I hate being a showoff, but I can't resist - some of the views around our new home are really very photogenic, and I don't think it's only because I'm a proud papa.

These wildflowers grow in the grass strip between our garage and the neighbor's yard. The dandelions I recognize, but I don't know what the plants with the blue blossoms are called. I'll have to do a little learning after having a good look around.

The bumblebees love these blue flowers; I was trying to catch a snapshot of the one that darted away just before I clicked the shutter.

Packing out of the rental apartment. We've been living here for nine months, but we won't miss it for a second. So long, broken fridge door handle! Farewell, laundry room as big as a phone booth! See ya, stinky sewage-soaked basement rug! Good-bye, garage door that doesn't open from outside!

The crew that made our move from the apartment possible! From left, Barb, Jim, Darren, Sue, Carrie and Tim. Behind them, Darren's monster trailer, pulled by Darren's monster pickup truck, into which all our belongings fit without the least bit of trouble. We're outta here!

The new abode was ready in nearly all respects, with a few small touch-ups needed here and there. Tim painted the kitchen cupboards for his Mom.

Most of hour household goods have been in storage for almost a year! The challenge: Make it all fit into our snug little home.

Moving our few possessions from the apartment was easy; stowing all the household goods we had held in storage was quite another problem altogether. Barb spent days trying to figure out how to arrange all the kitchen utensils, pots and pans, plates and flatware so that it would fit in the older, smaller kitchen layout of our home.

It's not a home without a cat or two underfoot ... or, in this case, on your seat.

The missus and I would like to express our kindest thanks for your congratulations and shared stories of home ownership.

We're just a little giddy about the prospect of owning our own home again. Maybe you can tell?

Barb watches happily as I sign away our paychecks for the next thirty years. We felt much less nervous about it this time around (we were homeowners in a previous life).

The sun rose on our last full day in Cottage Grove today. After the closing, we ate lunch on the kitchen floor of our very own house.

One of the oddest-looking buildings in Madison has got to be Best Western's "Inn On The Park," the hotel at the corner of Main and Carroll streets. If you're walking south along Carroll and look up, you'll see a rather boring-looking typical hotel building with no distinguishing features, other than the odd-sized picture window below the top floor.

Draw a little closer, though, and you see a different building ... it almost looks like two buildings: one slightly more interesting high-rise with wider, more visually interesting bay windows on the lake side, being swallowed by the blocky, boring chunk of a building, which has the appearance of having descended from space, possibly to transmogrify all our beautiful old architecture into Soviet-style block houses.

Look at that lovely scalloped corner, fighting to hold off the blockification crushing down on it. There was so much potential for this building until the architectural firm of Nickolai Ivanovich Sovietsky & Assoc. took over the design project and turned it into an experiment in nuveau concret.

Madison's renovated Museum of Contemporary Art opened last weekend. It seems to be most well-known for the glass prow-like corner that sticks out from the corner of Henry and State Streets. A glass stairway winds its way up the inside of the prow, where visitors can pause to watch the crowd on State Street, or just stand around in a group on a landing and chat.

The museum had some art, too, but the glass prow and the stairway was visually much more engaging. Make of that what you will.

As you walk up you can see each tread edge-on; they appear to be several layers of glass laminated for strength.

It's an intriguing idea and it was executed wonderfully, but if I hear one more person call them a "stairway to heaven" I'll puke.

From inside the prow a visitor can see three other triangle buildings: the one on the right is a Noodles restaurant, directly out front there's the world-famous Triangle Market, and just off to the left there's an Italian restaurant, Tutto Pasta Trattoria.

One last look back ...

A fetching view of Lake Mendota from the steps of the capital, looking up North Hamilton Street.

What's that bit of orange, caught in the tree to the right?

The tulips on the north lawn are yellow; those on the south lawn are red & pink. They've all blossomed this week, just in case you want to plan a trip to see them next year.

One last view of the capitol, the trees leafing out and lady Forward shining in the sun.

"That shall also content me."

We made a "pre-closing inspection" of our soon-to-be home sweet home last Saturday. The seller has moved nearly everything of his out of the house, with the notable exception of about a dozen pairs of shoes. The few remaining odds and ends were apparently destined for the dumpster parked in the driveway.

We're counting the hours now ...

We've moved house so many times to date that we know this spacious-looking room will soon be impassibly clogged with stacks of boxes and haphazardly-arranged furniture. We think of that, and sigh.

But it'll be our clogged room. No more living like a peeg in Potter's Field!

I'll be grilling bratwurst on that deck soon enough! Okay, technically I'll be grilling brats on a Weber BBQ, because the deck by itself doesn't get nearly hot enough, but the Weber, the brats and I will all be on the deck.

And B is already planning to scatter pots of herbs here, to catch the morning sun.

To Market, To Market


My Darling B inspects the herbs on offer at the Dane County Farmer's Market, which opened for the season this weekend. She's already loaded up on baked goods, and she'll move on to the flowering plants next.

