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The calendars below help me to keep track of when we’ve gotten rain in Madison. Dates with a light-blue background signify dates that Madison received measureable precipitation.

After many delays, I finally got some of our photos from Europe scanned into my computer and on-line.

Some of the photos this time have an accompanying audio file. We took a Minidisc recorder and a stereo microphone with us on that trip and we recorded some of the sounds we heard. If you just want to check out the recordings (some of which are better than others), check out the set of links on the Recordings page.

Today, I heard about Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve in Duluth, MN. Last year, Hawk Ridge saw over 101,000 broad-winged hawks migrate overhead in a single day. On the 16th of this month, Hawk Ridge saw over 31,000 broad-winged hawks migrate overhead in a single day.

I’m generally happy to get a few different bird species to my backyard feeders on a regular basis and to see a single hawk or two on a car trip. I cannot imagine what 31,000 or more hawks flying overhead must look like. I’ll have to add “Hawk Ridge in September” to my list of Places to See.

Recent actions by so-called Progressives really got me worked into a lather. So, I wrote a rant about it, and posted it to a local forum.

Two days ago, Sarah purchased a new bicycle, a Fuji League. The bike is a lightweight road bike without excessive bells and whistles.

She had been looking for a new road bike since last summer when she finally decided that her old road bike was simply too big for her.The frame of her new bike is red and white. The frame is chro-moly, which should absorb some of the usual bumps resident in Madison-area roads.

She bought it from a local bicycle retailer’s “used” department. However, the bike clearly had never been ridden for anything longer than a block or two. The chain and rear sprockets were in pristine condition. The rims evinced no signs that brake pads had ever touched them.

Madison ordinances require that all bicycles kept in the city be registered (licensed). Normally, the cost is $10/bike. However, once a family goes over the two bike threshold, the cost drops to $8/bike. Since we now own seven bikes, we’re clearly getting the volume discount.

Even though we have seven bikes, I expect that number to drop to six at some point as Sarah unloads her old, too large road bike. However, if I can find a cheap frame in decent condition, I’m going to purchase it and turn it into a fixed gear. Also, Sarah has expressed some interest in owning a single-speed of her own, so we may be on the lookout for another road frame that fits her we can convert to a single speed.

So, even as our bike herd is culled, we expect it to grow in the future.

Jonatha Brooke released her “Steady Pull” album in 2001. I recently found a copy of it and while I don’t necessarily enjoy the whole album, I have to be careful because one song on the album is strangely addictive. “Linger” [mp3 sample] worms its way into my head and it generally takes 24 hours or longer to get it out.

The music is carefully crafted pop, but the lyrics themselves are strangely compelling.

“I live in Utah, where the only virgin wool comes from the sheep that can
outrun the Mormons and the Republicans.”
— Utah Phillips, “Cannonball Blues

The line is from an old song, but it’s still funny.

What on earth have we been doing since we got back from our honeymoon? That’s a good question.This last weekend we tried to catch up some of our work around the house. We moved mountains of laundry through the washer and out onto the clothesline in the backyard. I mowed the lawn. Sarah did some weeding and pruning. After mowing the lawn, I put some caulk around the basement windows where the original caulk had dried out and broken off. Sarah also put up some curtains in our office. We had several that we saved from our house in Alameda, but she made one more because the ones we saved weren’t quite long enough.

Yesterday, we went mountain biking in Governor Dodge State Park which is about one hour west of Madison. A so-called real mountain biker probably wouldn’t appreciate the trails there as they aren’t terribly technical, but we’re not out there riding to experience single-track spills and thrills. We just like to go farther, faster in the woods than we can on foot.

The park itself was delightful. We encountered exactly nobody on the trails. The weather was plenty warm, but not terribly humid. There is a pleasant lake and beach area in the park that attracts numerous families and other sun-seekers. While we were eating our lunch (after biking), we watched some kids swamp their canoe about twenty feet from the dock. They didn’t know how to get back in the right way, so they ended up back in the canoe with so much water that just the tips of the canoe were visible above the water. It was fun to watch.

