First two weeks

So I know some of you have been curious about my first days at my new job. Well, it was a really slow start. I started last week Tuesday. I had about an hour of paperwork an hour of watching informational videos by myself, apparently this was my orientation. They sent me over to the landscaping building, but hardly anyone was there. All the landscapers went home because it was raining, so they sent me home too. Wednesday was a half day of taking down wire mesh from around tree trunks (winter protection from deer/rabbits), then we went home early because of rain. Thursday was a snow day, and Friday was my first full day. I blew leaves, edged, and pruned bushes at two different lake houses.

Saturday was a nice warm day so we went back to Kohler Andre State Park for a picnic and got our annual sticker. We will definitely be going back there to camp later this summer. They have two quiet woody campgrounds and two nice beaches. We took a walk through through the woods and smelled campfire smoke, it made us wish it was summer!

Monday through Thursday was pretty crazy. I was working at a huge house across the street from Lake Michigan. The owner was the daughter of the man who started Shlitz beer and the widow of the man who started Northwestern Mutual. Now here is the crazy part: we were hand thatching her whole yard! We were on our hands and knees pushing and pulling metal rakes through the grass to get out the dead grass from last year. Then we raked up the dead grass, went over it with a leaf blower, mowed it and then fertilized it. I was numb that whole week. The nice thing was that she gave each person a $20 tip and a box of cookies each day! The guys said that would be the only time I would have to do that and that it would be the hardest thing I would have to do, trial by fire I guess.

I will mainly be doing maintenance landscaping like blowing, raking, edging, pruning, mowing, stuff like that. I still don't know how I will be involved in native landscaping or organic gardening. I think I will find out more once planting starts picking up, or after my first 30 days when I get a review.

A side note on the fertilizer: Every once in awhile, we smell this really weird odor coming from downtown. It smells like a dirty rancid wet dog, but that doesn't begin to describe it, it's very unique to say the least. So the fertilizer we were using on the job was something called Milorganite. The guys explained that it is basically human poop from the Milwaukee municipal waste company. Mil(Milwaukee)-organ(organic)-ite is the final product of sewage that has been dried, baked and pelletized. Once the guys began spreading it on the lawn, I recognized that unique smell. That is what we have been smelling! No joke!

Friday we had a game night with the 20 somethings group from our church. It had been awhile since we had done anything with them, so it was good to get out and socialize. We played the dice game called Bunko. If you haven't played, it's a good way to mix people up and get them talking. We also played a Hilarious game of Catch Phrase.

Last night, we went out for a really nice dinner with all the tip money I got to celebrate my getting a job. It was the first time in ages that we went out to a restaurant. I had a great sirloin and coconut shrimp surf and turf, and Leah had a grilled tuna steak. And of course I had to get a Shlitz beer to honor the founder of the feast.

Spring Break

So Leah and I finally got a break from the monotonous gray that is Milwaukee in winter. I got a few days off for Leah's spring break, so we could head back to Holland and spend some time with family. We got home late Thursday night, so we could have an extra morning sleeping in at home. We spent most of Friday, Saturday and Tuesday helping my parents paint their living room and family room. They just got nice new hardwood floors and thought it would be a good idea to redecorate at the same time. Leah got to spend some of the time (while I was painting) shopping with her female fam. The rest of the weekend we enjoyed the great weather (sunny and 65 degrees) during the day, and enjoyed fires and movies at night.

We have also enjoyed the rest of Leah's spring break back here in Milwaukee. I had one thing on Wednesday, but nothing on Thursday, so we went up to Lake Winnebago for the day. We have been wanting to get up there for awhile, because we thought there would be some things to do (we were expecting something Traverse City-ish), but it was pretty sticky, as in "in the Sticks." We probably won't be going back there any time soon. On Friday, I was at a middle school about an hour away doing "mineral mania" 4 times in a row. It was fun and it gave me a pretty good idea of what it would be like to be a middle school science teacher, something that I am thinking of persuing later. That night, we went to one of the many local microbrews in town to celebrate what I will explain in the next paragraph.

