JPs BDay

The Gs smoked a pork butt for JP's birthday. We all ate way too much pork, baked mac & cheese, twice baked spuds, and slaw. 

MB sent some beautiful flowers that the cat knows would help her hack up a hairball.

Icy Monday

We had an ice storm come through Sunday night. It stayed at 32° and rained all night and day. The boys already had MLK day off. The prediction was that Tuesday would be just as bad, so school was called and the boys had a free day @ home.

Overall, it was melting as fast as it was sticking. We only maybe a 1/4" on everything. Just enough to make it pretty without tearing down all the trees.

Gibson!

The $350 I made from selling the Dig Dug arcade game has been burning a hole through my pocket like a pound of thermite. I was going to get a fretless bass, but instead found a sweet used Gibson LPJ Pro. It has a couple of scratches and I had to install a new nut, but it's a solid player. The body is all mahogany with a carved mahogany top (usually they're maple) and a maple neck (usually they're mahogany). It's not an actual Les Paul, but it's close enough for me!

It plays like a dream.

Lamppost vs Car

Last week someone lost control (or was playing on their phone) and ran off the road and hit our streetlight post dead on. I didn't realize the posts are fiberglass. Ours is now listing to the north and it's smashed where the car hit it. I'm glad it was this and not our tree. Two years ago the same thing happened to one of the trees across the street, except that it was summertime and the road was dry.

Dishwasher Helper

When it comes to working the dishwasher, JP refuses help from the boys and me. Something to do with incompetence or something. However, she does welcome help from the animals. M usually does the pre-wash cleaning, and L helps with the loading.

Montecristo Guitar

Over Christmas, I picked up a 3-string electric cigar box guitar. It's a short scale, tuned to an open-G and it has no frets (just lines), so it's played with a slide. Last weekend I replaced the fake cigar box with a real one that our next door neighbor gave us. It's much more authentic now. Just need to learn how to play it.

New Carpet

Once the holidays cleared out, we bit the bullet and upgraded our carpet. This gave us the opportunity to get rid of the squeaky floor by CP's door. Turns out the noise was coming from the floor moving relative to the wall. We sunk some huge screws in along with some glue that have taken care of the problem.

We did the installation in two parts so that we didn't have to move everything downstairs. Of course, we had helpers all the way. We took the old Marshall Fields sofa and the computer hutch from Woodstock to the homeless shelter. What a bear it was to get the sofa out! Despite taking the door off, JP will have to repaint the door frame.

Old on the left, new on the right.

Thermal Expansion

Since our A/C (and heat pump) died this fall, we've been running on gas heat, which puts out much warmer air. During our last cold spell, it was 5° outside and a lot warmer than that at the ceiling in the living room. We heard what sounded like a bird smashing into the window - it was the inner pane breaking on its own due to the temperature gradient between in and outside. A few years ago, the lower window did the same thing and we fixed it ourselves. Lesson learned. This time, we'll hire someone.

Fast XMas

This year, we went to Nana's for Christmas. Drive to IL on Friday, stay two days, drive home on Monday. It went fast! W the cat loved all the attention he got from the boys.

On the way there, we started off with frozen rain until we got to Omaha. The radar looked awful, but the air was so dry, nothing was hitting the ground. An hour north of Des Moines, I-35 was shut down due to ice. Good thing we weren't going to Minneapolis. We skirted the storm and had no snow and no traffic the whole way. Ten minutes after we arrived, it started snowing and continued all night. On Christmas Day, a fast-moving Texas-to-Canada cold front dropped down a tornado less than an hour from Lincoln. Kinda glad we missed out on that, too.

Puzzled

One of our new holiday traditions is to put together a puzzle. This one we picked up in NYC at the library gift shop. 

The cats LOVE to help. There are so many pieces on the table that need to be knocked to the floor.

Even when all the pieces are snapped together, V can't help herself.

Downsizing

Dig Dug has gone the way of Pole Position. The arcade is down to two machines.