After we got back to Madison, I watched the Vikings game while Sarah walked over to a friend’s house to visit.

Labor Day weekend, we laid around the house most of Saturday. We sat out on the patio, in the shade of the house, and read, snacked, and drank. It was a very pleasant and relaxing way to spend the day. For lunch, we had four bratwurst from BratFest. Sarah ate one, and I ate somehow found room for three in my stomach.

The next day, Sunday, we spent most of the day installing a ceiling fan in our bedroom. That wasn’t on the agenda when we woke up, but it needed to be done. Of course, none of our home improvement projects can be completed without at least one mid-project trip to the hardware store. So, while we made that trip, we also stopped at BratFest and bought four more brats for lunch.

Installing the fan took a fair amount of time because we first had to remove the old lamp, and all of the old wiring from the electrical box. Since our house was built using a technique called something like “spider web” electrial construction, all the wiring for any given circuit can be found in a ceiling electrial box. So, the master bedroom circuit has three outlets on it, including one in the office. That means that there were four pieces of conduit attached to the ceiling electrical box.

After removing the old lamp, and untwisting the various wires, it was up into the attic for me. That was easily the worst part of the job. The attic was at least 110 degrees. I was sweating so profusely, that I soaked through both my shirt and pants in twenty minutes of being up there.

I needed to get into the attic to remove the old electrical box. In this house, the electrical boxes are fastened to joists via some old system. So, I had to crawl up there with a wrecking bar, a hammer, and the like to remove the old electrical box. Once that was done, I was able to install a new “ceiling fan approved” electrial box that would support the weight of the ceiling fan.

Once I had that done, needed to enlarge the hole in the ceiling that allowed access to the electrical box. The old electrial box had some sort of cowling on that it limited access to it from below. So, after persauding the plaster to fall with the wrecking bar, she fit the hole to the new electrical box.

When we purchased the ceiling fan, the box said it was a “quick connect” type that could be easily and quickly installed. Even as I read that on the box, I knew that it wasn’t true. Sure, once you spend six man hours getting everything ready for the ceiling fan, it will most likely be a relative snap to finish the installation. That turned out to be the case. Once we had the electrical box in place, it only took about an hour to attach the mounting bracket, wire up the fan, attach the decorative fairing, and balance the fan blades.

With that done, we took the rest of the day off. On Labor Day, we tackled our basement. Since we moved into this house a little over one year ago, the basement really hadn’t gotten any attention. As such, we tended to just dump things down there we didn’t want cluttering up the first floor. Such a policy naturally lead to junk everywhere on the foor.

So, we spent most of the day sorting through the junk in the basement. We ended up with three boxes of stuff for Goodwill, several bags of trash, and an amazing amount of floorspace.

In addition to all of the above, Sarah has been getting ready for her classes. Today is the first day of her first full week of classes.

I’ve also been getting up early every morning to take Dalla to a dog park that is within walking distance of our house. All of the all-day dog parks are driving distance from our house, but there is a limited hours dog park just ten minutes away. The hours are 05:00-07:30, so we have to get up early and get over there before time expires. She has a great time there chasing and being chased.

Sarah made the (faulty) assumption last night that I had seen the movie Pretty Woman. As we were discussing what movies I hadn’t seen growing up, I realized that my movie selection criteria at the time were actually somewhat simplistic.

So, I made up a flowchart that allows anyone to predict, with a reasonably high degree of accuracy, if I saw any given movie that was released before I started college.

The useless disclaimers attached to e-mails by many corporate e-mail systems really rub me the wrong way.Since the disclaimers are all but unenforcable, they only serve to eat up resources like bandwidth, disk space, and processor time that could otherwise be used more productively.

For instance, today I got an e-mail message in which the actual message itself consisted of 48 characters.

The disclaimer attached to the bottom of the message totaled 1804 characters.

That means that for every letter my correspondant typed, I got over 37 characters of corporate disclaimer spam at the bottom of the message.

