Cats, Kids, Carry On

 

 Mrs. Cheetah and her son Chester

 

I dug deep into the archives to find pictures to post for today.  In my defense, the cameras are all packed up.  We put a blurry photo from Sue's phone on [the facebook] yesterday featuring us "coming in under weight" on our packed bags.  We each had to be under 55 pounds total for our suitcase plus our carry on for the trip from Iringa to Dodoma (Tanzania's capital) to Ndutu airstrip adjacent to the Serengeti.  My number was 44 pounds (including the first aid bag) and Sue's was 40 pounds.  We're also each taking collapsible duffel bags of school supplies each weighing around 30 pounds.

 

 

Add a boonie hat or a Houston Astros baseball cap to me and this is what I'll look like hanging out in Africa. 

 

 

A lioness and her cub

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Below is Grandma Dorene with the three Cornale Grandkids from 12 years ago.

 

Here

 

 

And don't worry about Mr. Tailwheel (seen here in his country estate's modern sink/lounge chair) as Mary will be house and cat sitting.  Her job: to feed and love and play with Mr. Tailwheel.  Oh, and to shovel the sidewalk.

Jim, Jonny, Matty

 

The call was put out there on Saturday for a racking and bottling session at the Snakeland Brewery bottling line located just steps away from the brauhaus and one floor away from the lagering cave.  Leon called in sick but my three books-of-the-bible friends John, James, and Matt all made it.  We bottled the British Pub Ale, a real session beer and we transferred the Belgian Ale to the secondary carboy.  It looked disturbingly cloudy and overly tan.  This is the stuff the Belgian monks brew so it must be OK.

 

 

Look who has a new best friend forever?  Tailwheel made an appearance strolling through the bottling line rubbing on legs and softly meowing until the cat lover among the brewers picked him up and pet his belly.  Sue was busy in the basement watching her Packers choke not unlike the Vikings choked the week before.

 

 

 

Tailwheel appears interested in reading the Augustana Annual Report.  Today I stopped in at church to pick up the bag of first aid supplies that I will be in charge of in Tanzania.  I'm planning to thin it out some so it takes up less space in my bag.  I began by throwing out the Tylenol that outdated in 2006.

 

 

Nice cat.

 

 

Tailwheel finally found Milhaud's cozy bed that we strategically placed within the intense heat zone of the fireplace.

 

 

I think we'll be seeing a lot of Tailwheel in this comfy cat couch, this feline futon, this lazy leopard/lion lair.

 

 

Sue has likened him to a 15 lb Polar Bear.

 

B and B Band-O-Rama

 

The Greish boys and cousin Paige had their annual Band-O-Rama festival featuring all band students in the Oak Creek, Wisconsin school district on the gym floor at once performing for every resident of Oak Creek and the surrounding suburbs who could physically fit into the gym.

 

 Here's Brett playing his tuba.

Plenty cold here today--the type of cold we northerners are referring to when we say "it's cold."

Winter Cat

Somebody discovered another good place to take a nap.

T-6 days

As I was loading pictures for this blog entry, my phone alerted me that the flight we will be on next week has landed in Dar Es Salaam. That means we left at 3pm yesterday and arrived just now. I suspect we'll be tired of airplane seats by this time next week.

 

Packing is in full force today and our bags should be ready to go with the exception of every day items that won't get packed until the morning we leave. Doug rediscovered his "boony hat" from the early 1990s which will serve as his hat on safari. 

All packing has been supervised by Tailwheel.  By supervision, I mean he is laying around waiting for someone to sit down so he can jump into that person's lap. 

 

 

There is some serious organization going on here.  The plastic bags serve both to keep clothes organized and to protect them from the elements as our bags will be on top of our mini-bus as we drive from Dar to Iringa.  I think they'll probably come in handy to categorize clothes in the clean vs.  wearable vs. questionable vs. "what is that smell?" later in the trip.

 

 

   

In addition to our own things, we packed a 30 pound bag of school supplies donated by students, colleagues, friends and family members and have another bag to pack.  We delivered 7 soccer balls that were donated by my students to the Pfeifers who will deflate and pack them.  So much fun!!

If you care to track our flights next week, I suggest using www.flightaware.com.  We fly from Minneapolis to Amsterdam on Delta and then on KLM from Amsterdam to Dar Es Salaam with a brief stop at the Kilimanjaro airport. 



