I'm Considering Something Crazy

We went to mass this morning and for the first time I heard the handbell choir play during the service. They were actually pretty good although the pieces they played weren't particularly difficult. It got me thinking. I kind of miss doing that kind of thing - handbell choir, regular choir. I know I said I wasn't going to get involved with anything that was a church group, but it seems like that might be the easiest choice.

As fate would have it, during the announcements they said the handbell group is looking for new members. They meet on Monday evenings, which I can do. I certainly have a decent amount of experience! I'm not sure this is a good idea yet but I suppose I could always just show up tomorrow and see what happens. Their choir meets on Wednesdays, which I can also do, but I'm not sure how much I want to get involved with considering I'm not Catholic, I'm not a member, and I have no intention of becoming either of those things... I suppose I could write it all off as a social endeavor.

Honeymoon Update

Adam and I sat down this morning and took a look at shore excursions for our cruise. The prices through the cruise line are not unreasonable so I think we'll probably go through them since that way we're assured that they're safe and the boat won't leave without us. For now, this is what we've got picked out. We plan to head to the travel agent again tomorrow to talk with her about insurance and booking these excursions.

Juneau - Mendenhall Glacier & Gold Creek Salmon Bake. I'd also like to do the Whale Watching Adventure but Adam's not too excited about that so I might end up on my own for that one.

Skagway - White Pass Railway & Klondike Gold Dredge

Ketchikan - Lighthouse, Eagles, & Totems Excursion

Victoria, BC - Victoria Ale Trail & Pubs Tour (woo!)

All in all we'll be spending another chunk of change on these excursions, but I think it'll be worth it.

Eee! I love shoes!

There a very few things I like to shop for in this world. Kitchen appliances would be one. Shoes would be another. I like shopping for shoes because my feet are one of the only parts of my body that aren't fat. I can just go to a normal shoe place and pick stuff up easily. It's nice.

That being said, it's very hard to find the shoe I'm looking for. No matter what shoe it is, I can never find it. It's a lot nicer going on the hunt because I don't mind the shopping part. But it's annoying never finding what I'm looking for. Last year I went on a quest to find new shoes for work because mine were looking kind of sad. I went to pretty much every store in the Fox Valley that sells shoes. I finally settled on something from DSW. The shoes are still sitting in their box in the DSW bag in our closet. Unworn. It's so sad.

So now I find myself browsing shoes for something for me and the Catherines to wear at the wedding. I'm trying to respect my sister's request for no heel but there's pretty much nothing out there for flats that is anything like I want. I've found a couple cute silver/metallic type sandal-y shoes but they all have an inch or so of heel. Would an inch be so bad? For myself it's been even harder. It's not white shoe season and most of the shoes I see with a heel high enough for me to be able to slow dance with Adam are god-awful uncomfortable.

But I'll carry on. My quest continues...

The Wonderful World of DVRs

So we finally broke down and got a DVR. Our VCR had been getting more and more sketchy and seemed to randomly stop recording right before the end of shows and that was totally annoying. Adam thinks the cable company and our VCR were in on this together but I think it's just a cheap VCR...

Anywho, we got the DVR last weekend and I programmed it to record 7th Heaven, What About Brian, and Rachel Ray's morning talkshow. Adam programmed it for a few wrestling shows. So far, I love it. It works great and I can fast-forward through all the commercials and other boring crap. I also don't have to stay up to watch the shows that are at 9 since I usually forget about them or fall asleep in the middle of them. I know, it's sad. This way I can watch them the next day when I'm wide awake. I love technology.

Reason #562 Driving in WI Sucks

Wide-load Farm Equipment

On the Highway

Going 35 MPH

In front of you

Dresses (yes, again)

I checked out the remaining bridal shops in the area (I dropped the one in Fondy) and discovered that one of the three styles I liked is not available anywhere. All 5 places I went didn’t have it in stock. Oh well. That narrows the competition I suppose. I’ll need to go to at least 2 stores to be able to try on the two remaining dress styles. Both stores we’ll hit have both styles, it’s just that neither of them have both of them in a size that fits me. 8? Yeah right. Maybe in my dreams. Anywho, a week from Monday my mother and I will hit The Brides in downtown Appleton and then head to Bridal Staircase in Kaukauna. We might hop on over to David’s Bridal just for the hell of it too. I’m kind of interested to see if that (discontinued) dress I tried on back in May is still there. I really have no intention of buying it, but who knows what could happen.




