Efficient trip

February 23, 2007 (7:17pm)
20º F, Dark and cloudy, E wind 13 mph.

Good evening,

The weather is the big story for the moment. We are supposed to get 1-3" tonight after midnight. Tomorrow is the real storm coming though. The weatherman is suggesting there will be 8-14" starting tomorrow night through Sunday night/Monday morning. We have been listening to the forecasts for the past few days. At first the weatherman thought it might be a good storm, but if it slipped a bit north of us we would be getting heavy rain, 1-3"! Now it is only snow predicted anywhere in the state. The central part of the state will probably get up to 6" of snow tonight, but we will take the brunt of tomorrow night’s storm, thanx to lake effect snow from the NE winds, strong winds, in the storm. Probably will park the van at the end of the drive tomorrow night, unless the forecast changes some. Sounds like the snow will be very wet too with the high temperatures.

Our ride to Milwaukee yesterday was probably the most efficient of any trip we have taken to the Immigration Service in the past. The route we "found" last time down really is a good one and easy to follow. Since the parking is at a premium, and we were later than normally we go there, we had to park a bit away from the office, in front of one of the Milwaukee School of Engineering buildings. The cost of the parking meter was costly as are all of them. There is no available un-metered parking within a couple of blocks of the office either.

When we entered the screening line, the officer on duty really looked over the letter Margriet got. I was a form letter for criminals having identification cards made up at the request of the FBI! I saw that some words had been crossed out on the letter, but really didn’t look that closely until after. The form letter was used to get Margriet there after an error had been made on the previous attempt of getting her fingerprints electronically recorded. The folks bent over backwards to get her in, done, and out. They succeeded! It was 24 minutes from the time I put the last quarter into the parking meter, until I was getting into the van again. There was a digital readout of the time on the meter, or I would not have known. Now if we could get a refund on the extra 36 minutes of parking I paid for. Not! Now we wait. Again.

Margriet has more or less recovered from her bout with a cold or what ever it was. She had a number of nose bleeds on Tuesday and Wednesday and I was determined that we would not go if they continued when she woke up yesterday morning. Fortunately, they ended and so did the fever she had. On the return trip, we stopped at a restaurant we spotted on the way down. It was on the intersection where we turned off from the interstate. I think it was the same chain that my brother and his wife, Bill and Mary, ate at a couple of years ago. The food was excellent and we had our fill. Probably will stop there again on future trips. We knew it would be good food when we walked in and saw the place with almost only senior citizens.

On the return ride I intended to stop at Cabala’s, a sporting goods store I had bought from by mail in years past, that I thought I saw a sign for. There isn’t one, or at least at the place I thought the sign said. As it turns out, the sign was giving directions to the store 30+/- to the west and which highway to take to get there. Oh well. I still want to actually go to one of their stores someday. I and the guys at deer camp bought some things we could only get there some years ago.

We did have a couple of pieces of good news the past couple days. Most importantly, Brenda and her Man will be getting married in March. It has been on the agenda for some time, but one thing or another has interfered with it. Would be nice if we could be there, but can’t. Since the place they are getting married, city offices, are on the square we watch on a website, Brenda said they would wave to us. We probably will start to watch the website non stop beginning the day before so we don’t miss it! We are very happy with the marriage and have been hopping it would happen sooner than later.

The other piece of news is that it sounds like within a couple of weeks the papers for the sale of Margriet’s house will be signed. That too has been a long and hard process. I know it has bothered Margriet a lot and now some of that stress can, and is, lifted too.

So .... we have been some busy and trying to keep out of mischief once in a while.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><