Merry Christmas 2010
December 2010
Hello again from Paul and Susan, cats and horses. All is well with us. We have slipped into a routine of working, and eating, and sleeping, and eating, and playing and remain healthy and happy, praise the Lord!
Our jobs continue to be secure in the coming year. Paul’s work continues to be a bit stressful but remains steadily busy for all their workers. My job continues to be secure and our company remains busy, almost too busy. Our division has been working overtime for the past half year and our manufacturing is so busy that we are interviewing for more production workers to enable us to meet deadlines. I think one, maybe two. One product our division provides is control systems for hydro electric power houses and these are bid contracts. We had a slowing earlier this year but now have several projects finally coming through the engineered process and being released for manufacturing. I work as administrative assistant to the Materials (purchasing, stock room and shipping) Manager and also to the Manufacturing Manager, so once projects are through the engineered stages I am kept rather busy. Of course, these hydro projects are not the only thing we work on; we also provide smaller control systems to other types of business, such as car wash lines and some systems in machinery.
I continued to get carried away with my knitting. This past year I was attended two different seminars in the Twin Cities area with some of the gals in my knitting guild and two weekends for knitting retreats. I enjoy the retreats the best. We take our machines with us and spent two and one half days knitting and enjoying one another’s company. Pictures posted on our web page of some items I made last month. The majority of what I make goes to charity. I am very fortunate that an older member of our guild has given members yarn on the condition that it is used for charity work. So those of us who want, make things like hats, mittens, sweaters, lap robes, slippers, socks, baby things, ugly blankets (leftover yarns mixed together) for the animal shelter. Then, we bring them to the guild and they are distributed by build members to various organizations both locally and outside our area. We have given things to local shelters, nursing homes and hospitals. Also, we have sent items to the Wisconsin VA hospital, Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and Rankin Inlet Birthing Center in Nunavut, Canada (way up north… almost to Santa’s place). We have also sent yarn and needles to a woman’s group in Sumi, Ukraine. It is so neat to see the various ways I can help others by my addiction.
We only had one special trip this year. We went to Steven’s Point, 30 miles south, and bought a gas insert for the fireplace. What a wonderful gift to ourselves. My chair is right in front of it and I have been enjoying it when I sit and hand knit. Actually, I turn it on as soon as I go to my playroom (the basement). My computer, my knitting… my playroom….guess it should be my fireplace then. Ah, but I have to share it’s warmth with cats and occasional a husband when he wanders down.
I did bicycling this year. I had been getting out and riding my bike for several years, but this year it took a bit of a serious turn. My company is always coming up with different healthy life style ideas for any one who wants to participate. A couple of winters they paid for participation in Lighten Up Wisconsin, one summer they gave participant pedometers to encourage them to walk additional steps each week. Well, last summer’s some one calculated that there were 1,137 miles if one traveled from one L&S location to another to another. So, the challenge was to see how many individuals or teams of two could walk, run, roller skate, ride a bike these miles between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. Tracey, the gal I share an office with, and I decided to accept the challenge. I had been riding the bike occasionally, and thought if I pushed a bit more could come up with 568.5 miles during the 15 week period or 40 miles a week. So we joined the challenge, I even bought an odometer for my bike to track the miles. Well, the first week I did 47.25 miles and one week actually rode 100 miles. At the end, Tracey and I had gone one and one-half times around L&S and beat the second place team by 20 miles. From the time I put my odometer on the bike Memorial Day weekend to when I put it away due to the cold, I had ridden 1,100 miles. We are lucky here to have many bike lanes around the community and easy access to safe country roads to ride. My best single mileage trip last year was 20 miles and I hope to regularly meet or exceed that in 2011.
Mother Nature gave us a funny season this year. We had a snow storm, about 4 inches, May 7 & 8. It was a heavy, wet snow and I went out on Friday night to brush the snow off our two little trees. Unfortunately, it did not help. We lost half the crab apple tree, all bloomed out and the top center of our little flowering tree. The damage to our area was very great, most significantly to the local ginseng industry. About 80% of our county’s ginseng was damaged by the storm. Wisconsin produces 95% was of nation’s ginseng, and nearly all of the state’s 200 growers who produce roughly 1400 acres of ginseng are in our county, Marathon County. It was strange to drive through the county later and see all the shade frames lying on the ground.
I did put in a vegetable garden again this year. I put in tomatoes, lettuce, peas, beans, kale, Swiss chard, spinach (I put it in, it only a few plants came up), squash and zucchini (it also did not do well. It would blossom and start, but then rot before the fruit matured). I decided to not feed ALL the neighbors and put up deer proof netting which is 6’ high around the garden. It worked very well to keep the deer and rabbits out and my little garden did OK in spite of the rainy summer until late August and mid-September. Then, again Mother Nature gave us a whammy, it was underwater! The first time, the water receded within an hour or so, but the flooding we got in mid-September, lasted a bit longer. Lucky for me, the only thing by that time I lost was the last of the tomatoes. We got 3.28 inches of water on September 23, but other counties nearby got as much as 5 – 6 inches of rain. Many of us held our breaths and gave up prayers with communities about 30 miles south of us as we continued to watch reports of the Caledonia levee failing. The 14 mile sand levee, built in 1890, held, leaked almost like a sieve, but held. The Wisconsin River crested at 20.6 feet. The good of all this… our seven year drought has ended.
Then to finish the year, we got 13.5 inches the second week-end of December. Thank God the storm started on Friday afternoon, most people had time to get home and stay there. The severe storm warnings did not lift until mid-day on Sunday. Our church even cancelled Sunday morning worship! Seemed so strange, but we were not the only ones. Then on the heels of the storm, can sub-zero weather for a week. The nice thing was that Mother Nature got this out of her system and Christmas and even through today the weather and travel has not been bad. Today, Thursday, December 30 we had a high of 37F and rain. Hope we don’t lose all our snow, I want to get more snowshoeing done.
My neighbor, Wendy, with whom I shared vegetables in the summer and visits in the winter, moved in October to the Twin Cities to live closer to five of her six children. I miss her friendship and guess I will have to find someone else to share my vegetables with. Paul has been getting more creative with them. Check out his recipe for ratatouille – good stuff according to my mouth and tummy.
God’s blessings to you for the coming year.
Susan and Paul Stomieroski
6310 Setter Road
Weston, WI 54476
(715) 355-7769
Susan@Stomieroski.com
Paul@Stomieroski.com
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