancy but it is way better than using my phone to capture things. I have played around with it a bit here and there but still not totally familiar with how to use it.

My friend, Jenn, sent me a link to a a year long photography project called Eyecandy Project 52. I liked this concept as it is once a week vs every day. Each week has a theme and you have the entire week to take your picture and upload it to the facebook group and other social media outlets.

I'm going to try to capture my pictures here each week as well as Instagram.

The theme this week is Me:At the beginning.

While most of the group, so far, has taken selfies. I wanted one that captured me on the first day of 2017. Doing something I, for the most part, love doing, running.

This photo was taken of me after finishing the Polar Bear Dash 5k in South Milwaukee on New Year's Day. The sky and the lake were such a brilliant blue and it looked so pretty with the sun shining. I knew I wanted that as my background. I suck at taking selfies so I had my gym pal, Maura, take the photo of me.




Next week's theme is From Above. I have a couple of ideas for this one but it will require the weather behaving.

Good Bye, My Friend

On Oct 12th, a coworker and friend passed away in Las Vegas. Kim was there on vacation. He got the Sunday morning and passed away in his sleep Sunday night/Monday morning. He was just 61.

When I found out it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was in the office and another co-worker, T, was bugging me to come down to the other end of the aisle where a few other people were standing around. I was in a team meeting and told T that I couldn't right now but would be down in a few minutes. T kept insisting. He then told me that Kim was dead. I was like "What the fuck a you talking about?". T said he was dead. I told T to shut the fuck up and then looked at one of the other guys standing there. This guy is a higher up dude that is in our aisle every so often, usually to hit the candy jar up. The look on his face told me T was not kidding around. I sat down in my chair in shock. The rest of the day passed in a blur.

For whatever reason, the building folks like to put Kim and his team near wherever I was. Sometimes across the aisle, sometimes a few cubes down. We have sat near each other for over 10 years.

In the two weeks since he died, going into the office seems weird. Every morning around 8:30 a few of us would walk down to the lunchroom to refill our water mugs. Kim would stroll down to my end of the aisle as ask "Are you ready for some water, young lady?" Sometimes it was just the two of us, sometime 3-4 of us would wander down there, chit chatting. We would go out the door on that side of the building and walk outside back to our side of the building.

Every so often, at lunchtime, a few of us would head to Menards to stock up on peanuts, or Penzey's to get whatever the free spice was in that month's catalog coupon. It will be strange to not have him go with us. He would give me shit (well deserved) whenever I would change purses and leave my badge in the purse that was at home. Since he got there earlier than I did, I would bug him to come and let me in the building.

I'm going to miss getting the good building gossip, hearing about his weekend at his cottage, shooting the shot about the Brewers or Packers.

Good bye, my friend. I'm going to miss you.

I Took a Walk

With the days getting shorter and the air getting cooler, I wanted to get out and explore a new trail that recently opened up near my house. After work today, I grabbed Boomer and we headed out.

Map of the Nojoshing Trail

Boomer and I walked up the street about .75 miles to get to one of the trail heads on the corner of Packard and Lake Dr. The first part of the trail is thru the meadow area. It is a paved trail that make access easy.

We soon came to the first split and headed off on to the trail that heads north and back to the woods. This part is all wood chips but was wide and easy to walk. Boomer had lots of fun exploring and smelling all the smells.

Boomer is having fun in the woods

Once we got to the woods the trail was nothing more than a path that meandered thru the woods. There were signs a couple times that pointed you in the right direction and most of trail was flanked by old trees and branches to make sure you didn't stray off course. This section was so pretty. One side was along the cemetery back in Seminary Woods. I wasn't sure how far it was to get back out of the woods so I didn't go over there to explore. Maybe next time when I know I will have more daylight. Boomer loved this section. I'm not sure what he was rooting around for in the leave piles. The trail in the woods made a big circle so soon we were back out to the wood chip trail in the meadow.

We headed back and took the path that came up behind the new Civic Center. That part was also paved and made it easy for people with disabilities to get around and enjoy. From there it was all neighborhood streets back home.

I want to venture out on the trail again when I know I will have more daylight hours to explore.

