New Facility Tour

Kris and I took a tour of a new care facility for her dad today.  It is in Germantown, and called “Tender Reflections”.  At first I wasn’t sure about it, since the address was on a road that is the same as another care facility that is, quite honestly, not a place I would want to send a loved one.  It made me worry that it was somehow associated with the not so nice place.  Well that wasn’t the case. 

This was a newer facility, only about a year old, and from the looks of it, very bright and airy. Even better was the fact that they had openings.  The other places we had toured all seemed nice, but had waiting lists at least 4 or 5 names long, so we would have no idea when we would be able to move him.  When we met the director we thought she was very friendly, and she had a wonderful attitude.  At first we weren’t sure, but as we talked and walked thru the facility, we began to think that this could work. 

We filled out all the paperwork and the director scheduled a time to come out and assess Kris’s dad.  So if all goes well, we can probably get him moved in by the middle of next month.  We are keeping our fingers crossed!

More Chipmunks

After going a couple of weeks without seeing any chipmunks digging up Kris’s plants, she sent me a picture this morning.  So I guess it is time to get the traps out again.  Not sure if this guy is new, or if it is one that I already caught and he found his way back home.  It would be so much easier to just bash them with a shovel.

It's Time To Move

As reported, a couple of weeks ago, the management at the assisted living facility where Kris’s dad is living told us that they could no longer care for him.  Well, today we finally received the written notice from them.  Kris had a meeting a little over a week ago, and in the interim while we were looking for a new facility to move him to, someone mentioned to check with the Ombudsman for the county and see if they could help.  She did, and this ombudsman person told us that they can’t just boot him out, and the whole procedure that they went thru to inform us about her dad and how he would have to move was not proper.  It sort of reminds me how they told us last year that he was going to need to pre-pay a couple of months in advance if we were going to transition him to Family Care.

I wonder what this person, the Ombudsman, actually does because it sounds like she knows all these laws with respect to eldercare and nursing homes, etc. very well.  Almost as if she may have been a lawyer at one point?  Maybe she is currently.  Whatever the situation, she asked Kris for copies of what they gave her at her dad’s meeting, and she contacted The Arboretum to inform them that they needed to follow the law, and provide all this documentation to us before anything was going to be done.

Well, we have it now.  So I guess the search for a new home for her dad is officially underway now.  The good news that we found out is that they can’t just boot him out on the street.  We have to have something lined up for him before anything can be done.  So at least we know that we’ll be able to make sure he is moving to a good care facility instead of some rotten hole in the wall where people with no loved ones go to die.

Thirty Five Years In The Making

Last night Kris and I got to go on our one summer concert (sometimes two depending if it is someone we both like or want to see).  This was a trip to the Waukesha County Fair to see 80’s powerhouse Night Ranger.  The show was free with fair admission, though I sprung for “VIP” seating for $15, and it turned out to be a good call.

Night Ranger has been on my radar since I was a teenager and saw their first music video on MTV (yes kids, MTV used to actually play music videos).  I had all their albums, and then later cassettes, they put out in the 80’s, and I always wanted to go see them when they were on tour back then.  Unfortunately, when I was younger there was always something, either I didn’t know they were coming, were playing on a night I couldn’t go due to work, or something else, or just didn’t have the money.  The closest I ever got was the Jack Blades supergroup with Ted Nugent and Tommy Shaw, Damn Yankees.  In college, I had 10^th row seats at the old MECCA, but I ended up coming down with the flu the day before the show and had to sell my seats.  Luckily my roommate wanted them so I was able to get rid of them.

They are currently on their 35 Year Anniversary tour (it’s hard to believe that it has been 35 years since I first saw them on MTV) and this time around everything lined up.  The VIP seats were a fenced off section of folding chairs in front of the stage instead of sitting on the grass.  And it was good thing since it had rained the night before and the grounds were a mess of mud.  The two rows in front of the stage were the “special VIP seats” which just meant the people who were sitting there paid almost $100 for them.  But when we sat down I had a look and the ground in those rows was nothing but a big mud puddle.  I would have been mad if I had shelled out almost $100 to stand in water and slop.

