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.