Happy New Year 2025

 

Good luck to us all, we're going to need it.  Let's hope his visions don't come to fruition.

Party (enjoy your freedoms) while you can!  After all, we have about 3 weeks still until it hits the fan.  Four years ago it was a relief, though a scary time on January 6, when it finally ended.  Now it will begin again, and this time he's angry, fearless, and inexplicably empowered by those he will hurt the most.

But I don't want to dwell on a vengeful orange wanna-be dictator and the hell that is about to be raised.

Sorry to make this political.  A google search for HNY 2025 pics also brought up Project 2025 pics.

I had today off, got some baking and housework done, went out to lunch and now I'm relaxing while watching the Bucks game.  Tonight, my wife and I will enjoy a nice t-bone steak dinner at home and a quiet, early evening.  I may stay up to see midnight, but I don't feel obligated.

No matter what happens in 2025, I wish the best for all of you.  Thanks for visiting.  Cheers!

Merry Christmas 2024

Happy Holiday, everyone.  

I'm not sure exactly what I'll do today, but it likely won't be much.  I do have some tedious tasks that I want to get done by the new year, maybe today's the day.  

Or I could go out and watch some football that is only on a streaming service that I don't have.  Might depend on what my wife needs to get done.

Whatever you're doing today, I hope it is pleasurable and rewarding.  

Merry Christmas.

Winter Solstice 2024

The winter solstice arrived early this morning, hours before I got up.  For several years now I've been having a fire on this day, in cold temperatures and in a bit of snow, but we have both this year.

So, no winter solstice fire pit this year but at least the days will start getting longer.  Very soon here I will be making the drive to Mom's and will be spending the night.  My wife will be staying back and taking care of her dad, as usual.  This week will be especially hard for her with the holidays, as well.  My sister and her family were supposed to arrive there yesterday but they came down sick, and it sounds like my brother and his family will be there for a few hours this evening.   This is our Christmas gathering this year.  Happy solstice, everyone.

Baking/Cooking Weekend

Two batches of baguettes yesterday.

Flatbread made today.

A fresh batch of pizza sauce made.

And not made today, but homemade pizza dough fresh from the freezer to thaw and rise for dinner.

What did you do this weekend?

Cold Repair Work

It was -2ºF (-19ºC) when I got up this morning, and I believe we only got up to around 10ºF (-12ºC) this afternoon.  It was damn cold, the coldest of the season so far.  Still, this is Wisconsin; life went on as normal with no shutdowns or anything.  Just a lot of tongue-in-cheek complaining about the cold, but that's a winter past-time around here.  Thankfully we don't have any significant snow on the ground yet to go with it.  And we will get warmer again as there is a chance of rain on Saturday and Monday.

With snow being inevitable we had my wife's wheelchair van in the shop this week.  Her driver side back door would not open, so she always had to use the passenger side to load and unload, which would be an issue when that curb side has 2 feet of snow piled up.  It was an expensive fix at over $1700, the part alone was a grand of that, but it had to be done no matter the price.  Next up for her car is brakes and tires, so we'll have another hefty bill soon after the new year.

I've not talked about my new job here much at all.  It's been over a year now, and I still feel a bit unsure about it.  I'm not sure why, but I've always kind of fallen into my next job and wound up being really good at it.  This is so different than anything I've done I think I still just don't have a ton of confidence yet, though certainly more than when I started.  Back then my head was still spinning from the last job and I knew someone who worked here and I needed insurance as soon as possible, so I took it.  I could look at the negatives about the pay, hours and insurance (and maybe I do which is why I still feel unsure), but overall I am much happier than I was before.

I spend about half my time in-house and the other half out job-coaching various clients one-on-one.  When I'm in-house it's usually just playing and entertaining clients with varying degrees of personal cares to do throughout the day, depending what classes I'm scheduled in.  And job coaching varies depending on the client, but normally isn't very difficult.  I've been getting one of our most difficult clients to job coach often, but he usually listens to me well and I know how to guide him so by now I'd actually prefer to be with him.

But, before I'm tempted to type specifics I should move on.  Thank you for the recent question, BW.

Meanwhile, frozen or not, these pumpkins are getting eaten.  I think they will slowly disappear into the belly of the beasts out back well before spring.

Street Reconstruction Part 17 & More

Yesterday they installed two No Parking signs near the top of our street and the next one over.  Today they installed more down both streets, but spaced further apart.  There is a sign two houses up and two houses down from us, which makes me happy we don't have one on our terrace to mow around.  So rather than take a picture of one of the signs in front of a neighbor's house, here is a stock photo of what they look like.

I'm thinking all that is left is for the extra poles to be removed and trees planted in spring, but they may surprise me with something I didn't think of again.  Happily, it appears people are heeding the signs and only parking on the other side since I'm not sure how many neighbors looked into the work to be done as I did and knew about this change.  And while I'm happy parking is on the other side, that means I'll have to back out a bit more carefully on this narrower street since we're pretty much guaranteed to have a car across the street now, and it may be my wife's at times.

When I got home from my Mom's on Thanksgiving Day I caught this fat squirrel eating from the frozen pumpkins on the stoop, picture taken from the car.  Well, they lasted out front for about a month and a half, through Halloween and Thanksgiving, so it was time to put them in back and let them decompose or be eaten.  

I've had trouble with my display driver on this computer so haven't used the trail cams lately as reviewing all that video does bad things, but you can still see the squirrels eat up our pumpkin from a couple years ago here.  Question:  Does anyone know if you can download a new display driver?  I haven't found anything when I looked, so I fear I may need to get a new computer to fix the issue.  And yes, the driver is fully updated.

I placed the pumpkins on the rotting stump in back, near the frozen bird bath.  (We've been below the freezing point for several days now, though we might manage to get just above tomorrow so we can get some rain that can then freeze for us.  Wonderful.)  Whatever the squirrels leave of the pumpkins can help nourish the wildflower seeds we plan to spread on the stump again next year.

After the break is just some recent baking, if interested.