Category Archives: cheeseheads

Throwback Thursday – Everyday Packers Decor

Posted on by
1

Everyday decor – I looked over this post and realized, as usual, that not much has changed since this piece first hit the Interwebs in 2011. Read on and find out what little did need updating.

Decor? Heck, this is just part of the household. Nothing is fancy. You know I hang green and gold ornaments on my Christmas tree. You know I sip coffee from a Lombardi mug that sits on a cheese coaster. With my Green Bay Packers and their winning streak in mind, let’s take a brief tour.
This title towel keeps my bread machine dust free in between uses.

Nap time means Packer blanket throws and green & gold Happy Feet slippers!

Let’s head upstairs.
In the bathroom, I can wash up with a classic and well-used Green Bay washcloth.

Tiny rabbit Krumpet used to live in Amigo’s room and hang out in a Green Bay Packers bean bag chair. Krumpet and La Petite now have their own apartment, but I still use this picture every September to show my students two important interests in my life: rabbits and the Green Bay Packers.
And last but never least, the guest room sports classic Green Bay Packers sheets.

These are just a few examples of simple evidence that yes, we are true fans in this household. Any questions? There will be a quiz Sunday night. Or Monday – “we” play Atlanta on Monday Night Football. Peach cobbler for Eating the Opponent, anyone?

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Throwback Thursday — Dressing the Part

Posted on by
Reply

Win or lose, run or pass, Cheeseheads never lose their class.

Well, teachers who are also Cheeseheads (Packers fans), that is.


You might be a Green Bay Packer fan if you can dress like this for work, and not only is it considered completely appropriate, your boss compliments you on your new attire.

Ironic, isn’t it? I posted this several years ago. My boss at the time has been bumped up to an office in the same building in which my virtual school makes its “home”. My current cubicle is in a drafty part of an aging building, so the blanket style jacket is, well, perfect. The more things change, the more they stay the same – in Packers country, anyway. 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Ah, Multi-tasking Packer Fans

Posted on by
2

There’s too much on my to-do list to allow a relaxed Sunday afternoon in front of the TV. But when you have green and gold running through your system the way we do at the O.K. Chorale, the game will be on and will be central to our existence for a few hours. We do a little multi-tasking, though, just to keep life from collapsing around us. For example:

  • Make ice cream. Mix the ingredients, turn on the ice cream maker, and then watch the game until it’s done. Note to self: watch the real clock, not the football clock, for timing.
  • Laundry. Turn on the bedroom TV while folding.
  • Bake. I baked angel food cake today – just the thing to go with our Eating the Opponent dish, Norwegian Fruit Soup. Yum.
  • Clean a bathroom. Seriously. Apply cleaning solutions (or vinegar-water mix) during one commercial break. Scrub and rinse during the next break. Not recommended during a Super Bowl when the commercials are part of the entertainment. 
  • Shop online.
  • Blog.

Readers, can you add to the list? As the Packers keep winning, I want to watch every minute. But in reality, life intrudes. What other tasks can be multi-tasked during a Packer game?

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Throwback Thursday – Packers and their fans

Posted on by
Reply

You know you’re a Green Bay Packers fan if:

  • Your favorite starting quarterback has a streak of incomplete passes – 3 in all.
  • You buy Christmas gifts at the Packer Pro Shop for out-of-state relatives.
  • You imagine the visiting teams saying, “We came, we saw, we lost” on their way out of Lambeau.
  • Your favorite field goal kicker is considered in a slump if he misses. That’s misses one field goal.
  • Your weekly superstitions continue, even though you know the team doesn’t need your help.
  • You have a cheesehead that sports the words “NFL Owner.”
  • Your decorative ceramic seagull wears a Barbie-doll size cheesehead.
  • Instead of rushing into laundry to prepare for game day, you just take out another piece of Packer-wear because you own enough to last through the playoffs — and indeed, the Super Bowl.
Readers, I’m looking at encore posts for a Throwback Thursday theme. Feel free to join me on your own blogs – or just stopping by to check on my Thursday posts. Regular readers might even say, “Hey, I read this the first time!” 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Eating the Opponent: Minnesota

Posted on by
2

For newcomers: We have a fun culinary tradition in our family. During the NFL season, we look at the Packers schedule, see who they are playing, and then plan to “eat the opponent” by serving local fare – the other team’s local fare. It’s a little tougher for our North Division opponents because our Packers face them twice every year – three times if it happens again in the playoffs.