Overall, the show was really good.  They still sounded very good for being in their 60’s and they sound was not distorted to the point of not being able to hear.  And the sight lines were really good.  We got lucky that there weren’t any tall people standing in front of us.  The music was top notch except for a couple of technical glitches when they first came out.  They played straight thru for about an hour and a half, and a total of 15 songs.  They did a couple of covers of Damn Yankees songs, and then they also did an Alice Cooper and an Ozzy cover, which I could have done without and would have rather the picked a couple of their own songs to play instead. 

I can’t believe it took me 35 years to see these guys.  I would go again if they came around, and I think I will keep an eye on their website for more tour dates.  For the money, that show could not be beat.

The only complaint I have is the pictures I took with my phone are not great, especially for how close we were.  But a lot of that is due to the zoom I think, and the fact that the spot lights were reflecting off of their skin making details look like nothing more than a white blob.  Hopefully you can make out some of these.

Trip to Minnesota

Wednesday and Thursday were spent in Minnesota for work.  I had to go up and review/tour a potential supplier to make sure that I would be satisfied they would be able to provide error free components for a new water meter that the company is developing.  It turned out to be 13 hours of driving in two days, but I will say the drive was very pleasant.  No traffic, and very scenic.  The visit to the company itself went very good, and I believe we’ll be using them going forward.

I purposely chose a hotel right near the Mall of America so that I would at least have something to do while I was there.  Though I will say I thought it would be better.  The only time I have ever been to the Mall of America was to do a girl scout overnight when Ali was in Kindergarten I believe (I may have an entry here somewhere about it way back at the beginning of my blog) when we got to tour the aquarium there after hours and sleep in the shark tunnel.  That was cool, though it was one of the worst nights of sleep I ever had.  This time around it was just walking around, and getting a late lunch at one of the restaurants with the co-worker that went with me.  She had wanted to do some shopping for her kids so it worked out good for her.  For me the biggest decision was to go to the Rain Forrest Café, Margaritaville, or the Hard Rock.  The Hard Rock won out.

Coming back the next day I had to stop in Winona, MN at a different supplier.  The coworker that I was with had to stop there for another meeting, so I just tagged along.  It was pretty interesting as we got a tour of the facility, and even some nice marketing swag from them.  But the totally awesome thing was the drive from Minneapolis.  I routed the drive along the Mississippi, and there were some truly breathtaking views of the river and bluffs.  If I didn’t have to stop for work, I may have thought about stopping to take some pictures and enjoy the scenery.

Maybe the next time we take Sarah up to LaCrosse, I’ll take the River Road route back.  It is an extra hour of driving, but you really can’t beat the views.

Accident

Kris sent me a message at work today with a newspaper article attached.  Apparently one of Sarah’s friends was in a motorcycle accident last night and he is not in good shape.  He was riding out on a country road where there are lots of twists and turns and he apparently failed to navigate one of them and crashed.  Even though he had a helmet on, it was a very serious accident and the flight for life helicopter had to transport him to the NICU at Froedtert.  He is in a coma with a head injury and apparently they think he will be paralyzed.  Sarah was beside herself when she heard.  Please pray for her friend and his family.  It sounds like they will need all they can get.

Hornet's Nest

If I were to tell you this about a hornet what would you think?

"...their aggressively defensive nature makes them a threat to humans who wander too close to a nest or when a nest is constructed too close to human habitation. They vigorously defend the nest, with workers stinging repeatedly, as is common among social bees and wasps. However, the baldfaced hornet has a unique defense in that it can squirt venom from the stinger into the eyes of vertebrate nest intruders. The venom causes immediate watering of the eyes and temporary blindness."

Not too appealing is it?  Well now imagine you find a nest the size of a small football right outside the bedroom window.  Yeah, I think you’d want to get rid of that.  Well that is what happened this weekend. 

