Moutarde

Yesterday we went for a drive to Mount Horeb & New Glarus, just to get out a bit while the weather still feels nice on the skin. The Mustard Museum was pretty cool. I wish we hadn't been so stuffed when we got there, since there were lots of things to taste in the gift shop. We did come away with a nice Poupon U souvenir mug.

Here were a couple that reminded me of home:


































We also walked through the Mt Horeb Fall Festival and I tried to befriend some llamas... but they weren't having any of it. I love the cool rocker-llama hairdo, though.

Random Parade

From our balcony this afternoon we watched an impromptu celebration (of something that remains unknown) marching along the bike path across the street. The music was actually pretty catchy. Part of me felt like running out to join them.

Like a Tree Frog

When asked to describe her aunty's appearance, my 3-year-old niece listed the following physical characteristics:

• black hair
• boobies
• a nose
• no teeth
• red eyes, like a tree frog

I'm thinking maybe I need to see her on a more regular basis, at least so she knows that I've lightened my hair.

Newly Discovered

1. Jogging. I've been going for roughly 2 months... 1/2 hour a day, every other day. Feeling awesome, but having trouble keeping my hands off fried food and ice cream since I started.
   
2. Another Lol-ish blog. I particularly enjoy the Cate Blanchett, Javier Bardem, Cindy McCain, and Posh Spice look-alikes.
   
3. And another blog
4. Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was awesome. I haven't enjoyed a Woody Allen film this much in years. In fact, I'm going to see it again this weekend.
   

Fasten your seatbelt, slutpuppy, this ain't gonna be no cakewalk!

A fond farewell to Estelle Getty. As much as I love Bea Arthur, Sophia was always my favorite Golden Girl. It's never a bad time, though, to stop and appreciate how awesome a television show The Golden Girls was. So go ahead - take a moment...

Not a gripping news article....

...but what an awesome headline!

http://www.madison.com/tct/top5/291166

.

f-r-e-e-d-u-m-b

Yay for late Spring! We joined a CSA this year for our veggies. Our second box came today with lots of greens, plus a few herb seedlings to grow on our own:















I stopped at the Co-op to get some mushrooms & sat outside for a few minutes with a smoothie to enjoy the sunshine while it lasted. Across from me sat an aging hippy wearing a bright orange safety vest. He kind of just started talking, and I took note of the following points from the conversation, though I was only rarely able to get a word in edgewise.

• He was an ex-con back in the seventies
• Upon his release from prison, he was immediately drafted. Essentially, he could go to war or go back to prison.
• He had trouble getting a job when he returned from Vietnam, "because all the veterans were treated like criminals!!" [I thought, "all the veterans? Or just the ex-con veterans?" Though I know that was generally true back then. ]
• In this country, we have no rights. And, "freedom is spelled f-r-e-e-d-u-m-b"!!
• He was once married by common-law without realizing it and was later ordered to pay child support for a child who may or may not be his.
• His wife left him for a woman, and his son, at age 16, escaped from a mental institution and came straight to Madison to find his dad. The young fellow had a tatoo that said "I kill hippies", as well as a nazi symbol tatoo and some metal spikes embedded in his head. He wanted his father to buy him beer.
  
• He appends "the Bike" to the end of his name (which rhymes with bike), because he fixes people's bicycles. In fact, his bicycle has a large wagon hitched to the back containing other bicycles that he's working on.
  

He was interested to know when I usually hung out at the co-op so we could catch up again. So I did enjoy listening to the guy. But based on his reaction to a reference I made to my husband ("Well, I guess this conversation is over!"), I'll probably keep my distance from the co-op on Saturday mornings for a little while.

No really, I'm fine.

Not to say that it's an excuse, but I'm having a relatively sleepless oncall week, and had time to make a travel mug full of strong coffee this morning, but not lunch.

So, starving and jittery, I bought a cheeseburger and fries at the cafeteria at work, and I'd made it up the first flight of stairs on my way back towards my desk. Then the door to the first floor opened behind me and distracted me enough to trip on the next step. The next thing I knew I was on all fours on the steps, surrounded by crinkle fries and my upside-down cheeseburger. A couple of alarmed people entered the stairwell, and as I turned around to tell them I was okay, I realized my face was covered in ketchup. One of them handed me a napkin she happened to be holding, and I mopped up my face while scrambling to pick up my fries and excusing myself repeatedly. Miraculously, nothing got on my clothes, but I was told a few minutes later by a coworker that I had a small glob still on my eye.

