That's all there is. There is no more. Until November.

Here lies the remains of the giant snow pile after one 90 degree day.  In the winter- and I'm sad I didn't take a picture of this and couldn't find one when I searched- the snow pile is so big that dump trucks can drive up it to drop off a load.

Now it's but a memory.  I'm not sure if there's actually even any snow left there or if that's all the dirt and debris that was mixed in with the snow.  Only a second 90-degree day will tell...

So this is why I live in Madison...

• Friday afternoon at the Union Terrace

• Lovely veggie sushi dinner at Takara on State St.

• The Dane County Farmer's Market.  How many places can you register as a member of the Socialist Party while enjoying handfuls of hot, spicy cheese bread right out of the bag?

• Tasty Italian soup with kale and chard from our CSA box (Thanks, A, for the recipe)

• Saving room for Chocolate Shoppe ice cream

In the winter, it's hard for me to remember why anyone would ever want to live in the Midwest.  After a day like yesterday, I can forget that not so long ago, I considered this a warm and pleasant day.

 

What do you love about where you live?  What makes it worth sticking it out through the unpleasant times?

More signs of spring

As seen at the UW gym:

If you can't read it, the three "construction season" rules on the lower left are 1.Drink water, 2.Clean up your sweat and 3. Wear shoes.  I can attest that the first two are important because the gym does not have air conditioning.  It's not soooo bad in the morning, but by the afternoon the place is a sauna.  You could charge $15 an hour and call it Bikram's weight training.  We're talking so much sweat that you can slide around on the floor.  Which, although I've never actually seen anyone come in barefoot, explains the importance of rule #3.    

Two other exciting developments from gymland are:

1. They got new towels!!!  At the UW gym, you can buy a towel one time and then swap it out after you take a shower, but as you can imagine these are some of the smallest, roughest, dingiest towels you've ever seen.  You can't even wrap one of the old ones around your torso while you walk to the shower.  You just have to hold it up in front of you and not get too bent out of shape because you are about to take a shower with eight grandmas (Hi, 6:30am senior fitness class) anyway.  BUT the new towels are still relatively soft and white and are long enough to wrap around your entire body.  Feels just a little bit more like I'm working out at a gym and not a minimum security prison.

2. I did a 150lb deadlift.  Three singles, actually.  And PS, I'm up to three reps at 105 on the bench press.  Not that I'm trying to brag... :)

Back to signs of spring- our cherry tree is blooming!  I heart you, cherry tree.

And because spring is all about new beginnings, I want to say congrats to Jamie on hers.

Check out the sweet animal print cake:

And now it's time to run!

  

Squee

First off, Happy Easter to everyone.  Hope you are having as beautiful a spring day as we are.

There's a lot of things about the internet that I don't understand (Courage Wolf, for example.  Can anyone explain the appeal?), but I am a sucker for baby animal squee.  Actually, now that I think about it, I kind of hate the word "squee".  I retract the previous sentence.  I am a sucker for cute baby animals.    

So with the promise of seeing baby goats bottle fed on the 10am tour, Daniel and I journeyed out to Hinchley's Dairy Farm  east of Madison Saturday morning.  During the drive, I was contemplating how actual farmers must view farm tourism.  Every morning they get up to milk the cows and feed and care for all their animals, and we will pay $10 a person for the privilege of pretending to do just that*.

Hinchley's is a real working dairy farm that supplies milk to Dean Foods.  They also grow corn, wheat and alfalfa to feed the cows and raise a variety of other animals, mostly as 4-H projects for the kids and to supplement the family's income.

First stop, the baby goats:

 
Most of the kids did well on the tour, but there was one little girl who screamed and cried almost the whole time.  Poor thing is going to grow up to be a vegan and have an irrational fear of cows.

Next stop was the baby cows.  This one was born just the day before.

This "little" one was two days old.  It was chilly out so the calves had to wear cow snuggies.

Then it was cow milking time.  I was kind of afraid I'd hurt the cow because you have to squeeze pretty hard to get milk to come out.  Juicy the Cow was unimpressed.

Then we went back outside to see the other animals.

Gigantic fluffy geese:

Mean, nasty, ugly geese:

Bessie the Dog, who we nicknamed Hambone, who followed us around during the tour:

Goats:

Chickens:

 

When we pet the chicken, we were allowed to touch the comb and the waddle, which the woman running the tour described to the kids as feeling like a hot fruit roll-up.  I'd agree with that.

Newborn baby chicks:

Baby lamb:

After the animals, we saw a bunch of farm material and equipment, including a gigantic $350k combine.  That thing would be like driving our 2nd-story apartment around.  The whole tour took about 1.5 hours, and was fun for kids and adults.  The only downside was that it was pretty cold out, and I was glad when we got to go inside and defrost my feet.

It was neat to see the animals and get a glimpse of the hard work that it takes to keep a dairy farm running.  Although this is exactly the kind of non-organic, large-company supplier farm that people like Michael Pollan love to hate, it was certainly clean when we were there, and the animals seemed well-cared for and happy.  And the farmers seemed to enjoy being able to carry on the family tradition.  If you live in Madison and are looking for some relatively inexpensive family fun (with our without kids), I'd recommend it.  They have a corn maze in the summer, and a pumpkin give-away in the fall.    

