Thursday

Today, one of those people who is near and dear to me but lives far away came to town. I'm lucky -- she has family here, so she has many excuses to visit frequently. But this day was special: it happens to be her birthday and so we spent a morning together celebrating.

Well, I don't know that we were celebrating just her birthday all day long. We do have gorgeous weather (what a summer it has been!) and here we are, alive and well, enjoying a morning on the Capitol Square. 

(On Monona Terrace. Her husband joins us today).

My friend used to live in Madison. (Of course she did! That's how we became friends!) This morning I used her sage insights and observations to help with my weekend of visitors, given the fact that it may very well rain from the minute they arrive to the day of their departure. Bummer, but what are you going to do... 

We checked out some stuff that we would do, rain or no rain.

Monona Terrace, which understandably looks from this point of view like the Guggenheim Museum in NY. Same designing genius!

The Capitol (so quiet on a non-market day)...

Indeed, we climbed up to the tippy top to see if it's worth the trek for others. It is!

All this was fun, but of course, the special part was just having this morning to be with her.

I'd already cleaned the garden before our meetup.

Unfortunately, the cleanup of the farmhouse still has to take place. I got to it in the afternoon. Cleaning the  bathroom drain has to be one of the more disgusting jobs around, but, Ed and I do it -- a twice a year job, done!

And much later, Ed and I went to the local market, which I consider to be a pleasant break from the scrubbing and dusting. We'd let a lot of small cleaning jobs slide over the months. I'm paying the price for it today.

Evening: house clean, more or less. I'm ready for visitors. Starting tomorrow.