Catching up the last two months

Blame the usual culprits for our lack of posts - busy jobs, general laziness, illegal immigration, The Wire DVDs from Netflix. Above all, blame the spring yardwork. Here are some of the highlights that have occurred since the last post.

Susie and Keith visited Madison. Here Susie sets up a tug-of-war between Lula and Coca.

More dog hijinks at the dog park. This picture was taken about 10 seconds after Chris demanded that Pacino not lay in the mud. Pacino looks quite pleased with himself.

The garden: leaf mulch from Olbrich that we picked up and unloaded.


Here the leaf mulch has been skillfully applied to the perennial garden by LL.

And here is the vegetable garden. Onion sets and potatoes are in the front of the picture. The trellis for pole beans and sugar snap peas is in the back of the garden. At the opposite side of the garden the spinach and leaf lettuce is starting to appear.

The magnolia tree blooms this year (Last year all the buds froze). We had a neighborhood party to celebrate it yesterday.

Go beagles!

As you can see, we're all excited here in Madison.

On Tuesday, a dog named Uno was the first ever beagle to win best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. The show has been going on since 1877, but they have "only" awarded a best in show since 1907.

Beagles everywhere are celebrating.

And how about a picture of Rodney Dangerfield, RIP.

Coca's first birthday

Saturday, February 9 was Coca's first birthday. As temperatures were in the single digits, we decided to postpone her birthday party. I think we'll celebrate with a dog party on the one-year anniversary of her adoption when the weather is nicer in April.



Notice that Coca is cuddled up with Jeanine's Packer/Badger blanket, and Rebecca's quilt rests on the back of the chair. We really like both quilts, especially in this cold weather.

Dinner at Fresco

Amy, Claire, Erin, Jannea, Sterling, and I went out last night. We had lots of things to celebrate: Finley and Henry's births, Jannea's new job, Sterling's new house, the long winter... Usually we meet at one person's house, but this time we met at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the wonderful restaurant on the top floor. We enjoyed another great night together!

Another big snow event!

Madison received 13.3 inches of snow on Wednesday. This brings our seasonal total to 73 inches, just 3 inches shy of the record.

Here are two pictures of Coca enjoying the snow:




Here are two videos of Coca romping in the snow. You can see that she is still working on responding to the "Come" command...





The UW cancelled classes after 3:30 pm, and the bus service stopped running at 7 pm. Most of my students trudged through the snow to come to my 12:05 pm lecture. About ten people came to my 1:20 pm office hours, and two people came by my office after their 2:25 pm classes were cencelled by their instructors for extra help. I really enjoy the teaching. Based on the feed back that I hear from my students, they are satisfied with the course so far.