Spring? Where Have You Been?

Yesterday was a nice reprieve from the week+ of cooler temperatures that we had been experiencing down here.  It was up to 71 degrees by the time I got home yesterday evening, so there was no better opportunity for me to get a run in.  It felt very good to be out and about again, but it will only be in the 40’s now until this weekend.  With the weather we just had pass through came a bunch of rain late last night that was just nice to hear again on the roof of our house.  They are forecasting more rain for tomorrow, so lets hope that comes to fruition. 

What can you say about weather in Milwaukee?  It seems that every time I have checked Milwaukee news in the past week, there was some ominous statement about the weather – yesterday being the worst.  And now a lot of schools are closed for today due to the cold temperatures?  Did this include Josh?

Ben has been a real firecracker these past few days.  It seems that he is starting to become immune to my stern “no” comments directed to him as he will just turn, give me a look, and get back to doing something that he shouldn’t be doing.  I’m sad to report that he has either forgotten or lost interest in some of the things that we taught him to do, like “touchdown”, the southern “patty-cake”, or blowing kisses good-bye.  Ben has even stopped making the ‘wookie’ sound.  In fact, the only thing I still see him do consistently is wave hello to cars as they drive by, in true southern style.  Over the past two weeks, Ben is now able to say “Ma Ma”, and is doing it quite well.  Jet and I really think he is able to associate me to “Da Da” and her to “Ma Ma” now as he mostly calls out to us using those names.  Maybe it is just in our heads.  I also wanted to report to you that Ben now has a spot for ‘taking care of business’ at Donald and Linda’s house, that is, when Ben scurries away from the living room and walks behind their kitchen table, we know someone may smell a little by the time he comes back.

This weekend is the start of Australian Rules football for the year in Atlanta.  I am glad that the weather is supposed to be back in the 60’s and 70’s by then.  I hope that I will be in at least some sort of shape to compete – well, at least in enough shape as to not embarrass myself.  Perhaps that’s just wishful thinking.

Cold January

Man, it is getting downright cold out there.  It has only reached the 40’s for the past few days and I am starting to get frustrated.  When will winter end?  Things went very well at Harley today with Dan and Wayne … they did an excellent job explaining the project to my students and I was very grateful that they set aside time for us.  It should be a pretty exciting semester for them.  Jet seemed to have a good time with her friends over today from the brief conversations I had with her.  We only had a few moments to chat over the phone today in-between classes, and by the time I got home after visiting Harley, Jet had to go straight to work.  It must have gone over well because she offered to host the women’s group again next week.

Happy birthday to Dad!  I hope everyone had a good time out in Pewaukee for dinner.  It sure sounded like it would be a good time and something we wished we could be around for.  I heard that Donald called Dad to wish him a happy birthday and tried to convince him to come down to Alabama, watch our house while we were away in Thailand, and enjoy the warm summer weather.  Not sure how likely that could ever be.  I hope Dad enjoyed his gift too.  Bristol, TN is about 5 hours from Oxford, AL, so it is a bit of a ways away from us.  It should be a great time for Sandy and Dad, though.  I always hear that Bristol is similar to Green Bay and that the speedway is revered for racing as Lambeau Field is for football.  I would like to hear what they think of it first hand, though, and see how they compare.

Life Goes On

I suppose I should continue to get on with life, but man, what a heart-breaker.  That is all I can bring myself to say … gosh, it still stings after three days!

Well, the snow came over the weekend, but was hardly the stuff they were predicting.  We were lucky to get an inch as it was just enough to get the grass to look white for a few hours on Saturday.  All of the local TV stations had round-the-clock coverage of the snow and suspended all regular programming for about 14 hours during the event.  Everyone was so crazed during that time, too.  The TV reporters ‘in the field’ going nuts over how the snow was falling, getting more and more excited as snow actually began to stick to the ground!  They had locals in the background dancing around, kids dressed up in full snowsuits like in ‘the Christmas Story’ movie (and not for comedic value!), and kids making ’snow’ angels in more dirt and mud than snow.  Bizarre.

The weather didn’t keep everyone away from Ben’s birthday celebration, however.  Ben had such a good time as there were several other kids for him to run around and chase.  After being sick at his first birthday party in Milwaukee, Ben really did deserve a birthday party that he could enjoy and have a lot of fun at.  Jet made Thai food for everyone to eat and I bought a few pizzas from Pizza Hut to balance out our menu.  We then had a half-sheet cake, a dozen cup-cakes, and ice-cream for dessert – more than enough for everyone.  All-in-all, just a wonderful time.

