Saturday on State St.

As if we didn't get enough of Downtown Madison on Friday night, the Empress and myself went back Saturday morning.

The Farmer's Market was in full swing so we walked around the Capital taking in the sights and sounds of that. It is a big deal and there was vegetables to be found. Mainly lettuce, green onions, and asparagus. The asparagus looked real good.

It seemed on the corners of the square were reserved for political activists and the left was quite well represented. I bite my tongue and just looked, it doesn't pay as for sure they are as dedicated and closed minded as myself about such affairs.

My cousin called and we arranged a meeting point and eventually we found each other. Well his father was out of his meeting just at that time so my cousin told him where we were and soon enough my uncle arrived on the scene. Well, then we went back to State St. and walked down the street.

Down towards lower State St. there were some young ones (college aged) asking everyone if the heard about Haditha and of course those fellows don't have to wait for the investigation to finish before they are certain as to what happened. Again my tongue was getting dented in with my teeth and I just ignored it. Of course in my mind I was playing through 100s of scenarios about jerking them around in such fashion but I did not realize those fantasies.

We eventually settled on an Italian restaurant called Ginos for our lunch. I had fettucine with meat sauce, a gin and tonic, and a glass of cabernet. It was good, the Empress had the last eggplant parmesan available and she liked it but she complained it was rather oily. I liked the music they played which consisted of baroque music (my guess is most of it was Vivaldi, but some Handel was mixed in as well) and some pieces by Mozart and Mendelssohn. I don't know if I will go back to it as there are many other places on State St. to eat at but I do suggest you stop in and check it out if you are hankering for Italian food, you will not go wrong.

So we hit State St. again and once again walked by the pushy young ones asking us if we had heard about Haditha. Today I had a little esprit de escalier and thought maybe I should have asked them if that is where Barry Bonds hit is Babe surpassing Home Run. Hehehehe.

Well we went to the Terrace for some desert. My uncle was hoping to get some "Alma Mater" ice cream but they had none. So I had a waffle cone (the small one, I would have hate to have seen the large) with their coffee flavored ice cream. It was very good.

We sat on the terrace ate our ice cream and watched the lake and the people. We were also crow watching. A crow had picked up a plastic baggy of something and flew into a tree with its booty. We then wondered what it had and how it was going get into the bag. More importantly we were watching to see if the crow would have dumped a load on the people below. Blessedly for the people below the crow did not such thing and we lost interest in the crow.

The one thing at the Terrace that got my attention was a laugh I heard. It was a head turning laugh because it sounded almost exactly like that of one of my college buddies (I went to Plattveille, not Madison) who lives in Madison. The laugher didn't look like my buddy but it has been a few years since we have seen each other. I was tempted to watch him and dial him up on my cell phone but I was afraid if it were not my buddy then I would be stuck explaining to my buddy what I am doing in town w/o calling him up. I'll call this week.

Anyway we then went back up State St. and parted ways and reunited and then the Empress ran into a work colleague. We stopped to talk with my wife's friends and my uncle and cousin faded into the crowd.

It was a good weekend not to be out and about. Later on this week I will talk more about the silly political things I saw.