stop motion movie

our new camera has a rapid shutter feature that allows us to take lots and lots of pictures in a row. most new cameras do that, i'm told.

here is a compilation of some rapid fire photography from this summer, set to music, and made into a little movie.

enjoy!

surprise!

last friday, dear-friend-from-college jackie came to visit from chicago. our other friend steph was coming to madison from milwaukee on saturday to join us. instead, she surprised us with an early friday arrival. it was wonderful

but there was another surprise. kate flew in from tahoe, and then hid in the bathroom at paisan's until the exact right moment. then she surprised me with her presence (jackie and steph already knew). the following photos document the surprise quite well.



here we are, happy to be enjoying a beautiful summer evening at genna's.

a good time was had by all.

urban assault ride: race day

as mentioned previously, today we took part in the urban assault ride. it is a mixture of a bike race and a scavenger hunt. marta and i competed in the co-ed division.

the week prior to the race we were told 6 locations around madison, in addition to the start/finish location at olin park, which would serve as checkpoints for the ride. we then had to design our route, using only bicycle safe roads and paths, while going to each checkpoint, in any order. at each checkpoint, we had to successfully complete some type of physical challenge in order to move on. to make the route planning a little more difficult, we also had to go to 3 mystery checkpoints, which were only disclosed to us in the form of a clue. we were given the first clue a couple days before the race, and then we received the clue for the second mystery checkpoint when we got to the first mystery checkpoint, and so on. basically, we had to start at olin park, go to 9 checkpoints in any order, perform 6 challenges, and return to olin park within 3 hours.

here we are prior to the race in our un-official sponsor t-shirts (thanks aaron)

here is our route and a description of the challenges (click on it for a better view, we traveled counterclockwise around the route).

rubber duck swim: one person gets on a giant inflatable rubber duck and the other has to push it out to a buoy in lake mendota and back. everyone gets soaked.

mini-bike slalom: both team members must navigate a slalom course while riding a miniature bicycle (see photo below for bike scale).

newspaper delivery: one person rides a banana seat bike through a course, and has to throw newspapers to the other teammate, who must catch them in a box.

bicycle limbo: each team member must limbo under three, successively more difficult heights, while on their bicycle.

cap pick-up: the team must fill a bowl with flat wooden tokens, that are scattered around an astroturf lawn, while people bombard them with water guns. oh, and you have to wear oven mitts.

human wheel barrow: one person holds onto a wheel on an axle, and the other person holds their legs and pushes them through a course.

we successfully completed all the tasks, and made it through our route in very good time. after the race we were treated to burritos, capital brewery beer, and the opportunity to take part in more hi jinx and shenanigans. here i am losing at the 2.5 feet height of a mini-bike limbo competition.

it was a mighty fine way to spend a morning, but after 25 miles of biking, plus physical challenges, we're pooped. there will be more pictures when the uar folks get them up on their website.

urban assault ride: planning phase

here's ben franklin helping us plot our course for the urban assault ride this coming weekend. he likes to lay along the isthmus and point out bike trails. he's a huge help.

there will be more on the uar to come.

moments of tenderness

blog stats: world map

we recently signed up for a service called site tracker, which provides us with some information about how many folks visit our blog, and where they are visiting from. it would appear from our tracking data that our site has a number of international visitors. i'm talking to you rio and yemen. the dots below represent the last 100 hits on our blog.
oh, and yes, when you check our blog, we are watching you.

a mighty fine gathering

we have the best neighbors. look what they made us for dinner the other night.

mmmmm...lobster and sweet corn

we dined under the lights on our shared driveway
happy birthday ryan.

boat cruise

this saturday we went to milwaukee for a brewery tour and river boat cruise to pre-celebrate the upcoming nuptials of our good friends tom and maggie. the cruise took us out the milwaukee river and into the area of lake michigan protected by the break wall. there we cruised around the summer fest grounds during irish fest and past the milwaukee art museum, before heading back up river. it was a very beautiful and enjoyable cruise. here are some photos from the evening.

marta prepares to set sail on the brew city queen.


the milwaukee river as we pass through milwaukee's downtown entertainment zone

mmmm... sausage

damn yankees

where did you fellas get your sun glasses?

i want to believe

please let this be true.