Unless something really unexpected occurs, this is the dress that the Catherines will be wearing. In purple though, of course. I plan to order everything for the ladies at once so I’ll need to be getting in touch with them for measurements and all that fun stuff. Then I can concentrate on the important things. Like shoes.

Pictures as Promised

Pets are just like kids. No matter what you do, they squirm around and refuse to look at the camera...

Mo


Einstein


Howie


Gus


Barry

I had a "moment" this morning...

I’ve had to scrape the frost from my car windows the last few mornings. I hate that. I haven’t even considering getting out my winter coat yet though. I’ve been wearing the comfy Cisco fleece Adam got and my black knit hat to keep my head warm.

This afternoon on the way back to my car at lunch I even considered taking the jacket off. It was nice out and the sun was shining. I got to my car and checked the temperature reading on the dashboard. 45.

Wow. I’m one of those crazy Wisconsinites now, aren’t I. *sigh*

Dress Shopping

Yesterday I decided to head to the two stores in Appleton that carry Alfred Angelo dresses to check on size and style availability. I have three bridal gowns and one bridesmaid dress that I want to check out when my mom is here in two weeks. As fate would have it, each of the two stores had one of the bridal gowns in a size that would kind of fit me and another in a size nowhere near what I needed. There is one style that neither of them had. The store downtown also had a black version of the bridesmaid dress. I’m pretty sure it’s the one I’m going to go with. It is quite similar to the David’s version. It’s a little shorter (which I think is a plus) and it has beading on the edges of the layers on the bottom as well as on the straps and along the empire waistline. It’s a nice dress and I think it’s something that could possibly be worn in other contexts. I still have a store in GB, one in Fondy, and two in Kaukauna to check out. I’d like to find a store that has all three bridal gowns in a size I could try on but that’s probably not realistic. I’d like to be able to try all three on so I can make a better decision. When I actually make a decision I’m not going to post about it here though because I don’t want Adam to know which dress I chose. It’s been difficult having to go to these places with him or alone since I don’t have anyone else to do things with. That’s how it is though, and it looks as though things will all fall into place in a couple weeks. I should be ready to order the dresses by the end of November which is definitely within the suggested 6-8 month timeframe.

I was amazed that neither of the stores had any kind of computerized inventory system. At the store downtown the salesperson had to manually hunt through the gowns on the racks. At the other store they had to scan through a binder with handwritten style numbers and prices. It’s 2006. How hard could it be to get your inventory into a system of some kind? Just ridiculous. This has made me more likely to go to the remaining stores rather than call them though since I’m assuming they all will be this way so I’d end up on hold forever.

I also had a moment in the store downtown which makes me happy that I had already decided to do all the ordering and alterations out in Kaukauna. We had found the dresses they had in stock and as I was leaving the salesperson mentioned that they were getting a whole bunch of new dresses in everyday that I might want to check out - many more in plus sizes. Ok, I admit I’m not skinny. Yes, I could stand to lose a whole lot of weight. But I think it might have been a little insensitive for her to make those kinds of assumptions. It kind of annoyed me. *sigh* Perhaps I’m oversensitive to this kind of thing.

I want an organist

who can play this.

Good Things

A few good things happened this weekend:

1) I went to refill my anti-baby pills and discovered that they finally came out with a generic version of Seasonale. Instead of paying $120 for a 3-month prescription I paid $24. Gotta love generics! But this leaves me with the dilemma of having tons more in my FSA than I need for the year now. I guess I’ll be buying a lot of band-aids…

2) We went up to the casino in GB on Saturday. I put $10 in a 2-cent Monopoly slot machine and cashed out with $34. This is the first time I’ve won anything in quite some time so I was excited.

3) None of our critters died. *Knock on wood.* We’ve now gone 54 days without one of our guys croaking. Woo! I’ll have to take some new pictures and obnoxiously post them again.

I’m sure other good things happened (Minnesota won, for one) but these were the biggies.

Katie's Wedding: A Comparison

Adam’s sister is now officially a married woman. The rehearsal on Thursday night was both interesting and hilarious. The guys just couldn’t grasp the concept of not turning when they met the ladies as they came down the aisle. Each one had to go through the process 2 or 3 times. Then Chris (the groom) had a laugh attack when going through the mock vows. I think he was a little stressed… Other than that it went pretty smoothly. The rehearsal dinner was very informal. I thought what I had in mind was going to be informal but they had lots on me on this one. They kind of passed out gifts as everyone walked into Frank’s and then we sat, talked, and ate pizza. While this is apparently what they wanted, I think I’d like a bit more structure for our dinner. I also think there will be more people at ours. We’ll just have to wait and see.