I GOT A JOB! So the story begins last fall when I was looking for jobs. I found a list of native nurseries in the state on the Wisconsin DNR's website. I found one within driving distance and emailed them, asking if there was anything I could do, I even offered to volunteer. They said that I could check back in March, which I did. A few days after I sent them my resume, I got a call from Lied's, the company I contacted. They were wondering if I was interested in an interview, which of course I was. I went in the next week and it went very well. I learned a little more about the job I would be doing and they said that they would contact me soon. Last week I got a letter saying that I got the job!

Let me explain it a little more: I will be a landscape technician (one level up from entry) working on a fairly traditional residential landscaping crew. What is really exciting is that I will also be involved in many of the projects that involve native plants and green/organic gardening/landscaping. The idea is that by next year, the company wants an entirely "green" crew that I will be an integral part of. The other exciting part is that it is full time with benefits! This means that I will be learning how to snow plow next winter! I start April 6, weather permitting. It sounds like I can still do Mad Science birthday parties/super saturdays/special events on saturdays and weeknights.

Their website is: lieds.com if you want to check it out a little more. You can see that most of the stuff is hardscaping, but I will be doing more residential planting. I will keep posting on how everything is going.

Thanks for all of the prayers!

So I didn't get either of the jobs. I have a few other ideas, but I won't bore you with the details until I actually get one of them. Please pray for patience, because it's been pretty frustrating lately. "Mad Science" is picking up, so I am working about 6-8 gigs a week, as opposed to 3-4 this fall. In other news, we have been doing some fun things lately, which I will try to recall now.

Last Saturday we took advantage of another free day at one of our local attractions. The Milwaukee zoo! Free meaning $12 for parking. It was quite a bit of fun to get out of the apartment for an afternoon. We wanted to go earlier in the day, but I was at the office doing a 2 hour "Super Saturday" event for the first time.

The first building was the primate exhibit. Leah and I have never seen orangutans and gorillas before, so it was pretty cool to see their mannerisms and how huge they are. The other monkeys like at John Ball seemed so tiny after that. It was a sunny, but very cold and windy day, so we just kept going from building to building. When we came out of the aquarium building, this is what we saw:

Either the peacocks escaped or they just run feral. It was really cool to see them up close and against the white snow. On a side note, we decided not to take pictures of the animals in their cages because it would just look sad. A little part of both of us feels weird about looking at animals that are kept behind glass. We also went to the small mammal exhibit which had huge fruit bats that you could actually see up close and not tucked away in some dark corner. I think the coolest part for us both was the aviary. The first room was huge with a waterfall, stream and tons of birds flying and walking around. Sorry that this is another picture of Leah and some birds, it just turned out that way:
These little guys were just waddling around the bushes while the bigger birds were flying above us. The rest of that building was pretty cool too. there were smaller areas that just had vertical wires instead of glass between us and the birds, so you could hear all the little noises they were making. Here is a rhinoceros hornbill that we thought was pretty sweet (internet pic):


The next day we went to the 20 somethings church group super bowl party at someone's parents' house (very nice). Again, it was great to get away. Leah lucked out and got to use the hot tub, girls only. The game was great. I should have bet some serious $ because I predicted that saints would get an interception in the second half and win by 1 touchdown.

This weekend we (I) watched some of the Olympics (while Leah was studying). The last time I really watched any games was probably in high school. Best to watch in my opinion: Luge, aerial skiing, short track speed skating and downhill slalom. Saturday we went to Doctor's Park again. It was a calm sunny day and it was great to see the sun on Lake Michigan. For those of you who have been asking, yes there are ice bergs here too, but they are only 6-8 ft tall. And yes, I did get in trouble for bringing rocks home (I have to bring them back). Sunday we had a nice Valentine's dinner at home. Thanks to Joel and Julie we had shrimp tomato basil pasta with a $3 bottle of wine from Aldi. Leah also made red velvet cupcakes without the one whole bottle of red food coloring for dessert.