As I was finishing up cutting the grass and trimming around the fence and bricks, I happened to see a wasp/hornet fly into a small space between the soffit and facia in the front of the house.  So I decided I should take a walk around the house and just check for more wasp nests.  I had actually walked into that start of one in the shed about a week earlier.  In walking around the house, I happened to look up by Sarah’s room and see a nest the size of a Nerf football stuck between the soffit and the siding right around the corner from her window.

After observing it for a few minutes I watched several wasps fly in and out.  I grabbed the ladder and climbed up for a closer look and noticed the flying insects were black and white, not black and yellow, and quite large.  So I went inside to look them up and came up with the bald-faced hornet.  Not something you want flying around where people are.  So, unfortunately for the hornets, I got out the cans of spray poison and went to town on the nest.  I didn’t know exactly how much to use since it was a fully formed nest and wasn’t sure if it would soak into the “paper” and kill anything inside, so to be safe, I soaked it.  I used up almost an entire can. 

A few hornets dropped out and rolled down the shingles while some more flew out and then just took a dive.  Once there was no activity around the nest for about five minutes, I went on for the ice scraper and knocked it completely down.  There were still a couple more that fell out of the nest, but they were virtually dead already.  There were also several larvae that fell out and into the gutter, which I washed down when I was trying to clean everything up.  Scratch one hornet’s nest.  I have to be better at checking at least once a week to make sure that no other nests/hives are being made anywhere.

WTF U-Haul

As Kris was looking over the checking account entries online she noticed one marked as pending for U-Haul.  I though, no, that can’t be right.  We closed that last month.  So I went back and looked at June’s statement, yep, there was a charge for U-Haul.  We had emptied out the Storage container in LaCrosse right before our month was up and the account was supposed to have been closed.  Apparently, the same person who “reserved” my storage locker also “closed” my account there.

That resulted in me calling U-Haul to find out what the hell the deal was and why I was giving them $200 of my hard earned money now?  Amazingly, when I called the number, I didn’t get someone at the national switchboard (which is what usually happens).  I actually got the manager of the site in LaCrosse.  I asked him about the charges and explained that they had now charged me for two months when I didn’t have anything stored there with them.  Of course he apologized and gave me a story about how it is a crazy time of year with college students moving things in and out and someone must have forgotten to close the account when they moved the container back into place. Not really my problem, now is it?

He said he would be crediting back the charges to my account and I should see them show up in a day or two, but if I didn’t to call back.  Well you can bet I will.  I swear, this whole ordeal was like an episode of Seinfeld.  I hope I don’t ever have to do this again.

Police Report

As I was sitting in a conference room at work waiting for a meeting to begin, one of my co-workers, also from the Falls asked me, “You live on Jacobson, right”.  When I said yes, he proceeded to tell me of a news report he read regarding something that happened on my street a couple of weeks ago.  As he was describing the story from memory, a light bulb went on and I thought, OH! I bet it was the creepy dude done the street (blog link). 

When he got back to his desk, he emailed me the story and while no names or anything else are given, I will go out on a limb and say for sure this is the same guy.  I shared it with both Kris and Sarah and I am thinking about contacting the police and let them know what happened to us.  Sounds like this guy makes it a habit to harass people driving up the road.  Enjoy.  

Menomonee Falls man allegedly spits on woman, injures her in road rage assault

MENOMONEE FALLS - A 33-year-old Menomonee Falls man is facing possible charges after he allegedly threw a 61-year-old woman to the ground and kicked her during a road rage incident on June 21.

The woman told police she was traveling south in the 8500 block of Jacobson Drive at about 3:30 p.m. when the man suddenly opened the driver’s side door of his truck into her lane of traffic, causing her to slam on her brakes to avoid hitting it.

The man immediately became irate and screamed at the woman to slow down as she drove around his truck, and continued screaming at her through her open windows as she drove down the road, a police report says.

When the woman got out of her vehicle and told the man she wasn’t speeding and that he opened his door without looking out for traffic, he spit in her face and used his leg to sweep her leg out from under her and threw her to the ground. Once on the ground, he kicked the woman in her ribs, according to a police report. 

The woman told police the man finally left when she started screaming for someone to call 911. She last saw him walking toward his truck and heard him walk into a residence.

