Flocked bikes locked up to a rack at the top of State Street.

The top of State Street has always seemed like a cozy place to me, and especially so on this frozen morning when my destination is Michelangelo's coffee shop (the awning marked "coffe" to the right) for a piping hot beverage.

We're all hoping that, by this time tomorrow, the snow will be gone, and we can eat our acorns without having to dig through the white crap to find them.

Sneg.

That's the Russian word for "snow" and I like it a lot right now because it sounds sort of snot-like and messy.

I've of two minds on snow.

On the one hand, I like snow so much that I moved back here, the state where I grew up, because I missed the variations of the seasons, and snow was one of those variations. They have snow in other latitudes, but not like we have it here (except in northern Japan; they have a pretty darned good winter season there).

I love the silent snow fall at night, the thrilling mid-day flurry, the fearsome attack of a stinging gale-driven snow. I love the way wind makes it pillow up. I love heavy, wet snow that throws bare tree branches into sharp relief as it sticks to the wind-swept side.

When the temps stay well below zero, the snow remains a flowing, fluffy blanket, but after just a day of warmer temps, even in the lower thirties, it crusts over so that an adventuresome boy can walk across its frozen surface or, if the mood strikes, and it certainly will, he can stomp holes in it.

Just a foot of snow fall will lead adults to heap it up at the ends of driveways high enough for kids to dig labrynthine fortresses in it.

Snow's real purty, and it's lots of fun.

On the other hand ... this is freaking April! Enough already! I'm ready to stroll down the street in my shirt sleeves on my lunch break. No such luck today. One look at the slush-covered sidewalk and the runnels of melting snow in the streets and I went back to my cubicle to read.

Enough, thank you. Time for spring.

Oh, Ye Gods!

Look at the date. Look at the date! Does that say April? Of course it does! So what's with all this white crap?

The first guy who makes a "global warming" joke to me gets a roundhouse kick right in the nose.

Your car may be a piece of junk if:

- any part of it is held in place with bungee cords, baling wire, twine, duct tape, masking tape or any kind of tape

- any part of it is missing that would be obvious even to people who had never seen a car before

- it has been folded, spindled or mutilated (bonus points if the wheel scrapes against a bent fender)

The Modest Offices of WORT Radio are only four blocks from where I work, but either they transmit from another location or they broadcast at about 50 watts of power, because I've got to constantly fiddle with the tuner of my radio to pull in the station. After two o'clock on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday it's worth the trouble, though, because that's when they play plenty of hot jazz.

[Footnote: According to the station's website, they broadcast a 2,000-watt signal from a tower on the southwest side of town.]

Ranks of Lantern-like Lamps line the Facade of the Lorraine on West Washington Street


The Lorraine used to be one of the grand old hotels in downtown Madison, back when there were grand old hotels in Madison. If it were still a hotel, it would be called The Grande Olde Hotel and be crammed to the rafters with pretentious geegaws and foofery. Either that, or it would be the seediest rat trap in town.

But it's not. It's been refurbished as condos, and pretty nice ones, from what I can tell of the photos I've seen posted by bloggers who've been inside, and even a few who live there. Even from the outside, it looks like quite a beautiful old pile now. The copper patina on these lanterns and around the overhang add a venerably aged look to the front entrance.

If there's anything I don't like about The Lorraine, it's that the face of the building almost always seems to be in shade, but that's a very minor quibble.

Ice Out

Open water is slowly making a return to Monona Bay.

I had a little walk along North Shore Drive and took a detour through the park by the rowing club's boat house. The rip rap has soaked up enough warmth from the sun to force a retreat of the ice sheet.

The waterway under the trestle leading out to Monona Bay is entirely free of ice now. You could've walked under that trestle on a sheet of ice six inches thick a week and a half ago.

... and there's a little more open water on the other side of the trestle, but there's still quite a bit of ice out there.

A coworker said she saw a couple guys row out to the ice in a boat, then climb out onto the ice to fish.

Damn.

My Darling B shows the Timster how it was done in the early days of video games.

It doesn't get much easier to grasp than Pac-Man: One joystick, that's it. No jump button, no fire button, no other buttons at all after you punch "one player" or "two player."

He thrashed his mother. He couldn't beat his old man at Galaga, however.

The video games were part of an exhibit at the museam of the Wisconsin Historical Society on the western corner of capital square. It was a lot more popular than we though it'd be; we had to wait in line quite a while to play Galaga.

Spring!

Pretty close to spring, anyway.

True, it did snow -- just flurries -- during the dinner hour today, but for a while we had some pretty darned nice, I dare say even warm weather.