From an article in today’s Wisconsin State Journal:

Two fans, Bonnie Torre, 45, of Madison, and Dick Story, 57, of Madison, complained that police confiscated a Snickers bar and bag of peanuts they’d bought from a vendor just outside the stadium, although they’ve been allowed to bring in similar items for years. Police said it was necessary because of terrorism concerns, Story said.Yes, the truth is out. No one can find any evidence that Saddam Hussein cooperated with terrorists, but I think we all agree that someone else did.

Mr. Peanut, you can hide the truth from us no longer.

81,000+ fans would assuredly have suffered the most terrible of all imaginable consequences had Mr. Peanut’s devilish progeny been allowed on the stadium premises.

We should all thank our faithful, ever vigilent law enforcement agencies for protecting us from the scourge of salty and chocolate covered snacks.

Nothing makes a person feel more loved than to get exactly two pieces of mail, both addressed to “Resident.”

Madison Magazine published a story I wrote in their September, 2004 issue.

After knocking around Europe for a while, we’re back on American soil. Monday night, Sarah and I arrived back in Madison, after a long flight back across the Atlantic.It would be imprudent for me to even begin to detail our trip in this space. We saw so much, and did so much, that it would take the better part of a day write up even a partial summary of our trip. Regardless, I’ll include some bare bones information and if you want more information, don’t hesitate to contact me.

While our flight from the USA landed in Frankfurt, Germany, we were only there long enough to catch a fast train to Munich.

Munich, by chance and not by design, became our home base. We spent no less than six nights there at various hotels and at various times throughout the trip. We rented bikes and rode around the city; we visited gardens, palaces, parks, and churches. We drank liter after liter of really exceptional German beer in biergartens. Munich is a fabulous city.

After spending a few nights in Munich, we took a ride on Lufthansa to Athens, Greece to catch some of the Olympics. Literally, in the last hour before running out the door in Madison, we decided to see part of the Olympic games. So, we booked a flight on-line and a hotel room through a combination of telephone, fax, and e-mail.

Rather than describe the Olympic experience in Athens (which, again, would take entirely too much digital ink to do it justice), I will refer you to the 23 Aug 04 and 30 Aug 04 issues of Sports Illustrated magazine. In those issues, read the Air and Space column written by Steve Rushin. One is titled “Eat a Gyro, Be a Hero” while the other is titled “Ten the Hard Way”. Those two columns will give you just a hint of what the Olympic experience in Athens was like.

For those wondering what events we saw there, we attended the following events:

• Womens Volleyball – Brazil v. South Korea
• Womens Volleyball – USA v. Cuba
• Mens Basketball – USA v. Angola
• Softball (Gold Medal Match and Medal Ceremony) – USA v. Australia
• Womens Beach Volleyball (Bronze Medal Match, Gold Medal Match and Medal Ceremony) – USA v. Brazil and USA v. Australia
• Gymnastics Gala (not a competition; an exhibition)

After a return flight to Munich, we took a train to Berchtesgaden, where we spent two days seeing some of the local sights, including the Eagle’s Nest (Kehlsteinhaus) and the Königsee.

A long train ride took us back to Frankfurt, where we spent the night. The following day, we were on a packed 747 back to the USA.

One delightful aspect of being in Europe was that the Republican National Convention is very nearly completely off the radar screen of Europeans. As such, European news agencies don’t expactly feel compelled to spent ten hours each day airing the same old, same old about the convention.

At least the BBC isn’t airing wall to wall convention coverage.

If it isn’t news, nor suspenseful, why must every news agency report on it constantly?
It was quite unfornate to find myself back in the States listening to non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage of the convention on US radio statins.

Fortunately, one of the local radio stations, carries the BBC World Report. As such, I’ve been able to keep up with the rest of the world, even as the US media beats the dead RNC Convention horse into the dirt and mud.

If, as the news media claims, the RNC Convention is so boring, stage managed, and completely devoid of life, why does it receive so much attention?