Even Closings Have An End

Just a quick update on things.  The closing for our house in Alabama was on Monday, so in a sense, we are finally homeless!  Good thing we have had Dad to put us up for the past four months.  Our closing for our ‘to be’ house in Mukwonago is on December 16 – two weeks away.  There has been a lot of hair pulling and frustration throughout this process (mainly working with our lender), but as Jack put it (Jet’s host family), ‘even closings have an end’.  He couldn’t have put it any better.  In the past week we have had the radon tests done (came back good), the appraisal done (came back good), and found someone (Met Life) that gave us the best deal on home + auto insurance.  We will be back at the ‘to be’ house on Sunday to look at the furniture that they are willing to sell us, so hopefully that goes well.

Ben had a blast at the Sesame Street Live event at Bradley Center with Jet on Saturday, though Ben seems to be becoming more of a handful every day.  But Ben is also at an age in which he is in awe and wonder at every new thing he finds out about Christmas.  His new favorite Christmas song is the old Buck Owens song, “Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy“.  Ben also watched “Rudolph, The Red Nosed Reindeer” for the first time last night on TV.  After it was over, I asked Ben what his favorite part was.  To my surprise, he said “the monster!”  After we first saw the “bumble’s” feet (I am sure you have seen it on TV many times before), Ben would keep asking me when the monster would be back.  I remembered doing the same thing when I was a kid so that I would know when to turn my head away (I did the same thing when I went to see “E.T.” for the first time).  But for Ben, it was the exact opposite.  He would ask me to rewind the show so that he could see the monster again.  I guess Ben is more daring than me, which if you think about it, probably says more about me than it does about Ben. 

In two weeks at Ben’s ’school’ (daycare), conferences are scheduled with parents.  In addition, there will be a pot-luck event where the children will sing Christmas and other songs.  I will also be coming into Ben’s class to share Oplatky with Ben’s classmates.  I will tell the children the story of Christmas Even in Slovakia and show them how to break the Oplatky with their friends and eat it with honey.  It should be a lot of fun and is something that I am really looking forward to.  As you might imagine, I already did get the Oplatky in the mail last week.  Since we usually have a bit of Oplatky left over every year, I though bringing some in to Ben’s class would be a good idea.  We will see.  On Saturday morning, Dad will take Ben to have breakfast with Santa at Saint Margaret Mary’s and then we are planning on spending some time in Mukwonago for their holiday parade and (perhaps) to take a horse carriage ride, among other things.

I did have my court date for the ticket I got back in October.  The time was scheduled at 6:00pm at the Wauwatosa court house just off of 76th and North Avenue.  Everyone that did not have a parking ticket to dispute had to sign-in outside the courtroom and wait for a brief meeting with the assistant city attorney.  There were about 10 people ahead of me, so after about 15 minutes, my name was called and I met with the attorney in a room adjacent to the courtroom.  I was in and out in about 30 seconds.  The attorney asked me if I either wanted to contest the ticket (‘not guilty’) or get a point taken off the ticket (‘no contest’).  I favored the latter, so the attorney circled that option with his recommendation (reduced from a 3 point to a 2 point infraction, ‘impeding traffic’ or ‘driving too slow’) and told me to wait in the courtroom until my name was called by the judge.  In the courtroom, there were about 60-70 people waiting for their names to be called, most were males under the age of 25 by my guess.  Very few dressed up for their appearance and only a few appeared to show the judge any respect when they were called up to meet with the judge face-to-face.  Although the judge spoke in a low tone of voice with the individual there were a few times when the judge got very testy.  He scolded one white male of about 20 years old with a shaved head, “What do you think I am, stupid? Do you think you can pull one over me?”  I then heard the judge talk about the distances between streets (e.g., “4000 block, 4100 block, 4200 block …”), which led to me believe that the kid was trying to make things up about where his incident took place.  After about 30 minutes of waiting, my name was called.  A few steps before I got to the judge, he told me “How do you do?” and within 30 seconds, it was all done.  The judge asked how I pled (‘no contest’) and sent me on my way with a smile.  I suspect I got some of the best treatment of the evening, either because I didn’t have a complicated case or because I was the only one besides the judge wearing a tie.  I paid the fine ($88.80 – Wauwatosa doesn’t reduce fines, only points) to the court clerk, who was sitting about 10 yards away to the right of the judge, and I was on my way.  A pleasant ending to an experience that I am glad is over.

