Lamont family visit

Ed and Ellie visited this weekend. The visit was highlighted by a trip to Eplegaarden for apple and pumpkin picking. A great time was enjoyed by all, in spite of jacked-up apple prices and draconian apple-gathering policies. Here we are pre apple gather.And post apple gather we are heavily leaden with multiple varieties of apples. We also ate about 5 apples each during the picking.

Plus we had a chance to see Liana's swank new professor's lab in the chemistry building. It has a great view of the campus near Johnson street.

Rank clan invasion

The Rank family visited Madison and we got a chance to meet the new members of their family - the second set of twins Julianne and Vincent. From left to right - Eloise, Liana holding Julianne, and Matt holding Claudia. They visited our yard and we ate lunch at Ella's deli.

And here's Eloise carefully holding Vincent.


Sorry, Beth, for not getting you in a photo. Other notable absences include Coca, who went absolutely crazy with 4 children around and so was left outside for the visit.

Cover Model

Each year Chemists celebrate Mole Day on October 23 at 6:02 am. Get it? One mole equals 6.02 x 10^23 particles...

Many educators use this celebration to reach-out and excite students. At the Journal, we publish a special issue on the theme designated by the American Chemical Society. This year's theme is "Having a Ball with Chemistry". We filled the issue with great articles aimed at junior high and high school students that related to bucky-balls, ball and stick molecular models, and materials used to generate balls and other sporting equipment. In addition, Journal staff contributed pictures of their kids (or dog) playing with balls for the cover.

Labor Day weekend

Susie, Keith, and Lula came for a visit this past weekend. Lula is such a cutie. If Susie and Keith hadn't gotten her through Petfinder.com, then Scott and I probably wouldn't have found Coca.

Keith and Jeff rode their bikes from outside of Chicago to Kettle Marine, where Susie, Keith, Lula, Becky, and Jeff camped Saturday night. As if that wasn't enough biking, Keith rode the trails at Kettle Marine, and then he biked from the campsite to Madison. He's my hero. It was about 130 miles total. After burning all those calories, Jeff and Keith deserved a big meal at the Taste of Madison. (Not sure what the rest of us did to deserve it...)


In addition to the great food, there was a lot of music at the Taste. One cool classic rock band caught our attention because it was made up of kids:


Thursday was our third anniversary. Scott and I went out for a really nice dinner at Fresco.

Rutledge Street update

My, how our gardens grow:

I really enjoy cutting flowers from our garden to bring inside. The vase from Jen and Chris is the perfect size and shape to display them.


We enjoyed lots of tomatoes, green peppers, eggplant, green beans, and herbs over the past few weeks. The butternut squash are still getting ready.

The weather has been perfect recently. It hasn't been too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry. Here's Scott getting ready to bike into work this week:


The other big development is that we put away Coca's crate. She's a big girl now, and we can trust her to roam the house while we're not home. Of course, that is assuming that she's received a decent amount of exercise and we've put away all pens and pencils. Eventually we'll move the desk from upstairs and a bookshelf into that open area.