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Nothing terribly exciting to report, just a bunch of little things.
First, it is now Fall. Apart from the date, I mean--the weather and trees are taking a definite turn. Here's what I can see in my neighborhood. Autumn is pretty in Madison. It feels like it's taking longer for the world to turn grey, as happens when the leaves finally fall off the trees. Maybe it's just happening that way this year and it's a fluke; I did notice before I left Minnesota that the trees hadn't started turning yet, which was unusual. Sometimes the sickly trees start changing color in late August.
And speaking of Minnesota, I may have a buyer for my house! I don't want to jinx it, so I'm not going to talk about this much until after the closing. I'm in a state of hopeful disbelief because it would be just wayyyyyy to cool to sell the house this quickly in this market. It's a good house, but there's a lot of competition out there.
Other minutiae:
Posted at 13:49 in Minutiae | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
...but today is not that day. I went to the farmers' market and got fresh horseradish (made last night), rainbow Swiss chard, daikon radish, some leeks, and I registered to vote.
It is now root vegetable season, gourd season, and "spicy greens" (arugula, mustard greens, etc.) season. It is also apparently the season of strange cauliflower, as seen in these photos. I considered buying some, but then realized that this familiar process would result:
That would be very sad. But this is what photographs are for! Now I shall have my pretty cauliflowers forever and ever, and so shall you. Look at the crazy green romanesco stuff! It'd be like eating fractals. OM NOM NOM.
My Wisconsin driver license arrived in the mail today, and it's fabulous because it has a picture of a little farm in the upper right hand corner.
Posted at 14:39 in Food and Drink, Minutiae, Moving, Wisconsin | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I think I'm selling my house at the right time. Not in light of the housing market, but in light of this big packet of new and "reinforced" rules that the homeowners' association my townhouse is a part of just sent me.
Some of their new rules:
Um, whut? So if little Timmy wants to have a pet gerbil and he lives in this set of townhouses, he's S.O.L.? No goldfish? You can only have two dogs/two cats (so glad they specified "domestic" there)/one dog and one cat, but you can have a metric buttload of birds? I bet the HOA people will start pointing and squealing and saying they saw you sign your name in the Devil's book if you even mention the word "ferret."
I can't have an overnight guest park in guest parking without letting my HOA know? That kind of defeats the purpose of moving out of Mom and Dad's figurative basement and into a home of one's own. And what happens if I have a guest stay for more than seven days? The document doesn't specify. How thorough.
That is to say, even if you want to dry your laundry in an eco-friendly manner, you can't even do it from your back porch. You can't even do it inside your house, if someone can see it through a window.
I will be so pleased to sell my house to someone who is comfortable with these rules and the mindset behind them. The rules at my apartment are much more lax, and the place looks fine.
Posted at 00:38 in House and Home, Pets | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I had a fabulous time in Hawaii. It was so nice to relax for a week in good weather, good scenery, and good company.
Getting to and from Hawaii was a long process, but not particularly painful although I did have to wake up at 3 a.m. on the 27th to do it. I went from Madison to Dallas/Fort Worth where I met up with Nathan, and then we traveled on from there to Honolulu and then to Lihue, on Kauai.
Despite everyone warning me about DFW airport, it was delightful compared to the Honolulu airport. The difference was mainly in the signage and transportation between terminals. Where DFW has clear and frequent signs and a Skylink tram that gets you quickly from place to place in a big circle, so it's hard to get lost, Honolulu's airport might as well have been a maze. They tell you when you deplane in Honolulu to go find the Wiki Wiki Shuttle to whichever terminal you need to go. Strangely, they also have signs that indicate you should use the Wiki Wiki Shuttle to get to, say, gates 6-11 and gates 40-60. Woe betide you if you were told to go to some other gate that isn't mentioned and are now confused. Furthermore, there's a whiteboard with written instructions on other gates covered by the shuttle that aren't noted on the official signs. Anyway, we made our flight out of Honolulu and over to Kauai, where we stayed for a week.
Kauai is simply lovely. We did some sightseeing but we didn't get too intense about it because we all needed some time to just relax. We went swimming nearly every day, most days twice. The swimming routine was: swim in the ocean, come back to land, rinse the salt and sand off, hop in the pool, swim around for a while, hop in the hot tub for 15 minutes, get back in the pool, chatting all the while. I have no idea how long each of these outings were because I wasn't checking the time. It was glorious. The only reason I know about the 15-minute interval for the hot tub is because that's how long the bubbles run before they shut off. Mmmmm. At right you can see the view from our room, with the pool and ocean visible through the palm trees.
We drove up and saw Waimea Canyon one day, which I can't remember if I did before when I was on Kauai with my parents in the 90s. Waimea Canyon is more impressive than comes through in pictures, I think. You can't get a sense of the sheer depth of it from photographs. I spent most of the trip thinking I was on a tiny little island--Kauai feels tiny because you can drive all around it in one day, and it doesn't seem like it could contain such a huge thing--but after I was up there and saw the canyon, the island felt much larger to me. The drive up and back was great too, because I got to see a lot of gorgeous flowering plants that you don't see at sea level, and there was even a spot where you could see all the way to Kauai's neighboring island, Niihau, and its little neighbor Lehua.
Other places we dallied during the week were:
One tasty surprise about Kauai is that it gets fresh ahi tuna off its shores. I mean really fresh. If you order ahi, you cannot go wrong because it will be fresh. The grocery store ahi tuna is of the high quality, and it only gets better from there. So, let's just say we ate a decent amount of sushi during this trip and leave it at that, shall we? It wouldn't be fair to go into too much detail. ;) A few other food highlights in Kauai:
Alas, the week eventually came to a close and we all had to return to Real Life, where we can't lie around and read books we've been meaning to read but were too busy, and spontaneously decide to go for a swim for the second time that day, and then maybe see if anyone wants to go find something to eat. When I got back to Madison it was 51 degrees and raining!
I put up a bunch of my Hawaii pictures here, if you're interested.
Posted at 00:50 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I'm back home from Hawaii; I arrived yesterday afternoon to rainy, 51-degree weather. I'll most in more detail about the trip once I'm done with work/chores/errands for the day. The short version is that I had a wonderful, relaxing time, which was badly needed. Hooray! And now, back to work.
Posted at 15:27 in Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