Grace Episcopal church through the weirdly-backlit oaks on the capital lawn.

The morning sunrise is reflected off the condos across Mifflin Street.

Maples are noticeably budding out, and the lawn is a beautiful spring green.

Where are the posts?

For some obscure, technical reason that must have to do with encroaching senility, I seem to have unlearned how to post photos to this site. I get the pop-up, I browse for the photos, I hit the upload button, and then ... nothing. No uploaded photo, just a blank page, and I can't figure out what's going wrong. For the time being, I'm loading photos up to a page on my web site.

Snow Returns to Madison



Everybody I knew was dreading the storm that was supposed to bring six inches of snow to Madison shortly after midnight last night. I'm possibly the only person in town who was disappointed to look out his window this morning to find a snowless driveway.

The storm struck shortly after seven o'clock this morning and left town in the late afternoon after dumping only an inch or so.

We could have had so much more fun, but here are a couple snaps of what we got.

The gable on the roof of Grace Episcopal facing Carroll Street, sporting a new throw of snow.

Quisling Terrace



On Gorham Street, this modest apartment building catches the eye, especially on a clear, sunny day like this.

Looking northwest across Gorham Street from the parking lot at Bethel Lutheran Church. The retro look is popular now; I wonder if the Quisling is popular by inference, or because the rents are low?

The Quisling comes from the Jetson-ish era when architecture featured fins, and lots of them.

The office entrance features this wrap-around concrete hood, punched through with futuristic holes. Steel grilles trim the windows and match the rail by the door.

The AT&T Building



From the visually creative Quisling, we shift to the blank and massive AT&T building on West Mifflin Street, four towering stories of oppressively drab, undressed concrete squatting like a Jawa sandcrawler on the south corner across Henry Street from the library.

For Sale At Auction

We've just returned from an estate sale. I believe there is almost nothing you can't find at these auctions. Case in point: Can you imagine anyone having this in the front hall? We have found all the typical Americana on sale, from beer signs to quilts to smut collections and every kind of furniture, but this five-foot-tall religious icon cast in plaster is a first.

Le Penseur ponders his muse.

We all have our price. What is The Thinker worth? I didn't stick around to find out.

A bit of Madison ephemera — a crate, sadly empty, from the Fauerbach brewery. Jim guessed it would go for quite a bit of cash, so I didn't stick around to find out. I had other fish to fry.

Jackpot! Five different treatments of the poker-playing dogs (the fifth was cropped out of the shot). They were only glossies clipped from the pages of a magazine, so I had high hopes of snagging the entire set for five or six bucks, but someone more exhuberant than I ran the bid up to eight dollars apiece. I'm pretty sure the frames weren't worth that much.

I've no idea what the strange mechanisms in this box were. If I had been strapped to a chair in a tiny cell with bright lights all around me and a grinning man in a lab coat opened this box in front of me, I would have been scared enough to sign any papers or tell him anything he wanted to know.

The dovetailed wooden box was very, very cool, though; I wanted it badly enough to stick around until it went on the block. They sold it and its weird contents for sixty-five dollars, much more than we had budgeted for that day.

Somebody liked owls.

A lot.

Quivey's Grove



A small, some would even say 'intimate' setting to enjoy a simple lunch. The venue was an old stone outbuilding in times past, but with the proper attention and this lovely addition they've added it's quite a cozy place.

Quivey's grove again, looking across the same room in the other direction. The weather-worn timbers, no doubt salvaged from a nearby dairy barn gone derilect, are all just for effect, but it's a very pleasant effect indeed.
The original stone outbuilding, seen in the background, is finished in the same way.

There was music playing but not too loudly to drown conversation, thank you.

The food's delicious, by the way. Simple, as the ketchup bottle on the table will testify, but tasty. I had the ruben. There just aren't enough dishes on anybody's lunchtime menu with sauerkraut, so I take it when I can get it (what the hell, it's a harmless passion and the only woman who'll kiss me doesn't seem to mind). Unfortunately, their ruben wasn't dressed with sauerkraut, but a pickled substitute. I liked it anyway.

Nothing soaks up the sun's rays like a cat

Rarely so discomposed, Boo sprawled in a sunny patch at my feet and purred with abandon, begging for a pet. How could I say no? Moments later, her ears scratched to perfection and tummy rubbed smooth, she burrowed her way into a folded blanket and disappeared, where she would stay until she needed another pat down or a sunny recharge. O, to be a cat.

This is why we have cats.



Tom asked us, "Why do you have them?" Because a nap in a comfy chair is a thousand times better when you have a warm cat purring softly on your tummy.

The early morning sunrise on the capitol.



There must be an optical illusion in effect here, because the capitol appears to tower over me even when I'm taking these photos from the seventh floor window of the building where I work. On reviewing these photos, it seems rather much smaller.

The sitting man casts a long shadow in the afternoon hours.

A New Window Arrangement at Taylor's



They usually have some kind of theme ...

... if I could only put my finger on it.

It'll come to me if I study it long enough.

Hmmm ...