And yesterday we had sunshine and temps in the sixties! The snow's just about gone from every lawn and pavement.

As the warm temps hung in for the second day in a row, the water on Lake Mendota began to open up. Ducks enjoyed this pool along the shore near the campus and ... are those guys ice fishing in the distance?

I would've gone out there to see what they were catching, if it weren't for the fact that I didn't feel like going for a polar plunge today.

From what I heard, the ice was six to eight inches thick -- probably enough to safely support me, but from what I could see, it was also shot through with deep cracks and covered in water.

In the interest of staying dry, I stayed ashore.

No Diving

Look at all those damn rocks.

And shallow rocks, at that.

On the Ice I

The weather was so sunny and warm that I could hardly wait to peel out of my pyjamas and take a walk.

There's a park at the end of Frostwoods Avenue that fronts on Lake Monona. I could see a few people on the ice fishing.

I haven't been fishing in years, and the last time I was ice fishing I wasn't any taller than my dad's knees, but there's a weird, almost irresistable attraction to walking across a frozen lake. The thought crossed my mind a couple weeks ago, when the temps were below freezing and I felt confident that the ice was safe. With the sun beating down and a warm wind blowing today, I wasn't so confident, but if I went sploot through the ice, maybe one of the fishermen would see me disappear and call the EMTs.

So I took a little walk across Lake Monona ...

On the Ice II

Ice fishing on Lake Monona is not going to last many more days past this weekend as temps climb into the fifties and the insulating layer of snow melts off.

In my short thirty-minute walk across the ice, I watched fishermen scoot their shelters from hole to hole, leaving a trail of shavings behind them.

On the Ice III

Contrails accented the wide, blue sky over the bay as I headed back toward the south shore.

On the Ice IV

I came ashore in a park along the bicycle trail that runs from Bridge Road to John Nolan Drive, through a narrow sliver of the city of Monona that hugs the south shoreline of the lake. The ice there was thin, as I could see from a hole somebody had chopped in the ice about ten yards from shore (for a cold plunge?), but I took the chance anyway, following a pair of tracks somebody had made earlier in the morning, and didn't get wet.

It's brassy-looking, it's about the size of a quarter (shown below for comparison), and it's about the ugliest coin minted in my lifetime. A few of the state quarters have made my face wrinkle up, but they don't come close to this new dollar for sheer ghastliness. Washington looks like he's been constipated for at least a week, and the the back looks like a cheap anodized token from a casino.

I spent five of these around town today, just to see what kind of reaction I might get. Not much. Nobody asked what I meant by trying to pass these off as money. Nobody refused to take them. Only the cashier at the bookstore gave them a second look before she dropped them in her cash drawer with the dollar bills and made change.

We got a little more snow last night. Good thing, too. We needed more of that.

A rabbit exploring the patio caught my eye as I was washing dishes, so I grabbed my camera, but too late to catch the rabbit. The back yard had that weird beige sodium light over it, though, so I tried to catch it again with a snapshot. Mixed success with that, as always.

My kids grew up mostly in Aurora, Colorado, where it snows but not very often, and the snow melts almost right away. I still remember the first time I told them that, back in Wisconsin where I grew up, snow sometimes fell on the ground in November and didn't go away until March. I think that was the first time my oldest son thought I was flat-out lying to him.

At the Orpheum

Ripped from the headlines, or some bizarre kind of accidental haiku? Or both?

Not Exactly SRO

Last night's snowfall kept an awful lot of people and vendors away from this morning's Dane County Farmer's Market at the senior center.

My Darling B tucks into her chicken-friend buffalo.

That's right: Chicken-fried buffalo. I would've never thought of it, either, but that's what they were serving for breakfast at the Dane County Farmer's Market this morning, along with fried eggs and a scoop of grits smothered in gravy, a cup of cranberry juice and a bottomless cuppa joe, all for six and a half bucks.

Prelude to the Blizzard

Snow began to fall in the evening, and the lowering clouds reflected the city light back at us.

100% Chance of Snow

The back yard appeared to be even brighter than the front.

My Darling B reviewed the forecast and found they predicted a 100% chance of snow. She seemed troubled by the certainty of the science. "How can they predict absolutely that, without a doubt, snow will fall?"

Snowmelt

The temps have jumped from below-zero to mid-forties. Everybody's out in their short jackets, or shirtsleeves, circling capital square once again.

The warm weather has melted off almost all the snow and it's running across the sidewalks in reflective sheets. The reflection of the YWCA - the old Hotel Belmont - jumped out of the water at my feet as I strolled up Mifflin Street.

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.

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