Fortunately, perhaps because I'm so tired, I am more entertained than embarrassed. At least I got to hear a good spell of trademark Kevin-Laughter upon relating the story. Totally worth it.

new toy!

One of my favorite takeaways from having gotten married is my new (or, sorry - our new) kick-ass camera. While I'm busy writing thank-you notes, here are some of my first pictures for your enjoyment. What's that you're demanding? Wedding photos? All in good time. Perhaps even by next week.

Poor Julie...

As I was leaving for work this morning the phone rang. I had the following conversation - not kidding:

Me: Hello?
Caller: Heeeey, what's uuuup!
Me: Who's this?
Caller: It's Jack! I got your panties!!
Me (glancing downward briefly): Huh. I think you might have the wrong number.
Jack: Oh. Uh, I was calling for Julie.
Me: Nope, not Julie.
Jack: Oh... I got her pink panties!!!
Me: ....
Me: That's great! Well, bye!

And it was the awesomest wrong number ever.

Building my vocabulary

A few new words and terms I've picked up this week:

Heavy freezing spray
Local ground blizzards
Thundersnow
Blowing snow advisory

Is it just me, or does a local ground blizzard sound way worse than the normal kind of blizzard?

Ok, ok...

Here, Kevin. Here's how much snow was on our balcony by Wednesday night, and also a shot of the yahara river, which was pretty:




























And in other news, I have a new nephew whom I'll be meeting at the end of this month. He looks very small and sleepy from his photos. Happy birthday to Gavin!

Around Christmas I taught myself to crochet, which is fun so far. I have about a third of a blanket that is just long enough to keep me warm while I'm working on it... so I guess I don't really care what it looks like when I'm done. I can also make coasters!

Whatever. To be honest, I have such awful winter blues right now. I hate February. Did you hear that 2000 vehicles were stuck overnight on the interstate like, 20 minutes from Madison?? Anyway, I'm going to zumba classes with Gwen and I made an appointment with a therapist. I can't wait until the snow starts melting.

Ode to Soldier Bear

Here's to the brave and noble Soldier Bear, who fought in WWII. "He drank a bottle of beer like any man". Be sure to watch the archival footage of him wrestling with his fellow soldiers. You think he's trying to eat the guy, but he's just playin' around.

A lesser babka

Kevin & I put up our tree this evening. I haven't posted in a while, so I figured this is as good an occasion as any. Over the two weeks before Christmas every year, the people in my wing at work coordinate to provide an abundance of sweets and snacks in a constant stream. Like, enough to make you feel like complete and total crap in time for the holidays. I feel like making babka, but I'm not sure I want to commit. It would be my first babka. Last year I brought in homemade tapenade on toasted french bread, which was great, I thought. I just found an email that I'd sent to Kevin on that day. It's a collection of verbal reactions to my tapenade from various concerned coworkers:

"What is this stuff? Why does it look like chocolate pudding?"
"When I eat anything crunchy my filling always pops out & it's 1/2 of the tooth... so I have to be careful."
"This might be a little too exotic for this group."
"Did you talk to Fern about this?" (Fern said the first 2 ones)
"People usually get this sort of thing in jars."

Gosh, I don't know what to bring. Anyway, I did finish my hobo gloves, as Kevin calls them. Here they are.































And also, here's a buttload of snow on our balcony. And just for the hell of it, our little tree. I just figured out how to work with exposure time on my digital camera, so bear with me. I kind of love it.

Holiday Notice!

Something to be thankful for? How about three inches of snow + another Anne of Green Gables marathon on WI public television? By the way, it starts at 7:30 am and finishes at 5:30 pm in case you're interested. :)

While I was driving down University Ave this evening I saw a young man holding a big sign that said, "Everybody sucks except for me!".

Rocky mountain... high?

