Mary Elizabeth Peter Middendorf

Squirrel Moon

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:37:43 GMT

Squirrel Moon is coming right up. The early registration deadline is the 30th of this month. Micah and Ariel, will you be coming? Anyone else?

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/squirrel/

Volleyball

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:47:44 GMT

Did I mention that Josh and I signed up to play Volleyball with people from work? Anyhow, our first practice was today, and driving over there I was thinking to myself, "Why did I sign up for this? I'm going to have a horrible time and then feel bad about quitting but worse about staying on the team," but instead I had a really really really good time. I'd forgotten how much I liked volleyball... and I don't suck quite as much as I remembered either. Also, I don't think I've ever played in sand before. I actually liked it because I'm so clumsy to begin with it wasn't that much of a hindrance... and it hurts a lot less to fall down on than I've imagine the gym floor would (and tried very hard to avoid learning about first hand). We also purchased a volleyball on the way home so that I can maybe get in some extra practice and learn how to sometimes make the ball go in the desired direction rather than a random direction when I hit it. That would be useful...

Yay volleyball! Yay socialization!

Sanding called on account of pectorals

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:20:08 GMT

I've done a significant amount of work on the desk the last 3 days (like, multiple hours each day), including a lot of use of the power sander. To update, when I started this evening, all the "outside" sides/front/back are done to 180 grit, and the inside "sides" were done to 80 grit. My goal for tonight was to do the inside "sides" to 180 grit tonight... which is probably only around 1 hours worth of work (not many corners/edges/curves, no more paint). However, I found after only a few minutes that I can hardly hold the power sander stable right now with my right hand because my muscles hurt (or really, not because they hurt... the pain isn't so bad... mostly they just don't respond to commands with any level of precision right now). My left hand has the same problem... only without any pain at all and for an entirely different reason.

Sigh. I'm so excited about getting this project done... and I have a hard enough time finding daylight hours to work on it... it's disappointing when I have the time to go out there and find I am unable to work on it. Oh well. I spent a good long time out there admiring it instead. Our entire evening is double booked tomorrow, so I should have a day to recover before I'm giving up any more time that I might have spent on it.

On the somewhat related subject of office furniture, we need more filing cabinets. Our funky little two drawer cabinet we bought in Evanston is getting rather full. I'd like to get something quad high, and at least double wide... possibly in a lateral configuration, and hopefully reasonably attractive looking (like wood or laminate). However, we might instead buy one or two of these or these (if they stack safely, which might be wishful thinking). As Josh is quick to point out, we really don't need that much filing space at this time... but I am confident we will eventually and have some desire for matching filing cabinets.

On the non-related subject of labtops, Becca's old Inspiron 1450 and another even older laptop arrived in the mail today. We'll be building a combination laptop out of Becca's old 1450 and my old 1450, which I am way more excited about than I have any right to be. Thanks Becca! That's exactly what I wanted for my birthday... and a month early too!

Another productive weekend day

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:31:54 GMT

Josh and I cleaned up the office today. It's been a wreck since... oh, pretty much when we moved in. We also moved my (old) desk out of here into the library/sewing room and the love seat in to take it's place... since I'd rather compute on the love seat than at a desk. It's nice in hear now that it's clean and organized.

I also spent 2-3 hours working on my (new) desk. The front, back, and one of the sides are now free of paint (or as free as they are getting) and fully sanded up to 180 grit sand paper (I need to work my way up to 300-something before staining--one or two more rounds). The other side is within inches of being done... but my light went away. Then there are the inside bits (where your legs go). The rest of the sanding rounds should go faster because I will only be smoothing out the wood from my previous sanding jobs... rather than digging out every last speck of paint. Anyhow, I'm really pleased at my progress in the last few weekends. I think I should be able to get all the sanding done in another 20-30 hours. And then it's staining and varnishing! Yay!

Also, there are some spots where there was a hole before the desk was painted, which is now full of paint... and where these holes are deep, there is precious little I can do about them. The final step (or maybe next to last before varnishing) will be filling the holes with wood putty and maybe applying a little brown paint to touch up these imperfections. I'm really excited though... I feel like the end is actually in sight, however far away a sight it is...

My goal, which Josh assures me I will make because he hates scraping snow off the car, is to get the desk completely finished and out of the garage before the first snow of the year. So I'm counting on having at least until mid-October.

Next up: Reupholstering Grandma's couch. (Don't hold your breath...)

