Lost in the Lights

Looking up into the whalebacked ceiling of a big theater with the house lights on is sometimes so much more like staring into infinity that it makes me dizzy.

Distinguished Lecturer in Time Lapse

My nifty digital camera can snap photographs under many adverse conditions. It can't, however, take a picture of Sarah Vowell when she's standing, floodlit, on center stage at the Memorial Union. Too bad.

It's the Mad City Model Railroad Show!

The biggest part of it, anyway. There was more to see in a few other rooms, but this is the main floor with the biggest layouts. Other rooms had smaller layouts and vendors galore, but no matter where I went, the floor was packed butts-to-bellybuttons with train nerds.

Mad City Rail Show '07

There were all kinds of model trains on display, from the classic Lionel toy trains ...

Mad City Railroad Show '07

... to some of the smallest scale models. These N scale engines, most just a few inches long, loiter in a maintenance yard.

Mad City Rail Show '07

Some of the models are big enough to climb into and drive!

Mad City Rail Show '07

I'm a big fan of steam locomotives, even when they're this small.

Mad City Rail Show '07

Some of the most eye-catching models weren't even part of a model rail layout.

Round pegs in a snow fall

The picnic area at Mifflin and Main.

After the snow

Stairs at the capital blanketed with the fresh snow we got Monday morning.

The cat with the warmest seat in the house

Weekends are the only time we have the luxury of a nap.

I woke in my easy chair to find that Boo decided to take advantage of Darling B's warmth and recumbency.

Found among the shelves of a local liquor store

"Tempered over burning witches."

There's nothing that can't be made into a novelty beer these days.

Smiley, Happy People

When the downtown fine arts center became the Overture Center, these faces, locked together like a jigsaw puzzle in the hippest 70's style, got painted the same faded army blanket green as the rest of the building, effectively hiding them from view. The only way you notice them now is when the sun hits them at the right angle, which strikes me as odd, given that the mission of the building is to be a showcase for the arts, and these are certainly a form of some kind of art.

I took My Darling B to the Dane County Farmer's Market at the senior center in downtown Madison this morning for breakfast and a bit of shopping.

We parked our car in the ramp next door.

It was a simple matter to pick out the cars owned by people attending the market.

You'll never guess who I saw at the parking ramp today

Lies they told me at Whole Foods

Just what the world needs: A two-bite brownie that you can eat in one bite.

The only thing better would be a whole tub full of two-bite/really one-bite brownies.

Here you go.

Among the sheep in Yorkshire

Many moons ago, I rucked up and hiked along the Pennine Way just a bit. I think it was the Pennine Way. The synapses don't fire the way they used to, y'know?

Anyway, the trail I followed threaded its way across many dozens of farmer's fields, all of them hemmed in by these stone walls that went on for miles.

Sheep and goats roamed the fields between, cropping the grass close to the ground and fertilizing the fields as they went.

Briancon, France

A friend of mine knew a friend of a friend who could get him a week's stay in a chalet on the French-Italian border where I learned to ski, after a fashion.

Our stay in the chalet was one night short of our time in Briancon, so we had to find a hotel in town for one more night. The town was a medieval walled city perched on the edge of a cliff.

I was a twenty-five-year-old from Spotweld, Wisconsin. I'd never been any place so exotic before in my life.

I remember as if it were yesterday ...

A view from the top of Malham Cove so gradiose it reduces me to cliche. Sorry about that.

As I was digging through a box of old photos I found this and other snapshots of a hiking trip I took through Yorkshire. I spent the night before this photo was taken in the yard of the farm in the center distance.

Malham Cove is a sheer wall of rock that's a favorite destination for climbers. I didn't climb the face of the escarpment, but instead followed a trail that went around and up to the top.

And it really does seem like only yesterday, or maybe a week ago at the very most. But it was, in fact, 1986. Tempus fugit.

... only yesterday

One end of Malham Cove ... from inside the cove, before I hiked to the top.

The escarpment rose out of the hillside with a lot more drama that I knew how to capture in a photo.

And I doubt you can make out the climbers on the rock face.

Which is why this is less than a photograph and more of a snapshot. Still, it gives you some idea how the cliff face slashed the hillside like a wound.

Too Much Fun Not To Share Right Now

Souper Bowl XI

It's Souper Bowl Saturday!

Yes, Saturday.

The local chapter of Habitat for Humanity hosts a yearly fund-raiser they call the Souper Bowl. For fifteen dollars, we can each pick out a hand-thrown bowl from those on display. My Darling B is having some trouble making a decision ...

Souper Bowl XI

High school students throw lumps of clay into graceful pottery, some for next year's Souper Bowl.

Souper Bowl XI

Your faithful reporter shows off our catch. Darling B's bowl is on the left, and my pick's on the right (your right, not mine).

Evening Geometry

A downtown parking ramp catches the last rays of the setting sun.

At the Antiques Mall

Sometimes they dig stuff up out of the midden heap that ignites a flicker of nostalgia or catches the imagination ...

... and sometimes it's just garbage. A Gulfspray aerosol bomb? Would somebody actually decorate with that?

Spotted at the antiques mall on Cottage Grove Road yesterday morning ...

An Odd Fish

On a stroll through an antique mall on Cottage Grove Road, I ran across this contraption, advertised as a German-made "folding boat."

The strange boat's skeletal nature made it quite eye-catching. I'd never seen anything like it before.

A clever system of hinges and hooks allowed the boat to be broken up and stowed into five canvas bags, according to the sign.

Barbie wants a new dish washer

So, with no small amount of trepidation, I took the doors off some cupboard space, grabbed a saw, a wrecking bar and a BFH and made some space for it.

After lunch I'll wire a circuit for it and sweat a three-way valve to the hot water feed under the sink.

Then, some time just before dinner, the good people at Sears have promised to deliver said dish washing machine to our door.

If the gods smile upon us, this evening's dinner dishes will be washed through the miracle of modern technology.

If the gremlins are instead out and about, there may be a short delay ...

Defoliated

I'll come back in six months when the leaves have turned all this stonework into a lost temple.

Kimonos with a fish theme

On display at Whole Foods on University. Many more there; worth a look.

Gratuitous Winter Snapshot

I don't normally approve of grafitti ...

I can't help but nod and grin at this, though.

The Coffee Shop Ground Zero Sunday Night

About fifty or so people gathered for an anti-war rally.

Among the guests at the rally

His honor, the mayor of Madison, Dave Cieslewicz, and Representative Tammy Baldwin.

On The Menu at Ground Zero

A look out the front window

After enduring weeks of snowless weather in December and January, slate-gray skies finally dump a load all at once over southern Wisconsin.

If you listen closely, you can hear the whine of thousands of snowmobile engines all cranking up at once.

A look out the back window

A bit chilly ...

Couldn't resist the pun. Sorry.

Reserved Seating

A stone bench in Elizabeth Link Free Park, between State and Gilman streets.

Not-Quite-Patiently Waiting

Coffee at Cleveland's

"Hey, I didn't notice the restaurant's picture was on the table cloth!" said my breakfast date last Saturday morning.

Up from the bottom

It's a limestone quarry redeveloped as loft apartments. It's a modern art installation titled Concrete Poop Dee Doo. It's the core of a nuclear reactor. It's about as far into the bowels of a downtown parking lot as you can get. It is.

A Back Alley near University Ave

There was so much going on here that it caught my eye.

Outside the Chazen Museum

Mother and Child, although nude, would be warm enough on this fine day.

Penguin Love

Pasted to a store front window on State Street.