Thankful For

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year, thanks to Kristin and the rest of the family for making it a wonderful event. I get a bit excited knowing that we are in line to host Thanksgiving next year for the first time ever, well, for any holiday. Speaking of hosting and houses, things are still progressing with both of our houses. Our agent in Alabama has said that the closing will take place on Monday afternoon/evening. This is one week after the original closing date we were given. Oh well, better late than never. Things are also progressing with our probable house in Wisconsin. We have had the home inspection completed last week, the radon inspection completed this week, and by next week, hopefully all of the financing will be in place to get the deal done. The tentative closing date is December 16, so we will just have to wait and see what happens. It looks like we could be moved in to a new house by Christmas. Wouldn’t that be nice?

The weather has taken a turn for the worse around here the past few days as temperatures dipped back into the 20’s again. Unfortunately, that is to be expected this time of year and we have really been spoiled by the good weather we have been having this mild season. Let’s just hope it stays until after we finish moving!

It was an interesting week driving back from work as I ‘almost’ hit a deer on Tuesday and Wednesday. With only about 20 minutes of daylight left on Tuesday, I was leaving Whitewater down HWY 12 when a buck galloped across the road about 30 yards ahead of me. No issues there as I was the only car in sight and the deer was plenty far ahead of me to not cause any problems. On Wednesday, I was passing through the Hale/Rock interchange on I-43 when a doe popped out of the trees that separated the split from cars going north on I-894 and those going south. It was already dark out, but I saw the doe rush out to the shoulder just a few feet from my door just as I was passing, then do a 180 turn and leap back into the trees. I slowed from 60mph to 20mph in a flash and was thankful that the nearest car behind me was 100 yards back. That was too close for comfort. What a strange mix of misfortune (encountering deer) and fortune (no cars around/no problems resulting). A few minutes later, the traffic report on the radio said that there was a 4-car pileup on I-894 going south. I guess the doe made another appearance going out the other side.

Jet will be taking Ben out this morning to Sesame Street Live, held downtown at the Bradley Center. I hope it goes well. I put Ben down for a nap just before the Iron Bowl (“roll tide!”) and he came down crying less than 1 hour later, complaining that his stomach hurt. Ben had a mild fever (99.9), so I didn’t put him back to sleep, and did my best to play with him while watching the big game. His fever appeared to come back again last night and Jet gave Ben some Tylenol to help. They are both still sleeping this morning (almost 7:00am), so I hope the extra rest will help them both.

I did not plan to out for any Black Friday shopping – I just may be past those wild days of my youth, standing in the bitter cold for hours to save a few bucks. Maybe. There was a promotion at Mayfair Mall yesterday that was reported in the Journal/Sentinel that the first 300 cars in the parking garage from 6:00am – noon would get a $15 mall certificate to be used that day. I left Dad’s house at 5:50am and arrived at the mall just before 6:00am. I was in a line of about 40-50 cars to get into the parking garage while there was another line feeding cars into the garage from the other side of the mall. I waited about 30 minutes in line, with only 4 cars ahead of me to get into the lot, when a security officer started walking to the cars ahead of me with the green certificate for a $15 gift card. It appeared that the lot was full. I got my $15 certificate and was happy. I got out of line and headed out in the direction that the other line had formed to get into the lot, so that I could leave the mall. Right after I made that turn, there was another person handing out the green certificates. The car ahead of me slowed down, rolled down his window, and spoke to the man. I did the same thing. Not wanting to get in trouble for getting a $15 certificate and not parking in the lot, I said that the security officer told me to go this direction for parking. To my surprise, the man gave me another $15 certificate. I found the first available parking spot and went inside the mall to claim my rewards. The mall was wild inside, as you might imagine on Black Friday. There were radio and TV crews stationed all throughout the mall. After another 20-30 minutes of waiting in line to redeem the gift certificates (the paper I received said that I had until 9:00pm to claim the gift certificate), I had two $15 mall gift cards in my hands and I just knew that Jet would be both happy and proud of me. I got back at Dad’s a few minutes before 7:00am and I was done going out for Black Friday 2009.

What Time Is It?

Things have been about as hectic and stressful as you could imagine this past week, from finalizing the sale of our house in Alabama to working on buying a house up here in Wisconsin.  That is why the coming holidays have been a blessing of sorts to our sanity.  With the playing of Christmas songs on the radio to the CD of Christmas songs that Ben loves hearing over and over in the morning, the mood does get a bit lighter.  Ben will request his favorite songs “Too much” (Snow Miser, sung by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy), “Christmas Time” (Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, sung by Bruce Springsteen), and “White Christmas” (sung by the Drifters), among other favorites.  The best part is when Ben tries to sing along.  Priceless.  Another benefit of this time of year is all of the “holiday” (note, not Christmas) celebrations here in Milwaukee.  On Thursday evening, we took Dad and Joanne out to dinner at a Thai restaurant in downtown Milwaukee, then walked to the next block for free hot chocolate and cookies for the lighting of the “holiday” tree and other “holiday” light displays with a fireworks show.  Ben was a little under the weather from a slight case of car sickness from the drive from Whitewater, so he was both excited by the event and freaking out.  He was both loving the fireworks but scared of them.  Loving the police horses, but didn’t want to get too close to them.  This morning we traveled back to downtown Milwaukee for the “holiday” parade, which Ben was able to enjoy much more than Thursday evening.  Though he loved seeing Santa at the end, he said his favorite part was the “band”, that is, the multitude of student bands that passed through – all playing Christmas toons.  So in the midst of all of this stress, it is the holidays that are putting things back into perspective.