for the full story, and mountains of scientific evidence, go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/us/15bigfoot.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

the dnr may not be convinced, but i am. look at those entrails! and those honest-faced hunter men!

mozzarella!

tonight, we made cheese.

as you may recall, we took a cheese making class a month or so ago. for marta's birthday i got her the supplies, and tonight we made fresh whole milk mozzarella. since it was our first go at it, we decided to make only a quart of milk's worth.

here is the milk just after we added he rennet. the rennet is a complex of enzymes in the stomach of mammals that digests mother's milk. when you add a concentrated amount of it to milk (milk that hasn't been ultra-pasteurized) it causes the curds and whey to separate.
the white part in the middle is the curd which we made into cheese, and the yellowish liquid is the whey.

after warming and stretching, we made molded the curds into balls of mozzarella. it turns out that one quart of milk only makes about 6 ping-pong balls of mozzarella, but man-o-man does it taste like homemade-italian-milky-cheesy-mozzarella-goodness. below is a little appetizer we made of cherry tomatoes and basil, from our garden, with our first homemade mozzarella.

next time, we will stock up on a whole lot more milk from blue marble, so we can make enough fresh mozzarella to share.

controversy!

i drove to my parents' house today for a mid week visit, complete with belated birthday cake. on the way to plymouth, wi, i drove the typical route from madison, which takes me through the lush horicon marsh and green pastoral beauty of dodge and fond du lac counties. in the last few years, there has been an increase in the number of large wind turbines in these counties, as well as a marked escalation in the hostility of the front yard signs. clearly, folks are divided on the wind issue. today, a huge hand painted sign shouted at me "GREED AND MONEY HAVE DESTROYED BYRON," perhaps suggesting that the neighbors who accepted money from energy companies to host wind turbines on their private property have ruined the view, the country living ambiance, and ultimately, the community of byron.

i do not live in the shadow of a wind turbine, and i do not suffer from wind-turbine-generator noise pollution. i am not a migrating bird that could suffer great bodily harm at the fins of these wind turbines. i am, however, a consumer of energy. i live in the shadow of a coal-burning power plant on the isthmus of madison. this coal-burning power plant remains the single greatest cause of pollution in dane county. for these reasons, i find wind turbines to be an exciting step in the right direction to free us from fossil-fuel dependence.

the controversy fascinates me, only because it is not a controversy on my doorstep. i cannot imagine how i would react if i had to deal with daily afternoon "flicker shadow" or the bothersome all-night-long glow of the red light atop the turbine.

i snapped some photos of the turbines today. it was a beautiful wisconsin summer afternoon, full of intermittent sunshine and the threat of a tornado or 2. it makes for some nice pictures.




a few turbines were being built today, and i snapped this photo of a turbine blade arriving on the flat bed of an over-sized load truck. it's pretty massive.


also, here is a link to the news story released this spring regarding the controversy. it is quite informative.
http://www.wind-watch.org/video/windfarmremorse.mp4

blog stats: monthly frequency

i beleive the time has come to share some blog statistics with the readers of davidandmarta.com. i plan to do so in a series of posts entitled: blog stats.

in this post i would like to address our monthly frequency of blog posts. it varies quite a bit from month to month based on the amount of interesting stuff (or semi-interesting stuff) going on in our lives, the busyness of our lives, our general attitudes, and any number of other intangibles. here is a histogram of our monthly blog frequency since we put our blog on blogger.
as you can see, last month was a record shatter-er. you can also identify a general up-trend in our numbers. i'm not certain what to attribute that to, but we have certainly had big numbers since we moved back to madison (may-08). maybe we are just getting better at blogging over time, or maybe we are getting more into it. august is off to a pretty good start with 7 posts. we'll see how she ends up.

dinner last night

it all fit on the grill, and it was delicious.

great taste

this past saturday we attended the great taste of the midwest beer festival. over 3 billion brew pubs, micro-breweries, and beer drinking yahoos converged on olin park for 5 hours of "beer tasting."

in actuality, there were about 400 breweries and 5,000 attendees. we made our way to some of our favorite breweries (bells, founders, new holland, capital, sprecher, etc.) and discovered a lot of new ones (surly, dark horse, flossmoore station, kuhnhenn, et al.).

