Our first snow of the season

I recently purchased my first digital camera so I now have the luxury of snapping useless photos around the house. ;-) I took a few shots out my back door on Nov. 23, the day of our first significant snowfall here in Ashland, Wis. The above pic is looking toward the neighbor's garage and yard.

The camera is a Nikon CoolPix L22 and I have been quite pleased with it so far. I bought it at a local Radio Shack franchise (Omer Nelson) and got an awesome deal as it came with four pkgs. of batteries and a 4GB memory card. I had been wanting one for quite some time and I was going to a concert in Chicago so I thought it was a good time to splurge for one.

BTW: Yes, I know I do need to put some kind of finish to the story about my trip to Madeline Island earlier this summer. I actually have a draft post I have been working on and I will try to post that soon.

PS. The photo currently on my blog header is another view out my back door on the same day.

The rest of the story

So when we last left our story I was waiting in line for the ferry over to Madeline Island to attend the annual music camp concert at Woods Manor. As we sat there chatting, a couple came over and stood about eight feet away from our vehicle and began to argue. As I mentioned, there is no A/C in my boss's car so of course we had the windows down. The disputatious pair proceeded to carry on a heated discussion about their finances and future prospects. It was juicy fare and we couldn't help but overhear the whole thing. LOL

Finally, it was time to board the ferry so they hopped into their car, which was a convertible. When we drove onto the ferry, the argumentative couple were directly across from us, but one row over. At first, we thought we were going to be treated to more melodramatic entertainment, but then a large pickup truck with dually wheels squeezed in alongside us and not only could we not hear the conclusion of the argument, we couldn't even get out of our vehicle to enjoy the scenery (not to mention the breeze!) on the way over. :-(

When we got to the island, we parked near the shops in La Pointe (the only town there) and checked out a few of the shops. One of the coolest was Imagine Gallery & Studio. I saw several things I would have liked but managed to refrain from spending any money. It was pretty hot and we walked several blocks down past the museum and into another shop. They had some cool windchimes, but again I decided not to fork out any cashola. My companion noted that the concert venue was a few blocks from our present position so we should return to the car, which was parked in the opposite direction. Silly me, I thought we were going back there in order to drive to the concert. But noooooo. Instead we stopped at the car so she could drop off her purchases and then we started off again on foot. Sigh.

As it turned out, we were right across the street (kitty-corner) from the infamous Tom's Burned Down Cafe. I had seen this place on a previous visit to the island about 10 years ago, but hadn't realized it was actually open to the public. LOL Yes, it's that bad. It has to be one of the most bizarre drinking establishments I have ever patronized. Fully 3/4 of the place is open to the elements (which I can only presume exempts them from the recently enacted statewide smoking ban) and it resembles nothing so much as a derelict pirate ship run aground on a small-town corner. The denizens of this sailor's saloon are a motley crew consisting of bony, sun-burnt sailing bums dressed in cut-offs, tank tops and/or bikinis plus a few hapless tourists. We definitely fell into the latter category. I can't remember now what my boss ordered but I had a Mike's Hard Lemonade, which I ended up having to chug as she suddenly announced we should get going to the concert venue.

It was a hot and unfortunately for my sorry, out-of-shape ass, an uphill walk to the venue from the bar. It was definitely scenic, however, as we took a sort of hidden path behind the Bell Street Tavern complete with vintage lamp posts. As we approached the grounds to Woods Manor, it was shorter to cut across this drainage ditch. My companion "lepped" across yon ditch with no problem; however, I was not so fortunate. LOL I promptly fell to my knees following an ill-timed jump and had the embarrassing experience of crawling out of the ditch, dirty, disheveled and sweaty. :-( To her credit, my boss never batted an eye and we proceeded across the lawn, under the curious eye of several lawn patrons seated nearby on blankets.

The large tent set up for the concert had been advertised as "climate-controlled," but the reality was somewhat different. It was nice and cool when we sat down (esp. after the humid hike to get there), but then once the event began, the emcee announced that due to the fact that they were recording the concert for public radio they would be turning the A/C system off during the actual performance. (It was pretty noisy, I must admit.) Well, needless to say, I was none too pleased. And my apprehensions turned out to be well founded as by the time the first song was over it was pretty warm in there.

