Money

Making sense of your money

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Healthy financial habits, while hard to establish, are the bread and butter of managing your money.

April, the month income taxes are due, is the time of year when many organizations focus on financial literacy.

To the Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corp., educating the public on personal finance is a yearlong focus. Heather Lux, WWBIC’s Kenosha program director, said, “While we celebrate the month, promoting financial literacy is part of our mission.”

Health

A season of SADness

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Earlier this spring, a long siege of cloudy weather put those in southeastern Wisconsin in a funk.

Although in general the weather put a damper on our mood, for those with Seasonal Affective Disorder, the seemingly endless days of dark skies made life a little harder.

According to the Mayo Clinic website, SAD is a type of depression that occurs at the same time every year, with symptoms in the northern hemisphere starting in the fall and continuing into the winter months.

Food

Tina’s Somers Inn: Fresh food, good friends

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Tina Ludwin has owned Tina’s Somers Inn for almost 13 years. “It was always my dream to have a restaurant,” Ludwin said.

The Somers Inn is nestled in the heart of Somers, just west of the town hall and past the second set of railroad tracks.

Ludwin worked as a waitress when she was younger and says she always liked people. Ludwin says, “I just wanted a small restaurant.” Ludwin says her son told her the Somers Inn was available. It took her six months to make up her mind to buy it, “But I’m glad I did,” Ludwin says.

Your Home

Making the most of your summer garden

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This is the season of the collective sigh. The stitch in the solar plexus releases and shoulders drop as gardeners let go of the bad memory that was winter.

For every flower-wrangler, patio-dweller, mower-jockey and trowel-crusader, the new challenge arises: how to make the most of this favored season before shadows grow long and frost once again savages the salvias.

If your gardening chores now outpace your energy and leave you no time to enjoy your yard and garden, it might be time to rethink your gardening modus operandi. Of course, every respectable garden has some combination of trees and shrubs, but for maximum enjoyment with minimum effort, consider this radical thought: plant only annual flowers this year.

Faith

Fond farewell

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When the Rev. Jack Fish and his wife Carolyn came to Twin Lakes in July 2001, it was a bit of a culture shock for the pair as they had lived in big cities most of their lives and worshipped in large congregations.

Fish reflected on his time at Hope Lutheran Church this week as he eases into retirement from his pastorate there, saying he would most miss the church’s generous, loving people.

Jack and Carolyn will be moving to Janesville to be closer to some of their grandchildren.

Life

Love My Ride: Tim Lois

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Lilly Lake resident Tim Lois, 63, ultimately decided it was time to splurge on a car.

Sure, he’d had some nice Chevrolets — a 1957 model, ’64 Impala and ’69 Camaro — but none as beautiful or as fun to drive as the ’69 Chevelle Super Sport (SS) 396 he took six years to have fully restored.

“I had fairly nice cars when I was younger, but all through my 31 years working for the (Illinois Bell/Ameritech) phone company I always drove beaters, $100 wonders,” Lois said. “Put 35,000 miles on them, drive them to the junkyard and buy another one.”

Books

Get your paws on ‘Genius of Dogs

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“The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs are Smarter than You Think” by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, c.2013, Dutton, $27.95, 370 pages, includes index

Your dog has a species identity crisis.

Some days, he’s a copycat and it’s like monkey see, monkey do around your house. Other days, he’s stubborn as a mule, eats like a little piggy, is fearless as a lion, and he runs through the house like a herd of elephants.

Travel

Big Apple, Little Wisco: UW grad opens ‘homey’ restaurants in the West Village

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No U.S. metropolis is larger than New York City, a land of many choices, easy anonymity and ever-wary strangers. Around 4,200 restaurants help nourish the population of 8.2 million.

Two miles south of Midtown skyscrapers and the commotion of Times Square is the West Village, where attitude and streetscape mutate quite a bit. Side streets veer diagonally, a deviation from Manhattan’s grid of rigid right angles. Restored and repurposed 19th century buildings resemble an urban European neighborhood.

“Stylish” and “spunky” sometimes mean “elitist” and “off-putting,” but that’s not the case here. Part of the West Village is transplanting Midwest roots with an almost-giddy sense of pride. “A micro-neighborhood of sorts,” reports the New York Post.