Looking from the path towards the woods

New Beginning?

I got an email today from Stat Counter telling me to update their code on my blog so that I can include mobile devices in my blog stats. I have pretty much ignored this blog for the past 10 months or so. Not sure why. Every so often I have things that happen in my life and would like a way to talk about them in a place that is not facebook or Twitter. But life gets in the way and the next thing you know it is a week or two later. I also realized that I have had this blog for almost 10 years. My how my life has changed in those 10 years.

Today was a day of downs and ups. Nothing huge or earth shattering but still important to me, none the less.

I've been working towards getting my BJCP certification. This is the standard used for judging beer. A friend from MN had recommended it to me a couple years ago as a way to become a better brewer. After attending the Home Brewers conference this past summer, I decided that this was something I would like to pursue further. The Beer Barons, a local home brew club, offer a series of classes that prepare you to take the exam. How it works is that you take classes or self study and you take an entrance exam. This first exam is pass/fail and not scored. You have one hour to answer 200 questions. They questions are true/false or multiple choice. It covers a wide range of topics from styles to brewing to judging. It is open book and I took advantage of that. What I didn't account for is how fast that hour would pass. At first I was going thru and answering each question. Then I realized that time was getting a bit low. So I started answering the ones I could easily do and skipped the rest hoping to come back to them. This worked ok as I was able to at least see all 200 questions. Next thing I knew I had 2 minutes left and panic set in. I started to go back and just guess on the true/false ones. Hoping I could squeak by somehow. In the end I only ended up answering 126 questions and failed the exam. But I now know what I need to focus more on for the next time I take it. I also know that for the next time to go thru them all once quickly and then go back and answer the harder ones. Time management is very important.

I was off today and took Boomer for a longer walk this after noon. It was nice out and he had some extra energy to burn off. We were walking at a pretty good clip so I decided to see how or even if I could run again. After tearing my plantaris tendon in my calf a little over three weeks ago, I have been slowly getting back to walking normal and not limping. I have always been active and this forced rest period  has been difficult on my both mentally and physically. So I started to run. I took one step, then two steps and then ten and felt no pain. I was super slow and found myself heel striking but I was running! I ended up running a little over two blocks. This left me feeling so happy. Maybe I will try a little further tomorrow.

Don't be the Asshole Neighbors

I live in a small-ish suburb of Milwaukee. Most of my neighbors are older people. I like that. They keep their house and yards up and don't do stupid shit. I talk to them, keep an eye out for them and help when they need it. But then there are the "others".

You know them. They are the ones who just move into the neighborhood and disrupt the good juju of it.

A new family moved in a couple houses down this summer. Mom, dad and two kids under the age of 5. They didn't start out very well when the first weekend they moved in their dog was running around the block. The dog is a bigger dog, maybe 60-65 lbs or so. They pretty much opened the door and let the dog out. They were never outside with the dog, so the dog would wander around to people's yards and poop. It would go across the street, they didn't seem to mind. I put a stop to that the 2nd day when I took the dog and the bag of poop and took it back to their house and asked that they keep the dog restrained and supervised or I would be contacting the police. I have three little dogs and one of them was attacked two years ago by a Pyrenees at the park. I didn't want a repeat performance. They were kind of taken back but said that they would. For the most part that has been taken care of. They now let the dog outside in the fenced in back yard. It is out there almost all day, every day. How do I know this, you ask. Well I work from home usually 2 days a week. I can't take my dogs outside in my back yard if the dog is out there because all it will do is bark and bark and bark. There are days when that dog barks almost all day long at the squirrels and other critters outside. I'm not sure if they are deaf or what but I'm two houses away and can hear it.

Last month, we got about 1.5-2" of snow. It was a wet, heavy snow. Well, these people didn't bother to shovel the sidewalk. I walk my dogs a couple times a day and use the sidewalks on my block. The first day I walked on the snow. By day 3, I called the city. You have 24 hours after a snow to clear sidewalks. By this time it was trampled down and because the sun was out it was melting a bit and now icy. I had to walk on the grass. The people were home, I seen them outside. They shoveled part of the driveway. Someone from the city must have stopped over there or something because it was about three hours after I called that they were out there chopping the ice/snow from the sidewalk. It took them the better part of the day to get it all cleared because they had to chop away at it.

