There are some people who just make you laugh and laugh

It’s important to understand that life is not all about laughter. Witty and clever exchanges, tease and banter – these are mere chocolate sprinkles in the cake of life (?!). Yet sometimes you wish for nothing more.

Thanks to the exquisite Althouse and the Tonya Show authors for this extraordinary day in Chicago.

[For the distantly positioned souls who do not understand the rhapsodizing about a trip down to Chicago, I want to explain that Madison is a great place to live in, but like every home base, it’s good to occasionally get the heck away from it, just to remember that the world has a long and varied perimeter.]

Oh, to preempt the questions about “what we did in Chicago” I just want to say that the trip was intense to the last minute. For example, I purchased two stools. One could argue that I did not need two law professors to help me in stool selection, but on the other hand, having their wise counsel made it oh so easy to pick exactly the right piece of wood to rest your derriere on.

Asian temple? No! The perfect stool.  

What’s cookin’ with the guy who first proposed marriage to me?

I blogged about him a while back, noting that when I saw him last year, he bore a remarkable resemblance to Omar Sharif (I posted a photo of the happy couple at the age of proposal -- Janek was 7, I was 6 -- here).

My ever-attuned-to-these-things sister (who lives in Poland) sent me the web address to his newest venture: an authentic restaurant-pub that he built in the mountains of Poland (there is an apartment for rent as well – rustic, but quite lovely). What makes it especially interesting is that it is very very close to the hauntingly beautiful *Alpine* valley of Rynias, about which I blogged just last month.

Here’s the link to Janek’s Szymkowka (I know, a mouthful for English speaking types) and just one photo from his site. We’re going to get on him to put up an English translation, but if you browse around, and find the photo "galeria," you’ll get a good idea of what it’s like.


To think this could have been my life…