When police arrived, the man refused to come out of his house. He was taken into custody five days later when he came to the police department to file a complaint.

The man told police the woman was the aggressor. He stated she spit at him and grabbed him by the shirt, and he was merely defending himself.

He is facing possible charges of battery and disorderly conduct. The case is under review.

The woman refused medical attention at the scene. She later drove herself to the emergency room, where she was treated for multiple contusions on her hand, arm, knee and ribs, according to a police report.

We will definitely need to keep an eye out for this asshat.  Their house is really an eyesore (grass never cut, junk in the front yard, parking their cars on the font lawn, garbage cans always out at the curb) so maybe we can call the village and get them harassed to the point that they will want to move.

Getting The Boot

Kris had a meeting scheduled at the Arboretum to go over her dad’s care, or so she thought.  The funny thing is we joked that we bet they were going to tell us that her dad was too much for them now, or required more care than they could provide and tell us we had to move him.  We thought this because recently we had been complaining about his condition when we would show up to visit.  His clothes were filthy, he looked like he hadn’t been shaved in a week, his hair was a mess, and he sort of smelled bad.  So we figured that the management there was fed up with us complaining about the care he was getting so they were just going to cut him loose.  Well that is exactly what happened.

Kris showed up and was met by the Facility Director, the Director of Nursing, along with his Family Care case manager and physical therapists.  They (the director and DON) proceeded to tell Kris and the case manager and therapists, Bob was unable to do this, couldn’t do that, and the staff couldn’t do “X”, blah, blah, blah.  When the therapists or Kris attempted to contradict what they were telling them, or make a case to the contrary they were shut down.  Ultimately they said he was being given 30-day notice to find a different place to live.

What a joke!  He has been there for a total of six years now and his care has steadily been going downhill.  The place has actually gone thru at least three directors that I can recall, and he is on the third director of nursing in the memory care unit in the two years he has been there.  What does that say about the place? 

I like to look at it as a blessing in disguise as at least we can find a place that may actually care for him.  But the problem is, now we have to find a place for him, and since he is on assistance now, those choices become limited.  Correction, very limited.  

Welcome Home

We had a very nice welcome home today…  For our TV!  

Yes, the 55” Samsung is back in its rightful place on the entertainment center/stand.  It is amazing to me that it basically only took a day to get it fixed.  It turns out that it was only a power cell, or something like that.  It just needed to be removed and have a new one soldered in pace on the board.  It was more of a hassle getting it down to the place and back home, but I will say it was a good thing I saved the box.  I remember when we bought it, I was going to throw it out, but I thought on the off chance it ever needed service, it is best to have the box to carry it in.  Who would have ever thought that I would need it? 

Sealing The Driveway

The annual custom of sealing the driveway to try and get it to last another year took place today.  It sure seems like every year things move around more and more.  And by that I mean that the blacktop ruts get deeper and deeper.  The next door neighbor works in asphalt and he told me that he would be willing to bet that the people who lived in the house before us put down a really crappy base before laying the blacktop down, something that is more sandy and rocky.  That would explain the shifting over time as cars drive in and out.  Makes sense to me. 

I am getting pretty adept at getting this done in a timely manner.  I remember years ago taking an entire Saturday to get it spread.  Now I can finish it in only a couple of hours.  It also helps doing all the prep work ahead of time, such as patching up holes, and filling in the large cracks.  So another sealing is finished.  I may see if I can give it another coat before the end of the summer, just as a precautionary measure.  Last winter, while cold, wasn’t too bad in terms of snowfall, or at least the amount of shoveling/snow blowing that needed to happen.  That is what usually ruins the sealer over the winter, scraping a shovel, or the flapper wheel of my snow blower running over it.

Catching Chipmunks

I’ve had the chipmunk traps out for about a week now.  And in that time, I have trapped a total of five chipmunks.  I had three within the first two days, then it took another day or two to catch the others.  I had gone a couple of days without any action, and then I got this guy. 