The Minnesota Vikings are probably settling in for a nice long nap downtown in my fair city right now as I’m blogging. Consider the following: It’s about a 45 minute drive from our downtown to Lambeau Field, Green Bay hotels often fill up as soon as the schedule is released in the spring, and what opponent wants to stay in Packerland City surrounded by cheeseheads, anyway? The jokes on them, really. We have as high a percentage of Cheeseheads as Green Bay itself. But I was talking about food.

My go-to default for Minnesota games is wild rice. I can cook it as a side dish, stir it into a hotdish, or just about anything. Wild rice is delicious. When former Packer Brett Favre donned the dreaded purple and played for the Vikings, we served turnovers for breakfast. Long time fans will understand. This time around, I was searching. Simply making wild rice on the side didn’t feel like enough.

I did a quick Internet search for Minnesota game – hunting game, that is. I printed a list of game animals that are hunted in Minnesota, tucked the list in my purse, and headed to a nearby corner meat market. Everyone should have a corner meat market. It’s just an awesome little place. But I was talking about Minnesota.

I bought a pound of ground elk meat. It was pricey, but can you put a price on a Packer victory? Never mind. Don’t answer that. I pondered the possibilities, and by the time I pulled in the driveway (5 minutes later) I’d decided: Elk chili.

At this moment, while the Vikings are staying in a hotel with a restaurant called Vince Lombardi’s Steakhouse, I’ve browned the elk meat and I’m cooking a pan of home grown tomatoes for sauce. It’ll simmer in the crock pot all day long while I’m in school. If I do this Wisconsin style, Amigo will add noodles to it late in the afternoon. And there you have it: Eating the Opponent — Minnesota, with a Wisconsin twist.

Go! Pack! Go!

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

A New Team Name for Washington, D.C.?

Posted on by
1

I might just like La Petite’s suggestion the best. Keep the name, change the mascot to a potato.

But if the owner won’t put his money into spuds, he could try these suggestions, also from La Petite.

  •  Washington Lincolns — mascot, a stove pipe hat similar to the cheesehead
  • Washington Congress — Instead of practicing, they just stand and argue.
  • Washington Georges — white wig, false teeth, I can see it now!
  • Washington Minutemen — slogan, You musket to the end zone!

How about:

  • Washington Gridlock – along the same line as Congress, see above
  • Washington Eagles — oops, the Eagles are already taken. How about the turkeys?
  • George Washington Bridge – ooh, that’s closer to New Jersey gridlock than Washington
  • Washington Patriots — oh, wait, they’re already in Boston and call themselves New England.
  •  Washington Weebles — they wobble, but they don’t fall down!

Meanwhile, whatever will we eat when the Packers formerly known as Acme play the renamed football club?

Well, readers, what do you think?

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

The Consequences of Disaster

Posted on by
1

It was almost a year ago that madness and mayhem struck the O.K. Chorale. A skillful (not) subcontractor digging to make a new sidewalk hit the curbstop that takes water from the main pipe in the street to our home. He looked around to see if he’d been seen, plugged the marking stick back in the dirt, smoothed out his tracks, and went on working.

The short story is this: his action led to water saturating the ground, pouring into the basement, and the attempt at repair led to a broken gas pipe and evacuation from our home with my purse, phone, our prescription meds, and the clothes on our backs.

The latest reminder of The Disaster came in the form of a dozen roses. I know we own vases, I know they’re in the basement, but I couldn’t find them. Due to The Flood, everything got moved and rearranged in the basement. I said rearranged, not reorganized. We’re still working on that.

The result? Hey, we’re nothing if not resourceful.

roses in vase

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

The Awareness Series: let’s move on, already.