Now to do some work work...

Edited to add: Today, just now (9:50pm), I set a personal record. That's right, I jogged 1 mile without stopping! Never done that before. At 11 minutes 20 seconds, it wasn't the fastest overland mile I've ever done on foot, but it is the only one I've maintained a jogging pace for the whole thing nonstop.

I fixed a lock

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:57:45 GMT

Our lock on our front door has been very stiff and hard to unlock since we moved in. Basically, it catches about 1/4 inch from unlocked, and it's really hard to get it that last 1/4 inch. It's a bit easier on the inside though, because you have more leverage. Shortly after we moved in, Josh put some WD40 on the shaft and in the keyhole, and that helped, but it was still difficult. Last Friday night, we ended up going in through the garage it was so stiff. I decided we should just replace the lock, but I didn't know how hard that would be. So I grabbed a screw driver and started taking the lock apart to see. Turns out, there's not much to disassembling a lock, but once we had it open and started fiddling with it, we could see where it was catching! We lathered it up good with the WD40 and put it back together. Now the lock works like a dream! Last night, coming home with my hands full, I was able to unlock and open the door with one hand!!!!! Ah, life's little pleasures...

Yesterday was pretty productive. After sleeping in (a little) and listening to Weekend Edition, we had a nice brunch, then I worked for an hour or so on my desk, which is coming along nicely. Then I came upstairs to do some work that I needed to get done, only to realize it was 12:30 and we needed to get to the banks before they closed at 1pm. So we dashed out (in the car, sadly), to Anchor Bank to close our account because Anchor Bank is in a really bad location for us to walk to (something we weren't thinking about in early March when we opened that account), and then dropped off the money at Park Bank where we opened an account last week. Park Bank has a branch right in downtown Verona, one block from the grocery store and in the same parking lot as the hardware store.

Following the banking, I worked (with some breaks) until 5pm. During that time, Josh was productive around the apartment, getting the spices put up (yay!!!), and getting the hall light taken apart so we could figure out what was wrong with it. I ended up finding the problem, which was that the tongue thing that connects with the butt of the light bulb isn't very springy anymore. I pulled it out a bit, put the bulb in, and it worked great. Then I took the bulb out, and went back upstairs to do more work while Josh reassembled the light fixture. When he put the bulb back in, it was gave off the same intermittent light that it did before, so he had to pull the tongue out again. Really, that part needs to be replaced at some point, but for now it's fine. Yay working hall light. (Though, of course, the times I most wanted a hall light were when I was digging through the card board box of spices sitting in the hall.)

At 5:15pm, Josh remembered that there was a potluck of work friends at William's house, and threw together some hummus so we could go. Turned out there was a really small showing... the notice for this potluck had been kind of short and apparently a lot of people couldn't make it. There is supposed to be a better showing for the event Wednesday night when Laura's fiance will be visiting from Germany (actually, he's already here in the States this weekend, but at Laura's brother's wedding with Laura). But we have D&D on Wednesday night. We had fun. Also found out that there is some sort of casual volleyball league starting up in September that Josh will probably be joining, and I may as well.

House Fire

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:21:04 GMT

Today, on the way home from work, Josh and I got the opportunity to see something we have never seen before (in real life): A house on fire. We saw a great column of smoke, just a few blocks north of our townhouse, in the subdivision north of Cross Country, so we decided to bike up there and see what it was. Not terribly surprisingly, it was a house on fire. When we got there, we could see flames on the back porch for a bit (then they disappeared), and an inordinant amount of smoke seeping out of the attic. A cop showed up right around the same time we did, first authority on the scene, and assertained that there was no one in the house. After an inordinant amount of time, the first fire truck showed up. 20+ foot flames were already coming out of the roof. They sprayed the house for a long long time. When we went around for a better look at the hoses, we saw that the siding on the house next door was all melted off. Wow. Eventually a few of them got their masks on and went in. We probably watched for an hour. We saw a fire truck arrive from Oregon (not the state, but a suburb decently far from us) as we were leaving. And we've heard a few more come by. It was actually a lot like what you see on TV... only longer... and I bet they are still working on it. Got to make sure there's no residual fire anywhere inside the house, in the walls, in the attic, etc.

It was quite a thing to see. Everyone in the neighborhood was out watching. I sure hope I don't see another.

It was a gas grill fire. We're grilling out tonight, and we were sure to put our grill a regulation distance away from the building before lighting it up.