Garbage pick up is on Mondays, usually by 8 am. Last week, they took the carts (two 85 gals one that were overflowing (how can people generate THAT much garbage??)) tot he street just before they picked the trash up. Then the carts sat there. and sat there. and sat there. Until Wed night. I seen them coming and going several times over the two days so it is not like they were not home.

Today I see them hauling out piles of trash to the curb. Not just a bag or two but boxes, chairs and quite a few bags

We are suppose to get rain/snow over the weekend and this will for sure now be a wet, soggy mess.  I am half tempted to copy this picture and tape it to their front door but doubt they would pay attention to it anyway. I should call the city on them.

I guess I just don't understand why people do stuff without regards for other people. I really don't want to look at their trash sitting there for the next three days. Once it rains I'm pretty sure the garbage guy doesn't want to have to pick it up. Don't make things harder than they have to be. Do what's right and don't do shit that will impact someone else.

PS. These are also the people who for the first month they lived here parked on the street and got a parking ticket every night for almost a month. How hard is it to pull your POS minivan into the driveway?

PPS.. as I've been writing this post their dog has been outside barking the entire time. I tried to get a sound clip but I'm not that stealthy. 

Five Years Later

Five years ago today, my world was tossed upside down. You can read about it here. You don't expect to be 39 and wonder how will you go on.

Some days, I am still sad. Some days, I am happy. Some days, I am still angry. Some days, I find that there is something I want to share with you. Some days, I wonder what might have been. Some days, I don't think about you at all. I think that Rufus still misses you.

I look back over the past five years and think about  how my life has changed. The things I've done that I never thought I would or could do. The places I've gone. The people I've met. I probably would have never done any of that if you were still here.

I found out that I'm stronger than I ever knew could be. For that I'm so glad.

Big Eddy and the Angels

This post is a long time in coming. Just never got around to taking the pictures off my phone.

Last month, Barley's Angels was invited to the Miller Caves for a Leinenkugel's tasting. I had met the 10th and Blake representative, Lisa Zimmer about a year ago for a Beer Club event she hosted. We later found out that we are both space geeks and would have been at the same NASA TweetUp for the last ever shuttle launch. I had contacted her to see if she was interested in hosting an event for the Angels. She was.

The meeting was being held at the historic Miller caves. The caves are where Frederick Miller first stored his brews over 150 years ago. It was a pretty cool (literally) place carved into the hillside. The theme for this month's meeting was Leinenkugel's and their Big Eddy series of beers.

The Miller caves are carved into a hillside and is the original stone

When we arrived, we were treated with Honey Weiss or Orange Shandy paired with either spinach, mozzarella and tomato flat bread or roasted red pepper and basil flat bread. I liked mixing the two beers together and having what was called an Orange Blossom.

The first course was the Hoppin Helles paired with rosemary chicken breast stuffed with herb garlic and topped with a balsamic cream sauce and caramelized onions over pearl couscous. The sauce was made with the Hoppin Helles and really brought out the citrus flavors in the beer and food.

Hoppin Helles

Next up was the Snowdrift Vanilla porter paired with sweet potato puree topped with brussels sprouts with bacon and vidalia onion. The porter and sweet potato was perfect together. I even ate a brussles sprout an it was ok. Just not a big fan of them.

Snowdrift Vanilla Porter

The main course was the Big Eddy Baltic porter served with prime medallion filet mignon with the porter demi-glaze and fingerling potatoes. This was fantastic!! The steak was so tender you didn't even need a knife to cut it.

Big Eddy Baltic Porter

For dessert we had Bid Eddy Russian Imperial stout that had been aged a year. It as paired with a flourless chocolate torte with Door County cherry and raspberry melba sauce. OMG!! This was fantastic. The stout really was so good with the berry and chocolate. I could have had that every day and I would be happy.

Big Eddy Russian Imperial Stout 2012

I was blown away by Lisa, Amanda and Chef Ernie. We had a great evening and I hope that Barley's Angles and 10th & Blake can pair up again for an event.

