Off to Washington DC

Jo had a business trip to Washington DC scheduled for Monday and Tuesday this week and I was looking for some special trip to surprise her with for her upcoming birthday.  So we decided to take a long weekend in DC since I couldn't make a four day trip to Paris work out time wise or financially.  We spent the time while she wasn't working trying to tour memorials and museums that we hadn't seen in our previous trips.  It is amazing how many new places have opened since I was last there in the early 90's.  We especially enjoyed our visits to the Postal Museum and the Newseum, both of which surprised us with the breadth of their collections and the interesting way they were displayed.  Along the way, we also managed to take in the Botanic Gardens, Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Castle, White House visitor center, Capitol visitor center, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Holocaust Museum, American History Museum, and the Spy Museum.  I also got to see the WWII memorial for the first time and we both finally made it all the way out to the Jefferson memorial.  We also saw the Korean War memorial, Lincoln memorial, Roosevelt memorial, MLK memorial, and the Navy memorial.  We spent most of one morning doing memorial tours.  

Since Jo had to work on Monday and Tuesday, I spent some of the time taking tours of the Capitol building and the White House.  Unfortunately, Barack and family weren't there to greet us.  It was my first back to Washington since the early 90's and it was interesting to see how much access has been restricted since all the terror incidents over the last decade.  The last time we toured the Capitol we could pretty much wander anywhere on the first floor, now you have to take a tour and it shows you much less.  Same is true at the White House.  It is somewhat sad that the world has become a scarier place requiring all this extra security to keep people and buildings safe.

The final highlight was getting to see the Capitol Steps perform.  This is a comedy group that makes fun of our politicians for all the funny things they manage to do.  Also, they routinely skewer both parties so it isn't one sided.  We were laughing so hard at one point, we were crying.  If they are ever playing near you, we would recommend taking in the show.

To quickly summarize, we had a really great five days in Washington, with perfect weather, lots of cool museums to see and information to take in, and delicious food to enjoy.  But we both came home foot sore and a bit tired from all the walking and standing in museums we did. 

Oh, a few last thoughts, we decided that to make the visits to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing especially exciting, that they should randomly give out one of the sheets of 32 one hundred dollar bills to one of the visitors (say once or twice a month).  Would really boost the popularity of the tour, wouldn't cost much given the size of our deficit, and how much more intriguing the tour would be!  Other fun fact, I found out that the president has to pay for the food that the first family's food eats (state dinners and the like are picked up by the government).  It seems to me kind of cheap on our part to elect the president, give him this really nice house to live in, require him to be on call 24 hours a day, and then stick him or her with the bill for his food.  Seriously, can't this country afford to feed a family of four or five at the White House for four years?  Buy one less cruise missile and we probably could cover all the president's food since Hoover was in the White House.  Enough ranting for one blog.

Busy Weekend with the Brewers and the Zoo

Friday night we started our weekend with dinner and a show.  Along with our friends, Tim and Rosalie, we headed downtown to the Rumpus Room for a tasty dinner along with two excellent desserts (sticky toffee pudding and caramel bread pudding, for the table not just for me).  Then it was a short walk in the cold rain to the Rep Theater to see the Doyle and Debbie show.  This was a very funny comedy that had the entire audience almost rolling on the floor with laughter.  The two main performers did a wonderful job handling the comedic timing as well as all the singing in the performance.  The performance really made up for the very cold and rainy weather outside.

While I'm on the weather, winter had decided to give us a little early taste over the last few days.  We have struggled to get into the high 50's or low 60's and the evenings are down in the 40's.  We haven't had any snow like some parts of the country, but it certainly feels like it isn't far away.  I am resisting putting on the heat in the house, but there have been some really cold nights with the temperature in the house dipping to around 60-62 degrees.  I'm not sure how much longer Jo is going to let me hold out on turning on the furnace.

Saturday morning after our exercising, Jo decided to get blonder during her haircut and came home almost as blond as when we first met (maybe even blonder, but who remembers that far back).  Then it was off to a massage for each of us before we headed to the ballpark to see the Brewers play along with our neighbors, Audrey and John.  Unfortunately, we once again brought the Brewers bad luck as they lost, but it was Hank the dog bobble head day so Jo got to add to her bobble head collection (see below for more details).


Sunday dawned a bright and sunny day although still cold.  Just to repeat the fun from Saturday, we had tickets to the Brewers again - these were sudden spur of the moment tickets that Northwestern Mutual had and couldn't find anyone to use.  It was another bobble head day - this time it was Robin Yount - so Jo's collection grew to eleven.  She has been collecting them since our Connecticut days but has made the most progress since our move to Wisconsin.  The Brewers managed to win this game so we don't always jinx them.  After the game we went to the Milwaukee Zoo for a Northwestern Mutual event.  They had rented out the zoo for all the home office employees so we walked around meeting some of the people that Jo works with while seeing a few new animal exhibits.  We especially enjoyed seeing the tree kangaroos.  I never new that tree kangaroos existed and one of them had a baby which was too cute for words. 

Then it was home to collapse into bed to rest up for the work week - well Jo's work week.  Oh, for anyone wondering why there wasn't a post last week.  Jo and I spent a quiet weekend at home just taking easy.  The only noteworthy activity was we biked downtown to enjoy dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, the Smoke Shack, where we enjoyed the pulled pork sandwiches (notice the significantly less blond hair color as compared to the pictures above).

Labor Day Fun in Madison

Our work week was fairly standard - I cleaned, Jo went downtown to work.  The evenings were spent exercising including one evening playing volleyball on Bradford beach with some friends.  I still prefer indoor volleyball but it was a nice evening so being outside wasn't all bad.  For the long weekend we packed up and headed to Madison where we visited with Jo's sister, one niece, one grand niece (yes we are now old enough to have grand nieces and nephews), and two nephews along with all their respective spouses, significant others.  The weather cooperated since a rainy weekend was predicted but it turned out to only rain briefly one of the days.

Our niece and nephew, Christine and Dan, drove out from Omaha and our Milwaukee nephews (Chris and Angela, Drew and Amy) came with their significant others to make for a mini-family reunion.  On Saturday to take advantage of the sunshine when rain was predicted we went over to the University of Wisconsin terrace to enjoy a beer (or two) - where Jo and I spent a few afternoons during our grad school days (very  few since we naturally busy in our labs at all hours of the day).  Their daughter enjoyed feeding the ducks while the rest of us just enjoyed the beautiful weather, the refreshing breeze off the lake and the youth of all the college kids around us.  This was especially true for our niece who is celebrating 40 years in 2014.  Not sure how the flower girl in our wedding got to be 40, we must have passed through a multi-dimensional wormhole somewhere without knowing it.  We held the birthday celebration Saturday evening with a excellent home-made, decorated chocolate chip cookie.

We did watch the Badger's first game of the season Saturday night and let's just leave it at, it was a disappointing evening.  Sunday morning involved a trip to the free-to-visit, Vilas zoo to ride the carousal for some and for all to enjoy seeing the animals, for me the red pandas were a special highlight.  I continue to marvel at the wide variety of creatures this planet has and has had on it.  Later that day, we made sure to enjoy a brewery tour in Middleton, WI since what is a weekend in WI if you don't have at least one brewery tour.  But all too soon, it was Monday and time for everyone to head back home, but we got to enjoy some of Dan's famous, home-made, blueberry pancakes before we left.  We came home with a bag full of grape tomatoes from Kathy's community garden which we have been furiously sun drying (ok, really oven drying, since how much sun do we really get and then there is the humidity to discuss).