Jet was out in Atlanta for the entire day yesterday shopping with one of her friends from her women’s support group.  She didn’t get home with Ben until nearly 8:00pm and was exhausted, but it did seem like they had a very good time.  I believe Jet will be hosting the women’s support group at our house tomorrow morning for coffee and breakfast, which should also be a good time for her and Ben.  We’ll just see what happens.

I will be taking my software engineering students to Harley (in Talladega) tomorrow for a ‘kick-off’ session as I have gotten Dan and one of his colleagues (Wayne) to sponsor a project for my students to work on this semester.  Hopefully all goes well.

More Snow!

Holy cow.  Just when you thought I couldn’t give you any more wild news about snow from Alabama, I got another golden nugget to pass along.  We are forecasted to get actual snow accumulations tonight into Saturday morning!!! Actual accumulations – possibly up to five inches!  When I first saw the snow projection totals (picture below), I thought I was looking at a map of southeastern Wisconsin.  Talk about a double-take!   Obviously the whole area is abuzz with this news.  All of the local news had hot-lines and blogs set-up to answer questions from viewers about the possible inclement winter weather.  You likely cannot find any bread or milk at stores all across the state as people are starting to panic.  From James Spann (the weather guru in these parts), if we do get accumulations of snow, it will be the first snow of more than a half inch since January 28, 2000 when 3 inches of snow was recorded at the Birmingham International Airport. The previous five snow events of a half inch or more at Birmingham were:

• Jan. 28, 2000 – 3.0″
• Dec. 29, 1997 – 1.6″
• Feb. 2, 1996 – 0.9″
• Feb. 6, 1995 – 0.8″
• Mar. 13, 1993 – 10.3″

So as you can tell, this has the potential of being a very rare event.  Speaking of another unusual event, I came home from school yesterday to see that a package from UPS arrived containing two packages of cheese curds and some beef sticks.  What a pleasant surprise!  The only thing identifying where it came from was just a simple card inside that said “from Chris”.  Wow.  Thank you very much Chris … it will be a wonderful treat to much on during the Packer game on Sunday.  Jet and I just can’t figure what we owe this surprise to?  Late Christmas gift?  Birthday gift?  Gift just for the heck of it?  Regardless, we greatly appreciate it.

Ben had his one-year check-up yesterday and he gained about a half a pound in the last week and weighed in at about 21.5 pounds.  I guess he finally got over his croup.  He also measured 30 inches in height so he is average in the 50th percentile for both.  When he woke up from his nap yesterday afternoon, Ben was just in awful shape.  He had gotten three shots during his visit and was running a slight fever.  The worst of it was after changing his diaper, Ben was in a lot of pain as I tried to slip his pants back on over his band-aids where he had his shots.  Poor, poor Ben.  After several minutes of singing, dancing, and just plain goofiness, I got Ben wanting to move around and start playing.  It wasn’t long after that when his condition started to improve.  After speaking to his pediatrician, Jet mentioned that it would be fine for Ben to sit in a face-forward car-seat now and that we should stop feeding him by the bottle.  Yikes!  I have come to depend on him drinking from his bottle every day just before he goes down to sleep.  Hopefully this transition will be painless.  The new thing with Ben over the past week are some of the noises he now makes.  Besides his usual babble, Ben now likes to make noises like a ‘wookie’ (from Star Wars).  Go figure.

Bama Snow

Well, that will be a birthday that we won’t soon forget even though Ben might never remember it.  I left school yesterday at around 4:00pm to a full-on snow storm and nearly white-out conditions.  Yes, in Alabama.  It was pretty wild … not like the snow flurries we had last year that I raved about, but real, actual, snow.  After I spent a minute or two wiping the accumulated snow off my car and was just a few miles outside Jacksonville, the snow turned to rain and sleet and that was the end of it.  There was so much snow on my car, however, that by the time I made it back home, there was still enough of it that I was able to make and throw several snowballs.  Yes, throwing snowballs in Alabama.  I suspect it kept snowing in Jacksonville for a while because coming back this morning, there is still snow all around.  As for Ben’s birthday celebration, we all went out to the Olive Garden for dinner and then afterwards to Maggie Moo’s for dessert.  Just an all-around interesting and memorable day.

Happy Birthday Ben!

Today Ben is officially one year old!  Wow.  The memories of that day are still so crisp in my mind.  Waking up early to take Jet to the hospital.  Staying with her for most of the day waiting … and waiting.  Donald and Linda visiting and giving me a chance to get some rest.  Then finally … Ben at 5:59pm.  One year already.