On Friday, Adam dropped me off at his parents’ house and he went to be with the guys at Chris’ house. I sat in the living room with his dad as his sister and all the girls got primped and dressed. I rode to the church with his mom and she was obviously nervous. We had a few near-death experiences as she cut a truck off in a construction zone and then ran a stop sign. After making it to the church unscathed, I spent some time in the bride’s lounge before I headed upstairs to meet with Father Mike. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that one of the scripture readers crapped out and Adam volunteered me to fill in for her. Thanks, Adam! (Just kidding. I probably would have offered anyway.) In any case, I was seated next to his grandma and his aunt, both of whom are very spunky ladies. The music started and the ceremony began.

There’s not much to comment on ceremony-wise. It’s a sacrament and things go like a mini-Mass. Kind of. The girls came in followed by Katie and her dad. Father Mike said some stuff, Marge (the aunt) and I read our bible passages. The vows were exchanged along with the rings. Unity candle was lit. Poem was read. Kiss, blessing, ta-da you’re married. The end.

That was their version. Seeing an actual Catholic wedding has helped me picture what ours might be like since the form is pretty much set and you just get to pick some of the specifics. Our ceremony will be different from theirs though. Firstly, I hated all the music they chose. (Sadly?) I could even identify them all: The Pachelbel canon (the bane of cellists everywhere), Handel’s Water Music, Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, and The Lord’s Prayer. Booorrrrring. Adam has told me I pretty much have free rein on the music choices since “I know more about that kind of stuff.” I also have to decide who I want to be playing the organ. The organist Chris and Katie chose is apparently an older, retired woman who was a friend of the family. Saying this as nicely as I can, she wasn’t that good. I don’t want to be distracted by obvious blunders on the organ during the ceremony. And if they happen, I’ll notice them. I’m strange like that. There is another organist at the church and I’m not sure if I’ve heard him play. When he does Mass he tends to play the piano rather than the organ. If he doesn’t work out I’m going to have to try and pull some of my musician mafia strings. Ha ha. I figure between the people my mom and dad know I should be able to find someone who doesn’t suck. I’d also love to have this woman from the church sing something. She’s the one who was the song leader (or whatever they call it) the first time I went to church with Adam. We also happened to sit in front of her and her husband once. She has a beautiful voice. The problem is I don’t know her. I guess I’ll wait and see where that idea goes. It would influence my song choices though because I think I’d want some singing as the girls come in and then again when the candle is lit… I don’t know. I’m still thinking about all those kinds of things. Secondly, I’m considering letting Adam pick all the bible readings. I don’t really care what they are and I don’t know who we’ll have read them. They aren’t optional so I can’t just skip them, no matter how much I’d like to. Other than that the ceremony is kind of set. I’m not sure how flexible the wording of vows are but we’ll get to that when we meet with Father Mike again I’m sure.

Ok, enough of that. After the ceremony, pictures were taken for a loooong time. I’m hoping there’s some way to avoid that but I’m not sure there will be since we’re doing the traditional not seeing each other thing. *sigh* I took Adam’s car and went home to grab my ID since he told me they were carding at the reception. (They weren’t.) By the time I got back to Appleton, pictures were done and social time had begun. Then dinner was served with lots of clanking on the glasses. Then dancing began and we left shortly after the bouquet and garter tossings. This is another area where our wedding will be different. We’re at a much larger (and, in my opinion, better laid-out) location. We’re having a buffet whereas they had a family-style dinner. I’m hoping there will be more (or better) toasts. They didn’t even cut their cake (the catering staff did.) Their dance floor was teeny. Adam barely danced. In any case, I’m hoping for better things at our reception.

Perhaps it’s not fair to compare Katie’s wedding to what I hope ours will be. But it was kind of inevitable. I was interested to see what she and his mom had come up with. I think I can do better. :) Not that it’s a competition…

298 days to go. Not that anyone's counting...

Oh, Barf...

In the birth announcements in the paper this weekend:

Nevaeh and Heaven Hawkins, daughters of Shawnalisa Hawkins of Oshkosh, was born Oct. 10.

Ugh.

Halloween

My place of employment has decided to have a “safe Halloween” event wherein the children of employees can come to the office for a couple hours on two afternoons and “trick or treat” amongst the cubes. This means not only do I have to give candy away, but I also have to dress up in a costume and pretend I like kids. Ugh.