I’ll leave the traps out for a few more days and as soon as it has been four or five days without any action I’ll consider them all caught and take them in.  If I leave them out longer with no chipmunks around, eventually I will start catching birds, and that is a real pain to deal with.  They totally freak out, even though all I’m doing is trying to let them out.

Home Alone

I get to enjoy a night alone at home this evening, because Kris and the girls are going to Summerfest.  They have tickets to see Dierks Bentley and a couple other country guys on the main stage tonight, and since country music really isn’t my thing, I decided to stay home.  Which means I need to find something to do.  I think I’ll just enjoy some peace and quiet and get caught up on all my shows from the DVR.

Emergency TV Repair

Since the TV is totally dead now, I decided to look and see what it might cost to have it evaluated for repair.  I found one place online that claims to be a repair shop.  Amazing that there are not more places around just based on the cost of new TVs alone.  I called and talked to the person there who told me they charged a $50 evaluation fee, which is applied toward the cost of the repair if we choose to go that route.  At best, I figured I would have to spend $2000 anyway for a new TV, so $50 just to find out if I could save some cash sounded like a good deal.

The place is in West Allis and closed at 5:00 PM so I had to hurry and get it there after I got home from work.  The shop is only open certain days, so if I didn’t get it there, I would have to wait until Saturday morning to drop it off.  So I pulled the box out when I got home and got the TV packed up (I knew there was a reason I saved the box).  Actually, I started saving the boxes for all my electronic equipment because in the event anything ever needed to ship back for warranty repairs or replacement I have found that the original box is always good to have, and some places require it.

The guy at the shop seemed very nice.  His shop was actually loaded with old electronics, and a few TVs that he had price tags on.  When I asked, he said that those were TVs that someone authorized to have repaired, but then never picked up.  So the price tags on them were just what the cost of the repair was.  There were actually a couple of cheap TVs I thought Sarah could use at her apartment.  Something to think about while I wait to find out of our TV can be fixed.

Time For A New TV

Since the TV is totally dead now, we took a trip to Best Buy to see if we could find a deal on a new one.  Well that didn’t go well at all.  We were over in the TV section when we had a kid come up and ask if he could help us find anything.  We explained the situation with our TV and how since Samsung has been literally no help at all, I will not be spending money on a new Samsung.  Well that sort of limited our options since 70% of their TVs were Samsung models.  We also gave him a price point, and a couple of features that we wanted since we had them on the current TV.  And again that limited our selections to about 3 or 4 TVs.  But of course the first one he shows us is the one at the top of our proposed range.  And then he shows us one that is just slightly above our range.  It was a decent model, and had what we wanted (I think it was an LG) but, missed the price criteria.  So thanked him and said we’d look at the other models and let him know if we decided on anything.

It is just ridiculous what a new TV goes for!  All I want is a 55” screen, and a 120Mhz processor for fluid movement and the ability to connect to the internet for Netflix.  That’s it!  I don’t need a screen that will differential 3 billion different colors, or a curved screen, or all the other bells and whistles.  I don’t get that much enjoyment out of it. 

It was depressing because if we wanted the same size TV, we didn’t have many options, and we were not about to drop that much money on a TV unless we were sure we would be satisfied with it.  So we ended up leaving to ponder our options.  After thinking about it, Kris and I decided to see if it was able to be repaired.  I found a place online that said they did repair HD, flat screen TVs.  Wow!  Who knew places like that even were still around.  They said they had a $50 evaluation fee.  In the end I thought, at most it’d be $50 to find out it was totally dead and we needed a new TV.  If we were going to be forced to spend $3K on a new TV, I figured another $50 to find out for sure wasn’t a big deal.

Watseland

You may have heard the expression that TV was a vast wasteland?  Well ours is definitely now, because it is completely dead!  There is no picture at all.  As has been noted we have been having problems with power and the picture just shutting off at random.  Well I think it is time to finally call the code on this one.  The picture went out around 2:30 this afternoon, and it has not come back on yet. 

