HORRENDOUS!

The City County building was built in 1955 - it was a decade ahead of it's time.   
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What a beautiful night it was last night! Spitting rain, wind, cold then the rain changing to snow!! AWESOME!!! Jenny and Caydence (who is just the happiest little girl) were over last night and visited to a while. Afterword I played an online poker tournament and after Bo Bo the Monkey Boy sucked me out of the tournament with his moronic play (I flopped a set and even though I raised a LOT, I could not shake his tree hard enough and he hit a back door flush). OH - I HAVE ISSUES!! LOL

So after watching the news I went to bed which felt SO good. Having 4.5 hours of sleep the night before the bed felt really comfortable. Milo had learned that outside was not a fun place so it seemed he wanted to stay inside tonight!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

3:30am

Meow . . . . .I WANT TO GO OUT CAN I GO OUT NOW HELLO? I WANT TO GO OUT I WILL GO OUT CAN I GO OUT I'D LIKE TO GO OUT IT'S TIME GO OUT WHEN CAN I GO OUT I WANT TO GO OUT  

MILO SHUT UP!    So I get out of bed, open the door and Sierra RUNS out and I plop back into bed and am instantly asleep.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

3:40am

I'D LIKE TO OUT CAN I GO OUT NOW IT'S TIME FOR ME TO GO OUT I'M NEXT TO THE DOOR SCRATCHING THE WINDOW TRYING TO GO OUT HELLO CAN YOU HEAR ME?

what? Milo? is that you! CRAP, Sierra must have gone out! DAMN IT. I get up and let Milo out

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

4:00am

HELLO HELLO IT'S WET OUT HERE CAN I COME IN I'D LIKE TO COME IN IT'S TIME FOR ME TO COME IN I'M GETTING WET AND AM CLINGING TO THE SCREEN CAN YOU HEAR ME HELLO? I WANT TO COME IN!

sigh!

I get up and open the door, Sierra RUNS in and Milo sits there thinking about the door and how it just seems wrong to come in voluntarily and maybe he does not want to come in after all and that maybe Sierra had talked him into coming in and perhaps he should think about this for a while. hmmm what to do what to do! FU Milo!!! I slam the door and he is forced to stay out until the alarm rings!

You can't really complain about the weather, it's not like snow is odd in April. By next week we will be in the 70's again and this is the bottom of the barrell weather wise as it gets all good after today.

I looked out our back window and even though it looked ROTTEN it was sort of pretty . . in a sick way.

I went to the front of the house where Blake and now Milo were sitting and took this shot.

The snow will be gone by the afternoon!

In Columbus in the last 3 days we have had 2.67 inches of rain and once that sun comes out watch for things to REALLY grow ( like the grass).  The good thing is that my flowers are growing so fast that I can actually tell what is a flower and what is a weed.

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On this date in 1994 Kurt Cobain was found dead.

Thirteen years earlier Omar Bradly died. Bradly was my favorite General in WWII  and was the commander of the 12th Army Group who ensured Allied victory over Germany. His book "A Soldier's Story" is still on of the best WWII books around!! A must read for WWII buffs!

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I have a photo that unless you are on my email list you have not seen yet! Also on the list you already know that I have been accepted for the Portage Art Walk (June 4 and 5) and the Sun Prairie Taste of the Arts Festival (June 12th).

I also received my canopy in the mail yesterday and . . OH MY GOD!! There were like five 7 foot boxes on our porch - each weighting 60 pounds! This is a Trimline Canopy with extra Mesh walls and stabilizer bars and I'm going to set it up every weekend just for practice. 

Some will say I should have purchased an EZ Up Canopy for like $1,500 less but I've seen those catch rain and billow out on windy days at the Farmers Market. It's one thing to get your strawberry's wet in the rain but when you have a thousand dollars of art work inside . . . . . . . .

Oh yea - the photo!

This will be a framed 12x36 panorama!

Have a great Thursday - only a couple days to the weekend - we can make it!!!

And BTW - this whole thing about donating art to good causes and you can "write it off as a donation" thing is a bunch of hoo hoo!  You can only write off the actual cost of the material and then you only get a TINY percentage. Not an asking price.  So if you donate a piece that you would sell for lets say $100 you will only get like $2 in return.

Cheers
Rod

Which direction is the game?

Before I get into my night in Milwaukee I should have one good photo for the non-baseball junkies!  

larger is MUCH better  - that's what she said!

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A friend of a friend of mine had an extra 8 Free BP Brewer tickets from last year and the Brewers said they could use them THIS year so I was invited to go to the Milwaukee Brewers game last night.

OH - a word of warning - I didn't get to bed until about 12:30 this morning and even then it was not a restful sleep - I guess a 100 calorie Coke at 11:30 was not the brightest move but . . I was SO thirsty when I got in my car for the final drive from Lake Mills to Columbus!

We arrived at Miller Park just before game time and the rain was just starting to patter down a little - it was dark and threatening but we made it into the stadium with no insidence.

It was nice to have preferred parking on the close side of the stadium for a change but of course our seats were on the opposite side.

These are the first shots from our magnificent seats - I might make fun of the location but you can never complain about the word FREE right?