Cutting the Cord

Most everyone has cable. Every couple of months it goes up. Not a lot, a few dollars here and few dollars there. After a while you realize that your cable bill is damn near a mortgage payment.

It started almost a year ago when Time Warner (TW) started charging for "leasing" their cable modem. I've had the same modem for almost five years and now they want $5/month to lease it. After talking to a few people, I discovered that you can use your own cable modem. I went to TW's website and found a list of modems that are supported. I bought one on Amazon. Do your homework as prices can vary quite a bit. I wanted one that if I ever upgraded my internet speed the modem could handle it. It took about 15 minutes to set up. You have to call TW and give them the MAC address of the new modem. Make sure you return the old modem to avoid still being charged for it.

I work from home two days a week and some days spend 3-4 hours in meetings so having a land line is essential. Using my cell phone would eat my minutes up in a couple of days. So, I started doing some research on VoIP phones.  A few days later Woot.com had a Ooma as one of their daily deals. I snapped it up. I liked that Consumer Reports gave them a good rating. An added plus was that when you register your device you enter your address and it can be used by 911 to determine your location. It is now $40 to port your existing phone number. They said it would take a month. More like a week and there was no loss of service. You get emails from them at every step and know when things are going to happen and are done. They even notified TW to cancel their phone service for you. The call quality is excellent and have never had an issue with it. All I pay for is taxes which comes to $3.71/month. That saved me $30/month

TV service is where things took a bit longer. I started out by making a list of what I DVR'ed. Everything I watched except Finding Bigfoot (which I may break down and get on iTunes, unless some kind soul will let me watch it at their house) is available for free. I can either watch most shows live or stream from the networks websites. 

I've had Netflix for years so I can use that as an option for some shows

I had a digital antenna I got when the gov't was giving them out for free several years ago. TW was giving them out for free, so you may want to ask them if they sill are giving them out. Otherwise you can get one at Target or Best Buy for $20. If your tv is newer it may already be built in. I already had a Roku player. That can get lots of channels including Netflix/ Hulu. There are several options available.

My DVD player was about 10-ish years old (it was a PJ’s raffle one from like 2002) so for $75 I bought a blue ray that has internet and Netflix built in. It can get several other channels as well. I have a Wii and stream Netflix from there as well.

My laptop is older and does not have an HDMI port so I bought a little converter on Amazon. I can connect the laptop to my tv and stream network shows from there if I want to watch something that has already aired.If you have an HDMI port on a laptop, you can stream using a cable to the tv without the converter

One of the biggest things I watched on cable was sports. Namely the Brewers games. Come next baseball season I can stream MLB.tv from any of the devices. If you are wanting to watch your local team they are delayed. So I found a website that will switch your IP address for $25/year so you can get the games live instead of on delay. The Brewers season ended on Sept 29th. I returned my cable box on the 30th. 

My last cable bill was $143/month. Next month it will be about $53. I call that a huge win to my pocket book 

World of Beer Festival 2013 - Angel Style

Yesterday was the World of Beer festival sponsored by the Beer Barons of Milwaukee. It is a small, by choice, beer festival that boasts it is "By beer nuts, for beer nuts". The breweries in attendance were fairly standard but many brought out the rare and normally not available in this area beers. Lots of special casks and barrel aged treats to sample along with a whole section of meads.

The gathering crowd

The nice thing about the festival is that it is small and not a drunk fest like other festivals I've been to. One of the coolest things about the festival is that it had its own app. You could check off what beers you wanted to try. It then gave you a little map of where the beers were located. I would love to see this for other beer festival. It really helped me put a plan of attack in place.

 This year I went not as a participant but as an exhibitor. Barley's Angels (@BarleysAngelsMKE) is now a registered home brew club. We were invited to serve up our home brews on the patio with other local clubs.

Paula and Erin working hard. Don't you love the bright table cloth we had?

The weather was perfect. Warm and sunny. Erin and Paula arrived early to secure a prime spot on the patio. As women, we are naturally well organized and were so efficient that we were often mistaken for the check in table.

