Saturday, December 1, 2007

Thanksgiving Weekend Part Two/It's FREAKING COLD here/go me!/Snow Dog!

I will firstly summarize the rest of our Thanksgiving weekend with Thor, Dio, and Antigone: it was awesome. Lots of eating, lots of drinking, and even lots of sight seeing despite the chilly temperatures. I appreciated Dio's tenacity; I know she is not built for freezing temperatures, but she did a great job of bundling up and pushing through. On Saturday we visited the art museum and Discovery World, and then cruised the River Walk a bit. It was cold but very pretty that day, clear and sunny.

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Later we assembled the fake Christmas tree my neighbor lent us and decorated it with some cheap decorations from Drew's Variety Store in downtown Tosa. I won't lie, this tree is verging on Charlie Brown. But hey, it was free! We ate dinner at home that night, took a cold weather/warm drink walk through the Highlands, and watched a movie. On Sunday, we went to Whitefish Bay, a charming and somewhat upscale little city north of downtown. I love that area. We walked through some of the neighborhoods until we found shore access, and then played on the beach for a half hour or so. It was beautiful.

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We then took a tour of Sprecher Brewery, only about five minutes from Whitefish Bay in Glendale. They make German style beers and also some very good sodas (root beer, cream soda, orange soda, etc.) so we all had beverages to try. We ate cheese curds (still not sold on those) and bought a growler of Bavarian Black.

All of us were feeling pretty good by the time we went to Il Mito, one of my most favorite Italian restaurants ever, for dinner. We had an amazing meal and drank a bunch of wine and were very, very merry. The night continued in that fashion, and all of us were somewhat regretting the extent of the merriness the next morning, especially me, since I had to go to work at 8 am. :(

We said goodbye to our visitors that evening and were very sad to see them go. It was so nice having family come to us for Thanksgiving; pretty much a perfect weekend.

The rest of this past week was rather uneventful except for a) the RIDICULOUS temperatures (when I got in my car Wednesday morning it was 18 degrees outside--I almost lost my fingers on the 2 minute walk from my car to the door of the hospital), and b) the fact that I had to take this irritating Human Growth and Development test that I had efficiently not studied at all for. Passing this test would essentially get me out of a class required of applicants to the MSN program at UW Milwaukee. The subject matter somewhat overlapped with the general Psych class I took during the summer, and I really did not want to have to take the entire class just to apply to a program that is really just a back up for me. So I decided to give the test a go, since all I needed to do was pass to get credit. Suffice it to say, I squeeked by--I got the absolute minimum score needed to pass. While I am not necessarily proud of this, I'm fairly pleased with the fact that with a minimal amount of effort I got credit for a 3 unit class. So, go me!

Moving on--we are in the midst of a real, honest-to-god snowstorm. It has snowed for a good 6 hours so far today. Here's how it looked at 11 am:

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Around 1:30 pm, it looked like this:

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And by 3:30 pm, our neighbor was out with the snow blower, clearing our driveway and sidewalk of several inches of snow.

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It's wild. I shoved Vinny out the door and he was truly confused; he went out in the snow last week but there was much less of it.

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He was tentative at first but within a few minutes he was bounding around the yard, kicking up snow everywhere, having a ball. He likes it! He's a snow dog!! Who would have ever guessed?

Despite the cold we are warm and happy in our apartment, which we have not left all day. The cat is entertaining himself by intermittently destroying parts of the Christmas tree, and Vinny has been under the covers in bed ever since his little romp in the snow. I'm glad this storm is happening on a weekend so that we can be lazy and enjoy it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Look! The snow, Vinnie likes it... he really really likes it!

Thank you for the blogs, since you refuse to call me I feel like we are still friends from the Facebooking and Blogging :). I sent Matt an e-mail a day late saying happy b-day, I hope he got it. :) I considered sending a plant, balloon and card but thought it might be a bit much man to man. I will have to buy him some beers and/or the first bottle of wine at Amarin Thai when you guys come back... soon?!

And to make you jealous, I just got back from 5 days in Puerto Vallarta, 80-90 degree weather with 50% humidity... really a rough 5 days for me :).

Anonymous said...

Hello and a cyber high-five to you VERY brave snow-goers (is there such a word, and do I sound goofy yet again? oh well :) Eeesh, and add in that you must find it odd that this apparent stranger is writing to you guys again - please pardon what may seem like eccentricities - I love reading this blog: 1) it's awesome to hear about Matt's life now and 2) your wonderful story, if you will, telling is most entertaining + really informative since I don't know beans about Wisconsin egads! Thank you very much for everything you put into this (cool pics also!). Well, keep up the hard work and good living!

PS Happy much too belated birthday from a much too out of touch cousin to Matt.
Thanks again for this cool blog!

Hey, and congrats on moving forward with your graduate school plans!