I had the program around here for a long time, but now I can't find it and I guess the songs they played are pretty irrelevant to my purposes here. It was a very nice concert and I enjoyed the music thoroughly. But damn, it did get hot during the tuneage. We strolled outside during the intermission and walked over by the main building there at the music camp. It was a very beautiful setting. We ran into some friends of my boss there who had taken their boat over from the mainland for the concert and were spending the night on their boat on the island. They were really nice.

After the concert, during which my boss took a few photos for the paper, we got in line for the next ferry. There weren't too many cars on the return trip and we never saw the battling couple again. Hopefully, they resolved their difference and had a lovely evening.

As we cruised over the Big Lake toward Bayfield, my boss suggested we have some dinner in Washburn at The Steak Pit, which was where my car was parked. I was totally up for some chow so we headed to the restaurant once we landed. We got to sit out on the back deck and enjoyed the sunset and our delicious sandwiches. I had a Wisconsin burger (with plenty of cheese, naturally!) and a rum and Coke with an iced tea on the side. :-)

The Mad Isle

The view from the back deck at The Steak Pit. We were there about sunset so it looked very much like this.

So it's taken me awhile to get back to you... so sue me! ;-) Here's what happened:

I was running late (as usual) and sped through Washburn looking for the huge Steak Pit sign on the main drag because that's where we were meeting. I had seen that sign a million times but had never tried to find the actual restaurant, which was several blocks off the beaten path, down by the marina. Despite the road closed, construction ahead signs, I kept going and finally spotted the sign farther up than I remembered.

I turned right in the direction the sign pointed, toward the lake. I found the place and the parking lot was almost empty. I surmised (correctly) that they didn't open until suppertime. One of the only vehicles in the lot was a large pickup truck with longhorn steer horns gracing the hood, so I knew chances were this was not my boss's vehicle. LOL I decided to park over against a fence by what looked like an apartment building or condo. I glanced over and spotted my boss in her car several stalls away. She confirmed my suspicion that the Steak Pit didn't open until later, probably around 4. We laughed at the cliched signage depicting a large raw steak near the entrance.

We took off in her car and headed to Bayfield. It was pretty hot and to my utter horror, her vehicle did not have air conditioning. I was very glad I had brought some tea with me as I soon had a coughing fit due to the high levels of pollen and my undoubted early stage emphysema/undiagnosed asthma. We got to Bayfield and headed down to the ferry landing. We were using the ferry pass from work so that was cool. We got in line because the next ferry was leaving in about 15 minutes.

To be continued....

Living the Northern Summer

Summer on Madeline Island aka Michael's Island, the only one of
the 22 Apostle Islands with year-round residents.

On the Mad Isle!

My post title is actually the name of a great 1992 album by Michigan native Jim Chappell. Highly recommended! BTW: I am going to the Madeline Island Music Camp's annual concert this Saturday and I plan to blog about my adventures. We're going to the legendary Tom's Burned Down Cafe and Lord only knows where else. Stay tuned. ;-)

I hate my computer!

One of the four ferry boats that make the 20-minute trip back and forth from Bayfield to Madeline Island all season long. That three-story Victorian with the cupola on the hill is the Old Rittenhouse Inn, an historic bed and breakfast on (where else?) Rittenhouse Avenue in the heart of Bayfield, Wis.

My computer is screwed, dude! Someone or something (a Chinese spambot, perhaps?) has hacked my Hotmail account and stolen/pilfered my address book. It is empty! All of my contacts are gone. This happened on Thursday, May 27, the day, as it turned out, my sister was arriving from Illinois. And as she was my first house guest since I moved here in late September 2008, quite a bit of long postponed cleaning had to be done in the days leading up to her arrival. So more stress, I did NOT need!

I only found out about it as soon as I did because my friend, HeatherCrazy, had already opened a spam e-mail sent to her ostensibly by me that morning using my Hotmail account telling her about this great new iPhone I had just purchased. It referred her to a link to learn more about said phone. I don't think anything bad or malicious happened if you clicked on the link, I think it just took you to an ad for this phone.

Anyway, my friend knew right away that I didn't send that stupid message and that something must have happened to my account. Hell, I don't even own a cell phone, let alone a $600 iPhone like the one this e-mail claimed I have! When I called her on her lunch break that day, she told me about the e-mail. I was both freaked out and pissed off!

