Guess Who is a Year Older

Jo crossed that key date in the year, that we all have, last Friday and got a year older.  We celebrated with a trip to Madison for a dinner and a Badger football game.  Friday night we went to the Old Fashioned with Kathy and John for a joint birthday celebration - John's was earlier in October.  While there we ran into an acquaintance of Jo's who let us know that the Capital Steps were playing at the Overture Center.  So after a delicious dinner (I highly recommend the bacon mac and cheese) and a few too many of cocktails (as the name of the restaurant says, I enjoyed a couple of Old Fashioned's) we made an impromptu stop at the Overture Center.  We were able to get seats to the Capital Steps and enjoyed their good nature ribbing of our political system and politicians.  Which as you might imagine in this election year has quite a bit of material to work with.

After the show we headed back to the condo to enjoy the traditional birthday cake.  I attempted a chocolate layer cake and while a bit crumbly and requiring a lot of icing to smooth over the imperfections caused by the cake sticking to the pie pans, I must say it was quite tasty.  Of course, that could be the chocolate, butter cream frosting that I used to glue everything together talking for me.

Saturday morning we toured the farmer's market to pick up some fresh apple cider before heading down to campus to find an "official" Wisconsin poncho since the weather predictions for the game were stormy.  While walking around campus we found that ESPN was broadcasting their Game Day show from the quad so we enjoyed watching the boisterous crowd for a while.  Then it was back to the condo for a little rest before Kathy and John joined us for a pizza dinner (Rocky's sausage pizza - a rival, not an equal to Papa Del's) before walking over to the stadium.

The game was a nail biter and provided the crowd with quite a few highs along with quite a few lows.  But we were lucky in that the predicted torrential downpours didn't happen until after we were back safe and sound in the condo and it wasn't a blow out by Ohio State.  This was our first Badger football game this season and I must say that I enjoy the afternoon games in the bright sunshine and crisp air better.  Night games aren't as enjoyable of an atmosphere - in my opinion.

Sunday we hit a local diner for breakfast on our way out of town.  This was a true diner - it used to be a gas station - with a pancake as big as a large dinner plate.  We each only ordered one pancake and didn't finish them.  Tasty pancake, but still doesn't beat a fluffy Perkins pancake.