Madison Summer

I'm continuing to have a rather amazing summer break. Super glad I get to keep having these for my professional life as a teacher! Rock on, summer vacation. I wrote before that I've had a lot of visitors- my grandpa, my dad, and my high school besties all visited me for a couple days in Madison, which means great company for all the staple Madison going-ons: lots of art museums, capitol tours, and terrace beers.

Madison Museum of Contemporary Art has three amazing amazing galleries right now. Their exhibits are American Photography Since 1950, Paintings by Leslie Smith III, and Los Grandes Del Arte Moderno Mexicano. It always kind of shocks me when people haven't been to MMoCA or the Chazen so let me take a quick second to say: Madisonians, these are free museums! Go to that gorgeous glass triangle building on State Street and spend an hour. The museum store is beautiful as well and I bought an amazing blown glass sphere of the expanding universe for my uncle's birthday from there. 

My favorite piece of the current MMoCA exhibit of Leslie Smith III paintings.

There's a political group on Madison abbreviated as A.L.E.C. and there's always really foul side walk chalk about them. I think it's funny (sorry, Alec). 

A Badger under the Badger overlooking the Wisconsin Supreme Court ;]

The state of my dry erase board post-Toledo visitors 

My family tries to go on one big vacation each summer and forgoes traveling during winter and spring breaks. I've got another blog post brewing just about my time in Tennessee and North Carolina (where I am currently!). I took the Van Galder bus to Chicago as always, but then my cousins Bobbie and Michael picked me up in Chicago to drive me to Toledo. The timing was so perfect- they were on their way to Manhattan to visit their son and grandkids on the same day I was heading through Ohio as well. In exciting family news, my cousin Ben is working on the new Michael J. Fox sitcom and the new Billy Crystal show. His sister, my cousin Julie, is working for the Food Network, and her husband Todd is the head writer for a 120-episode series based on the new movie Turbo. I wish them all the success! 

Bobbie and Michael are from Skokie and brought the most delicious sandwiches from their favorite local deli. Tuna and pastrami and turkey and corned beef. It was the easiest Madison -> Toledo travel day I've ever had and really fun to catch up with some Chicago family. We had my favorite Lebanese restaurant for dinner and it was also super delish. 

"In this family, we only travel with the best sandwiches."

Catsup

It's hard to stay organized without a desk. I've got an old clunker of a desk, but it's too big for my current apartment, so I have to wait until mid-August to be reunited with it again. I realized that I need a real honest to goodness place to sit with an table surface in order to write and read and work my best.  I've rarely been sitting down and using my computer this summer since I'm trying to cut back on my internet use (not that it was excessive or anything). I just want to read more and listen to more music and be in the sun a lot. Analog rules. Unfortunately, this means that I keep on planning blog posts in my head that never actually get typed. Here's a photo dump then:

Smoothie makings

That house was there yesterday, gone by the afternoon.

When my dad was visiting, we saw a helicopter flying really low, probably 30 feet above the water, going back and forth by the terrace. What d'ya know, the next day on /r/UWMadison, a dude posts that his friend took him on a helicopter ride and he works at the Union so took a bunch of pictures.

Can you see us? We're having a beer on the water!

This is a perfectly timed picture my dad took of Lulu communicating with the kittens on tv

B'AWWWWWW wie süß?

um. Mine and Heller's creation

This may be better suited for ihaveashittyphone, but this is from watching Rhythm and Booms from the Porter Boat House for 4th of July. I saw 3 fireworks shows in one week heheheh

wowwwwwwwwwww oooooohhhhhhhhh aaahhhh k

ANARCHEEE

I skydove!

Super huge thanks to my friend Bess for organizing this skydive trip. I can't believe I've finally gotten to do something I've wanted to do for over a dozen years. It was cooler than I even though it would be and cannot wait to go again!

We had a group of 6 and we decided to go to Skydive Midwest (http://www.skydivemidwest.com/), about an hour east of Madison. First of all, we couldn't have picked a single nicer day to jump. It was sunny, cloudless, and low winds. So nice! The launch area had outside picnic tables and reclining chairs to watch everyone land so the morning was super enjoyable. As we were signing our billion initials, the forms got pretty straight forward:

"There is no and will be no perfect parachute apparatus." 

The plane ride up was a hoot! But very bare bones.

 Our plane held 6 pairs of tandem jumpers. It takes about 15 minutes to reach our altitude of 14,500 feet and there's no door the whole way up! Everyone in the plane was really jovial and joking around. My dude, Chris, was super awesome. He said he quit his post-college job and became a professional skydive instructor, even jumping in Australia. He's from Ohio too, and after complimenting Cedar Point, he agreed to do a bunch of loops and spirals in the air with me. So when it's time to jump out, it's really time to jump out. I was 4th in line to waddle crouch over to the door and flip out. The free fall was way longer than a minute should feel and it was INSANE!! The wind sounds crazy in yours ears and you're going 120 mph but the ground doesn't even look like it's getting closer. After the parachute deploys, everything changes and gets calmer and quieter. Because of the beautiful weather, I saw tons of Lake Michigan and even the Milwaukee skyline! Landing was super easy and I landed on my feet. Jumped out of a plane, literally gently floated back to Earth, and walked away. Holy cow.

SAFE ON THE GROUND

Ground, sweet ground!