East Bank, East Africa

 

Over the weekend we worked on some of our shopping and packing needs for our upcoming trip to the cradle of civilization, the undiscovered continent, the southern hemisphere, the other east coast, the one and only, sub-saharan Africa. Also, Sue tried on all of her combinations of safari clothing including her boonie hat and her binoculars that she said were good enough to see a license plate down the block from our computer room window.

 

 

These nifty and spiffy grey pants are from the J. Peterman catalogue (if only my brother Mike, the Seinfeld aficionado read this blog then that joke would not have been wasted).

 

 

 

On Sunday after church, Young Ben brought his trombone over for an informal lesson/jam session. Ben started playing last summer as a pre-fifth grader. This trombone guru thinks he sounds good and is definitely on the right track for a life of trombonitude.

 

 

I prepared for our trip buy getting an extra short haircut and an extra long previously owned and presumable read novel (Les Miserables - 1500 pages). We were going to see the movie on New Year's Eve but instead saw This Is Forty, about a forty year old couple having an R rated mid life crisis. It was a good movie with some really good acting but far too raunchy. I think once they decided on an R rating, they felt obligated to fill the movie with vulgar language, sex, and gratuitous nudity.

 

 

Today I popped in at The U for a mantoux skin test to provide my yearly proof that I do not have tuberculosis. This is the new, still not open light rail station on the east bank of the river. Its name: East Bank. Look at all of the decorative mathematical symbols in case the rider forgets that she is passing through one of the largest universities in the country.

 

 

It looks like Washington Avenue will still have a lane on either side of the train tracks for buses and hopefully cars. If they close this stretch of Washington Avenue to cars permanently, it'll only make the traffic horrible on River Road and all of the tiny side streets in front of my hospital.

We were going to re-post some cute pictures of the Twin Nieces from their second birthday last Saturday but in the mean time, you can assume they are as adorable as ever.

Trombone Forest

 

Mr. Wheel hides in a forest of trombone slides.

 

 

I think playtime is more exercise for Sue than for Tailwheel.

 

 

 

He's a pretty good boy.

 

 

This is his pose of utter exhaustion after playtime

Call Me Maybe? or Call Me "May Bea"

 

 

 We took a cold walk (15 degrees) for about two blocks on New Year's Day.  Later in the week it warmed up to about 30 so that was nice.

 

 

Most blog entries should have a photo of a cat, right?  This is the classic Volkswagen pose that Tailwheel strikes so often.

 

We did nothing special on New Year's Eve or Day.  Sue made some baked potato soup and Sloppy Joseph sandwiches (barbecue).  I turned the TV off after Carly Rae Jepsen appeared on two different networks singing her overexposed song -- we're supposed to maybe call her or call her May Bea if we get the time or something?

 

The trees are down and our house has reverted to non-Christmas normalness.

Green Day

 

Today was Sue's Packer Friday at work where people who love the packers dress in various greens and people who hate the Packers dress in purple.  An unofficial survey of students revealed that way more kids support the Purple-Packer Eaters.

 

Tailwheel is very comfortable in his routine here.  Last night he was sitting on the TV stand while I was trying to watch TV through him.  He greets me with some muted meows when I walk into the kitchen at 520am.  Sue's been engaging him in frantic play using the cat fishing wand.

 

I made some green curry chicken stir fry for dinner tonight in celebration of Green Day and also because no one has ever heard of Purple Day.

 

Two Thousand and Thirteen

 

Here's the photo that will leave friends and family asking when I got contact lenses.  I did not.  I removed my glasses because they were fogging up.  This was taken right before we departed for Milly Walk "E" after Christmas.

 

 

Mr. Tailwheel has settled in to his Pied-à-terre (apartment in the city).  He has some hiding places that remain undiscovered by his landlords.  Air France is adding a nonstop flight from Minneapolis to Paris starting in May.  This flight will compete with and hopefully drive the price down of Delta's flight, the only other nonstop to Paris from here.  Hmmm: fly to Paris and rent a car to drive across France to that bridge leading across the Rhein River to Neuenburg. . .

 

 

Sue proclaimed the guest cat Simba, King of the Lions.

 

 

Happy 2013 everyone!