Christmas at the Farm

The highlight of the visit was the infamous escaping cow- the vicious, wild cow (possibly mad) that Josie single-handedly corraled back into its pen. Yes, she is a cowgirl. Even Claire was properly impressed with the escape and subsequent retrieval. I am certain that others would be impressed, too, had they been awake during the wee hours of the morning during which this happened.




After Josie took care of the Great Cow Escape of 2008, there wasn't much to do around the farm. We ate a lot of delicious food (thanks, Tim!), played pitch and euker, and watched the kids play. After the little ones went to bed, we were reduced to licking our elbows for entertainment- according to Andy's cousin, Blake, "The most delicious thing you've ever eaten."

Andy and Josie had a wonderful Thanksgiving in MN, eating lots of pie and lefse and playing with our puppy niece and nephew, Yuka and Oscar. It turns out that Andy likes dogs. A lot.

Grrr!

Watch out for the mighty Claire Dinosaur! Actually, I am pretty sure that she thought she was being a cat. Anyway, she was very scary ("meow! meow!") and is coming to do a tail-wagging dance near you! -Josie

Marmot!

So about a month ago I was in Colorado and had a staring contest with a marmot. He won, but through cheats such as charging right at me. We also saw a white marmot - the picture is not as good. But that is pretty old news... New excitement:
-Trip to Seattle
-Finishing Painting the Windows
-Mowing the lawn
-Running more and logging runs again
-Cooking good homemade pizza and grilling
-??? Who knows what else... We have a pretty nice Sunday planned, first we are off to the Home Depot, pick up some landscaping bricks and some paint. Maybe Bed, Bath, and Beyond, I don't know, I don't know if we'll have enough time.

Things are pretty good, we may do some furniture shopping as we have not bought furniture since we moved to our house... I bought a mattress in Dubuque, a bookshelf in Madison, and we were given a lot of stuff by various kind people. I suppose we did buy a kitchen table, but that was retired when we were given a table. Our couch has... issues. Pretty old/stained to begin with, and a decent sized section of fabric is an old pillow cut up and held on with straight pins. It is where the person that gave it (we do appreciate it) to us had a candle fall on it and burn a large hole. So perhaps this weekend we will find something to replace it.

Sunday!!!

Well, after many Tuesdays of silence I'm back online Sunday afternoon. My computer has been crashing lately, I likely need a new motherboard, which saddens me. The cats have been mostly good, though somehow they wiggled open the screen one evening when Josie and I were watching a movie. After the movie we eventually found the cats outside on the deck hiding on/under patio furniture. Pongo would not be taken easily, and ran underneath the deck. He was apprehended shortly after.

Other news: I've been on call last week and kept pretty busy. Looking forward to a normal sleep schedule. My sister is now a Doctor, which is good. My sister in law was not well congratulated when she became a Doctor... her Grandma (trying hard in her own way) wrote, "We are very proud of you for becoming a Doctor, of course, we would have been just as proud if you had become a janitor." So Kate-- congats and you should be waaaaaay more proud than if you had become a janitor.

Weather News:
Lots of storms! Our street flooded decently, we are near a drain and had a small lake above the drain where water went past the sidewalk. Luckily no water in the basement [other than through a skylight which is apparently structurally good-- this was minor and is being cleaned up by insurance etc. -- but lots of fun]. Another major effect of the storms is that my task of staining the deck is delayed, yet another weekend passes with the task undone. Also, as always Josie and I obeyed the television and donned our bike helmets as tornado protection.



And yes, we survived. Thank you television. We also learned that "it is a bad idea to go outside to get pictures of the storm, but if you get any good ones, send 'em on in!" We tried to obey this command but were confuzzled.

Tuesday?

Yep another Tuesday. I actually ran last night _and_ this morning. Wow 2 days in a row! But Ultimate Frisbee starts a week from Thursday and I need to be in top condition. Not really but I am enjoying the lack of ice [read being able to run without injuring myself yet another time on ice].

Josie made an amazing cheesecake yesterday, using that recipe from Aunt Jane. Man does it make a lot, but man is it good.

But really things are busy but good. Was nice to see lots of family on Easter. Greg and Ellen had ok excuses. Claire was cute but needs to work on her cat animal noise, Cmon'! The biggest Easter news is that Kate somehow did not break the new dishwasher.

Dog Sitting

So we had a visitor a few weeks back, Gizmo. He is a Shi-tsu and full of energy. When he first arrived he just ran around and smelled everything.


Eventually Toodles decided to check things out from a safe distance.


Gizmo decided Toodles was pretty scary, so he hid under a chair.


Our other cats were petrified, and hid (unsuccessfully) under tissue paper for hours.


But we all had fun. Here is Josie and Gizmo in their matching jackets heading out for a walk.

one more

Ok this one is so good I had to share it --

Wisconsin nEwS!

Ok so I finally got a new computer. Yep the old PIII800 is getting retired from service. We had a good run but after 8 years the fans were getting frighteningly loud and once something broke it was not worth fixing. The new system is pretty good, another frankenbox from parts but delivers on performance [and cost]. So I'm glad to announce the geek council is considering re-instating me now that my system is not obsolete. All in all, things are lookin' up.

I could not have done it without help from the cats. Brought in a cousin of Pongo to help with wiring. As payment the cats get all the boxes stuff came in, which they love - of course.