Paula is getting her taps ready

Erin is wicked with a mallet and a tap

We had seven different beers for folks to sample. A special cask of Natalie's British session ale, two versions of English Milds, a Wheat Ale, Black IPA, Hefeweizen and Paula's very popular cranberry cider called Candy Crush. Aptly named after the addicting game.

Natalie is tapping her cask of British Session Ale

The festival kicked off and our tent was always steady. There was even a crowd (three's a crowd, right?) waiting for the tapping of the cask at 2 pm. It was fun to talk with people about our beers while they sampled them.

With having four of us there, everyone had some time to go off and sample other beers. It was great to see Alex from Rustic Road, Scott from St. Francis Brewery and fellow Angels Meagan, Tallgrass and Joan, Oscar Blues. I didn't get to sample as many beers as I would have liked but made the most of the ones I did try. Some winners were Psuedo Sue from Toppling Goliath, Tounge Thai-ed from Blue Moon's Graffiti collection and the Fleur de Houblon from Ommegang

We got to meet lots of women and introduce them to Barley's Angels. I'm excited for our next meeting to see how many come out and enjoy a good beer with us.

Baby, You Can Drive My Car

Over the past few weeks I have noticed some terrible driving around town. Are the drivers here just that dumb/ignorant/clueless or too self absorbed to actually drive decently??

I was coming home from the grocery store after work a couple weeks ago. Stopped at the light. Car in front of me stops. Sits there for about 10 seconds and then proceeds to drive thru the intersection. There was still traffic going the other direction. It is a miracle he didn't get hit. A couple blocks later another car did the same thing.

Brookfield is known for having a lot of speed traps set up along Capitol Dr. There will be five cop cars sitting in a spot and picking speeders off bing, bang, boom. The funny part is that they are sitting there in plain sight, in marked cars. Do people not see them sitting there??

Driving home from work seems to be the worst. Car will drive down Capitol Dr, turn their signal on and then proceed to drive past four or five driveways. Leaving people to wonder if or when they are going to turn.

Getting on the freeway is another tough task. Do drivers not know what the metered ramps mean?? Stop on red and when your light turns green, one car goes. It even says that on the signs. One car per green. People won''t stop or if they do, a couple cars will go at once. The worst part is that they were in such a hurry to go until it comes time to actually merge, then they fail to get up to speed before the end of the ramp.

Last night was another perfect example. I stopped at Subway on my way out to meet a friend for a drink. I have to do a left turn/half U turn to get in the driveway. Cars coming towards me had a red light. Do you think that any one of them would maybe stop before the driveway/median break to let me through. Nope! It was not like I was going to slow them down in any way.

Being in LA last fall, made me really realize how inconsiderate our drivers are. LA may have a lot of traffic but they were always driving smart. Using turn signals when turning or changing lanes, speeding up to merge, stopping at the crosswalk if you know you won't make it through an intersection before the light turns red. Nothing that is all that big of a deal but sure makes the other drivers around you less stabby.

So stop talking, texting, eating or whatever else you do in you car and just drive.

Things I've Learned today

It is barely noon and I've learned all sorts of interesting things today.

1. The St. Francis recycling center does not take old garage door openers. 
2. The St. Francis recycling center does take yard waste including grass clippings! I've lived here for 5 years now. How did I not know this? I always bag my grass clippings.
3. I took my old garage door opener to the recycling place and I got $10 for scrap metal! Win
4. Petco, where the prices on everything are crazy expensive, so I never shop there, price matches. Need a store ad or previous receipt.This will now save me the time driving over to Pet World and $18 on a bag of dog food. When you buy a 30 lb bag of dog food every month that adds up quickly. Now if they only sold the bird food in bulk.
5. There is no 5 yet. But the day is early.

Being Sick

The last few days have been rough. It started on Tuesday evening when I ate dinner before a meeting after work. My stomach was all sorts of rumbly. Sounded like some dinosaurs where fighting in my belly.

On Wed, I worked from home because I was doing a guest brewing thing at Rustic Road Brewing in the evening (blog post coming soon). I had not been feeling great most of the day. Some GI issues but felt good enough to go. I had not eaten anything but an apple during the day and we stopped at Subway for dinner on the way to Kenosha. I only at half of my sub.

