No Tree This Year

There is not going to be a Hahn Family Christmas Tree this year. Once we decided that we would be going to Florida to see my parents for Christmas, Kris pointed out that we shouldn’t bring it up from the basement, unpack all the ornaments and lights, and set everything up if we weren’t going to be here to enjoy it. And she was right. It is a lot of work, to set up the tree. It takes me two full days to get everything up and decorated. Plus, with the cats, we are constantly shooing them away from the tree. They chase each other around it, and Samson will try to chew on the strings of lights, or swat at some of the low hanging ornaments that ate sparkly and catch his eye. It is a constant battle to make sure they leave the tree alone when we are home, I can’t imagine what would happen if we weren’t here for a week. They would have it toppled over, or worse.

I did bring up a few things, like the girls’ nutcrackers, and some of Kris’s snowmen decorations, but it just doesn’t feel like Christmas around here without the tree. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have a tree up in our house. Even when I was in college, I had a tree. I think it would have been 1990 or 1991 when I was living in a flat by UWM that we didn’t have a Christmas tree. I know we can’t really have it up, but it still makes me sad not having it.

Indian Invite '16

We had our first Indian Invite as workers/volunteers today.  Since this was our first foray into working it, we had no idea what to expect.  The good thing was that we had someone working with us in the kitchen who has been doing this for something like five or six years (he has had two daughters each as varsity cheerleaders for four years).  But it was still hectic.

Getting the meat heated up and ready for walking tacos was easy.  All we had to do was put it in the convection ovens for about 15 minutes.  The big problem that we had right off the bad was making coffee.  Since we opened the doors at 8:00 AM, we wanted to be able to have coffee ready for anyone who might need a pick me up.  The problem was that the coffee makers we had in the kitchen were the old, barrel style percolators.  I have NEVER made coffee in one of these, and had no idea how they worked.  Add to it I had no clue what sort of filters were supposed to go in them and it was just a comedy of errors. 

The first batch we made had grounds in it because we didn’t use paper filters.  It also wasn’t something that we pushed start and the coffee was ready 5 minutes later.  It took 15-20 minutes to perc and heat up.  The first few cups we sold to people must have just been BAD!  Sorry about that. 

Once we got the hang of things we had a nice little assembly line going with our hotdog and walking tacos.  Oh, and one other thing we ran into was having stuff ready right away.  Along with the coffee, we had a few dozen donuts and cups of donut holes, figuring that would be good “breakfast” stuff for people.  Well as early as 8:15 or 8:30 people were coming up and asking for walking tacos.  Really?  A walking taco at 8:30 in the morning?  Or even a hot dog?  I suppose, but it certainly wasn’t something that I would have considered for a breakfast type item.  Next year we’ll have to keep that in mind and make sure that EVERYTHING is ready to go by 8:00 AM.

Overall, the event went off pretty well.  It sure seemed to go quickly though.  I think everyone was pretty much cleared out by 1:30 PM and we were cleaned up and packed up by around 3:00.  Some of the parents went to a local watering hole to “celebrate” afterward, but Kris and I were tired and just figured we wanted to go home and take a nap.  I wouldn’t have figured it would have taken that much out of us.  Although being up by around 4:30 AM to be there at 6:00 AM didn’t help.  The only downside as I see it was that we were unable to see any of the competition, so we don’t have any idea of how the other teams we would be competing against this year, look.  Then again, it shouldn’t really matter much as long as they hit their routine.  Next competition is the UCA Nationals qualifier, so they better work their butts off between now and then if they want to go to Disney in February.

Competition Prep

Tomorrow is the first competition of Ali’s HS cheerleading career, the Indian Invite.  And since the Falls hosts it, the parents all have to work it.  That means that the day before is devoted to preparing.  All the parents met at the high school around 7:00 to begin set-up and preparation.  Kris volunteered us to help in the kitchen with concessions.  Luckily, we were working with a parent who has been doing this for at least the last five years, if not longer.  I know he has had two daughters go thru the varsity team, though I don’t know what the overlap with them was and this is his last year since his youngest daughter is a senior this year.  He showed us around and what we need to do, so we finished our part rather early, so then we helped out with other areas as we were needed until we had everything set up, or just about all set up.  I think we’ll have the kitchen pretty well set for the morning, I just hope things go smoothly.

Update

We finally got our confirmation for Kris’s dad that he was accepted onto the state’s care/assistance program.  We have meetings with case workers and nurses now, but for the most part, we have a huge weight lifted off of our shoulders now.  The funny thing is that the assisted living facility was trying to tell us that we needed to pre-pay her dad’s rent/care bills for a couple of months ahead of time so that we would not have to worry about his care/coverage being approved.  I am glad we didn’t.  I am still not sure I trust the administration there, but for the time being, things seem to be going well so we just cross our fingers and hope for the best. 

Camera Upgrade

This year for my birthday, I decided to finally upgrade our camera. For years we have had a simple, point-and-shoot. Our current one is 8 years old, and we are starting to lose some pixels on the viewing display. Aside from that, with changes in technology (megapixel size, resolution, etc.) Kris’s iPhone camera is probably better quality that the Sony Cyber Shot. So since we had a little cash saved up and money I got in gifts, I decided to pull the trigger on a Canon DSLR. I have wanted to get one for years, but just never had the money saved up because something else always came along.

I don’t know how much it’ll get used, but I am hoping much more than the little one. I realize it is a lot bulkier and I can’t just carry it around in my pocket, but I hope to be taking more photos now (and better quality ones as well). It will probably take a little time to get used to things, like focusing, light settings, etc. but I think I will be able to get the hang of things pretty quickly. Look for some better shots on the Christmas Card next year!