 I had to buy one of these shirts for $10 bucks. I'll make the second two a three and I'm golden.

It's true though.

Another woman was talking pre-jump how she heard that skydiving was like getting a tattoo- it's addictingly fun and once you start you can't stop. I have to agree with her!

This guy knows what's up

Vest

It'ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss arts and crafts time!! A while back, I found an old childhood denim jacket in my coat closet in Ohio. I wanted to keep it, but couldn't wear it as is, so I brought it to Madison with me until I could make it into a sicky jean vest. I cut off the sleeves, cut off the buttons and holes so it laid flat more, then went to painting the back. I know I wanted a flag, but the American flag is a bit complicated (50 frickin stars?) and let's admit, a little over done. So I looked at my available paints and went for the Israeli flag! I'm partial to the design anyway.

I painted a white base

Here's the reference I used for spacing. You can basically ignore this picture because I'm sure the final product will look nothing as accurate as that.

As I was painting the first blue stripe I realized the edges aren't even in length and it's damn difficult to get straight lines with the supplies/materials I was using. I love ombre effects, so I started using a sponge brush to make one edge fade out. I liked the way it turned out, I have no penchant for perfection, and it's more unique now.

I'll take a picture of me wearing it once it's complete. I want to add patches or buttons or more designs or rip it up more or do something. This is a work in progress!

I'd like to welcome you to my beautiful house

The graduate and his SV placard! <3 <3 <3

I love my house :') We put up a flag that's half UofM and half OSU that says "A House Divided." I want to add an action W and write "A House Tri-vided" ;]

The lovely centerpieces! Some hand me down cat toys and bubble gum yum yums

Some quick hi-tech modifications and our corn hole set becomes OSU friendly!

Tada, that's the backyard. 7 tables and 49 chairs.

My family made me in charge of decorations and signage. This was a great idea. 

WE HAD AN ICE CREAM MACHINE! SO YUM

As with all good Christman parties, the night devolved into a drum circle by the end of it.

Not gonna lie, they sounded pretty good!

I may have been a bit biased ;]

The party was so much fun. I got to see so many people who I haven't seen in ages- my neighbors, parent's friends, curling people, Sam's friends, so many people! I heard a gillion comments about my hair and gave even more compliments to UW-M. My dad had a little fireworks show for Sam's bday/graduation/America Day. The best part was Kiley coming over a staying for 8 hours of craziness with me. After the drum circle, Sam and his friends starting dancing to Glee so we fled to the basement. Crego came over around midnight and we watched Dead Poets Society, one of my all time favorites, because it was lying on the basement table. We laughed, we cried, it wasn't our fault. 

As die-hard Buckeye fans, these two have waiting farrrrrr too long for this moment.

The leftovers my mom sent the Cregos with!

Great party, family, from start to finish.

L.A.R.K. wknd

I've got the greatest friends in the whole wide world because they love visiting me way out here in Madison! I love these weekends because I get to see their beautiful faces again and we can be silly and reconnect. Since Andrea's a working woman, they had to drive down after work Toledo-time, and got into Madison late Friday night. We went to the Farmer's Market and totally scored with a 50% off hot spicy cheese bread coupon WHABANG! I've been on a Wisconsin Capitol tour kick, so we walked up to the rotunde outside the top floors for amazing Madi views. 

The weather was drop dead gorgeous and bright and warm, so we headed over to the Henry Vilas Beach for sunning and swimming. We went through the zoo to and from which is always lovely. The capybaras are too darn cute! Plus it's a free zoo :] We did some State Street shopping, saw a wedding at the Nitty, and went to see a friend of a friend's band at the Dragonfly Lounge. It's been great introducing my old friends to new friends and new friends to my family when everyone I love visits Wisconsin. 

Props to five girls sharing one shower for a summer weekend. I only have three towels, so we ended up using my old "save for t-shirt quilt" supplies.

I'm reenacting both parts of American Gothic and Crego's being Creggy!

The Itch

I have very sweet skin. Ever since I was younger, I would always come back from camping trips with by far the most mosquito bites out of anyone in my family. Not only do I always get a cubic crap ton, but they itch. I'm too old to dunk my foot in calamine lotion (plus pink really isn't my colour) but I'd like to think that I have the self-control to resist scratching them so that they'll go away quicker. 

Well, last Tuesday I went to the drive-in movie theatre in Jefferson on Highway 18. We saw a double feature of Despicable Me 2 and Furious 6 (also known as The Fast And The Furious 6). I haven't seen any of the prequels in these two franchises, but both were enjoyable in their own ridiculous ways. The first is an animated movie with Kristin Wiig, Kristin Schaal, and Steve Carrell and a major plot point involves fart guns. The later has endless incomprehensible Vin Diesel lines and a 45 mile long runway. Anyway, the moral of the story is don't go to a drive in sans-bug spray and sit with the trunk open. 

My battle gear. Portability. Variety. "Breathe Thru The Itch."

I did a rough count on Thursday and I easily got over 200 bites.

That's including quite a few on the bottom of my foot! 

The sides of both legs and both feet definitely got it the worse

However I had a really fun sucker right on my middle knuckle!

All in all, they didn't itch too too badly. Thursday afternoon and Friday night had some withdrawal-esque itchy times, but I did really well and most of them are already fading and not itchy! Wooo nature. But also FU nature.