A couple things

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:03:47 GMT

Frogs: the other night Josh and I went walking in the neighborhood just north of Cross Country, that surrounds a wetland area... and while we've seen frogs there before, Monday night was pretty incredible... the sidewalks were hopping with them and we really had to watch our steps. Frogs are soooo cute, almost as cute as kittens.

CSA: Last Wednesday, our co-worker we share our CSA share with was unable to make it to pick up her portion, so we got it all. However, I am proud to say that we made good work of it... it wasn't too hard because we got good stuff last week. However, suggestions about what to do with fennel, tons of cilantro, or tons of lettice would be appreciated.

We ate:
3 yellow zucchini
3 UFO looking things that we think might also be a kind of zucchini
2-3 kohlrabi (forget how many there were)
2 fresh garlic cloves (plus 1-2 from last week)... mmm... so good!
Some of last weeks radishes
1 of the heads of lettice
1 small egg plant
1 cucumber

We also made:
2 bunches of basil into 2 cups of pesto which are in the freezer for winter

Still plan to make (when I find time, hopefully SOON):
1 bunch of cilantro into "cilantro pesto" (I have a recipe, we'll see how it is)
3 bunches of leeks into potato-leek soup which I plan to can for winter

What we didn't manage to eat (and I really don't know what to do with):
The other bunch of cilantro
The fennel
The other 3 heads of lettice

This CSA thing is getting more fun now that we are getting a higher fraction of things that we like. I enjoyed not sharing my zucchini, but it's good that our co-worker will be back to help out. We've hardly had any meat this past week, and we still didn't manage to eat everything. Plus, we do have a bit of a back log... kohlrabi, beets, and radishes from former weeks (fortunately these seem to keep pretty well). Plus swiss chard which might well have gone bad by now.

Shiny

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:39:15 GMT

Now there's a shiny house! Right down town Verona. Over 100 years old (yay character), but updated with central air heating and cooling (yay comfort)! Unfortunately, we're not actually buying right now, nor planning to spend that much when we do.

But... but... but... SHINY!!!

Quicken...

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:09:25 GMT

My parents talked me into buying Quicken instead of continuing to make my own financial database in Access. Overall, it seems really nice. And when I was looking through it with my folks, it looked like the reports were really nice. So after I got home today I spent an appauling number of hours entering in all our data from the past year (aside from a little bit of data on two accounts for January, I got it all done). However, now that I actually have my own data in the system, I'm seeing that I'm not really liking the reports after all. You see, Quicken (and much of the rest of the world) has a very strange concept of what a "bill" is. Somehow Quicken thinks that the credit card payments count as "bills" (I consider them transfers and thought I had them entered as such), yet somehow "rent" is not a bill. WTF? Thus, a lot of the reports aren't seeming very useful. Actually, none of the reports I've found look useful at all yet. Ugh. Not upset about the $30, but I'm going to be super upset about all the hours if this program doesn't have useful reports. :-(

Also, in the pie charts, it shows that half or more of the money we *spend* goes *to* Epic by way of our paychecks. Something is clearly confused. This was why I was going to make my own freaking program.

Refreshing

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:36:57 GMT

For the first time in... at least a month or two... I woke up feeling really refreshed and well rested. Furthermore, I did it not only before the alarm went off (because I pushed it back an hour), but also only 7 minutes after the alarm would have gone off if I hadn't moved it. Even though I decided to stay in bed and relax for a goodly long while and give Josh a back rub, I was still at work earlier than I was yesterday.

Sleeping through the night rocks. I should do it more often. I should endeavor to be in a physical, mental, and emotional state condusive to it more often. Also, I think it helped that we ran the AC all evening, bringing the temperature of the bedroom down to 65 degrees, and then turned off the AC and didn't open the window or turn on the fan when we went to bed... so it was both cool and QUIET all night.

Yesterday

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:51:11 GMT

Yesterday was a big full day. In the morning we drove down to Paoli for the farmers market, but arrived too late and it was over (not because it was scheduled to be over, but because the farmers had sold everything and gone home). However, instead we stopped in at the local grocery store down there, which had quite a remarkable array of locally produced products. We picked up some aged Gouda and fresh strawberries.

