Happy Birthday Anne!!

Happy Platinum Birthday Anne!! This is her sailing on the lake, one of the few things she wanted to do to celebrate her 54!








Ack caught his first fish of the season today - he hasn't been fishing much...

Anne in parade...

Anne drove a convertible in the annual Waunafest Parade today. She was helping Peng, a friend who is running for a state Assembly position in our district. We've had fun over the years with Peng -- got to go to his naming ceremony a few years back and drink toast after toast with the elders. More often he and his children come over to fish from our dock. 

Waunakee is the town just to the northwest of us.  It's slogan is, "The only Waunakee in the world."  But their parade was pretty similar to most town parades. Politicians, businesses, youth groups, cloggers, equipment like fire trucks, and Shriners! - those big men driving around in circles in those little cars. 

Vote for Peng!!

Happy Birthday Mike!!!

Happy Birthday Mike A.! While not a platinum birthday, a celebration nonetheless!

NYC visit

Ack is in NYC for Monday through Thursday for a meeting of the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project. He also is doing some sightseeing (the Museum of Natural History with Brent, one of his students) and some good dining. In particular, the Telepan, along with Brent, Steve Platnick and Robert Pincus. This is one of Robert's favorite restaurants - it was delicious! Four course meal, with a wine enthusiast coming to table with a wine selected particularly for that dish. He new a lot about wines, perhaps too much. I started with the poached egg in a hole of bread (apparently the chef liked to cook with eggs), followed by peekytoe crab linguine, followed by the best hanger steak I've ever tasted. Dessert was some delicious soft peanut brittle cake with ice cream. Robert knew the co-owner and chef so we also had a lot of extra dishes - compliments of the chef.

On Wednesday evening, Andy came in. We meet at Penn Station and bar-hopped to the Hilton Theater to see Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein. It was good music (though the singers probably didn't need to be mic'ed up) and funny - even knowing when the funny lines where coming! This picture is from a phone, of Andy pointing to the Empire State Building.

Tuesday night (well, Wed morning at 4 am) we had a couple of manhole covers blow out in front of our hotel. I'll post a photo of a burned out car when I get back to Madison.

Que Flavor!

TheNorthside had a dance party tonight at the Warner Park lagoon. The seven-member Afro-Cuban band Que Flavor provided some great dance music and all kinds of people took advantage of it. I even got up for the last dance - couldn't resist!

Paddle & Portage

The Paddle and Portage race was today. Anne and Alana have won a few ribbons at this event (1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishes). With Alana in DC, Anne's needed to find a new partner. Last year she did it with her cousin Ellen. This year she volunteered to direct traffic and keep participants safe! The bandages on her chin are a result of the two skin cancers spots removed from her face a couple of days ago. All is well on that front.

Also, the sandhill cranes are around this summer. This time there are two families. Notice the high water levels behind the cranes and the underwater dock that leads to the boat.

Birthday....

So, how did I spend my birthday? I went fishing for 54 minutes, and caught 0 X 54 fish. Anne made a wonderful breakfast and then I worked on a retaining wall near our driveway (adding 54 stones). That was fun, not work. I went briefly to work to give a presentation on a NOAA telecon - that was work. We went and got panniers for my bike and a shirt from REI. We then saw the movie, "Journey to the Center of the Earth - 3D", which was pretty cool in 3-D (don't bother with the 2-D version). Did some more fishing near sunset with the same result as the morning. Watched fire-flies (see movie below) and a DVD: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, which was an interesting documentary.

Turning 54

Today's Ack's birthday.

Your golden birthday is when you turn the age of your birth date (eg, 18 on the 18th, or 31 on the 31st), so we learned from our daughters years ago.

What do you call your birthday when you turn the age of your birth year? The girls never told us that one. We've been thinking about this because we both turn 54 this year, with our birth year being 1954.

We like numbers. We made a big fuss when we had our 23rd wedding anniversary on August 23 in 2003 (and 23 was a prime number!). We'd hoped to pull together a 54 party for this July when Ack and I both have our birthdays but travel isn't going to let us. So, we're exploring other options.

We've missed blogging since we returned to Madison about a month ago (we kept one in DC), so we're using this excuse to start a new one for our 54th year.