Sleeping Beauty in Milwaukee

30 MAY 2009 - MILWAUKEE

I woke up and noticed that the room seemed rather bright already - it was noon!

Unpacking my luggage I found that my conditioner had leaked out, but only into my sponge bag so that was easy to clean up. I also realised that I left a t-shirt on the domestic flight so I found out how to contact the airline and sent them an email to check if they had it in their lost property. I had rolled the shirt up and was using it as a neck-pillow for sleeping. At least one time I thought "I'm probably going to leave this behind" so it was annoying that I didn't remember to put it back in my bag.

I bought the shirt online so I could easily find a picture to include in the email, but the shirt isn't in stock for me to buy a new one. I hope I hear back from the airline "within 10 business days" to tell me they found it.

Then (hours later in the day, after much complaining about being tired) there was a mission to pick up a car with a roof-rack so a canoe could be taken back to the house. The canoe was still at the old house (as opposed to the new house) so needed to be taken out of the way of the new people at the old house.


The mission was successful, and the canoe was subsequently hidden in the weeds so as to not breach any of the condo homeowner association rules.

Some viewing of town sights ensued - the lake front, the coffee shop in an old water pump building, the north point lighthouse, and the art museum designed by Santiago Calatrava.

The cafe was also interesting besides the machinery in the building because the coffee seemed to be pre-made and kept in a urn. If a coffee was ordered, it would be put into the take away cup, then given to the customer to go over to the condiment table and add their own milk/sweetener/spice sprinkles and put the lid on.

My hot chocolate was made normally and pretty good. We also had a cran/date bar and a huge, solid square of fudge brownie.

Dinner time came afterwards but not long enough afterwards for me to get more than a salad. We ate at Applebees and it was pretty good. As the interesting, new person I was answering a lot of questions and I think it actually took me at least an hour to eat my dinner. It had a lot of toasted slivered almonds which were really good, and also some chicken along with the lettuce and coleslaw.

Then it was home to bed and a weird night of four hours sleep, four hours awake and four more hours of sleep again.

All during the day I was in a bit of pain walking around. I couldn't figure out why to start with, but my calf muscles were really cramped, quite sore and made me feel like I was hobbling when I walked. I finally remembered that when I started work the day before, I arrived before anyone else but didn't have a key to get in. To kill a bit of time until someone arrived, I walked up the stairs to the top level of our building. I think there are 7 or 8 levels.

I'm pretty sure it was a combination of the unusual exercise and then being stuck sitting in cramped seats for hours at a time that added up to one unpleasant experience. Luckily it was really only painful for a day or two and the went away.