Four years ago today Anne and I got married. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but it also seems like it's been longer? Does that make any sense? It sort of feels like we've always been together, possibly because we will always be together. Either way today is the 4th anniversary of the day of our marriage if you're living in the dimension of time.

I love you Anne!

Yes, it can be done.

The key, thus far in my experiments, is to buy the vacuum sealed strips, they tend to be juicier than the large packaged stuff (which is very dry). Fry it up in large quantities of butter and oil, give it time to absorb the oil and get tender, cutting it into small bits facilitates this by increasing the surface area.

So there you have it, a new ingredient for your culinary creations, similar to bacon in it's legendary awesomeness.

I've been meaning to post this for over a week but I've been busy and also lazy. I finished my new workbench for the workshop downstairs. I believe the former one was built before the house and it was starting to fall apart. I was able to salvage a lot of the wood from it to build the new one though. Additionally, Anne's office moved and they were getting rid of three drawing cases, which have now been repurposed to store wine bottles (formerly they held rolled up architectural drawings). The cellar has the ability to hold over 200 bottles of wine. Additionally the three new racks can hold magnums (1.5 litre bottles) if I want.

That's a lot of wine!

In the photo below you can see the three 5 gallon carboys of bulk aging wine. One carboy of Zinfandel and two of Concord. Also most of the racks are empty, I guess I'll need to harvest more bottles and make more wine.

Last year, Anne's parents gave us their old snow blower. It's a two stroke engine and thus requires that you use a gasoline/oil fuel mixture in the fuel tank. We didn't use it last winter because we are idiots (or at least I am). This year I got fuel for it and got it running (eventually).

It is awesome.

It's not huge or anything and it can't handle the really wet snow but it really reduces the amount of work I need to do to clear our walks (not to mention the time it saves me).

Another thing that's awesome about it is it's seriously environmentally harmful exhaust. I hope it helps to warm this planet up because global warming has so far been pretty freaking cold.

Shatner Hasselhoff ‘08

They'd do just as good of a job as anyone else.

As most of you know we live pretty much right next to the St. Francis Seminary though there's a bit of forest between our house and the seminary grounds proper. Well on the other side of the seminary grounds there is more forest that we had neglected to explore until last night. Now we're regretting waiting so long.

The sign reads: "Seminary Woods Wildlife preserve endorsed by Milwaukee Audubon Society protected by state and federal laws" which is good. Hopefully that means it's unlikely to get turned into condos.

We wandered through the woods on a whim, at first our path led us mostly along the fencing at the back of St. Thomas More High School and the elementary school next to it. After walking a while we started to move further into the woods themselves and came across a creek of sort. Initially it was coming out of a sewer pipe; one of our neighbors who works for MMSD once told us that there are a number of streams and creeks in the area that have been moved underground or routed through sewer ways. As we continued to wander the path grew wider and more maintained, we went across a bridge over the small creek and then we came upon a clearing which held a cemetery.

Apparently the Seminary has a small graveyard out in the woods where it buries it's nuns and priests. Most of the graves were dated in the 19th century. Many of them were very simple markers, though, as you can see, there were a few very ornate stones as well as a big metal crucifix.

Unfortunately we didn't get to linger long in the graveyard, the mosquitoes were running rampant in there, while they had been pretty much non-existent in the forest. We left on a different path than we had entered so as to continue to explore the lovely woods. Just inside the woods from the cemetery clearing was a little grotto with a sitting area and a spot to have a fire, at first I thought it was some sort of Catholic shrine or something but it was just a big fireplace.

The woods were so huge and beautiful and peaceful, it was hard to believe that we were surrounded by city and only a 10 minute drive from downtown Milwaukee. We continued our stroll through the woods and eventually came out onto the Seminary grounds between the convent building and the main building. There were a few fruit trees growing here, some apples and some plums hanging from the branches; not yet ripe. We headed home having thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and with plans to return very soon.

more photos

I never wished Anne a Happy Birthday last friday via the nerdy medium of the weblog! So without further ado:

Happy Birthday Anne!
I love you!

Hopefully the real life stuff I did on time makes up for this oversight, I'm sorry.