Thanksgiving in Madison

As I'm writing this, the snow is slowly falling outside making everything all white.  While having snow fall in Wisconsin in December isn't exactly rare, having it come down slowly without a gale force wind whipping it into your face is.  We have actually had an unusually warm winter so far with most days reaching into the 40's - my thanks to El Nino since we could really use a less brutal winter once.

We spent the long weekend enjoying Madison.  Our condo is working out great as a place to stay although we did find that an air mattress doesn't keep you quite as warm on cold winter nights as an actual mattress.  We took a couple of nice hikes while there, one along the shores of Lake Monona and the other down through campus to see some of our old haunts as well as taking in all the new construction that has happened in the last 30 years.

Kathy and John hosted Thanksgiving, and we were joined by Drew and Amy, Mike, and Sean.  Food was fantastic and I ate entirely too much for dinner and then decided to see if what was possible to stuff pie and ice cream on top of all the food and not explode.  It was, but it was a tough evening as my stomach let me know what it thought about being stretched that much.  We didn't do any Black Friday shopping, but did head out to the Cottage Cafe for a brunch before everyone dispersed to their various homes.  I personally love the diners in the US and my goal is to try all the different ways of making eggs Benedict.  The Cottage Cafe's were ok, but really overloaded with the Hollandaise sauce.  For our contribution to the retail economy, Jo and I hit the University bookstore on Wednesday - not that we needed anything, but because can you really have too many articles of clothing with a college logo on it.

We came home on Saturday and spent the weekend puttering around the house.  The weather cooperated so that we were able to get outside on Sunday and harvest the last and final crop from the garden beds - the parsnips.  Now we just need to be home to enjoy some roasted parsnip dinners.