Back On The Horse

So what do you do when you were outbid on a contract for a house?  You place a bid on another house, of course.  That is just what we did today, so we hope the results end up more favorable in this round.  This current house that we bid on is a little more expensive than the last one, but it would not need the same amount of work (e.g., new paint, carpet) as the last one.  The location is better for Jet as it is closer to the freeway in Mukwonago, but we will have to wait and see.  Our agent informed us that there are two other bids that are also competing for this house.  What is up with all of the recent activity?  I wonder if it is related to the recent updates to the federal housing tax credit program.  If it is, that stinks.  First time home buyers can offer $8,000 more on a house while repeat buyers can offer $6,500 more – both sizable amounts that we cannot match.  I guess we can only hope for the best.

Jet and I took Ben to Trainfest yesterday, which was a lot of fun for us.  We had told Ben that we were taking him for a haircut, and when we walked inside the Wisconsin Expo center, his eye’s got as wide as saucers.  We had a hard time catching up with Ben at times as he ran from display to display seeking out all different kinds of trains.  I was just surprised that Ben was good about not touching the trains or the displays and was very well-behaved.  Of course Ben went nuts for a minute when we left the building, but it was a wonderful and fun time for us.  Coming up on Thursday is the Milwaukee Holiday Lights Festival in downtown Milwaukee which should also be a lot of fun.  With all of the stress we have buying a house, it is good to still find time to enjoy ourselves.

Losing It

After class on Thursday, my voice started to get a bit harsh and started to break up.  When I woke up on Friday, I could barely speak.  I feel fine, but my throat was so congested that it was tough for me to speak.  Undeterred, I still took Ben to the Scuppernong Hiking Trail in the Kettle Moraine to meet with our friends, Kyle and T.  Kyle suggested this trail and did speak of many other trails that he and his wife Robin have hiked, so he surely knew more about the area trails than I did.  For the first bit of walking, it was a struggle.  Lugging around a backpack in one arm, I had to hold Ben in the other.  For the past two weeks Ben has been going through a phase where he gets a bit emotional/angry when things don’t go his way.  For whatever reason, Ben was full-bent against walking.  Oh well, at least it was a good workout for me.  Though T is a few months younger than Ben, he had no trouble walking around on his own.  T’s issue was that he would find something of interest (e.g., a rock, a stick, a patch of grass) and would lag behind.  We made it work, though.  We reached a lookout point about 20-30 minutes into our walk when I was finally able to convince Ben to walk around on his own. Ben then began to play with T and was back to his usual self.  Ben walked around on his own, picked up various sticks and acorns, and kicked around leaves with me.  That was what I was hoping for.  It was the first time that Ben and I enjoyed the outdoors together in Wisconsin.  I am glad that Kyle came up with this idea because I hope to spend a bit of time with Ben in the future outdoors.  I am also happy that he managed with a lot of one-way conversation because I was losing my voice.  It is those little moments that make you appreciate all that you have.

We got news yesterday that the house we put an offer on in Mukwonago was not accepted and that a competing offer was.  From what our agent said, the other offer was just a small percentage over our offer.  Although the news is a little disheartening, I just trust in fate that this house was not meant to be ours – no matter how much I had hoped it to be.  After a full week of having dreams of that house at night, I finally had a good night rest last night.  Oh well.  On to more showings today.  Keep moving forward.

Moving Ahead

“Moving ahead” seems to best describe the mood of the moment.  We have been going nuts over the past week to resolve issues with our home sale in Alabama that resulted from our house getting a lower-than-expected appraisal.  We hope things are all in place now to get things finished, albeit costing us more out-of-pocket than we had wished.  We have also put in an offer on a home in Mukwonago, but there are no sure things here as we just found out that there recently was another offer placed on that house.  As much as I am attached to this house, I will have to stay faithful to the house selection process that Jet and I have in place.  Here’s to hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.