Interview

Thanks for all the emails/calls/posts about the interview! I think it went pretty well over all. The county parks job was more heavily weighted on volunteer coordination and non profit collaboration than I expected (which I have no experience in), so I'm not too hopeful about that one. I think I have a better shot at the DNR job, which was a lot more my thing: prescribed burning, invasive species removal, habitat restoration, seed collecting, plant propagating.... I will hear back in a week about the parks job and 2 weeks about the DNR job. So now its the waiting game. If neither work out, there is a position open at the zoo!

Sorry in advance, but this is going to be a nerdy post.

So a few nights ago, It just started to snow as I went to pick up Leah from her night class. The snowflakes were so huge, I could see hexagons on my car from 5 feet away. Some of them were 7 to 8 mm. across. Once we were back, I wanted to see if I could take some pictures. After awhile I got the hang of it and there were just a few that turned out really well (click on the pictures to make them bigger).


Nothing spectacular, but I thought they were pretty cool.


About my interview on Tuesday- I found out that I will be interviewed for two jobs at the same time, the one I mentioned and one with Wisconsin DNR. It would be a similar job at a 4,000 acre recreation area and wildlife preserve about 45 min. south of town. We will just have to wait and see what happens.

We haven't done anything else blogworthy lately because Milwaukee is pretty boring in the winter (if you don't have extra spending money) as evidenced by my snowflake pictures. We are already looking forward to spring so we can do stuff outside. So just as a heads up, if you want us to keep posting, our blog might become a little boring. Hang in there until spring!

Hi All,

As many of you know, I've been looking for jobs for quite awhile now. I applied through Americorps for a stewardship assistant with the Milwaukee county park system. It would involve many things that I have done before, like invasive species removal, seed collecting, plant propagating, and general maintenance. The job also comes with some form of health insurance. It would start March 1 and go through August, full time. Today I got an email inviting me to come in for an interview. I'm not letting myself get excited, but it would be great if I got this job. It's on February 2 and I'm asking for prayers that all will go well.

We just came back from another relaxing weekend in Holland. The main reason we went home was because one of Leah's older cousins got married. The reception was at Boatwerks and had a 10 piece jazz band all night, very cool. We also got to hang out with Joel, Julie and Kyper. They were in town because Joel is in between rotations. We had a "business meeting" at JP's and talked about a project that we might get going soon. More about that later.

No pictures today, but we'll keep posting.
Aren

So. I guess it's been awhile. We kind of gave up on the whole blogging thing for a bit, mostly because our camera was broken and wouldn't turn on. I guess it just needed a little bit of time to itself, because we tried it again yesterday, and it works again! Yay!

Now to bring you all up to date on our lives (even though we've likely recently seen everyone the two people who read this). I made it through my first semester of grad school quite successfully and was all too ready for a break. Fortunately, Marquette has a month-long winter vacation, so I was able to totally forget about school for awhile. We spent a fabulous two weeks in Holland; some of the highlights included:

-Going sledding and playing in the snow with cousins
-Having Christmas morning with the whole Phillips family for the first time, and seeing our nephew Kyper's first Christmas
-Going snowshoeing on fresh snow at the nature center
-Spending New Year's Eve at the local retirement center. Without the old people. More fun than it sounds, I promise. There's a hot tub, pool (swimming) and pool (billiards), games, food and family.
-Going on a walk through the Allegan woods with my family
-Going to the beach and stealing signs (Aren and his brothers; I did not participate)
-Having a knitting and tea party (me and my friends; Aren did not participate)

After two weeks at home, Aren and I came back to Milwaukee so that I could work for my assistantship. It's been pretty nice for me to be here and not have homework to do all the time. After I got home from work, we had time to relax, get things done around the apartment, watch movies, etc. I finished our wedding album finally and Aren got his butterflies all labeled and put in a case, they look pretty cool:


Today, we went to the Mitchell Park Domes, a botanical garden near our apartment. We are always looking for cheap (and by that I mean free) entertainment, and today residents got in free, so we took advantage of that. It was a sunny day and the gardens are in glass domes, so it was very bright and summer-y feeling. Here are a few pictures:


(Stealth photography...Aren had no idea I was taking this one)


And that brings us up to right now. This may be the last you hear from me for the next few months, since I start back up tomorrow with classes. I guess it's all up to Aren for awhile, so complain to him if there aren't any new updates. Peace out.