After lunch, it was still relatively not blazing hot outside (like 78) so we got on our bikes and went for ride toward down town. We ended up on a truly wonderful rails to trails path headed straight for down town. This was suburban/urban biking at it's best. This is what a city would be like in a cyclist's utopia. The trail was well paved and wide enough to easily accommodate 3 cyclists across. There was shade and were proper street signs every time we came to a road. The path was extremely level and straight (as you'd expect from a former train route), and in many cases we went over or under the automobile roads. In neighborhoods of cult-i-sacs and dead-ends, there were bike trails connecting the roads to the bike path, again with proper road signs so you knew where you were. There were tons of people out using the path, for both recreation and transportation if I don't miss my guess. As we got closer into town, we started passing condo buildings with extensive and overflowing bike parking outside. What an incredible place to live that must be... urban living at it's finest... but unfortunately rather far from work for Josh and I.

As we came into town we also started running parallel to train tracks that are still in service, and apparently carry coal to the power stations near the University. We stopped at the old train station that has been converted to a bike shop and purchased some bungie cords as my backpack which we had strapped onto the back of my bike (with non-elastic strapping) kept falling off. We bought a couple normal bungie cords, and also an ingenious little cargo net which is a rather brilliant piece of engineering.

Right around the one-time train station the tracks start veering away from the city again. We took a branch of the trail that veered around Monona Bay and enjoyed seeing the ducks and water mammals of some sort that were up on the shore, then took some surface streets and eventually met up with a portion of the trail running along John Nolen Drive and took that across the entrance to Monona Bay and back toward the city. John Nolen Drive then runs parallel to Lake Monona, but slightly inland with fancy convention buildings right along the lake... well, it turns out the path is even closer to the lake than the buildings, so we got to follow the lake front into town. It was beautiful, but smelly. Lake Monona isn't as clean as one might hope.

Eventually we arrived at our destination, the St. Vincent de Paul downtown, only to discover that evidently one of the times my backpack fell off the bike, the bike lock key for the spare lock (which lives in the lock as we only have the one key) had sheared off, leaving half of itself in the lock. We ended up turning around and retracing our steps a mile or so to the bike shop that looks like a castle and purchased another lock (our primary locks live at work, since that's where we normally lock our bikes). Then we returned to St. Vincent de Paul for a little shopping. As I'd anticipated, I was able to find a copy of "The Mists of Avalon" in their extensive used books section, and we also bought some clothes. When the store closed, we stopped in at a nearby Thai restaurant we'd passed between the St. Vincent de Paul and the bike shop for a well-earned dinner. We were briefly distracted by some folk musicians in the park across the way, but I was concerned about getting dinner in time to catch a useful bus homeward (we were exhausted by this point), so we didn't listen long. The food was okay, but not excellent (aside from the crab rangoon which were excellent)... kind of like most of the Thai food we've gotten in Madison.

After dinner we walked two blocks to a bus stop for the #7, which took us to the West Transfer Point, and then became the #51 which took us to within spitting distance of Verona, but still around 3 miles from home. On that last leg home, we noticed some model airplanes flying in a park nearby.

All in all, it was an absolutely lovely day, though ~20 miles of biking tired me out more than I think it should have... but that's all the more reason for having done it.

Dear Lazyweb,

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 01:31:49 GMT

Anyone out there know how to use Access?

I'm trying to do some really basic things, like fill in values to one cell when another cell is changed (like you might do in Excel really easily), but I can't seem to make it happen... even after an embarrassingly large number of hours trying. Eventually I'd like to do this across a few tables and whatnot, maybe use some SQL stuff, but anything to get me going on the syntax and stuff would be great...

Desk update

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:36:29 GMT

I feel like I am stripping paint off of Gabriel's trumpet.

On the list of things you don't want to hear...

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:49:38 GMT

So about 2 hours ago, our land lord came up and knocked on our door. She had a woman and two children with her. She apologized for disturbing me when I was busy moving and all, but Chris had said it would be okay for her to show the apartment this evening. So I'm just sort of standing there with my mouth hanging open... didn't know I was moving, and who is this Chris person, is he helping her manage her rentals now or something?? No, turns out it was just all a big mix up... she went to the wrong unit. Chris and Mandy next door are moving, not us.

Having the land lord show up unexpectedly to show people our home... not something you want to have happen! (Also not legal and all that, but that's another matter.)

The Prestige

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:22:46 GMT

Josh and I watched a movie called "The Prestige" a few week ago. It is about two rival magicians around the turn of the 20th century... and aside from being a little gruesome (not visually so much, but content-wise), and a little difficult at first to keep from confusing the two main characters, it told a pretty good story incredibly skillfully.