We did the Jingle Bell Run at the Milwaukee County Zoo on Sunday morning and it was unseasonably warm for a November day.  Temperatures have been in the 50’s and 60’s (even 71 on Saturday!) since Friday and will likely continue until this weekend.  I ran stride for stride with Bryon during the run.  Since I don’t know if Bryon will ever do a 5K again in the future, that was an opportunity I didn’t want to pass up.  That run gave me the motivation I needed to do my first run at Whitewater.  Instead of taking advantage of the warm weather, I decided to run 30 laps on the outside ring of the indoor track on campus.  As much as I don’t like running in circles, I figured that I need to get adjusted/familiar with the track since this will likely be the only place that I will be able to run at after the weather takes a turn for the worse.  I did a slow and steady jog, but it felt good to be out and active again after a prolonged layoff.

This coming Friday I am planning to have a Dad’s Day Out with our new friend Kyle and adopted Thai son.  We both have Friday’s off, so this might become a regular occurence.  Since the weather should be nice on Friday (fingers crossed), Kyle suggested taking a hike in the Kettle Moraine.  To me, that would be awesome.  We’ll see what happens.  This coming weekend (Saturday and Sunday) is Trainfest at the Wisconsin State Fair park.  I was planning on taking Ben there myself and making it an event for ‘the guys’, but Jet let me know that she might want to come along as well.  We’ll see what happens.

Just one update, here is the link to a recording of my interview on the radio regarding virtual teams in my class this semester.  Below are some overdue pictures from Halloween, to Ben’s first ’school pictures’ at his daycare, to pictures from Sunday’s race.

Little Bear

The house search begins anew again today, this time without the worries of possibly having two house payments to manage.  We are scheduled to see 10 houses today, from New Berlin, to Vernon, to Mukwonago, and possibly even Eagle.  I hope we don’t exhausted too soon.  Dad has volunteered again to watch Ben while we are away after having done the same yesterday. 

I was a little nervous leaving Ben yesterday because Dad had just turned on Sesame Street for him and went back to bed.  What trouble could Ben get into without any supervision!  At that moment I remembered the little scare I had watching Ben the night before while Jet and Dad were out grocery shopping.  Ben and I were watching Game 1 of the World Series when he started getting a little rambunctious, as he often has a tendency to do.  Ben was rolling around next to me on Dad’s couch when he fell off backwards, hitting the back left side of his head on the square corner of Dad’s coffee table on the way down.  After a second or two of shock, Ben began to cry.  Only a few seconds later, blood began to spill profusely from the spot on his head where he struck the table.  Lucky there was a small towel nearby that I could grab to control the bleeding.  After it was all said and done, Ben had a big lump on his head and what only appeared to be a decent scratch – nothing requiring stitches.  Kristin informed me that minor head cuts often produce a lot of blood, so that appeared to be the case this time.  Yeah, how could Dad do any worse than me!

Today is the official day for trick-or-treating in Milwaukee, though I don’t know if Ben will take part.  The weather has taken a turn for the worse in the past day (windy, colder) and Kristin’s kids have all been recently sick – Josh the latest and perhaps has yet to fully recover.  Trick-or-treat takes place from 1:00 – 4:00pm, so we may either be still looking at houses (hopefully not) or Ben may be down for a nap (more likely).  So Ben has all of that working against him trick-or-treating today.  At least he was able to get out and do it last weekend, though Ben has asked to go trick-or-treating again a few times on the way to school during the week.  Who knows – if a lot of trick-or-treaters come to the door of Dad’s house today, perhaps that will keep Ben awake and anxious to get out there as well.  We will see.  Last night as we were going to bed, I told Ben for the first time “night night little bear”, and without any hesitation, Ben responded “night night big bear”, then promptly rolled over to his side and fell asleep.  That was a moment that will stick with me for a long time.

Media Hound

It just keeps coming!  The story I was interviewed for a few weeks back regarding the ‘virtual team’ project I am having my students participate in was released today on the UWW media page.  A few hours later I got a request to give an interview about this to WCLO, a local radio station in Janesville.  The interview was over the phone and short (10 minutes), which was nice because I did it in the spare 15 minutes I had between classes today.  The reporter said that he would cut down and produce the report, which is good because I am sure that I spoke a mile-a-minute.  I don’t know if I can ever listen to WCLO because I never pass that way, but I hope they do put that interview on their Website so I can hear it.

I have volunteered to help with a technology camp tomorrow called Cyber Girlz, which will be held in downtown Milwaukee (at Northwestern Mutual) and is something that I am really looking forward to.  Maybe I will get lucky and have a chance to have lunch with Jet tomorrow since the Chase building downtown is just a few blocks away.  Kristin has graciously volunteered to watch Ben for the day while I am away, and if the weather cooperates, Ben will join his cousins in decorating for Halloween.  With weather in Wisconsin, that is no sure thing. 

