So it goes...

It's a good time of year to be a Wisconsin sports fan. I'll admit I am pretty much a one trick pony when it comes to sports. I LOVE NFL football, but don't have a ton of time for the rest of sports. I'll watch the standings for all teams from WI and MN, but really other than pro football, I don't really care who does what. When the baseball playoffs start if the Twins or Brewers happen to be in them, I'll start watching, but don't really watch much more than the standings during the year. That probably qualifies me as a fair weather baseball fan, but you know what? There's only so many hours in a week. I feel guilty enough watching two Sunday games and a Monday Night game. Basketball is even worse. Any game where they score points every minute just don't do anything for me. If I watch a game, it's only the last few minutes of one, because why watch the first 100 points? Again, fair weather? Probably, and I'm OK with that. Now, I do enjoy...

This is a post in the hopes that the Dean of Carroll University does a Google search on his own school and this blog comes up as one of the top 3 hits. I have always loved living near Carroll University. I loved it even more though when it was Carroll College and it was a smaller, quaint college tucked inside the center of Waukesha. What has happened is they have grown the college by leaps and bounds. They are building apartment/dorms exponentially and filling them. Now I'm all for free enterprise and growth. I guess bringing in people to spend money in the city is a good thing. They will eat at our restaurants, buy our groceries (and beer), and shop at our stores. That said, much comes along with the growth. First and most obvious to me is the traffic. Foot traffic, auto traffic, bikes and scooters. They cross the road wherever is convenient for them and I've almost hit a couple on my bike. It's perilous at 7:30 in the morning and continues throughout the day. A...

Below is the poem I wrote for my brother's funeral. It speaks of Rob's overcoming adversities as well as God's righteous plan, albeit mysterious at times.  I miss him unbelievably, but realize we'll be reunited one day. You Took                                   By Jim Landwehr You took away his hearing, So that he might become a friend to those You also chose for deafness. So that he might better appreciate the touch of his loving wife and beautiful daughters You took away his hearing, Lord but he listened to You still. You took away his sister, So that he might be a blessing to his brothers and sisters remaining. So that You could show him the love of stepbrothers and sisters that he might never have known. You took away his sister, Lord but he trusted you still. You took away his Father, So that he could be a better fathe...

While we were up in Mercer, WI a couple of weeks back, I had set a goal to catch a musky with some of the equipment Rob gave me the last time I saw him. He gave me his musky rod and lures because he knew I would use them. It meant more to me than most of my possessions. It's weird how sentimental you can get about such things, but when someone very close to you passes away, you kind of grab on to what you can of them in a desperate attempt to heal some of the pain. To some it's jewelry, some a car, and some it's fishing stuff. My friend Steve got his brother's golf clubs and he treasures those. Mercer is where my brothers Paul and Rob both caught their muskies. Paul caught his first when one year he decided to try fishing for musky - a very difficult fish to catch - after having such crappy luck fishing for anything else on Spider Lake . We wished him luck as he headed out with his rod and a very large lure. Turns out he caught one on his first cast, a feat that is ...

It has been a brutal couple of weeks. As most of you know, my brother passed away on Tuesday, August 30th after a long, courageous battle with cancer. Much has transpired since then, too much to list here. I do want to talk a bit about our trip to Mercer, WI two weeks ago. On Tuesday, when my family gathered at my brother's house to support each other, the idea was postulated that maybe it would be a good thing if they all went up to Mercer to be with us and heal as a family. When we got word that that was going to happen, we were very excited. Because of Rob's quick passing, I never got the chance to get home and be with my family during their grieving. This would give them the opportunity to come to me, in some respects. We drove up on Friday after work with our friends Jill and Steve who had planned to come with us all along. They were fairly trepidatious about the thought of being caught in the middle of our family's mourning. We assured them that we wanted them ...