We still have one too many arcade cabinets in the garage. Can't decide which one will be next. Tempest is the all time greatest game, but the Omega Race cabinet is just so cool...

Shanghai Video

Finally! I got the video uploaded from the Shanghai trip. It's in HD, so it should look OK on full-screen. Check it out here: Shanghai Video

2016 LSW Wreath Auction

This was JP's 3rd year as chairperson for the LSW Speech/Debate Team Wreath Auction. This year it was much less hectic in the weeks before than the last two times. 

We had a good turnout at the Lodge at Wilderness Ridge. I think of the 140 tickets sold, 90+ showed up for yummy hors d'ouvres.

Madame Chairperson

It's all in the name of supporting these kids and their teammates.

Killer Kitty

When it gets cold outside, the mice want inside. Unfortunately for them, V really likes to hunt, play with, and kill them. We found mouse #1's lifeless carcass when we returned from Thanksgiving. It had crawled under the utility room door and expired there. The photo above is mouse #2. V got it during the night and she was in the middle of the living room floor with her present for me in the morning. She was VERY excited about it. Meow Meow MEOW meow myow! GP is completely amazed that our cute and cuddly little cat is such a vicious and cold blooded killer.

We (JP mostly) began an exhaustive search of the house for more signs of mice. We found where they had chewed through a crack just above the foundation in the storage room. We left the door to the room open, put the cats in the basement, and closed the basement door at night and let nature sort herself out. In the morning all we found was a small pile of cat puke with little bits of grey fur and some tiny intestines. Not sure which one ate it, but that was the end of our mouse problem for this year.

Of course, we needed to make sure there weren't any more, so we spent all day last weekend emptying out the entire storeroom and throwing out anything with mouse turds on it. I lost my backpacking pack and sleeping bag. The boys lost some of their old toys. JP would be happy if we pitched all of it.

Elfie Selfie - Or Where Did November Go?

The blog has been running a bit behind this fall due to a general lack of free time. Starting at the end of October, I had the week-long show in Louisville. Two weeks later was a weeklong trip to Shanghai. Back to work for two days, and then off for five days to IL for thanksgiving. We got back on a Sunday and the next day I was back on a plane. In O'Hare, I spied Elf walking around and he was fired up to grant me an Elfie Selfie. My traveling companions (my boss included) didn't get it. From Chicago, it was on to Kohler/Sheboygan for a day, then drive across WI to Minneapolis for a full day's meeting. Back in the office for three days, and then on the road again to Grand Rapids. This week I have zero trips and am actually taking today off so that I can get caught up on home life.

Shanghai!

In November, I went to Shanghai for a week (for work). It was hectic at work and I didn't have time to do anything. When I printed out my boarding passes, I neglected to see that they were being sent to the marketing printer, in color, and on 11x17 paper. They sat in the printer all afternoon, so everyone walking past got a chuckle and gave me a hard time. The TSA agents also got a kick out of them.

The trip from Lincoln to Minneapolis to Seattle to Shanghai takes about 24 hours to complete. The flight across the Pacific is 13 hours. There's a 10 hour time shift; the jetlag makes for a swirly trip. By the end of the week, I was sleeping thru the night, only to return home for another 10 hour time warp. We got home on a Saturday night at 10 PM and had all day to recover Sunday.

Once we got thru immigration and customs, we took the Maglev train at 300 kph (188 mph) for 8 minutes (it's only a prototype section of rail line) to another station where we tried out the Shanghai subway for the first time. From there it was 45 minutes to the station closest to our hotel on Nanjing Road, which is a beautiful pedestrian walkway. By the time we got there our heads were spinning.

We on a Saturday night. Sunday, we went on a three-hour walking street food tour with a group of six other tourists. It was awesome food, and we got to see a little bit of China away from the neon lights of where we were staying. After the tour, we took the subway to the old original part of Shanghai. There was a ton of shopping, plus we toured the Yu Garden, a 17th century retreat built by a city patriarch. From Yu Garden, we walked to the riverfront and gawked at the buildings. The building on the right in the photo below is the Shanghai Tower. At 2,000 feet in height, it dwarfs the others that are still actually taller than the Sears Tower in Chicago. The building with the hole in it is 1,600 feet tall!!