Things have been relatively quiet all week, which is good.  I’d like to say things are easier and stress-free because our house is ‘almost’ sold, but you get rid of one stress, and two more pop up. It has been a good month or so since we looked at houses, but that will pick up again this weekend as we will be looking at homes in the Mukwonago area.  Hopefully we can find something that we both like so that bit of stress can go away.  Stress has shown up in many ways too.  One thing that I am not proud of is that I have now gained 20 pounds since moving back to Wisconsin.  20 pounds!  In 3 months!  I have no idea where our iPod shuffle is that I loved to listen to while running, so I just went online and bought a new one yesterday to give me some ‘extra’ motivation to start running again.  Since it is getting a little too cold to go running outside, I plan to use the indoor track a lot at UWW over the next few weeks.  This weight gain has got to stop now!

House Sold?

Well, our last post mentioned how we had left our real estate agent after 6 months and planned to sell the house ourselves.  Our agent picked up her sign earlier in the week and Donald and Linda put a “for sale by owner” sign out with flyers shortly after.  Jet called me on Saturday morning letting me know that our agent called us back.  The couple that put the earlier offer on our house (the only couple that did) put in a much better offer.  We countered.  They accepted our counter on Saturday evening.  If it all does come through, we would be taking roughly a $15-20,000 loss on the house.  The relief in having the house sold?  Priceless.  Hopefully everything pans outs.

With that bit of big news, there were a few other “fall” things that we did this weekend.  Kristin, Ty, and Sam came over on Saturday night and we went trick-or-treating in my Dad’s neighborhood.  The city of Milwaukee officially has trick-or-treating next week Saturday (on Halloween), so I am not sure if this neighborhood will have to do trick-or-treating twice.  On Sunday morning I raked leaves at Dad’s house, only to come home in the evening newly littered with another coat of leaves.  We watched the Packer game at Kristin’s and at halftime, Kristin and I went out to cut wood.  Kristin was at it cutting with the chain saw while I took the ax.  I split about two logs and took a quick break inside.  That quick break became a long break as I fell asleep.  When I came back outside, Kristin was tearing up the rest of the wood with the ax, putting me to great shame.  I played football outside with Josh and Ty for a little while after until Ty was run into and got a big knot on his cheek.  Then Jet carved pumpkins with Ben and Sam.  It really was a full weekend of “fall” stuff.

The article that I was interviewed for by the Journal Sentinel appeared in Sunday’s paper.  Kristin complained that I wasn’t on the front page of the paper.  I wondered why my 30 minute conversation resulted in a one sentence statement in the article.  Everyone wondered why I was called “Andrew P. Ciganek” instead of “Dr. Andrew Ciganek” or something else.  Oh well, my 3 seconds of fame appear to be about tapped out.

It All Evens Out

After a tough start to the week (Ben sick, pulled over by the police), things have taken a dramatic 180 degree turn.  Ben got over the fever on Wednesday, which was the same day that I received word that another paper of mine was accepted for publication in a journal (my second within a month).  I then got word on Friday that I was elected to the faculty senate at UW-Whitewater, something that was very unexpected because it is only my first semester at UWW.  And to top things off, the result of what was video recorded in my class two weeks ago was used for the grand opening of Hyland Hall on Friday.  Although there are only a few short clips with my students and me in it, somehow I am featured (briefly) at the start of the video.  A picture from the video is included below while the entire video can be viewed here.  I guess it all does even out.

Things have still been busy around here.  Jet is still working overtime during the week, but it is no longer mandatory for her to come in on weekends, which is good.  Ben, Dad, and I met up with Kristin and the boys for a fish fry at a Masonic lodge in Brookfield last night.  The fish was good (not outstanding, but Kristin and Dad I am sure would beg to differ) and the potato salad was excellent – the closest I have ever tried to the kind Dad makes.  Trick-or-treating is this weekend, but with the rain and cold weather, we will see how this all turns out.  I have a bit of work to catch-up on at school, so things will continue to be busy for the forseeable future.

Just to update about our house in Alabama – it still hasn’t sold.  It has been six months since we went with the top agent in Oxford, but that didn’t seem to help.  We ended our contract with the agent this week and are now trying to sell the house on our own.  Hopefully by reducing the price (from the savings of no real-estate agent fees) will be enough to finally sell the house.  Here is our flyer and our posting on Craigslist.  Please pass this on to anyone that might be interested in getting a house in Oxford, Alabama!

Dr. Andrew P. Ciganek