Luckily I’m pretty much prepared… except for that last part. I got a big bag of teeth-rotting candy last week when we were at Sam’s Club. The best part is it’s one of those variety bags and I don’t even like some of the stuff in it. This will make parting with it less painful. I’ve also decided what costume I’m going to wear. I happen to have cat ears and a tail at home (don’t ask…) so I’m going to wear all black and meow every once in a while. I’m still debating whiskers. Maybe I should get black gloves too for paws…

In any case, I’ve decided to be semi-good humored about this whole thing. I just hope the kids who show up aren’t too obnoxious. Otherwise it will be like when someone brings a baby in. It’s like the presence of an infantile being causes the entire office to stop and coo. It’s disturbing.

Today is Friday

It’s kind of fun knowing today is my Friday. I have both tomorrow and (the real) Friday off due to a combination of Katie’s wedding and using up vacation days. I don’t really have anything to do most of the day tomorrow and Adam doesn’t have the day off. I suppose I’ll find entertainment in cleaning or watching mind-decaying television.

There’s not really much else going on these days. Excitingly, Adam has many days in a row off from Walmart. Through Saturday. That’s a lot of free nights. Yes, a few of them are already occupied with the rehearsal dinner and wedding, but we’ve got tonight and all day Saturday together. He said earlier this week that he wants to go to the Mall of America again on Saturday. I’m resisting that suggestion. It seems a little much. And do we really want to spend 8 hours of our day together trapped in a car? I can think of lots of other things we could do in those 8 hours. And no, not all of them are dirty things. Just most of them.

Shoes

I’ve got shoes on my mind.

I admit I’m taking things a little out of order. I haven’t even chosen a dress yet (soon, I promise) and I’m already thinking about finding the perfect shoes. The great thing about being the one in the big white dress is that no one sees your shoes. The dress is so long and important that no one will be looking at my feet. Theoretically I could wear bunny slippers.

Then again, there’s that foot+ height difference to think about…

So far I’m leaning toward a white wedge of some kind. Wedges are generally more comfortable than your traditional heel because more of the shoe is heightened rather than just the heel. Platforms are another option to get me a good 4 inches taller. I’m thinking cheap – Payless or Target being my first stops. I also plan to buy them pretty early so I can parade around the house in them well in advance to break them in and make sure I don’t do an uncoordinated nosedive down the aisle. Well, I suppose there’s always that risk but I want to make sure it’s not because of my shoes. And anyway, if that happens I’ll blame my dad. :)

I’ve also started to check out shoes for the Catherines. They are a little trickier since the dress they’ll be wearing is knee/mid-leg length so people will see their feet. I haven’t decided which dress I’m going to go with mainly because I haven’t gotten my lazy butt out to the two stores to see if they have the Alfred Angelo version of the dress everyone likes. Motivation escapes me. The shades of purple are a little different depending on which designer I go with. But I’m not sure purple shoes would be a good idea anyway. I might just go with white or silver to keep it simple and something re-wearable. I also have to keep in mind that the guys are tall and the girls are not. And my sister hates heels. Aah, the dilemma. I think I told her she’s 99% guaranteed to be stuck with some kind of heel. I’ll try and keep it below 4 inches though. :)

Here are a few I like for me:



And for the Catherines:


Update: As fate would have it, I couldn't find any of these shoes when I went to the actual stores. Figures...

Cars

My car is over 50% mine! Last month was the half-way mark for my car loan. As of the 13th, I own 52.8% of my car. Woo! The best part is I haven’t spent anything on maintenance aside from the occasional carwash and a couple sets of windshield wipers. All my oil changes, tire rotations, etc. have been comped as part of the package I got when I bought the car. The first time I’ll have to pay for any of that is next month when I take it in for its next check-up. It’s a sweet deal. Even nicer is the fact that nothing has gone wrong with the car yet. It always starts, runs well, gets great gas mileage (average is now 31mpg), and is generally cute. A vast improvement over the various cars I’ve had before. If things go as expected I’ll own the car outright by March 2008. I plan to keep it for a while after that though. Save the car payment and all. It’s big enough that (when needed) a car seat or two can fit in the back with no problem. Eventually we’ll want to get something bigger that can get a hitch put on. That way we can quit borrowing his dad’s Santa Fe every summer. But that’s a ways off. And I’m not sure whether my car or Adam’s car should be replaced. We’ll see when we get there I guess. There are lots of things that will come before that.

