Vocabulary Lesson

One of the things I quickly caught onto living in Wisconsin was the language. Not only is there a "Midwestern accent," but also a different use of words.


Today's lesson is the word "yet."
It's early yet. I have to eat yet. It's raining yet.


This was one of the, let's just say odd, word placements I noticed even when I lived in AZ. Rob was among a few Wisconsinites I heard using "yet," but couldn't pin-point exactly what the corresponding word was. Confused, it took me a bit to realize what the word was... it was "still." The use of "yet" is interchangable with "still," but not to be used together.


So translation to the statements above: It's still early. I still have to eat. It's still raining. All, of which, are completely true right now.


Happy Thanksgiving!

An hour gained, an hour lost

For those who don't know, Arizona doesn't participate in "falling back" or "springing forward" like most of the country. I really couldn't tell you which is better - having to remember to change the clock or having to remember that everyone else changes, but you. All I know is that during the winter, I'm one-hour away from my family in Arizona and two-hours during the summer. 

So this begs the question... why do we change our clocks at all? It seems to work fine for AZ and some other parts of the country not to make the change. It's my understanding that we do it to have an extra hour of sunlight in the morning, but what about at night? Aren't we "losing" an hour because it gets dark at 4p instead of 5p? 

Either way, I enjoyed the extra hour of sleep I got this morning. Not because I got to "sleep in" an extra hour, but because we were so dog-gone tired by 7p that we went to bed super early.

Not all windshield wiper fluid are created equal.

After living here for about a year or so, I've come to realize there are quite a few differences between living in warmer versus colder climates. And actually, it's not all climate differences, but also in language and culture. I guess it shouldn't have come as a shock to me, but I decided to create this blog to share lessons learned before they become "ordinary, everyday" things to me. 


As temperatures start to dip, I'm reminded of when I first arrived in Wisconsin. Rob and I made the move back to his home state of Wisconsin during the week of Christmas last year - what was I thinking?!? A girl who's only lived in sun-belt states thinking she can brave the cold, bitter winters of the frozen tundra, which her friends lovingly call Baja Canada. Before our move, Rob made sure our vehicles had sufficient windshield wiper fluid for the trek across the country. Not thinking anything of it, I picked up whatever blue liquid was there. 


The first two days of driving was rather uneventful. The weather behaved and we made our scheduled stops without much anguish (minus getting out of town later than expected, which made our first day of driving rather long!). As we were driving through Iowa into Wisconsin, it started to snow... well, not really... it was more of a snow/rain mix. Either way, it was cold and frozen droplets of water were making their way to my windshield. No problem, all I had to do was pull the windshield wiper lever and voila! I can see again. WRONG! I pulled, it made some noise then nothing. That's right! My windshield wiper fluid FROZE! 


Needless to say, we made a quick pit stop where I proceeded to pull out the bottle of windshield wiper fluid to see it say in big, black ink "protects down to 32 degrees." Really?!? I know it doesn't get that cold in Arizona, but doesn't water freeze at 32 degrees? Why would someone manufacture windshield wiper fluid that only protects to 32 degrees? Wouldn't it make sense to just use water then? 


So lesson number one: Not all windshield wiper fluid are created equal.


And oh, welcome to America's Dairyland... I was in for a bumpy ride!