The guest brewing was fun but didn't drink a lot as my tummy was still wonky.

Thursday, I woke up and felt lousy. I was sooo cold and could not get warm. GI issues were still hanging around. I knew I had some stuff that only I could do for work and of course my laptop was going thru a Notes upgrade that took FOREVER. So I sat at my desk with a long sleeve tshirt, my heaviest hoodie on. I had a blanket wrapped around me and Rufus on my lap. I was still so cold. By time 4 pm rolled around, I was toast. I took the pups outside and grabbed my comforter, two blankets and my pillow and lay down on the couch.

When I got up at 8:30, I knew I was not good. I was still so cold. I took my temp and it was 101.7. I took the pups out and went back to sleep on the couch.

When I was a little kid and I would get a fever I would have hallucinations and night terrors. One of the dreams I only have when I have a fever. I dream that I a being chased by King Kong. I am in an Oak Creek subdivision where we used to live. But when I was little that was all forest and fields. I eventually escape him by crawling into a culvert.

I also have the sensation of lightning coming from my fingertips. It is weird, I know. What is even more bizarre is that I had the tv on while I slept on the couch. I had a dream that I started a fire on a house with the lightning coming from my fingers. Now I'm pretty sure that I must have heard while sleeping the reports of a house fire in West Allis (I'm not even going there). But is was most strange.

About 4 am I woke up just sweating to death. My fever had broken and I was now drenched. My GI issues were still going on but I no longer felt like a truck had run over me.I took the dogs outside and went back to bed.

I got up about 9 am and felt pretty good compared to the last few days. Stomach wasn't rumbly. I wasn't freezing and no more lightning from my fingertips. I actually feel hungry. Something that hadn't happened since Tues.

I don;t get sick very often. I'm glad it was fairly short lived.

Now to get prepared for BEER WEEK!!

Boys of Summer Are Back

Baseball is back!

Baseball means sun, warm weather and enjoying time outside once again. 

I was going to get rid of cable until I found out mlb.TV will only show out of market games live. I wouldn't be able to see the games live. Sure, I could listen to them on the radio and love listening to Uecker but I love watching the games on TV.

The past couple of years I only made it to 3-4 games a season. This year is different. I bought a ticket package. I'm kinda excited about the package we got. We start out with seats that are in Bernie's Terrace.  If the Brewers win you move up to a better section. By the last game, if they keep winning, you could be sitting in field level diamond box seats.

How fun would that be?

Little Free Library

As most of you may know, I am a big reader. I have always liked to read. My library card gets a workout. Now I find myself with more books to read than I have time. As a result, I pay lots of overdue book fines. I was so jealous of my friend, Renee, who was on vacation for three weeks and was able to read over a dozen books. I long for that kind of free time.

Lately, I've noticed that there have been lots of Little Free Libraries popping up around my neighborhood.

What is a Little Free Library? They are little structures that are placed in public places that house books. Their mission is to build more than 2510 libraries around the world and to promote literacy and the love off reading. They are operated on the "leave a book, take a book" principle. I love the concept that books are available for anyone to read and is never closed.

The libraries often are decorated in various themes or styles. Some look like the home where the library resides, some look like schools or churches. You can go to the website and see some them. If you go to the map page, most of the spots on the map have a picture of the library there.

Here is the library on the northwest corner of Oklahoma Ave and Lake Drive in Bay View

Lots of different books in this one

How much is that doggie in the window?

The kitten wants to keep an eye on things as well.

This one is on the southwest corner of Howard Ave and Lipton Ave in St. Francis.

Fairy tale themed

The castle and mermaid

Dragon!

Unicorns too!

I encourage you to find or even build a Little Free Library in your neighborhood. You never know what or who you may find there.

Bock This

This post is a little, ok, very late in coming. Almost two weeks ago, Laura and I went up to Stevens Point for the weekend. Why Stevens Point you ask? Well, beer, duh! And a race, of course. You know I like to take run-cations.