Finalized My Trip

Today I got everything finalized for my work trip.  I am heading to Mexico the first week in December.  I’ll be gone from Sunday to Friday.  I am actually looking forward to going.  I know lots of people hate travelling for work, but now that the girls are older and I don’t need to worry about them and how Kris is going to get along with them by herself, I don’t think I will mind travelling for work.  The one thing I worry about it being able to communicate with everyone I need to.  I don’t speak a lick of Spanish, so hopefully the people I will be working with will speak enough English that we’ll be able to get our work done.  Check back next month and I will try to post things from the road.

Extra Cookie Book

We have had our power go out a couple of times in the last few days due to some repair work a block over. It was sort of frustrating. However, I got a call today that came up on the caller ID as WE Energies. Usually we will get a robo-call saying “your power is back on, we’re sorry for any inconvenience”. So I answered and was surprised to actually get a voice on the other end. It was an actual rep from WE Energies who was calling to apologize for all the outages, we had to put up with the last few days, and as a way of saying they were sorry, she said they were going to send us a 2016 WE Energies Cookie Book as a token. AWESOME! So now we have an extra cookie book! WOOHOO!!!

Accident

I had to take a trip to Chicago today for work, and on the way home I got in a little scrape.  I had checked out one of the company cars for the trip down which all went fine.  It was actually a pretty decent drive down.  Not a lot of heavy traffic, and I found the place pretty easily.  However, the drive home was a bit more eventful.

The two people I was in Chicago with both took their own cars down because they weren’t planning on heading back to work afterward.  Getting out of Illinois went fairly smooth.  It was a little busy, but no back-ups anywhere.  Then it came time to get back to Milwaukee. 

I was driving up 94, just south of the airport.  Everything was going fine, traffic wasn’t heavy, but moving along at a good speed.  I was in the right lane about 3-4 car lengths behind the car in front of me.  Then all of a sudden, the car in front of me brakes and swerves onto the shoulder.  As I was watching the car wondering what he was doing, I look up and there is a big, black object across my lane.  I was doing about 72 mph and the first thing that went thru my mind was, Oh Sh*t!  Since the car in front of me was on the shoulder moving slower, I instinctively looked to swerve to the left, but there was a car right next to me, so I was unable to swerve without taking him out, so I tried swerving right at the last second while hitting the brake.  I think I probably got down to maybe 30-35 mph, then BANG!  I hit whatever it was from about the center of the bumper to the left turn signal.  Plastic and bits of metal went flying, and I slowly moved onto the shoulder.  It must not have gotten any other vehicles, even though debris went flying when I hit it, because no one else stopped.

I got out and looked at the car and the bumper was pretty much smashed up, and the turn signal lamp, but the headlight was still intact.  I got on my phone and dialed 911 to report it, and the first thing the operator asked was my location.  As soon as I told her, she asked me, was I calling to report the tool box that was in the road (so that’s what I hit I guess).  I said, maybe, because if that is what was being reported was in the road, I just hit it and needed to report an accident.  A cop showed up about two minutes later since they already had someone en route.  When he showed up, I gave him the whole story about what happened, and he was asking if I wanted to file an accident report.  I told him, yes, I think so.  I was driving a company car and I am pretty sure any damage will need to be reported, but I called work to talk to the person in charge of the fleet vehicles just to make sure.  She said, yes, file the report. 

The sheriff seemed a little annoyed that he would need to write it up, but he did it and gave me the paperwork I needed to turn in., and I was on my way.  As I drove back, I was thinking about what happened, and I thought I was lucky that it wasn’t much worse.  If I would have just swerved left without looking, I would have hit the car next to me and probably caused a multi-car accident.  Or if there had been someone behind me, I could have been rear ended big time when I slammed on the brakes.  The total damage that I heard was around $2000.  So all things considered, it turned out OK.  I wonder if they’ll let me check out any of the company fleet vehicles in the future?

The Google Car

This morning as the annual WE Energies cookie book hand out. I won’t go into detail with that other than to say go look it up.  But as we were driving down to Miller Park to get a bunch (you get two per person, so we made sure to bring at least one of the girls with us) we came upon the Google Maps car.  Because of all the road construction I was driving thru town to get there because I thought that was going to be the easiest way, even though it might have taken a few minutes longer.  As we pulled up to the stoplight on the corner of State St., Harmonee Ave. and the Menomonee River Parkway, the Google Maps Street View car was directly across from us.  It turned right at the light and then back around the block so that eventually we were driving behind it once the light turned green.  So I will have to keep checking back with Google Maps and see if the new street view will have us in it.  If I end up finding our car on the street view in that area, I’ll let you all know!

Cookie Books

As stated, today was the annual WE Energies cookie book hand out. So Kris and I piled into the car to drive down to Miller Park.  I don’t ever remember seeing anything about this cook book in my time in the Milwaukee area.  I have lived down here pretty much since 1991 when I decided to stop coming home for the summers while in college.  I only remember seeing the cookie book give away in the last couple of years, though Kris says she remembers it back to when she was little.  In fact, when her mom passed away and we were cleaning out her parents’ house when we moved her dad into assisted living, she came across several old cookie books from the ‘70s.  I’m not sure if either of the girls will want to have them when we’re dead and gone, but it will be sort of like when we cleaned out Kris’s parents’ house.  They’ll just sort of find them and then need do decide if they want to keep them. 

We ended up going thru the line a couple of times, because we get one copy to send my mom, and maybe one for one of her friends in Florida.  And this year, we won’t have to send it, we can deliver it personally since we’ll be spending Christmas in the south this year.  We also grab one copy for us, one for each girl, and we’ll try to grab at least one extra one in case someone we know would like one.  I will say that people in Milwaukee love to get their stuff for free!!!