For the last two weeks of February and all of March, we pretty much stayed close to home. We also didn't have any visitors of the human variety---only one canine. We did do a day trip down to Chicago for an outing with Roger and Sheryl. We went to the Dreihaus Museum, which had a special exhibit of costumes from Downton Abbey. It was very interesting and it made me very sad that the show is not on anymore. We walked from the museum to Quartino's for lunch. This was sort of a repeat field trip for us---we had gone to the museum before for a different exhibit. And we liked Quartino's so much the first time, that we decided to go back. All the food was great, but the dessert would have made the whole trip worthwhile--little donut-like things, served warm, with a chocolate dipping sauce. My mouth is watering just thinking about this!
We must have been a bit bored during these dreary months, because we decided to make a few changes in our technology. When Bob started to do the taxes on Turbo Tax, he got a message that he needed to update to Windows 10 or some such thing. Well, we didn't think that this would even be possible on Abby's old hand-me-down Dell. So we went shopping for a new laptop. This was a bit of a learning curve for both of us, and I really haven't gotten into using it much---I rely on the iPad and still use the old Dell for stuff like this blog. (Because I haven't taken the time to figure out how to do it on the laptop.) About that time I also got a notice that I could upgrade my phone, so I decided to take advantage of that. So I went from using Abby's hand-me-down iPhone 4, to an iPhone 5s. I could have gone to a 6, but I didn't really like the bigger size. Fortunately not too much of a learning curve with the phone.
Then I also noticed that our AT&T bill had taken a bit of a jump--again. So I decided to gather all my patience and make a call to see what I could do to bring the bill down. I got a very nice person on the phone who actually seemed to have English as her main language! After looking at our situation, she said that the best deal for us would be to switch from U-verse to DirecTV for our cable service. I had been told this once before, but Bob was not excited about doing that. So this time I put him on the phone with the girl at AT&T and she was able to convince him that it would be a good thing to do. That's been a pretty easy transition--Bob was worried that we would lose our service every time we had bad weather, but that really hasn't been a problem. It certainly hasn't happened any more often than it did with U-verse. So I think it was a good change. And we brought our bill down about $40 a month.
Last year for my birthday the kids gave me a "Plant of the month" type of thing for six months, and I really enjoyed all the plants that I got. Unfortunately, I was not able to keep them all alive, but a few of them are still with us. One of the plants was a mini-orchid, and it was blooming when I got it. There were directions for what to do with it to get it to bloom again, and it seemed simple enough even for me. I had to put it by a north-facing window, and give it a quarter cup of water every 2 weeks. Lo and behold, this is what happened:
An orchid blooming in February!
March is still a winter month, at least it is in Wisconsin.
And we have frequent visits from the neighborhood deer in the winter. They somehow seem to know when Bob has filled the bird feeders, and they just trot right over to help themselves.
If Bob catches them, the tries to scare them away by knocking on the window. Sometimes it works.
One highlight in March was going to see the live broadcast of "Prairie Home Companion" with Garrison Keillor. Since he is retiring, this was the last chance to see this in Milwaukee. We really enjoyed it!
One day we decided to take a little drive up to Cedarburg--I could hardly believe that it was Bob's suggestion. Maybe he was jealous that he usually misses out on our Cedarburg outings. Of course Creme and Crepe was a must for lunch.
The dessert crepes are the best!
This next picture was taken a bit later in the month--notice the snow is gone. The deer are not the only uninvited guests at our bird feeders. This little rascal got pretty good at making it up that pole to get at the feeder.
Oh, I think I mentioned a canine visitor--yes, Molly came to spend a couple weeks with us! The Wissinks went to Des Moines for the Easter week-end, and so we drove down on Good Friday to meet them in the Chicago area and brought Molly home with us. They had plans to come to Wisconsin during Jeremiah's spring break in April, so that's when they would pick her up again.
Hard to say no to that face!
A man and his dog :)
Well, that pretty much takes us through March. I promise that there will be some grandkid pictures in the next post.
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