Monday we visited a supplier north of the city and continued on to Nantong to see another supplier on Tuesday. From there, we drove five hours south to Hangzhou, where the G20 summit was held a couple months earlier. I went there last year and was amazed at the improvements that had been made in one short year. From Hangzhou, we did a day trip to Ningbo to visit a casting supplier and machine shop. 

To get back to Shanghai, we took a bullet train at 180 mph to the Hongqiao train/airport/subway station and then took the subway from there back to the hotel. Last time I was there, a seasoned China traveler advised me that the secret to traveling is to go superlight: "Book your hotels with at least two nights so that you can get clothes cleaned." We had a one-night stay in Nantong, so instead of packing only two sets of clothes, I had to pack three. Everything fit easily into a normal sized carry-on bag. We didn't have to check any bags on the airlines, and the smaller size really helped out when navigating the subways and sidewalks.

We arrived back in Shanghai to our original hotel on Thursday afternoon. Every night since we arrived, we had eaten like kings as the guests of our suppliers. Every lunch was a huge meal, as was every dinner. We were tired of eating twenty different foods at each meal. so when we had the opportunity to eat on our own, it was simple noodles.

In Shanghai, there are a fair amount of Westerners, but not a lot. Along the waterfront everyone is a tourist, and everyone is taking selfies with the tall buildings in the background. Trying to be polite, we would try to get out of people's selfie backgrounds. We were surprised that people would move to keep us in their picture frame - they wanted us in their pics. Once we figure this out, we had fun posing with the locals in their selfies and snapshots.

Friday after we visited our final supplier, we packed up for the return journey the next morning and then took our Chinese corporate colleagues out for dinner. This time it was on us: PIZZA! We found an authentic Italian place on the rvierfront that served up so very tasty pizza and microbrew beer. Our Chinese friends were shocked to learn that we (Americans) eat cheese daily. Dairy isn't a food group there.

As I mentioned, we got around everywhere via subway. It took a couple minutes the first time to figure out how it all works, but from then on, it was cruiser. The trains and stations were clean and safe (and sometimes crowded) and we treated each ride as an adventure.

Additional photos are on Google Photos in an album here: China Album

Glitter Houses

JP built a town of glitter houses again this year for the LSW Speech Team Wreath Auction. She's been working on them for months.

Thankful for Old Friends

For Black Friday, we journeyed to Woodstock to see our old friends in Woodstock. We went to the Deer Park mall to hit Restoration Hardware, but found that it's gone. Only online sales for them from now on. It was JP's favorite store there.

The kids have known each other since birth. Won't be long and they'll all be gone away to school.

The Nebraska - Iowa game is always the day after Thanksgiving. This year I got to catch three minutes of it at the bar in the restaurant where we ate. Maybe some year we'll be able to see it in its entirety.

Thanksgiving 2016

We made the trek across the exciting plains from Nebraska to Illinois for Thanksgiving. Truly riveting scenery along the way, to be sure!

W the Cat is as fluffy as ever. 

Another awesome dinner with S & BD and family. What a fun bunch to hang out with.

Nana and her tall boys.

If the Box Fits I Sits

The fastest way to find a cat is to throw an empty box on the floor. Within seconds it will be occupied.

Don't Blame Us

CP was fired up to vote this year. Both boys were very engaged in the whole election process and its associated carnival. We were all devastated with the outcome. At least Nebraska was able to split its electoral votes, so CP's vote was not wasted. Out of Nebraska's 93 counties, all but two were red. Lancaster County was solid blue, thanks in part to our new voter.

Little Pecker

We had a new customer at the birdfeeder - some sort of tiny woodpecker. The birdfeeder has been the best $20 we've spent in a long time.

Cubs Win!