It's pretty new apparently (2006), so I suppose you've all heard about it and probably had the ending spoiled, but I recommend it anyway. I wont tell you why, because that would spoil the ending.

Tofu

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:59:43 GMT

I just rendered 2 lbs of tofu for later use. Pressed it, cubed it, and froze it. According to "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" it is good that way. Apparently, since the water expands when it freezes, it forces itself out of the tofu and you get, like, super-pressed tofu. We shall see. Also, it seems actually pretty good plain and raw. I have not had plain and raw tofu since my mom was on her tofu kick sometime well before I was in high school. I remember not liking it plain and raw at the time, but the little bits that broke off today and I ate were pretty good. Maybe my tastes have changed. Or maybe the difference could be buying the expensive ($2/lb) organic tofu. And for a final thought on tofu of the day, I have always known that you are supposed to press* tofu before cooking it to get the water out. I assumed I learned this from my mom, but when I was on the phone with her over the weekend and asked her if she had ever tried freezing tofu to get super-pressed tofu, she claimed to have never heard of pressing tofu. So perhaps I learned the pressing thing from William (the vegetarian man next door who was like another father to me). I should call him at some point and see what he thinks of freezing tofu.

* Press as in with a paper towel, like you might do with bacon--though I have sworn off paper towels and used a linen towel instead.

Good but Busy Weekend

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:19:16 GMT

We had a busy weekend. I don't really recall what we did on Friday. Probably we tried to relax a little. Saturday we got up early (for the weekend), and drove down to Mandy and Ed's place. We arrived in time for lunch and enjoyed visiting with Mandy and Ed. Eventually the Hyde Park folks got out of bed and made their way out to Oak Park too, and we got to see them. Then we went to Newt's 30 birthday party and had a great time there too. Talked some, played some bridge, and got attacked by children who wanted to have tickle fights with me and other such things as needing me to play jumping games with them and do the hokie pokie. Afterward we had another nice visit with Mandy and Ed in the evening, and then in the morning over Mandy's yummy french toast. It was very nice to see everyone, and I'm really glad that my work trip half of this weekend's trip got cancelled and I didn't have to cut everything short by leaving at 8pm to go to my hotel to go to sleep so I could get up ungodly early.

Then we drove home... by way of Prime Outlets for a lid, and ended up taking forever while Josh tried on lots of pants and dress shoes. We eventually found a promising pair of potential dance shoes and bought them... a major accomplishment... the last time he found a pair of potential dance shoes that seemed likely enough to try to buy, we were also shopping for wedding shoes for him. Yes, our wedding. No, he didn't end up liking them as dance shoes. Then we continued on home, but stopped at Goodwill, where we took forever while I tried on pants. I found some good dress pants that I've been feeling a lack of for go-lives, and we also somehow brought home a nice pair of dry clean only dress pants for Josh... one of us put them in the cart for him to try on, and whichever of us that was forgot to do anything about them getting tried on. Didn't realize the mistake until the tag was off... but they do at least fit him very well... which is good, because they fit me like crap. However, the awesome purchase of the day was this beautiful painting of a sunset over a stream flowing out of a lake next to a little cottage surrounded by snow covered evergreen trees. Very pretty.

Then when we finally got home, there was a UHaul outside Chris and Mandy's townhouse. Mandy was over at their new house, and Chris was loading the UHaul. We helped load it and with some packing, then went over to the new house with him and helped upload. (Small loads because the new house is 1/2 mile away.) We got a tour of their lovely new house, then went back with Chris for another load while Mandy went to the grocery store and made some dinner. Chris and Mandy, who have been at this since Friday, were pretty beat and decided that since everything that wont fit in the car was moved, they were done moving for a little while. There's still a lot of stuff at their old place, but they have the old place until the end of June... so plenty of time for those remaining trips. We had a nice visit with them over dinner and ice cream. I think we would have become better friends with them during the past 5 months had they not been so busy with getting married and buying a house and all that. We are a little disappointed they ended up buying a house this summer... they'd been planning to wait until next summer because Mandy had a condo in Milwaukee that wasn't selling, but then they discovered they could get a bridge loan, and then they finally sold Mandy's condo anyway. Anyhow, like I said, they are only moving a half mile... so not far or anything. Hopefully they like us well enough already that the difference between next door and 1/2 mile wont matter.