Luckily for me, whoever it was didn't change the password, so I was able to access the account, and lo and behold, a couple of puzzled people who hadn't heard from me in years but were still in my damn address book had replied. They no doubt wondered why the hell I was bothering to write to them after all this time bragging about my expensive new gadget. :-( Needless to say, I was none too pleased and wrote back immediately trying to explain. How mortifying. But I was actually surprised by how many people were taken in. They never gave it a second thought, I guess, since to all intents and purposes the message originated from my actual Hotmail account. Sigh.

One friend, Lynne H. (yes, Stan, she actually does live in Rockford!), forwarded an e-mail from her son about a similar occurrence to his Hotmail account, which happened somehow through Facebook. My Hotmail address is the one I have registered with Facebook and I am convinced this is what happened to me as well. I did change the password and some other security stuff on that e-mail account and I have not deleted it. I was going to change the e-mail I have registered with Facebook and then I thought: Wait a minute! What am I doing? Giving them another e-mail address to ruin? I don't think so! They've already gotten all they can get from that one, so why provide them with a fresh account to plunder.?! ;-)

It gets better: After the dust settled from my sister's five-day visit, I tried installing IE7 with the idea I would then move up to IE8. Apparently, this was not the proper way to go about things because now Internet Explorer won't open at all! When I double click on the desktop icon, it takes forever for anything to happen and then it opens a blank window for 2 seconds and closes. I haven't been able to upgrade it to IE8 through Mozilla but then again I couldn't open jackshit on the Web all last weekend. My computer sucks right now! It is so slow and so messed up that I am seriously thinking about just wiping the hard drive and starting over from scratch!

PS. I did have a really special Memorial Day weekend this year. My sister, Anna, drove up from Flatland (aka Grand Ridge, Ill.) and stayed from Thursday night until Tuesday morning. I had a four-day break from the ink mines and we had a nice time. :-) She cooked a pot roast and we went to a place I have been wanting to check out: the Black Cat Coffeehouse here in Ashland. It was kickass caffeine! We prowled the Chequamegon Food Co-op, haunted Saint Peter and Paul Cemetery at sunset in Moquah, walked the beach at Cornucopia and perused the aisles at Washburn Hardware on beautiful Hwy. 13.

On Saturday, we took the ferry over to Madeline Island and cruised around the whole thing, including Big Bay State Park. Anna dreamed of owning a house on the island and she took a few snapshots here and there, but it was only after she had left that I realized we hadn't gotten a photo of both of us somewhere... anywhere...the entire time. The beachfront shops at Cornucopia, for example, would've been perfect. One of us should have thought to ask a passerby to preserve the Kodak moment, dammit!

I considered buying a digital camera before her arrival but decided I couldn't swing it. (The camera I have is a 1980s Canon EOS, and it needs film and a new battery.) So I don't have any actual shots from our trip to Mad Isle. :-( However, I am going to try to set aside some cash and get a digital camera because they are not that expensive anymore and it would be so much better. I might actually want to upload some cool nature pix or scenic shots from around the region, which would get me out of my apartment once in awhile. ;-)

Big time

Big Top performers (clockwise from bottom left) Corey Carlson, Phil Anich and Cheryl Leah sing their hearts out at the historic theater in Ironwood, Mich.

The Blue Canvas Orchestra performing "Moon Songs and Moon Shadows" in Ironwood, Mich., on 12/30/09. That's Big Top Chautauqua regulars Tom Mitchell on the drums and Bruce Burnside playing the banjo. I will post some pix from the Mineral Point gig as soon as they are available.

I drove into my garage Wednesday evening after a 294-mile return trip from Mineral Point. I took a slightly different and more direct route on the way home, shaving off about 35 miles or so from the drive. However, that still didn't make up for the stupid blunder I made on the way down resulting in my nearly visiting La Crosse. LOL

The Blue Canvas Orchestra was in rare form and it was a truly magical evening in the newly restored MP Opera House. This was the first time I had seen the entire "Moon Songs and Moon Shadows" show featuring the music of Paul Simon and Cat Stevens. I really enjoyed it! Phil Anich was amazing as usual, the band sounded wonderful and Jack Gunderson nailed his solo on "Bridge Over Troubled Water." It was evident that they were really having a good time up there and their enthusiasm and joy were infectious. The sellout crowd gave them a standing ovation and they actually came back on for an encore, which they obviously had not planned on at all since they did a song they had already sung earlier in the show.

It was wonderful to see some friends I had been missing for so long. :-)