Digging Up The Daylilies

As a child my favorite thing to do when visiting my Auntie Helen was to play tourist. She lived at the seaside but instead of taking a little plastic bucket and spade to the beach we took the kitchen mop bucket and a trowel. :)

Today I played tourist in my own town. John, Drew's (and by extension my) college roommate is in town for two days. Yesterday I showed him State Street and we sat at the Terrace and watched the lake. Today we went to the zoo, the Veteran's Museum, and the State Historical Society Museum. We had a really good time and it cost us maybe $10 plus lunch and a coffee break.

I was surprised at how much there is to see at the Vilas Zoo. We only saw half of it before we had to leave to meet Drew for lunch. The primate house was really interesting as was the Tropical Rain Forest House. There was this African bird that I swear looked like MC Hammer. It has a black plume that's sort of rectangular that it could puff up on the top of its head.

After dropping our inkjet printer off at the Computer Science department we met Drew for lunch at Ian's Pizza. This is our favorite pizza place in the whole world. Why? Best pizza. They always have several veggie options and lots of really unusual toppings. Drew and John both had a slice of beef taco pizza and a slice of macaroni & cheese pizza. I had spinach & feta and a penne pasta pizza.

I may never go to the Veteran's Museum again but I'm glad I went with John. John was in the Army Reserve and deployed to Iraq in 2003. There was a special exhibit on the current war which gave him lots of artifacts to explain to me. Then we went through the rest of the museum where I saw things that I knew the names of but had no idea what they looked like. All the classic (post-1850) armaments for example, which my guy friends seem to know about instinctively. Now I've seen a Tommy gun, a Winchester rifle, an AK-47, and a claymore mine. It'll help when we're playing more modern role playing games.

At the Historical Society Museum we went to the Odd Wisconsin exhibit. It was a lot of fun but the part that made the biggest impression on us was the very end. After tracing the history of unusual things in the state they showed a kitchen and living room circa 1992. We stood in front of the living room trying to see what videos, Nintendo games, and CDs they had. It looked very very generic and very very familiar. For the record they had a tape of Ghost, and Pac-man, Super Mario Brothers, and Duck Hunt for the Nintendo.

The guys convinced me to go to the Jonathan Coulton concert tonight. I was by far the least geeky-looking person in the place (I went straight from work, still had my pearls on), but I had a blast.

One of the highlights? ukelele winning coolest friend award; she got Jonathan Coulton to congratulate eirias on finishing her PhD! Drew and I sat there and said "Hey! We know them!".

Paul & Storm were the opening act, and they totally rocked too. At the intermission, before Coulton even started, I told Drew that I'd had my $20 worth.

Dear pedestrian,

I am the woman in the hatchback who almost hit you this morning at Dayton and Charter. You stepped into the intersection without checking that both lanes were clear. In an intersection where there are stop signs on only one street there were 4 cars stopped for you, one in each direction. I understand that you were in a marked crosswalk and had every right to be there. In ordinary conditions (read: not this winter) I too would have stopped for you. I hit a long patch of ice and, despite the fact that I had only been going 20 mph and had already slowed when I saw you dithering in the intersection, my antilock brakes were working as hard as they could. But I could not effectively stop for you -- I slid 15 feet trying to stop.

I am frequently a pedestrian myself. I walked to work all last winter, crossing Park Street twice a day. I understand the rights of pedestrians. I also understand their responsibilities which you, madam, apparently do not. There was no one behind me. It would have been wise to wait for me and the pick-up truck in the other lane to pass and then cross the road. It is not -5F this morning; you were not in danger of frostbite. You were, however, in danger of being run over by a driver who was doing everything right (except, I guess, for not anticipating that a pedestrian near the University would do something unwise).

Sincerely,
Me

Last night we had 5" of fluffy snow on top of our dense, frozen snow pack. Happily it is dry and fluffy -- easy to get off the car and easy to shovel. Last night when I got home from knitting I shoveled the driveway and then parked. This morning I went out very early to shovel again. My next door neighbor was just finishing up her driveway (and my sidewalk!) and offered me the use of her snowblower. So I did the driveway, my elderly neighbor's drive and her sidewalk, all in the time I would have spent to shovel out my driveway. I like the snowblower. :)

On my way to work I stopped at our awesome neighborhood hardware store. They've been selling salt as fast as they get in, and so are selling it first-come first-served, no reservations. I tried to buy a bag of salt to be picked up later, but they said they couldn't. Instead they took my name and number and called me 40 minutes later when the truck came in with the salt. The guys at Quality Hardware are working really hard to keep us stocked with the salt we all need -- the owner's retired father drove two pallets of salt up to the door and I got one of those bags. They were really apologetic that they couldn't give me my usual discount because they were paying a premium to get this salt in. No worries.

Oh yeah. Gene, my maintenance guy at work, gave me a snow brush. He says the college kids threw away a bunch of them when they moved out in August and he saved a couple. So now I've got a snow brush to replace the one that's lost somewhere in storage.

I'm doing ok driving in the snow. The car wallows or sways occasionally in soft snow ruts, but I just hang on and keep going, and so far I haven't hit anything, thank God.

I stopped at the Farmer's Market this afternoon after work. It was raining, so I figured that they would be short on customers. I bought asparagus, morel mushrooms, and a dozen eggs. At home they turned into a wonderful asparagus & mushroom omelet with arugula & carrot salad (from Saturday's market) on the side and home made bread. Yum!