Retirement Party in Madison

Jo traveled to New York last week to attend the Forbes Women's Conference where she was presented an award to one of the attendees.  She had a great time, had photos tweeted of her, and met some celebrities.  My week was not quite as exciting as I worked on our garden, mowed the grass, and otherwise puttered around the house.

For the weekend we headed over to Madison to attend a retirement celebration for my graduate thesis advisor who is retiring at 70 after many, many years at Wisconsin.  The party started Friday night with a gathering of his former students at his house.  It was great to see people I went to school with over 30 years ago and haven't seen since.  Also, it was a chance to meet other students from the years we weren't in attendance - both earlier and later students.  It was very interesting to hear about their professional trajectories, especially since we all, more or less, started from a common point.

Saturday was an all day organic symposium with talks by former students and professors - Jo opted to spend the day with her sister enjoying the Madison Farmer Market and goofing off since a) it has been a long, long time since she did any chemistry, b) her degree is in inorganic chemistry, and c) she had a really busy week at work.  It has been quite a while since I listened to synthetic organic chemistry talks so it was a interesting to see the changes in the field since I last kept up with it.  The event was capped off with a dinner and roast attended by faculty and students.  Then we packed up and headed home to enjoy a lazy Sunday in Milwaukee.

This week the highlight so far was heading to Lake Geneva to help our friend John christen his new boat and enjoy the maiden voyage around the lake.  We were extremely fortunate as we had the warmest day of the year so far with lots of sun.  We had to naturally stop off in Lake Geneva for some frozen yogurt since what is the point of being out on a boat if not to travel to some yummy dessert.  On the garden front, we are starting to have a few buds begin to poke their heads out of the ground, so hopefully it won't be too long before we are enjoying some fresh lettuce and spinach and of course countless pictures here.  We plan this weekend to plant all the remaining crops so lets hope the warm weather is here to stay!