Point Made

Mopedites Cured As many of you know, my preferred mode of long-distance transportation is my Aprilia Rally 150 moped. It offers many advantages. I can step through to mount, so need not try to throw my bad leg over the saddle. I don't have to shift gears. It has what is known as "twist n' go" acceleration. My specially modified unit can get up to 50mph and cruise comfortably at 45mph. This increase in speed makes it reasonable to use many streets, such as Lincoln Memorial Drive in Milwaukee. In the State of Wisconsin, it is treated as if it were a bicycle; I can park it anywhere on the sidewalk, as long as I don't block pedestrians. I do not need a motorcycle permit. My Wisconsin drivers license is sufficient. As I have written about my inability to get anyone in Louisiana to service my moped I have am grounded, so to speak. Horray! I have found a shop in Appleton who will work on the bike. Watch this space for further news. By the way, it goes without saying...

When we moved back to Appleton, we moved rather quickly into some old activities that were familiar and more or less traditional. Maria hosted a brunch for the family, celebrating a visit by a contingent of our left coast family. We began to stop at Frank's Pizza on Tuesday evening to see which Toads showed up. Maria and I shop at our neighborhood markets. We have our places. Kwik Trip,  Copps, Target and we added Costco. Soon we will join a gym. We are gathering up our old friends. We joined the Nagler's, Slama's, and Olson's for a monthly dinner meeting of The Royal Order of the Toads (ROT). The lure of Any Movie, Any Time for $5, on Tuesday at the local Marcus theater has us in its grip. We didn't forget our friends to the South. This last weekend we made a quick trip to the City on the Fresh Coast of the Inland Sea (Milwaukee). While we didn't get to see everyone, we did a good job for the short amount of time we had. I wish I could report that Maria ha...

Why would one leave the best weather in Louisiana for, possibly the worst weather in Wisconsin? My weather site is stuck. Every morning when I click on NOAA, it tells me how pleasantly warm it is in Louisiana. I enter my request for Appleton, WI, and it reports cold temperatures, overcast skies, and possible rain or snow. Lake Maria, the giant puddle in the backyard, overflows and recedes depending on how much precipitation we get. Truly, It's not that I didn't know that it would be cooler up here. The weather in Wisconsin, this time of year is why the Milwaukee Brewer's have a covered stadium. We've had a good deal of unseasonable snowfall for the last two weeks, and the temperatures below freezing are not the norm either. My Landlord should be pulling his hair out. You know that drain pipe that you insert the hose from your washing machine? It takes the grey water out of your washer and puts it in the sewer? Now most anything that isn't water isn't goi...

The weather headlines on television tell me there are floods and tornados in Louisiana. The front causing this activity is covering the entire US from Northern Michigan to the Gulf Coast. In Wisconsin, we were predicted to get 8 - 10 inches of snow. Mandeville got some rain. Appleton got 3 inches of snow. What does 3 inches of snow look like? Note the garden hose is crawling off the picnic table. The pictures and paintings are crawling out of the boxes, scattering themselves about the house, some of them have scaled the walls and are hanging in place. Pieces of furniture have found their final home after a tortuous journey through various rooms.  We settled o ne benchmark in house history . Lucy's food and water bowls have found a place in the kitchen. Take a look at the photo above and note her paw prints in the snow. Lucy is reacquainting her backside to the snowy surface. Not joyfully, I must say. This snow will be gone before you read this blog. It is ...

This is our new backyard. The water will recede. It will become a swamp, then a dry hole, but it will always be Lake Maria. (Thanks to Jeramey Jannene for the Name.) Yes, there a pair of Ducks setting up housekeeping. Yes, I'm concerned about them building a nest in an area that will soon be a pile of wet leaves. I know what it means to move to a place only to find out you're going to be moving again. But enough about moving, let me tell you what happened when we moved from subtropical Louisiana to snow storm threatened Wisconsin. Someone has to explain to me how you can move twice in less than a year and, you throw away, give away and sell stuff you think you don't need and the same sized truck is still full when you pull away from the driveway. But I digress. The crew dropped the moorings and the good ship, with its port o call, Miami Florida on the ships papers, pulled out of Mandeville, Louisiana, on Monday, March 14, 2016. Our destination was Effingham Ilin...

And why I choose to disparage female dog's, I can't explain. I'll hazard a guess that  it's just a bad habit. Each room of our house has a stack of packed moving cartons and a couple of open, partially full cartons waiting for completion. In some ways, this is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that has multiple solutions built into it. As I pack, I use the balanced weight theory. A box full of books is heavy. A box with some books and some knickknacks or linens is easier to pick up and move. This takes planning flexibility and patience. As my wife will be more than glad to inform you, I have some capacity for the first two and almost none of the last. We'll see. We agreed that only in some circumstances would we move something we haven't touched in the time we've spent here. If we haven't needed it in the last eight and half months, we more than likely don't need it. Since she hates my corduroy sports coat I'm sure she's hoping that...

I had a long conversation with my landlord the other day. He was showing the house we rented from him to prospective renters. We are leaving in the middle of March for our return to Wisconsin. Our mission is complete here. There is a Democrat in the State House. It's time to get one in the Governor's mansion in Madison . (This my story, and I will stick to it.) He told me a story about how after Katrina struck New Orleans, his son had a tough time handling the loss of his friends and the family home. His friends didn't die. This young middle schooler merely lost track of them, as they scattered all over the area. This happened naturally as their families made decisions on how they would deal with the loss of their homes, neighborhoods, and schools. The young man experienced two middle schools and three high schools as his parents bounced around the Northshore trying to resettle. I suppose one could say that while this experience isn't anything you would wish on any...