Then we finally actually come home, and turned around and went directly to the grocery store, which was closed because it was 8:30. Then we came home again and did laundry, a little (not nearly enough) clean up, showered, and wrote this Livejournal entry. Now I will go to bed because it is late and tomorrow there is work. So much for getting out to Indiana Jones tonight, or working on my desk project anymore... maybe tomorrow. It's good to be busy though.

Flying Pigs

Wed, 28 May 2008 01:16:02 GMT

Has anyone seen any flying pigs lately?

So the other day, at the grocery store, Josh bought tofu. Yes, you read that right. No, I didn't sneak it into the cart and distract him while the cashier rang it up. Josh walked up to the tofu at the grocery store, picked up a block of it, and put it in the cart. When I asked him if he was okay and if he needed to see the doctor, he said no really he wanted to try the tofu. I never thought I'd live to see the day. He complained so much about it when we were part of the vegetarian cooking group that one summer at Mudd, I don't think I've ever seriously brought up trying it again... except to try to re-create William's stir fry, and he was pretty lukewarm about that in a "Can't we just use chicken instead?" kind of way, so I never did make it. But then a couple weeks ago at the Epic cafeteria, they had this wonderful spinach and tofu dish. We split it and the meat dish they also had that day, and Josh actually agreed with me that the tofu dish was better (it was really really good). So today we made tofu and spinach. Ours was good, but not as good as the stuff at Epic. Then again, we don't have much experience cooking tofu, and we don't earn a living cooking yummy food.

It was probably also the healthiest meal we've eaten in a long time. Tofu fried in good oil + lightly steamed spinach. Probably your healthiest way to get your protein + probably the best vegetable for you.

Things I want to do while living in Madison

Tue, 27 May 2008 13:57:59 GMT

A while back I made up a list of things I wanted to do while living in Chicago. I didn't get to all of them. Now I will make a similar list for Madison.

Spend a night or two at a B&B in the woods when there is snow on the ground.

Visit the Apostle Islands.

Visit Kickapoo Valley Reserve.

Visit Circle Sanctuary.

Bike the Military Ridge Trail to Governor Dodge State Park.

Make use of some of the other bike trails in Wisconsin.

Visit Little Norway.

Visit House on the Rock.

Avail myself of some of the cultural programs at Folklore Village.

Visit the University in search of the scenic drive people keep telling us about.

Visit Cave of the Mounds.

This list will probably be growing. Suggestions welcome as always.

Governor Dodge State Park

Sun, 25 May 2008 22:18:36 GMT

Josh and I camped Friday and Saturday nights at Governor Dodge State Park. This is our second trip to Governor Dodge since moving to Wisconsin, our previous trip was before all the snow melted and when everything was gray and ugly... it didn't give me a very good impression of the park. As it turns out, it did not give me a fair impression of the park either. Governor Dodge is an absolute gem of a State Park, it is just about everything a state park should be. They have magnificent rock formations, lakes and streams, waterfalls, trees and wildflowers. They have car camping, 1/2 mile in "backpacking" sites, a significant amount of hiking-only trail, biking and horse trails, swimming, boating, and fishing. They don't have rock climbing or weekly big band concerts with dancing... but we didn't much make use of those features at Devil's Lake either. And furthermore, it is only 45 minutes from our home and we showed up at 7pm on the Friday before Memorial Day, and were able to get a site for the full weekend without a reservation (the second to the last available for the full weekend). I am in love.

In researching for this weekend, I also ran across Kickapoo Valley Reserve almost by accident, and it looks like a place worth a trip. It is about 2 hours northwest of here. And on the subject of places to visit, Folklore Village (which is on the way to Governor Dodge) has a number of events I may be interested in, and a nice listing of other things in the area I may be interested in. Little Norway also looks like it is worth a day trip, at only like 10 miles away. Speaking of which, it looks like I don't, strictly speaking, need to become a Pagan to celebrate the Summer Solstice with other people in this area... of course, I might just want to anyway.

There were pretty birds...

And there was a bird's nest right next to the falls...

I had fun with my super-zoom--this is the stream above the falls and photographed from below... it's not often the day is bright enough to do anything with my 24x optical+digital zoom!

Some kid threw a rock into the water right as I was taking a picture. Cool splash, eh?

Next we followed the romantic little stream down away from the waterfall.

I borrowed Josh's wedding ring for some artistic fun. He was very relieved when I gave it back to him.

After that, we headed back up past the waterfall...