david enjoys a decadent taste of beer from a beer fountain (thanks new holland).

marta rehydrates at the beer bubbler (aka drinking fountain)


tom generously shares from his pretzel necklace. pretzel necklaces were very en vogue at the taste.

the majestic capitol peeks through a gap in the porta-potties at olin park.

a good time was had.

say "ya"

this past weekend we went to the great taste of the midwest at olin park (see next post). we picked up another can coozie.

this coozie come from michigan's only "cans only" brewery, the keweenaw brewing company.

wow

you rarely get such an emotional weather forecast from your local meteorologists. madisonians are lucky to not only have perfect weather, but excitable meterologists.
we'll see if this pans out.

flat earth theory

have you ever considered the possibility that the earth is flat? apparently, there are some folks out there who subscribe to this theory. i received an email today from my brother-in-law matt, alerting me to a website where these types of people discuss topics relevant to flate earth theorists (i don't believe matt is one of these people). it isn't totally clear if everyone on this site is on the up and up, but after learning a bit about the flat earth society, it has become clear that at least some of them are totally serious.

the gist of f.e. theory is that the earth is a flat disc. what we think of as the north pole is at the center of the disc. the disc is surrounded by an ice wall which is what round earthers think of as antarctica.

as the theory goes, the sun and the moon are like spotlights, moving in circular paths above the earth. they are about 3000 miles above the earth's flat surface. they each have diameters of approximately 32 miles. the stars are about 100 miles beyond the sun and moon. the spotlight nature of the sun and moon accounts for our night and day, since we can only see them when they are above us. the seasons are caused by a widening and narrowing of the radius of the sun's path.

why isn't the flat nature of the earth common knowledge by now? what about the fact that the earth is clearly spherical from space? what about the fact that people have crossed antarctica?

well, it's a massive conspiracy. all the governments are in on it. the space programs and moon landing were faked, and the money for the programs was spent generating believable images of a spherical earth. as far as crossing antarctica goes, can you say for certain that anyone has actually crossed it? the best single piece of evidence for the inter-government conspiracy is the u.n. flag. it clearly displays a flat earth. they are laughing at us for believing in this round earth sham.

after reading their websites, hearing their evidence, and pondering my own interactions with the earth, i wouldn't say that i am a f.e. theorist, but i would say that i am definitely a flat earth fan.

the new laundry service

we couldn't be happier with the new laundry service. such vigilance! such clean clothes!

minneapolis: city time

during our visit, we took a walking tour of downtown minneapolis. we arrived by the new and exciting light rail (hooray for public transportation) at the same time the train was delivering thousands of twins fans to the metrodome. it was a tight squeeze on a hot day.
dana appears distressed while david seems to be enjoying it.
our walking tour took us across the river a few times.
julia describes a dam in the river that marks the location of a once-great water fall. she says it was bigger than niagara falls. i think she's exaggerating.
mmmmm. grain belt beer.
mills along the riverbanks and the new (blue) guthrie theater peeking out from behind.
downtown, where all the lights are bright.

minneapolis: family time

over the weekend, we visited my sister julia and her husband dana in minneapolis. the have an awesome little house in a great neighborhood, and their dogs and cat seem happy.
willy tells david of the joys of the longfellow neighborhood.
julia and diego give us a tour of the house.
david and dana share a special brother-in-law moment. or, maybe, they share a special moment discussing how they are not technically brothers-in-law. or are they? they are married to sisters. does that make them brothers-in-law?
backyard lunchtime sister bliss.

manhole covers

looking through our photo library, it would appear that i have a strange facination with photographing manhole covers when we travel. i'm not sure why, but i rather like them. here are a few of my favorites.

downtown montreal, canada: i believe this is the first manhole photo i took

broadway, nyc: it has my initials on it. i had to place my safety at a bit of risk to get this manhole, as it was in the middle of the street.

minneapolis, mn: very sharp looking manhole. this was taken this past weekend while we were visiting marta's sister and brother-in-law. marta will blog more about that trip later.

it takes different strokes

on friday night, the gang from casimir jones had a firm outing to watch a madison mallards baseball game. a super time was had by all. actor gary coleman was on hand to throw out the first pitch, and he hung around for most of the game to meet fans and sign autographs.


quite a thrill.