It will be interesting to see how well my “life plan” works out…

Definately Fall

Well, looks like yesterday was “*whomp* day.” The parking lot is ankle-high with leaves of various colors and the trees are looking bare. Considering it snowed yesterday and has been snowing randomly today it’s only appropriate that things are progressing. Ugh. It has been windy enough that wind advisories have been issued in surrounding areas. Last night Adam put up the plastic insulation things to try and get rid of the draft we have around our bedroom windows. By all accounts it looks as though the fun is over.

FOCCUS, the Sequel

We successfully completed part one of our marriage preparation, Catholic style. And the nice couple from St. Mary’s didn’t look at us like we were crazy too often. That’s a good sign. There were a few uncomfortable moments (at least for me) when different items came up. For the most part Adam and I had anticipated there would be discussion points about certain things. We were pretty much right on. There was a question or two that showed up because I think one (or both) of us had misunderstood the question. The best way I can sum it up is that we don’t have many problem areas and those that were brought to our attention by participating in this process we were already aware of. Still it was a positive experience overall [and we got homemade pizza too! :)] We got our “diploma” last night and we have to drop it off with Father Mike. Next is the “Engaged Encounter” day-long “retreat.” We’ll do that early next year. St. Mary’s has it in January and April but Adam wants to do it through St. Joe’s for some reason concerning a certain Sister… I don’t know the story. I don’t really care where we do it through anyway.

Wedding planning has been at a standstill for a couple months. Intentionally so. It was our plan to get lots of stuff taken care of right away so we could enjoy some of our time together. My mother’s visit is fast approaching so dresses will be taken care of by next month. Flowers and candles will follow soon after and then it’s just the little stuff: favors, gifts, programs and actually mailing things and planning menus. Given that there are still 10 months to go, we’re in excellent shape. I went through our contracts and updated our budget on Monday. June through August 2007 is going to be an expensive time. :) We have deposits on most everything so we’ll have balances to pay on the reception, the photographer, and the honeymoon. We paid full upfront on the DJ and cake so that’s all taken care of. So far it looks as though we can come within the preferred budget with no problems. Granted, the budget didn’t include a honeymoon and that’s getting to be almost as expensive as the wedding itself. Oh well. You only do it once, right? (Oh god, I hope so!) The good news is we’ve got months to save up the money to pay for this spectacle. And we’re earning lots of world points! Yay for credit card rewards! It’s kind of annoying that our chosen photographer doesn’t accept plastic since we’re spending quite a chunk of change on that portion of the deal though. *sigh*

Nothing much else is going on right now. The weather sucks and it’s supposed to SNOW tomorrow. I’m getting a cold and I’m hoping it will do its thing before Katie’s bachelorette party on Saturday. Next week is her wedding and I was informed last night by Adam’s mother that I’ll be sitting at the “family table” at the reception. Sweet…

Progress

We made some progress over the weekend. Nothing too spectacular, but still something. We booked our flight to Seattle for our honeymoon cruise. We didn’t arrange for a hotel for the night before yet but we’ll get to that. Adam checked at Hotwire but didn’t like any of the locations I guess. We’ll see what we can find. We also got our tickets for the opera in November. We’ve got pretty good seats in the side loge with (hopefully) lots of legroom. My only concern is that perhaps we’ll be too close to the stage to see the subtitles well. Oh well. Not like you really need them…

Other than that the weekend was pretty much a success. We saw the movie Friday night (and it was as good as I'd expected) and then we heard on the news that the Big Picture Theater is closing next week. What luck! It’s too bad that it’s doomed. It was a nice place but it just didn’t have the attendance it needed to function well as a business. Saturday was pretty uneventful. I went grocery shopping, Adam worked most of the day and survived yet another Walmart bomb threat. Sunday we went to the zoo, Marshalls, Cooks Corner, and Beersten’s. Then we went to bed at 9:30. Yeah, we’re lame.

This week is unusually busy. Tomorrow we have our second (and last) FOCCUS meeting. Wednesday I have dinner plans with Uncle Kirby. Thursday Adam has the night off and we’ll probably find something to do. Then next week will be full of crazy with Katie’s wedding and the hoopla that comes with it. I’m still undecided about whether I want to go to her bachelorette party or not.

We'll also be getting tickets soon for a "Christmas Extravaganza" at the PAC. We plan to go to that with Tina and her husband. I'm not really the world's #1 Christmas cheerleader (I know, you're all shocked), but it should be fun.