Today is just a relaxing day.  We went to church this morning, did some cleaning, and will go to yoga and Easter dinner at Samba tonight (gotta use up a Groupon before it expires tomorrow!).  Tomorrow begins the final push before our trip to ARVO.  Have a good Sunday, all.

*Well, I didn't have to shovel any poo...  Probably couldn't get $10 a person if poo shoveling was involved.

Dear The Weather,

We regret to inform you that there is a mistake in your Page-A-Day calendar.  The entry for November 19 was accidentally duplicated and inserted in your calendar in place today's entry for April 19.  Here is a copy of the the correct page if you'd like to print it for your use.

So your agenda items should include this

and this.

Instead of this

That's snow on the roof.

 and this.

More snow

We regret any inconvenience this error may have caused.  We are still the leader in calendars, planners, and stationery for natural phenomenon, and we hope you will continue to use our Page-a-Day calendars in the future. 

Thank you,

The Management

Bird watching

Last Thursday while I was getting some software updated on my computer, I looked outside and noticed two swans were swimming in ponds out by the marching band/ ultimate Frisbee field.  We get birds- including cool stuff like swans and cranes but mostly just nasty geese- passing through on their way north for the summer.  So I grabbed Kerri and another coworker and we braved the weather to check out the swans.

They were so beautiful and didn't seem to be bothered by people watching them.  I took about 10 pictures.  

Kerri brought her binoculars to get a closer look.

Although you can't tell from the pictures, the feathers were incredibly detailed.

Even though it was windy and gross outside, the swans just swam around the ponds peacefully... impervious to us... to the guy chasing geese off the flag football field with a net... not even moving their heads at all...

Because- as we realized after 5 full minutes of oohing and ahhing- they were fake.  Those incredibly detailed feathers?  I guess you can do a lot with plastic these days.  The groundskeepers must have put then in the ponds to scare away other birds.  I'm guessing it will work because they sure fooled us.     

Leaving nature alone, Friday night Daniel and I went over to check out the opening of the new UW Union South.

It's pretty fancy.  There's a bowling alley, a rock climbing wall, a movie theater, food court type restaurants, a bar/grill, concert space, and offices and meeting rooms.  Daniel is happy that he will be able to cut through it to get from the computer science building to the engineering building during the winter.

It was pretty packed, but we were able to catch a free showing of The Social Network.  Although I was obviously not a computer science major at Harvard, the movie did take me back to my undergrad days in the early 2000s.  The whole idea of spending a Friday evening watching a movie at the student union was reminiscent of Gator Nights.  I thought the movie was pretty good, but I did have a hard time watching any part with Justin Timberlake in it and not thinking "Hey! That's Justin Timberlake!  Wow!  Justin Timberlake is in this movie!"  Daniel didn't like the message it gave that good and innovative computer science is all about hacking and binge drinking and twizzlers.  But he did say they got the parts about Mt. Dew and Asian girls right.  He also plans to start writing all the solutions to problems he's working on on the window.

  

Skipping ahead to today...
It's 9:30am on Sunday, and I have the whole day ahead with no obligations.  Normally we'd be going to church now, but Daniel went in to work on a paper he's submitting to a conference on Thursday, and we've already heard the sermon so I decided to stay home.

On the agenda:

• Update the blog 
• Apply to a summer fruit/veg and a meat CSA - I've done the research.  Now I just have to get the printer to work
• Go through our "in box" and deal with mail, etc.
• 1 hour Dave Farmar yoga podcast
• Practice the piano
• Figure out what I'm going to bake for our church group meeting tomorrow night
• Walk to the store (I have the car, but it's beautiful out!) to get ingredients
• Update our budget
• Get lunch stuff ready for the week

If there's time:

• Work on my afghan while watching a movie/ Pushing Daisies?
• Do some vacation research?

Hope everyone in NC is doing alright after the crazy storms yesterday.  Get out there and enjoy some nature! 

Now with 80% less funk

Good funk:



Bad funk:

Nasty.

Ewwwwww... this is what happens when you and everyone who comes to visit you takes off their snow boots in the same place for six months.  It feels pointless to clean it when ever day brings another layer of sludge, but fortunately, maybe, possibly we are beyond all that for awhile, so it was time for scrub-a-thon 2011.

The lineoleum is old so it doesn't *look* that much cleaner, but I guarantee you, it is.

Whew.

 I'd say I was doing spring cleaning, but it really feels more like summer.  It was beautiful yesterday, but the weather is about to go all Wizard of Oz on us this afternoon.

Eeek.

Our indoor/outdoor thermometer is confused:

Indoors: 76.4 (that'll be fun for sleeping tonight); outdoors: who knows?
What is this "warm weather" you speak of?

I wish I could say I spent the day outside, working on my tan, but it's already windy and thundery.  So instead I played Miss Domestic (Servant) and cleaned (see above) and cooked lasagna for our neighbors who just had a baby

Cheese-a-licious

While I'm on a roll, I'll share my #1 (and only) cleaning tip with you:  Denture cleaner will clean anything.  Well, I haven't taught it how to vacuum, but every week we soak our dish drier and my water bottle in hot water with a few Target brand denture cleaner tablets, and it clears up all the hard water and general gunk that builds up.  

So fresh and so clean, clean.

Now it's time for straight chillin'.  And hoping we don't get hit by a tornado.  And finding the fan for the bedroom.  Please deposit any lazy cleaning tips you have in the comments section.