Posted on by
3

From fall of 2012 — I still feel this way. The first in a three- day series, Awareness Encores.

Breast Cancer Awareness is all over the networks – at least it’s all over ESPN, NFL Network, NBC, CBS, and Fox Sports. Guess it yet? The NFL is blowing the horn to the tune of Pink – massive pinkness in the most macho of arenas.

Pink Gatorade towels. Pink shoe covers. Pink wristbands. Pink cleats, chin straps, and ribbon decals. Pink whistles for the (real) referees, for heaven’s sake. And why?

The purpose of all this pink on the turf is supposed to make all NFL football fans think about breast cancer. Be Aware. Know it’s there.

I can’t help it. My inner cynic is screaming “Enough with the pinky dances already!” My inner cynic, for those who don’t know, is very tuned in to breast cancer in the realm of early detection through mammograms. I’m more than aware of radiation studies, chemo, reconstruction – you name it, friends and family in real life have lived it. Yes, Mom, my latest mammogram was once again normal.

Before readers denounce me as a Bah Humbug, my inner cynic must look into its own wardrobe for two (at least two) pink t-shirts designed by an art teacher who was raising money for the Avon Walk in Chicago. I also own a pink polo shirt with the Green Bay Packers logo on it and the famous pink Packers baseball cap pioneered by Deanna Favre. Both of these items sold out quickly, and not just for Deanna. We still liked Brett back then, but we who bought pink knew a significant portion of our purchase money would go toward breast cancer research.

Well, readers, you might recognize my tone already. I have contributed to breast cancer research through purchases of t-shirts, baseball caps, and just simply by donating to sponsor my amazing friends who walked the walks. So why, why would I complain about the wealthy NFL putting its pink on parade to bring attention to breast cancer for Breast Cancer Awareness?

I complain because awareness is the lowest form of knowledge. Awareness means we know it exists. Awareness means, hey, look at that guy, he’s man enough to put on pink wristbands. This pink thing must be important. What does the pink stand for again?

Awareness doesn’t mean understanding, public support, private support, or personal support. The biggest anticlimax is that all that pink doesn’t mean financial support.

I’ll pose a few questions.

The NFL plans to auction off pink gear to raise money. How much will they raise? How much do they hope to sell? What percentage of the proceeds will actually become donations? And to whom will those donations go?

How much did Gatorade spend on those towels? I’d venture a guess that it could have funded many mammograms for women who don’t have medical coverage. Those dollars might have made up for some of the bucks that Susan B. Komen foundation tried to pull from Planned Parenthood – money that funded just that.

How about those pink whistles? Cute, huh? Cute, however, doesn’t pay the bills when a woman is recuperating from reconstructive surgery. Putting the bucks directly into a fund for follow-up care would go much further than the whistle-stop campaign.

The hot pink shoes, wow, they really show up well on TV hoofin’ their way toward the end zone or during a dramatic kickoff or punt return. But again, at what cost? How much good could that money do if it were used for research toward saving lives?

Okay, NFL, you know I’m a fan. I’m a true blue green and gold cheesehead shareholder type. I’ll keep watching games, pink or no pink. The token pink, though, still irritates me.

Let’s see the teams and their officials and their coaching staff wear the regular colors and have the organization instead make a more-than-token donation to breast cancer research. Maybe when public groups like football teams move beyond the pink ribbons and towels we as a society can admit that research and treatment will gain more from a sizable infusion of cash than from muscular young men sporting hot pink shoelaces.

Until then, maybe I’ll stick to listening to my beloved Packers on the radio for the rest of October.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Prepping for the Cold

Posted on by
4

Be Prepared! It’s the Girl Scout Motto. It’s also part of what we do in Wisconsin and other Northern realms of the U.S. Let’s see how this played out so far.

Friday we heard the forecasts. Minnesota’s governor ordered the entire state’s schools to close. I won’t go into the responses circulating our office or the Internet regarding the likelihood of our anti-education governor actually doing something positive for children. Oops, I just did. At first the smaller, rural districts announced they would close Monday. Then the Big Cities of Madison and Milwaukee announced they planned to stay closed through the dangerous wind chills starting Monday..