This Weekend

This weekend should be an interesting one. Tonight we have tickets to see the second Pirates movie over at The Big Picture Theater. Batman Begins was awesome on the large screen and I have high hopes for this movie as well. And you definitely can’t complain about the $5 admission price. Then on Sunday we’ll be heading down to Milwaukee. We plan on going to the zoo for a while since we’ve been meaning to go there for a long time. We’ll also make a stop at Marshall’s (we’re hooked) and at the Marcus Performing Arts Center to get tickets for Don Giovanni which we’ll be seeing in November. If time allows we plan to come back up through Manitowoc and see if Cook’s Corner has any good going-out-of-business sales. The store up in Appleton appears to have been taken over by another company so we’re not sure it’s going to close and there are no clearance prices yet.

Unexpected Visit

Last week I got an out-of-the-blue email from my uncle Kirby informing me that he’d be in town (well, Madison) next week for some training. So we’re meeting for dinner next Wednesday. It should be an interesting time. I haven’t seen him since Evan’s wedding and even then I was in a perpetually bad mood so I probably wasn’t the best company.

Hand Horror

Last night was not a good night for my hands. I came home from work armed with a recipe for roasted butternut squash. We had stopped by the local farmer’s shed and picked up some apples and squash last Sunday and I figured I should probably use them up. I got to peeling, seeding, and cubing the first squash. After much frustration I decided it totally wasn’t worth it and just halved the remaining squash. I got them into the oven and went to wash my hands. This is when I noticed they were orange. I scrubbed at them with soap and water but they wouldn’t de-orange. They were also very tight and stiff. I lotioned them up good and put some rubber gloves on them while I cleaned up the kitchen. While loading the dishwasher I managed to slice the tip of my right pinky finger open with my huge (and awesome) knife. Right through the rubber glove. Wow, did that finger ever bleed up a storm. When I finally managed to get it to slow down enough that a band-aid (or three) would stay on, I kind of gave up on cleaning up the kitchen or doing much of anything. By this time my left hand had started peeling. I don’t know if it was a pesticide/chemical reaction, a squash reaction, or what it was. It was just uncomfortable. After the squash was done and removed from the oven I soaked my hand in soapy water for a while. This didn’t accomplish much other than make my fingers wrinkly. I donned gloves again when I scooped the squash out of its skin. After stowing the food in the fridge I took refuge in bed for a while. Then I tortured the guinea pigs with cuddling for a little while. Good times.

This morning my hand was pretty much the same until I took a shower. Then it started peeling like crazy. I showed it to Adam and he was kind of disgusted. Most of the loose skin rubbed right off though and now there are just little patches of flaky skin on my palm and fingers. My pinky finger is still all bandaged up though. When I removed the band-aid this morning it started gushing again. *sigh* Good thing I’m not squeamish about blood…

My question is this: what in the squash caused me to lose a layer of skin on my hand? I don’t think I’m allergic to squash but I suppose this is the first time I’ve ever prepared it myself. I was just not expecting this kind of reaction.

Creepy...

This is one building down from the apartment I used to live in.

(from the Oshkosh Northwestern)

A 36-year-old man is in custody in the Winnebago County Jail in connection with the brutal stabbing death of on Oshkosh woman whose body was found early Sunday morning in a west-side residence.
Barry Busby, Winnebago County coroner, identified the victim as Jodee L. Thompson, 48.
"It's one of the most brutal, vicious attacks that I have ever seen in 29 years in law enforcement and nine and a half years as coroner," Busby said.
Oshkosh Police Sgt. Steve Sagmeister said Thompson was found dead from multiple stab wounds at about 12:45 a.m. Sunday after officers responded to a report of a small fire at the residence at 1750 Taft Ave.
This is the fourth murder in Oshkosh this year, the most Sagmeister can recall in many years.
"Our largest number before this I can remember was three (murders in one year)," Sagmeister said.
The other deaths include a January shooting on Minnesota Avenue, a murder-suicide on Monroe Street in April and a stabbing in July at the Court Tower apartments.
The man was transported to the Winnebago County Jail until the Winnebago County District Attorney's office can review reports and issue charges. He has not been identified by Oshkosh Police.
Sagmeister said officers received information about the vehicle the man was thought to be traveling in Saturday night and were able to take him into custody elsewhere in the city. He said the suspect may have been intoxicated at the time he was taken into custody and police believe alcohol was a factor in the homicide.
"The Oshkosh police department did an excellent job of having the suspect in custody within a couple hours after the incident," Busby said.
As of press time, police said the relationship between the victim and the suspect was unclear.
The cause of the fire and the events surrounding the homicide remain under investigation.