Cat ATTACK

News for me- I'm sick of this much snow and having to drive in it. And the cold is not appreciated, as I've been trying to run every day. So far I'm at 14/22 days running for the month- a heck of a lot better than last month but I'll try and improve on it. Had an eye check today and man is it not fun to be outside in the snow and sunlight when your pupils can't contract.

News for J- She likes cheese. No other news. She needs to update her own blog, which is unchanged from when I made it 2 years ago. Also, she likes blueberries.

Well our Cats love the new "tiered" seating with baskets, though they each prefer a different level. Note the heavier they are the closer they prefer to be to the ground.

Toodles has been working out on the exercise ball. He has also constructed a rudimentary fort with this newfound strength. We shudder to think of his potential had he a brain.

Guests and Such

Well Josie and I got to watch Claire while Kate and Will enjoyed a much deserved evening to themselves. She really enjoyed the cats. Miss Ping decided she would run around in front of Claire and distract her from eating, there were a lot of "oohs!" She hasn't quite gotten petting down but we have high hopes for her.

Todd visited us for a few evenings, for his new job he uses Epic software, and was in town for training. Here we are the evening I cooked:

Josie found a recipe for poached balsamic chicken, it was pretty good actually. I think I prefer baked or grilled to poached but the flavor was excellent.


I had a couple trips recently, Detroit and Houston. Some crazy travel fun flying near the holidays and with bad weather, but I made it. Hopefully driving this weekend goes as well.

Weekend!

Nice weekend so far, Victor Allen's for Breakfast, a trip to Woodman's (always fun) and some raking thus far. Who knows, maybe we will have time to go to Home Depot- I just don't know if we will have enough time.

Cats & Stew!!!

So all 3 cats decided this on a sunny day that this desk was a great place to be. Mr. Tobias Tooley (aka Toodles) of course asserted his dominance by being at the highest level. Though they also sorted themselves by weight. Perhaps the effort of raising his bulk higher than the floor was too much for Pongo, but we can only speculate.

I'm trying to add lentils to my diet. My first attempt was a lentil and chicken stew. It ended up pretty delicious. It had carrots, onions, rosemary, basil, lemon juice, and tomato sauce. Perhaps next time I will try a curry.

Winery Tour

As Josie and I are all sophistimacated in our old age, we went on a tour of a local winery with friends.


There were some very old buildings. The wine tasting was definitely the best part of the tour, our group was oversized so we were a bit tight on space on some parts of the tour.

And when I got tired of walking there was a nice bench.

We also hit up some apple orchards and found some really good honeycrisps. All in all a good day.

Sunday --- almost back to work

Well our vacation has been good- too much rain to get as far with painting as we would like. But we had some fun. Toodles decided it would be fun to play in a drawer.

Nick came over and for some reason we started a puzzle... Some 6 hours later (2:30 am) Nick and I finished- and here it is... Yes- the lemons took 45 minutes and the neverending, mind numbing green took the rest of the time.

And I made a thai red curry stir fry thing. It was delicious ^_^

Huge friggin cat

Pongo is a large cat. He is 90% belly. He likes to lay with his tummy in the air; one of his favorite spots is crushing this cardboard box. This photo has not been altered in any way. For those concerned, there were no cats inside the box at the time this photo was taken.

Happy Caturday!!

Since it is Caturday here is a pic of all 3 cats at the window.

In other news, I was able to beat an elf using ghouls/aboms/dests. Dark ranger / Pands / archer / bear /dryad. He didn't have a chance. Ok not really but i was all proud of my scouting and ghoul work early, got a few archers and really really slowed his creeping. A DR that is allowed to free creep is a scary thing.

Played a lev ~25 Ud, one of those 100-100 people. Not great but if I suck I lose. Gnoll wood, so I decided to tech bear/dryad. I'm glad I scouted- he was next door and scouted me. My AP completred just as the DK and 4 ghouls hit my main. Had wisps ready to heal, AP stayed up, dk and ghouls had to run.


I harassed his creeping and crept a bit myself till I got bear/dryad- hit his main and found towers and master necs, as well as wagons waiting for me. Had to port quickly.
He hit soon after- but I had quickly made ~4 extra wisps and placed them away from my base, to the side of where his army would come from. This is what I was facing - with more in the wagons waiting to be risen:


I quickly detonated a couple wisps in the midst of this army- then another wisp decimated the next wave. With dryads/bears and Panda AOE nuke, it was pretty easy finish. If my wisps had all been behind my lines it may have been different. But at least I have a strat vs necro wagon - dryads/wisps seem great.

So J and I went camping this June. Here is us on top of a "mountain" overlooking the mississippi. And here is the G-man being attacked by a crazed animal whenever he visited last...

Claire met our cats, who were overall frightened by her. Mainly due to the screams. But she got some good pets in just the same.

WC Update

Decided to try my hand at elf yesterday. My orc is no longer pitiful, just "decent." Fun so far, I have a basic archer build down, it allows AOW creeping some maps. Need to learn a hunt build for 2v2, should not be bad. Anyway I split creeped a lot of AOW/archer while the DH kept them busy, here the DH came back to help with a tough group.

After that I creepjacked the human, bought from the merc shop as he crept it, and cleaned up.


I'm probably going to learn elf enough that I don't totally suck, then try basic hu. Then maybe play random. Good times.