On our return trip, we ran across an old "refrigerator" house, which is a house build across the stream which people used to keep their food cold in the summer. It was pretty neat.

Further along the trail, we came to another refrigerator house, this one not over a stream, but just seemed to be full of nasty water. I wouldn't want to store food there, but the toads seem to like it.

After our morning hike, we went back to camp and took naps. Then we went to the beach.

At the beach, this butterfly was kind enough to hold still long enough to be photographed.

Then we decided to go on a little walk, because we'd eaten too much and were not hungry for dinner yet. Our little walk ended up circumnavigating the lake. I don't seem to have taken a picture of the lake, but it was pretty big. There was a wonderful peninsula into the lake, with a side trail along it. It was one of the nicer picnic/snogging sites I've seen in a long while.

I might just make this next one into a user icon.

Also, there were tons of wild flowers. My mom would have liked this trail. We took pictures to entice her to come visit.

There were lots of rock outcroppings like this one. The peninsula into the lake was very much like this.

New Desk

Sat, 17 May 2008 23:30:24 GMT

Last Sunday, Josh and I were on a walk and we ran across a desk sitting out by the curb. The owners were evidently getting rid of it. We checked, they were. It has some nice shape to it, and the drawers slide like a dream. All-in-all, it seemed pretty well made. We drove back to pick it up (after completely forgetting about it) around 11pm. The folks were still up, in fact just saying goodbye to their guests. It ended up not fitting in our car, however. So we took the drawers and placed the rest of the desk up next to the house so it wouldn't get picked up with the trash. On Monday after work, we drove back over, verified that indeed it didn't fit, and then walked it home on the dolly.

Today we started the task of stripping the paint off. Stripping paint is a lot of work, especially if you do not use enough chemical stripper. Adding more chemical stripper (and then waiting around for it to start working) helps a lot. However, it is still a slow process, and of course all the nice curves and details that make it such an awesome piece of furniture are slow to strip. We got the top done, along with the routered edge. Also got three of the four front legs stripped from top to bottom. It seems to me that stripping paint off a routered edge would be easier if you had the original router bit to scrape with. Oh well. Planning to spend a lot more time on it tomorrow, this time applying plenty of stripper to one region at a time (rather than not enough stripper to the whole desk). Chemical stripper is pretty nifty stuff when you use enough of it.

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:29:04 GMT

You know what is more fun than reading the interweb?

Going on a walk outside without a jacket!

Yay spring! Yay!

Attn: Persons who know Northern Wisconsin and Eastern Minnesota

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:55:36 GMT

So if Josh and I are indeed invited to the wedding up in Duluth over Memorial Day weekend (and maybe even if we aren't), I'd like to think about making a trip of it. I've sketched out a possible route, including perhaps some waterfalls in Northern Wisconsin on the way there and the Missassippi River on the way back. Ideas on what might be worth stopping to see along the way?

Possible Route

Silver-White Winters that Melt into Springs

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:57:09 GMT

Last weekend, it was warm and the snow was almost gone, so Josh and I went out to Governor Dodge State Park for some hiking. It was okay, but disappointing as everything was gray and brown... dead looking, like the middle of Winter somewhere it doesn't snow much. It kept it from looking or feeling like Spring had arrived.

Well, last night we had a huge rain and thunderstorm. Fortunately the electric-works hadn't started yet when Josh and I biked home in it, because is was miserable enough as it was: 30 mile per hour headwind, 30 degrees, and pooring down rain. Josh faired a bit better than I as he was a little better dressed for it. My legs were so numb and cold by the time we got home!

But anyway, this morning when I got on my bike it was a whole different world outside. That fresh smell the world has after a good rain. Worms up from the ground looking for air. Robins down from the sky looking for worms. A redwinged black bird pirched above the wetlands looking at his reflection. A mallard swimming in the water. A little mist for good measure. The grass has all turned bright green, and even last year's dead cornstalks seem to have more color. It's like someone painted the world last night while I was sleeping, and it is a beautiful masterpiece.

Genius!

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:14:14 GMT

They have re-designed the REI Quarter Dome tent, and it is absolution genius! My biggest complaint with the Quarter Dome we have (the model from 3 years ago), is that there just isn't nearly enough head room. More height would be nice, but what I really wished it had was more side-to-side room. Check out the picture, what they have done with the poles is fracking brilliant! Why didn't anyone think of that before? Why didn't I think of that before?

I guess I should have let Josh recycle the REI catalog without opening it. I want a new tent now.