To celebrate Ben’s birthday, we will take Donald and Linda as well as Dan, Julie, Brandon, and Miranda out to the Olive Garden for dinner.  I am really looking forward to that.  Ben’s ’southern’ birthday party will be on Saturday and we are expecting a lot of people from the neighborhood to show.  Again, it’s something that I am really looking forward to.  Ben has been in good health and spirits lately, so I just hope that keeps up so that he will enjoy these celebrations more than he was able to when he was sick in Milwaukee.

Well, the cold weather has returned down south.  Temperatures have only been in the low 30’s in the morning and only reaching the 50’s during the daytime.  In fact, there is a slight chance that we could see snow flurries tonight and tomorrow night.  What a birthday gift that will be for Ben.

First Day of School

Well, the first day of school is in the books and I pulled through once again.  It looks like this will be another exciting semester as I was encouraged by the looks and size of my classes.  In one class, I have 23 students registered and there were so many students in the room that within 10 minutes I was sweating from the heat given off by all the people in such a small, confined space.  Hopefully that will improve during the semester.  Yesterday was a rocky day weather-wise as well.  It was in the 70’s again, but in parts of the state there was severe weather.  The tornado sirens even went off around here too last night, but nothing came from it.  Just a bit of win, some much needed rain, and now colder weather (temperatures in the 50’s – yikes!).

On Wednesday night, before Ben went to bed, he got into our pots-and-pans and one scratched his face, causing him to bleed.  It looked much worse than it was and you can barely notice the wound today only two days later.  Jet has tried getting Ben to become more ‘independent’, that is, able to do more things on his own.  She was able to get him to eat a banana on his own and eat some macaroni and cheese using a fork and spoon on his own.  As for using a ’sippy cup’ instead of a bottle, not much success.  I guess that will come in time.

Spring Semester

Tomorrow the spring semester officially begins and I have my first classes.  I am just finishing up the final touches for all of my courses and I am pretty excited about the work I have put into this coming semester.  I think it will be nice to get back into a routine in the coming weeks because once that happens, I am sure time will fly.  I was contacted yesterday about teaching graduate courses over the summer at Assumption Univeristy, an international university (English speaking) in Bangkok, Thailand.  This is very exciting news for me as my summer plans are starting to take shape.  I will be sure to pass along more details as they come.

The weather has just been wonderful here over the past few days – temperatures in the mid-70’s and lots of sunshine.  It was nice to finally get the chance to take afternoon walks with Jet and Ben again.  I haven’t looked at the upcoming forecast so I cannot say how long this weather will last.  If anything, it was something welcomed to put away far from our minds the snow and cold we experienced in Milwaukee.  Not that the snow and cold was bad, just the sickness that resulted from it.

Speaking of sickness, Ben seems to be getting over his cold pretty good now as he only has a rough cough every now and again and he has just been very playful over the past week.  As for Jet and I?  Jet went to immediate care on Monday to get her illness checked out.  Turns out that she has bronchitis, so the doctor gave her a steroid shot, a prescription for antibiotics, and some eye drops.  Those medications seemed to do the trick because 24 hours later Jet was feeling much better.  As for me, I still had not improved so Jet scheduled an appointment for me yesterday.  Turns out that all of my sinuses are infected so I was given a prescription for antibiotics and sent on my way.  I am hoping for a 24 hour turnaround like Jet because last night was really the worst night of all for me with this illness.  With Jet, Ben, and myself all on antibiotics right now, we are truly the ‘biotic’ family.

Cough, Cough, Cough

The good news is that Ben appears to be nearly back to normal.  No more runny nose.  No more junk in the eyes.  Running around again wanting to climb up everything now.  To the chagrin of Jet, no more wanting to “cuddle”.  The bad news, both Jet and I are still fighting our colds.  Now they are relegated to a sore throat and coughing, but it is really getting on our nerves now.

Jet is scheduled to work tonight and in less than a week, the spring semester will start.  Seems that things are starting to get back to normal around here.  The temperatures have dipped below 20 degrees the past couple nights, which has gotten several of our neighbors complaining to us about “bringing the cold weather” back with us from Milwaukee.  No matter, it looks like we will be having a week of 70+ degree weather starting on Sunday.  After speaking with Dad, it seems that temperatures might reach the 40’s up in Milwaukee, so it appears that many of us will get a reprieve from the cold soon.  That is good news.

Bonus!

Here is a bonus posting today of pictures we had taken over the past couple weeks. Enjoy!