The vast geography of Packer Nation started calling out “Ice Bowl II! Ice Bowl II!” Ticket holders and the intrepid people who work on the sidelines stocked up on long underwear and fleece lined jeans. People who could stay at home stocked up on – milk, bread, and eggs, along with a bottle of wine or a case of beer if they didn’t get any for Christmas.

Facebook was full of calls for more schools to plan ahead. Local papers ran Internet polls asking “Should schools close on Monday?” Families sent letters pleading for at least an excused absence should families decide to keep their children safe from frostbite and hypothermia.

Survival comments from Wisconsin and Minnesota ran like this —

  • There’s nothing about this weather a box of Triscuits and can of Easy Cheese won’t remedy.
  • Cabin Fever is already in full swing for me, and we have only just settled into winter. It’s going to be a LONG winter!
  • Lawrence University in Appleton ranks as one of the top 20 coldest colleges in the country.
  • Sage advice from a ski patroller and stagehand re: frigid cold. Take this very seriously. A person can go from fine to needing an ambulance ride in a few minutes.
  • Today will consist of Netflixing Dexter & making warm things out of yarn.
  • Grocery stores are packed as people prepare for the frigid temperatures that are set to hit.
  • I have plenty of coffee. Bring it on!
  • I am ready for the deep freeze. I have tomato soup & fixings for cheddar/swiss grilled cheese sandwiches.
  • We’ve got more warm gear than you can imagine, though. We’ve got common sense. Together we’ve got over 100 years of experience with Minnesota weather. 
There are those who panic, and those who make fun of those who panic.
snowstorm panic
Here at the O.K. Chorale, we’re a bit calmer. We took precautions, stopped off at a grocery store, charged the phones and laptops, and then we settled in. Well, Amigo and I stayed home. Dear darling “Chuck” put on his fleece lined jeans and headed north to work (with a visiting crew from San Francisco!) at the NFL venue known for good reason as the Frozen Tundra.
Tell me, readers. Did you need to prep for the storm or the cold? How did you handle it?

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Captions are Entertaining

Posted on by
1

The NFL sees protests across the country asking that the Washington Redskins change their name to eliminate the demeaning racist image their current name and mascot portray.

The team and the NFL should have a talk with the people who add the closed captioning to their broadcasts. The scene was this: Washington at Green Bay, kick-off at noon on Sunday, with a protest outside the stadium at the Oneida gate. Elsewhere, as people watched the game on their home or bar television sets, those with closed captioning saw the visiting team referred to as The Washington Red Cross.

Chuck kept channel surfing through his own station to make sure they were still on the air with their Christmas Eve mass. I noticed the captioner didn’t quite get the gist of it when I read, “…father, sun, and holly ghost.” Protestant caption-writer? Not Catholic, for sure.

Then I was watching NFL football with Amigo, and the live captioning referred to Carolina Panthers’ quarterback Cam Newton as Cam Putin.

Let’s examine the possibilities here. 1. The network could have borrowed a captioner from the news staff, one who knows current events in Russia better than he or she knows the NFL starting quarterbacks. 2. The auto-correct feature (not unlike that on cell phones) may have grabbed the basic sounds and missed the first consonant. 3. Closed captioning technology hasn’t evolved as the need for captions and widespread us of captions has grown.

I didn’t include “All of the Above” as an option, but that’s probably the best answer. Captioning technology does have automatic fill-in-the-blank features. The people trained to write the captions that appear on our TV screens may or may not have knowledge of the main topic – in the last example, NFL football.

I expect transcribing live captions must be a challenging job. There’s no rewind or DVR when the announcers are commenting on fast-breaking action of a football game. However, it’s time. It’s time for networks and local stations to get serious about closed captioning. It’s time to go beyond just meeting the bare minimum requirements of disability laws, and time to provide a quality product for consumers.

Meanwhile, captions or no captions, it’s time for My Packers to rally around their quarterback, Aaron Rodgers!

Share and Enjoy !

Shares