 I've never felt so disconnected from a game in my life. Typically when I have Free BP tickets they are behind home plate but back row.  This was section 437 row 16 and we were way way way far away. All the players sort of looked the same except for Prince Fielder who looked like two players talking.

Here is another photo of where we were - you can see Dave the guy with tickets waving if you look real close!   Thanks Dave. 

One of the first exciting points in the game that many people missed was the 3-run Homerun by McGeHee.  Half the people were not watching, half thought it was a foul ball and the other half could not even see the ball.

The rest are just random shots from around the ball park.  I didn't take a photo of my pretzel because it was seriously dripping with Crisco or something and I did not want to touch my camera.  No really it was DRIPPING with oil!  I tossed 3/4 of it out because I did not want people slipping on the oil walking behind me.

Ryan Braun 

As I was struggling with my dripping pretzel we saw the sausage races and I handed off to Tim and took a few shots.

One of the most exciting moments of the game is always the Bernie Brewer toss where one lucky fan gets to be tossed over the side of Bernie's Chalet reenacting what happened to the original Bernie Brewer, 69 year old Milt Mason who FINALLY, after 40 days was allowed to leave his little cramped trailer on top of the County Stadium scoreboard when the Brewers had a game wit h40,000 in attendance.   

Milt was so excited to leave his little chalet he slid down a 30 foot rope severely burning his hands and dropping to the concrete the final 15 feet which broke a few dozen bones in his frail body!  Once his very lengthy recovery was complete the Brewers, as a gift, gave him a lifetime supply of beer which it seems he tried to drink in one day and he died of liver failure do to alcohol poisoning.  YEA BERNIE! 

So now every game they toss a teenager over the side if the chalet to the delight  of the crowd as sort of a sacrifice.  Typically it's a drunken dude that get's talked into it as a fun thing to do!

Here is the struggle just before the toss! 

 
And of course some live action shots from 2 miles away! 

Fielder Swing and a Miss 

  

It's Trevor Time!!!!

That's my story - not super exciting but . . . . .

the real excitement was waiting at home  . . .HEY - get your mind out of the gutter . . . .

I had two huge boxes when I got home of prints - one is a large metal image I ordered and it looks GREAT, the other was 8 canvas prints which I could not open until this morning because, literally, it takes a half hour. I think they used a whole roll of tape.  I think when I get home Sierra will he stuck to the floor because she wanted to play and got all tangled up and now can't move.  

Have a great Wednesday,.

Rod

The Last Place Milwaukee Brewers

Stick a fork in it! It's over. Brewers are eliminated from World Series contention. Let's see what we can get for Fielder and work of rebuilding for next year!

OK - who would you rather be. The Brewers who lost 5-3 but looked good except for missed opportunity's? OR the Cubs who lost 16-5 and will continue their streak of 500 straight years without a World Series ring.

The one big worry is Right Field where Corey Hart who was solid in spring with his bat, hitting in the middle 100s and Jim Edmonds who I have a lot of confidence in because no one even wanted him last year. Edmonds had a fine day as he struck out swinging twice with runners on base instead of hitting into double plays so that is a bonus! Oh yea - did he get doubled off base once also?

Seriously though it was just a regular loss. Nothing to really get excited about, just one of those games.
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Nice to have T-Storms last night. As of 7:00 this morning we had 0.78 inches of rain and I expect maybe another inch today.

I can't believe I'll have to mow my lawn on April 8th (and probably shovel the driveway April 17th LOL). I can not remember when we have had such a fast start to the growing season.

Farmers Market in Madison opens April 17th along with the Flower Factory and on the 24th
hopefully I'll buy a flat of Vinca minor (periwinkle) for under our deck. I'm going to work in a lot of Humus (not Humis . . totally different) under the 20x20 deck but it spreads pretty fast from what I have read. Some call periwinkle invasive but it seems to me the word invasive is overused. Sure - if you let it go on it’s own for 5 years it will grow but if you bend at the knees and pick it once a year it stops.

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So yesterday I spent the day at moms house and all was excellent. We had a Home Care nurse in for 3 hours and it was GREAT!! Both of us feel pretty confident now. It seems my brother told my mom to not take 2 of the 3 medications because what his wife read stuff on the internet - my feeling is that while the internet is full of great information I have to think that a Doctor has the knowledge edge on this one.

The big concern was 3 new medications all at once but now with a nurse stopping in 3 times a week any new weirdness will be noticed. Sure medications can all intermix and cause adverse reactions but that is something you have to just know might happen, normally does not happen and NOT taking a medication is worse then MAYBE having an adverse effect.

Mom is feeling good and is happy (except for the not driving part).

On the way home from Fort Atkinson there were the storms coming and I'm in this panoramic mood of late (could be because the area where I live is pretty flat) so as I was driving I was scanning and stamped on the breaks, turned around and took this shot (well . . . .a little post processing involved also).

Another 12x36 inch panorama.

Sheltered from the Storm 

And for building freaks here is a quiz!

Looking at the beautiful style of this building when was it built! 

Man I love rainy days!

 have a nice Tuesday. Going to the Brewer game tonight so expect photos of Miller Park tomorrow!  OH - and look for me on TV - I'll have my Brewers jacket on!

Rod