Last week I went to a software conference at a ski resort in Colorado with a couple coworkers. I enjoyed it, but I was a little surprised (and disappointed) by how few women were there, at least compared to other technical conferences I've attended. Perhaps for this reason, I seemed to be meeting new people at an alarmingly faster pace than my male coworkers.

Everyone seemed pretty nice, though there were a couple of suspected creeps, and at one point I found myself invited to the annual hot tub party that the regulars throw at the end of each conference ("Entry fee is a bottle of malt scotch + eligibility to vote!"). As you can imagine, I spent all my free time either hanging out with the handful of guys from my company, or alone in my hotel room with my door bolted. It was on one of the latter evenings that one of the guys I used to work with smoked a little something with the hotel employees and then went out drinking. Ambling back to the hotel at 2 am, he fell into an icy pond and lost his driver's license. I'm not actually sure if he made it back or not, without another photo id to board the plane. Anyway, here are a few photos. The first one is the view from my hotel room. And the third one was just a cool truck that I liked. Honcho!

Produce

Last week we tried fractal broccoli, a.k.a. broccoli Romanesco for the first time. We steamed it & it was sweet & yummy even eaten plain. And it's aesthetically pleasing:





























I also need to say that if you haven't ventured to the farmer's market & picked up some apples from the crotchety old "we-reserve-the-right-to-refuse-service-to-anyone-who-bruises-our-apples" couple, you need to do that as soon as possible. It's worth the standing in line for 10 minutes.

No thank you, Sigmund.

Some of you already know that Kevin has been reading a lot of Freud these days in preparation for writing one of his chapters. So naturally he's getting excited about dream analysis just at a time when I've been coming up with some crazy shit while I'm sleeping. For instance:

1. We're at my Mom's house in NY and Kevin is enormously pregnant with our firstborn. It's beautiful - reminiscent of those expectant wim in Egalia's Daughters, he's glowing, strong, upbeat, and frighteningly calm. Kevin decides that it's time, and gives himself a C-section. He presents our son, and we both cry. Then I realize that the child needs to eat, and since Kevin has no breasts, that one is my responsibility. I start searching frantically for my sister's copy of What to Expect.. to see if it will tell me how to nurse. Thankfully the dream ended shortly after that point.

2. I'm walking along a mountainy beach with a bunch of people I supposedly know, when a giant robot-thing starts to attack the area. I run into a cave in one of the rock formations, but something explodes nearby and I am slowly buried in gravel. Despite struggling, I can't seem to get out. I fall into an opening where a sage of some sort gives me some herbs to chew on, and a giant wasp appears and begins to chase me. (Ok, despite Kevin's immediate attempt at psychoanalysis upon my relation of this dream, we soon realized that it is directly related to an episode of Babylon 5 that Kevin made me watch, in conjunction with an episode of Bones that I had watched voluntarily. I had warned him during the B-5 episode that I was going to dream about it that night, which I did).

3. In short, a horrible nightmare that ends with me angrily, but inadvertently injuring the cat we had when I was growing up. This was related to my anxiety about bringing Billie to the dermatologist today for an allergy screening, for which she was anesthetized. When the doctor saw the state of her skin after shaving some fur, she decided to biopsy several areas. Billie came home a half-shaven, polka-dotted, holey, stitched-up, groggy mess. She alarmingly resembled the beat-up old cat in my nightmare.

Here's hoping for a good night's sleep tonight...

Odds & Ends. But mostly odds.

Ok, so we're not in short supply of silly pictures of Kevin lately, but I can't help myself. Here he is trying on the cardigan I knit for my sister's child-to-be. And I don't really know what's going on in the other one, but we were playing a board game.

Yesterday I went sailing around Lake Mendota with a coworker. Surprisingly, you can sail around to different places for a good 3-4 hours and it's still really fun... especially if it's windy, and even more so if you're allowed to steer the boat.

Also, a while back I'd meant to post about a movie we'd watched called The American Astronaut. It's not a well-known movie, and it was made back in 2001, but it was so good. It's my new favorite movie. Filmed in black and white, it is a space western rock-opera with a very odd, confusing plot. I had a hard time figuring out what the hell was going on most of the time... but overall I was really entertained.