Back last fall, I won a package from the Stevens Point Visitors center. It included a free hotel night at the Country Inn. When I seen that registration was opening up for the Point Brewery's annual Bock Run, I asked Laura to run with me. She agreed and we both signed up for the race when it went on sale at noon on New Year's Day. As always the race sold out in like 18 hours.

We decided to make it a beer weekend since the run was sponsored by a brewery and Laura is my assistant at Fartlek Brewing.

We left bright and early Saturday morning. The race wasn't until noon but we wanted to make sure we a) got a good parking spot and b) had plenty of time to get there and not be rushed. We made it up there by a little after 10. We hit up the gift shop at the brewery and bought a few things. I had only worn some yoga pants because my tights are way to warm to spend 3 hours in so I had to change. There were no real bathrooms nearby so I changed in the car. Which was now beginning to resemble a Ragnar van, minus the stink.

After we pick up our packets we go back to the car. As we are sitting in the car keeping warm, a woman decide to park in front of us in her Prius. In front of us was a home with a wheelchair ramp and the front was all a huge snowbank where they cleared off the sidewalk. After go back and forth several times, she now has her car on the snowbank at such an angle. the right side of her car is almost a good foot higher than the left. She gets out, looks at it, gets back in, goes back  forth a few more times. Not that it did any good. She gets out again and decides that it is good enough. Laura and I are cracking up at this. Laura decides that we are too close to the corner and pulls forward a foot or so. Cuz, you know?

Laura and I pre race.

It is almost race time so we head out to the party.

We line up and away we go. I had not run much since Disney 6 weeks before so my goal was to not die.

First mile 11:11, ran the whole time. Mile 2 12:10, still ran it all but a bit slower. The course is nice and flat. Mile 3 12:35. Took a short walk break, made the halfway turn at 29:50 walked thru the water stop. Mile 4 13:13 a few more walk breaks but it seems like it is going fast.. Mile 5: 13:12. I am almost done. I kept pace with another guy for the last mile and a half. We turn the corner and know it is only a block or so left. About 100 yards left the guy says "race ya to the finish" Game on. I ran my ass off the last few feet and clocked in a super speedy 9.1 mph. Total time 1:02:14. Laura was also super speedy and finished in a little over 53 minutes. She had a beer waiting for me at the finish.

Laura and I post race. Yes, we are smiling. We have beer!

My cousin and a couple of her friends had come down to hang out with us. She missed us crossing the finish line but had some great signs that we forgot to get pictures of. We forgot to tell her this was outside and muddy and it was decided that they would meet us back at the hotel later.Laura and I hung around for a few hours enjoying the party and several barley pops.

We weer hanging out at a table where a bunch of flyers were in boxes for other local races. We found it hilarious that there was one for breast feeding. Seriously?? Do they really need a fund raiser for that? I wanted to run it with two dolls attached to my boobs.

Breastfeeding 5k??

We are now out of beer tickets and decide to head back to the hotel and shower and warm up.

Coming soon: Beer tours

Surviving Boot Camp

Remember when I last posted that I was going to do a boot camp?? Well, I did it! And I didn't die.

There were only four of us in the class with Tracey. It helped that I knew Laura and Nicole and "knew" Chelsey from twitter. I wasn't going to be surrounded by all these super fit people and I would feel like a lumbering ox.

We focused this week on lower body. I was scared that with the impending snow storm I was going to be so sore from the boot camp that I would not be able to shovel the snow on Friday.

We started out with a nice warm up of jumping jacks. I remember why I don;t normally do them. They hurts your boobs. The best sports bra in the world can't keep them in tight enough. Luckily the jumping jacks ended quickly.

We did some circuits that were fun and while challenging not so difficult that I couldn't keep up. Jumping on the bosu ball was freaky. Thought I was going to bounce right on my ass a couple times. It definitely got the heart rate going.

We ended it up with core ab work and stretching.

On Friday, the snow fell and I was able to shovel it. I then got lazy and used the snow blower for the rest. My butt muscles were a bit sore but once I got moving they were fine.

It was fun class and Tracey kept us all motivated and from feeling like we were dying. I am looking forward to next week and doing upper body stuff.