Snoeshow during the storm

Hal writes:

For those of you who don't live in the Midwest or the east coast, there was a snow storm that went through the heartland last week. On Sunday I walked through the woods to RD Jen's place to watch the Wisconsin Badger BBall came with some friends and took my camera along. Below is a "self portrait" of me as I began my journey.

In the woods I found some animal tracks and a few different places where animals had slept through the storm. It's hard to see the footprints below, but this looked to be a small rabbit's shelter for the evening. You can see how its little body warmed up the snow beneath it until the snow melted down to the grass.

The woodwork below is in preparation for the bridge that will link my halls to the other halls and the dining hall. The bridge will be a single span when fully in place, the wood is just to hold up the three sections of bridge until it is welded together. Once complete, the posts will be knocked out from underneath it. I walked right by the bridge and had to duck walk my way up the hill on the other side.

I found a stump during my walk to set the camera on to take a timed delay photo. Every try running in snow shoes for your own picture in the middle of the woods? I wouldn't recommend this. One false move and the wolves would have had me for dinner.

I decided not to post the photos of what my students made out of the newly fallen snow as it may prevent you from viewing this blog if your web browser screens for inappropriate material. Jim's post indicates similar snow structures were erected on his campus, so maybe it's a UW thing...

Tastefully Simple meets Cage Dancing

Hal writes:

I tend to write about my co-workers a great deal, which makes sense because in addition to working with them during the day this is also my core group of friends in Platteville. And since most of us are "E's" on the Myers-Briggs type indicator, we draw our energy from group activities.

Thursday night was sign-up night for housing on campus. I already completed the process for my hall two weeks earlier, but the other halls had an internal sign-up process in their halls earlier in the week. The Thursday night was for students who wanted to move to different halls on campus for next year. Unlike in past years where this occurred in the individual halls, we decided to have all of us in the basement of the dining hall for sign-up. Since my building was full, I played crowd control, line monitor, and joke teller to the people who were waiting in line to sign up. To make sure everyone knew I was in charge, I wore my ref jersey for the occasion.

After an evening of worked up students, it was time to relax. The RDs started off the evening with sampling of items from the Tastefully Simple catalogue. In the past couple of years, we have had a few parties and we are all familiar with the products, so this time we just made a number of items for people to eat and handed out order sheets. Pictured below was the "dip area" where you can see Anna made cards to let you know which dip was "Onion Onion", "Fiesta Party Dip", etc., etc. If you would like to order some wonderful products from Tastefully Simple, I would suggest placing an order with our consultant by clicking here.

As I have probably mentioned before, my hall is not 100% complete. Prior to students moving in this past fall there was a flurry of activity to get the things that "need" to get done completed prior to student arrival. The rest of items on the punch list are not, as my friends in maintenance would say, a "priority". One of those items was a storage space for me. Each RD has a storage space in the basement, but Anna and I have been without one since we moved to the new building. But new developments have occurred, and the construction of a cage is almost complete in our basement. After eating tastefully simple, the RDs went to the forbidden basement for some cage dancing, which consisted of a CD player, a strobe light, and what will one day be the RD storage. Pictured below are my colleagues in the cage.

Among the fun treasures to find amidst the basement was a button that is an emergency shutdown for some machinery in the basement. Below Stef and Matt and playing "Deal or No Deal" with the button. What do you think? Deal or No Deal?

Anna was unable to attend the coffee convention in Chicago due to weather. Her and her coworkers only made it a few miles out of town last night before turning back. But I am happy to report my parents made it back from their "spring break" trip in Florida.

Family filled weekend

Hal writes:

This weekend Anna and I went to the Twin Cities. Dale is skiing the Birkebeiner ski race (whether permitting) and flew in from California this weekend. Sandy and Kat came down as well, so we got to spend some time together. Of course, no trip to the cities would be complete without a trip to IKEA.

Additionally, my parents and grandma were flying down to Florida for the week, so I met up with them at Jay's new house. Lindsay was also in town for the MIAC swim race. She brought me some Career Builder merchandise as she is now employed with the company. (I'm a little sad that they monkey commercials are no more...)

In addition to seeing Jay and Tabby's new house, I got to play with Alex and Haily. This picture below was taken in between "flying" the kids around the rooms. As you can see from the background, there is some more painting to do. The curtains in the background and the bedspread we are on were made by my mom for Alex's room.

When Anna and I first moved to Platteville, I was excited to find Sprecher root beer in the local grocery store. Shortly there after, they stopped carrying the Milwaukee beverage, and I became bitter. Jim got me hooked on the stuff in grad school and I had hoped that moving to Wisconsin would provide an abundant supply. In a surprise move, I checked in the soda section this past week and I found that the root beer is back. Hooray!