Smith family visit

The Smiths came for a visit this week. They all look great! Ava is a charming little girl who takes her role as Big Sister very seriously. Olivia is much bigger than when I saw her in January.


The Madison zoo changed a lot since the last time I attended it in 2001... Plus, everything a lot more fun to enjoy it with Ava. We fed the goats,


rode the train,


climbed on the new playground,



and enjoyed each other's company.


Ava had many interesting things to say about how the lions are similar to Dagney and how the great apes are similar to us.

Coca was such a good girl all weekend. She played well with Ava and kept making Olivia giggle with her kisses. Coca continues to improve walking nicely on a leash.


Here Olivia eats cereal and avocados. Notice that Coca is waiting patiently to clean up any dropped food.


We toasted Madison's newest PhD Jeet at the terrace!


Then we had dinner at Tex Tubb's.

Bathroom Make-Over

Here's the before shot of the bathroom:



Here's the after:

Garden update

The rose bush blooms beautifully! This is the best it's looked, which is especially amazing because it was infested by critters last spring. Scott brought it back from the near-dead.


The rain certainly helped the vegetable garden. The onions, potatoes, lettuce, squashes, and herbs are thriving. Two of the cucumbers plants died again this year, but Scott planted another set.


Slugs nibbled on the lettuce and essentially destroyed the spinach, but we enjoyed a whole row of lettuce. The tomatoes, peppers, and green beans continue to grow. The peas started flowering.

Weekend of celebrations

We just finished a busy weekend in Illinois. Liana and I went down to Chicago on Friday for the suprise 30th birthday party for her longtime friend Susie. Here she is with Liana at the restaurant, prior to the consumption of multiple "bellatinis," which energize the mind, body and spirit through a combination of alcohol and high fructose corn syrup with peach flavoring.

While Liana and her mom chilled in Lisle, I joined her brother Jeff for his bachelor party at the Lamont cabin at Lake Wildwood. It was a fairly low-key affair, consisting mostly of golf, beer, food and debates about timely topics such as plagiarism, Obama, and the origins of obesity.

Hard rain's gonna fall

In Madison I think the total rainfall this past weekend was about 6 inches, more or less depending exactly where you live. That's not as much as the Dells which had 9 inches and real flooding. But here is where the Yahara river exits into Lake Monona, and usually you can see several feet of rock that are now covered with water.

After two years of a relatively dry basement this storm was too much, and some water is seeping in. The partially refinished office has been cleaned out - it had carpeting that got soaked. Fortunately the beer making equipment is high and dry. And on the plus side we finally had a reason to re-organize the basement, which had been on the to-do list for approximately one year.

New game

We have a new game for Coca. It's called "Toss the small stuffed animal in the air and watch her catch it in a dramatic jumping manner." We are open to any suggestions for a shorter name.