Since we had the parade and fireworks tonight I figured I would let it sit, unplugged, and by the time we got home (at around 10:45) I’d be able to plug it in and it would come back on and we could see what we missed.  Nope.  Nothing.  I plugged it back into the wall and “click, click”, “click, click”.  I spent the next hour or so unhooking all the cables and cords and setting it in the corner and getting the 42” TV from the basement to put on the stand portion of the entertainment center.  The girls will be mad since there won’t be any TV to watch in the basement and they’ll have to stream Netflix either in their phones, laptop, etc. At least we have TV in the living room again.  Now I just need to decide how to pay for a new TV.

Another Parade In The Books

So as has been the tradition for what seems like 25 years, we headed out for an evening of patriotism tonight.  Yes, it was time for the annual Menomonee Falls Independence Day Parade and fireworks.  This year we didn’t have to rush to get home since Kris wasn’t working so I thought we could just relax and enjoy things.  The list of attendees was not as large as in the past either, so it was more of a just hang out and enjoy the evening sort of thing.

Ali had to be there early to line up, and Sarah was going to be coming later.  She had asked to get off early when she found out we were going (since at first we weren’t planning on it).  Luckily, her supervisor let her out really early since things were dead at the store, so she made it to our spot by 6:00.  She went walking around to find some friends, before things started.

Overall, the parade was the parade.  It was the same as every year, and if it weren’t for Alison having to be in it, we would probably stop going, at least for a while.  There are a lot of people who sit around where we do that just make me cringe and think ‘Oh My God, why do we put up with this?’ Maybe next year will be the year we decide to stop.

And the fireworks were once again lacking.  We have been there in years where they were awesome, and during years when they were duds.  This year was a dud in my opinion.  The best part (or worst) was during the finale when they were doing the “let’s light everything off at once”.  It was, just sort of ‘meh’, but then when it was done, it was like they found a few more they forgot to light off.  After firing those few off, everyone was just sort of sitting there, not knowing if they should be waiting for more, or if they should pack up and leave.  WOW!  I hate to say that is typical of the fireworks show in Menomonee Falls, but it is typical.

This year we also get to deal with a new “cheer parent”.  He is a bit of a knob, and sort of creepy in my opinion.  He takes WAAAAAYYYY too many pictures of his kid, and thinks that he should be taking pictures of everyone else’s kids too.  It doesn’t make me happy one bit.  This year, during the parade he apparently had a drone flying overhead and took pictures of the girls from above, thinking he was really cool for doing so.  No, that’s just creepy dude!  Stop being a d-bag!  This is not going to be a fun year with this clown.

One Less Day In My Life

When I finally die (in 30-40 years, God willing) someone will need to add up all the time in my life that I spent doing absolutely nothing.  When they do, they will look back and add in another day because of what happened today… Waiting for a parade spot.  Yes, the annual tradition of sitting on the sidewalk, doing nothing while waiting to be able to stake off my spot for the Menomonee Falls Independence Day Parade was today.  It really is ridiculous, but if you want a spot to sit, it is what you need to do.

Originally we weren’t going to go this year.  Kris’s friend and god daughter were going to be out of town, and no one else we usually sit with was actually planning on going, at least as far as I knew.  Then I found out about a day before, one of our friends was thinking of going and wanted to know if I was going to be out waiting for a spot.  I decided I would do it (because I am a nice guy, and because it is a tradition).  Alison will be in the parade again with the cheer team, so we’ll need to be there to pick her up afterward anyway.  Who knows, maybe I’ll end up skipping it next year.  You only have so many days on this earth, you know.

Time To Trap the Chipmunks

For some time now I have been seeing chipmunks in the backyard.  They have been sitting under the bird feeder eating (or is it collecting?) the seeds that fall out of the bird feeder.  I haven’t made a fuss about it since Kris’s flower pots haven’t been dug up at all so I figured I’d just leave them be.  Every now and then I would see a clump of safflower sprouts springing up around the coneflowers, or the hostas, in the mulch around house, but that was no big deal to pull them out.

Today, they started sprouting in Kris’s hibiscus pots.  I took a look at her other pots and found a couple other ones that had spouts in them too.  So I guess that means it is time to get out the traps and relocate the things.  I hope it won’t take too long to catch them.