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.

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.

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” 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.

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.

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!

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.

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

So Ben was sick with a fever (102.5) through Tuesday – not sure what that was or where it came from, but we are glad that it is gone.  Ben stayed home on Tuesday and Dad watched him through the day.  It is such a luxury to have him around to do this now that both Jet and I are working full-time.

We had a reprieve from the miserable weather yesterday (Wednesday).  I stepped out during the lunch hour to go play basketball with other faculty (the same group of guys play basketball Monday-Friday during lunch) and was pleasantly surprised to feel warmth in the air.  At the risk of sounding trite, it felt like I was back in Alabama.  At that moment I wished I had my iPod shuffle with me so that I could go running instead.  That was a good feeling.  Thinking about cold days in Alabama, I don’t ever recall the weather reminding me of Wisconsin, that is, a crisp, cold, and fresh, biting air.  Surely those cold days in Alabama (when it would actually get below 30 degrees!) didn’t prompt me to go out running.

At the start of my class that afternoon, a student asked if we could have class outside instead.  I am not sure how I would be able to podcast a class outside, but it was a nice thought.  As a compromise, I ended class about 10 minutes early under the condition that the students would all go outside and spend that class time outside walking around.  Everyone was pretty happy about this, but I don’t think many (if any) actually did go outside directly after my class.

And as the old saying goes, if you don’t like the weather, give it a day, it will change.  Today the weather is just plain miserable.  Raining.  Cold.  Wet.  Someone in the hallway today complained about the poor weather we were having.  I responded that we have miserable days like this so that we can better appreciate the nice days (like yesterday) we have.  If I could only always have a positive spin on things.

Ben woke-up at 4:00am with a fever this morning – a harbinger of how the day would play out.  Ben went back to sleep and we had plans for Ben to stay home with Dad for the day, but when I was leaving at 6:00am, he showed no signs of a fever and got very upset that I was leaving for school without him.  We relented and Ben was just fine on the way to Whitewater this morning, singing and looking out for cows and horses, just like usual. 

Heading into my meetings in the afternoon and class I didn’t give much thought to Ben, however, I had two messages waiting for me on voicemail after I finished class at 3:30pm.  Calls from the children’s center – Ben had a fever and needed to be picked up.  As it turned out, Ben was just “not himself” today as he skipped lunch, went to sleep at 11:00am and was still sleeping when I picked him up at 3:45pm. 

You could tell Ben was not feeling well as he was in and out of sleep for the entire ride home.  Right when I got off of the freeway, Ben threw up the only snack he ate on the way home – raisins.  About a minute later I rushed through a yellow light turning red and, sure enough, a Wauwatosa police car was waiting in an alley to pull me over.  I have a history of no luck getting out of a ticket, although it has been over 8 years since my last ticket.  Surely I would have a chance here as I really did need to get Ben home to clean him up and get him some medicine.  No luck.  The police officer was young (late 20’s) and appeared nervous as his hand was shaking when I gave him my license.  He just ignored everything I said about Ben and walked to his car. 

About 10 minutes later, Ben threw-up again.  I got out of my car to clean him up and the police officer came out to see if everything was OK.  It clearly wasn’t (at least to me), but the police officer just said that it would be a few more minutes because I had an out-of-state license.   The police officer returned with the ticket and my license after about 25-30 minutes from when I was first pulled over and he wished Ben well. 

I was off for Dad’s house right after then where Jet was waiting to give Ben some Motrin.  His temperature was 102.2 and I just feel beat.  I am not upset that I got a ticket because I shouldn’t have gone through the yellow-red light.  The police officer was just doing his job.  I just feel beat after a long day.  Hopefully Ben gets over this soon.

Here are some pictures from when Kristin took Ben with the kids out to pick apples and pumpkins yesterday.  At least these can make the mood a little lighter.