That Was Awkward

So Brad and I have each had a kind of awkward experience lately and I thought it would make a good post so that you can see some of the everydayness of our lives. First, I said “That was awkward” to Brad and some friends after returning to the table from the lady’s room. We were eating dinner at Giordano’s, Chicago’s most famous pizza place, after a temple trip. They are acclaimed to have the best deep dish pizza, which is funny because we found out we had eaten there before with Brad’s family when we randomly chose the closes pizza restaurant while walking around in Chicago. Anyways, so the awkward part takes me back to inside the woman’s restroom washing my hands, when a young teenage boy walks in and starts heading towards the stalls. I look at him with probably a puzzled look and I am thinking ‘is that really a boy’ and then respond with “you know this is the woman’s restroom?” The boy responds to me like I am the weird one with “yeah I am waiting for my mom” and continues to enter the stall. I look around all confused, there are only two stalls in the bathroom and I just came out of the other one, then I walk out to see if there is for some reason a long line at the men’s room, nada. That is when I walked back to the table still trying to figure out why I had just experience what I just did…I don’t know what is wrong with some kids these days, he is just lucky that I was so confused by it all or else I would have had some words to say.

Awkward number two, for Brad. Brad has been doing a week of externship, which includes getting paid to follow around an internal medicine doctor. Brad has really enjoyed it because the Doctor lets him go in and do all the initial interviewing of patients all by himself, then he reports to the doctor and takes his guesses on what is wrong. So the other day we both returned from work to a house with no electricity. We decided that this must mean we should go get fast food for dinner, so we opted for our local Taco Bell so that Brad could prove that you really can get lunch for $3 (from an earlier discussion of ours). As we were sitting there eating, we spent more than $3 but it is true you can get three tacos for $3 still, Brad tells me to look over at a lady sitting across the restaurant and says “Wow, that is awkward”. So I look over and take a unsuspicious scan at the woman that he is talking about curious to see what is so awkward. I think to myself as I am looking at her that she looks pretty average compared to some of the other people there at Taco Bell, this one is past 60^th St. if that helps you know what kind of people are around. As I am still looking at the lady in my peripheral Brad says to me that he knows more about this lady than probably anyone else in around right now. I flash another puzzled look, and he continues to explain that he just did her interview in the clinic, really she must have also come directly to Taco Bell after also (this was really coincidental since the clinic was 30 min away from where we were at). Brad was trying to decide if he should go up and say hi or if that would make the situation weirder. Since I didn’t think the woman had looked over and recognized him we hurried and slipped out of the restaurant and Brad decided to ask the doctor what he should do in that type of situation in the future.

Madison

So I love visiting state capitol buildings or even city hall buildings, it is something about the architecture that I just love to see. I have been wanting to visit Madison for a while so that we could go to the capitol and it just hasn't happened, but this Saturday we needed an excuse to get away from the house so we weren't stuck helping our landlords repaint it all day. So we went to Madison kind of on a whim, without looking up anything just with knowing the approximate location of the capitol building and a map of the state that really didn't help us to well once we got there. Somehow we did find the capitol building, okay it was pretty easy once we got on a street without trees so that we could see it. We just missed the farmers market which was happening right in the area, sad because I was dying for some fresh cherries. We decided then to take a walk down the street with restaurants to find some lunch and we found ourselves on the outdoor state street mall. Apparently this was the happening place because while eating lunch out on the sidewalk we had some good people watching. We had heard that Madison was like hippie town and even compared to Boulder. I would have to agree now. We even saw bike cops giving out tickets to bike riders running the lights, that was random. While Brad and I were in the camping store I heard what I thought was a marching band coming down the road, so I walked over to the window, I was on the second floor, and I see a demonstration of protesters walking down State Street. Brad and I were pretty intrigued so we followed them to the capitol and even listened to some of the speeches being made. Don't worry we made sure we kept our distance from the action. After we got our fill of that we randomly drove around the campus area, Brad gave $ 0.75 to a beggar, we asked a random couple for directions and any suggestions on what to see in the area, and ended up at some park on the lake that had free firewood and bonfire pits (if we would have had matches we might have stayed for a bonfire). On the way home we decided to stop at the outlets to get hiking shoes for Brad and ended up with some pretty good deals. For not planning anything it turned out to be a pretty good day. Though next time I am at least going to get a good map.

Here is the Wisconsin Capitol Building

Here is the protest from the store window walking down the street

I love this shot because it has the capitol, the protesters, and a bike rider, pretty much sums up that city

Here is Brad trying to fit in with his mad face from where we were listening.

Here is the city skyline from across the lake at the park we found.

Door County

This last weekend we spent some time in Door County WI. It is the thumb of Wisconsin that sticks out into Lake Michigan. We left Friday night after work with no reservations and hardly any plans. We lucked out with getting the last campsite available (I was glad of that because Brad wanted to sleep in the church parking lot if we didn’t get a campsite). So with no plans and all the maps we could find we went ‘exploring the door’. It was a good way to find out exactly what is up here in the door county that we hear so much about. And it was kind of nice to not have to rush to anything because we had no where we needed to be. We were able to see many beautiful shore line views, tour a lighthouse, see some ship wreck sites, visit the sand dunes beach, and eat at some cool restaurants (all for reasonably cheap). Brad really liked the area because of the Scandinavian influence, we stopped at a couple Scandinavian stores and ate at a Swedish restaurant with real goats on the roof (really I’m not kidding, but the goats left before we could take a picture). We decided next time though we need to explore more of the lake itself (either by canoe or by kayak).

Here is Brad our trusty captain of the trip.

We made several pit stops just to see the lake

Brad and I dressed to match the buoys

This resturant serves you by train

Outside the resturant we found lots of random things like a huge chest game

Scott tells us about the shipwreck

This is one huge light used in the lighthouse!

Here is the shore just below the lighthouse (doesn't look to bad to be shipwrecked here)

The most photographed lighthouse in wisconsin and we helped take some more.

Here I had to pull over and take a picture of this road, who designed this one?

The view from atop a tower

Here are some sweet cliffs that we were told to visit just up from the beach

We even caught the sunset

With a background like that we had to be cute

4th Of July

So we decided to stay home at the last moment for the 4th of July weekend, but staying home didn't mean that we didn't do anything, we actually did lots. On Friday, my holiday from work, we drove up to Devils Lake and went hiking. On the way there we hit traffic so we took out the map and detoured on some smaller roads, one of which took us to a ferry to get over the river. We enjoyed the hiking at Devils Lake and the area is really beautiful. The hiking features balancing boulder features which where created by a glacier thousands of years ago, and it reminded us of the geology mystique of Utah. We are excited to go back with our canoe. We also hit up the IMAX, the parade, the ward party and two fireworks shows. Don't worry we actually got a nap in this weekend too. We wanted to show off our pics of Devils Lake so that maybe we can get some of our friends to come along next time.

Devils Lake from the shore

The hiking trail

Our friend Mr Butterfly on my are

Mr Butterfly really liked Brads finger too

Balancing Rock

Devils Doorway

The lake from the east bluff

The train that came by on our hike around the lake (yes we were hiking on the train tracks, but we hopped off when we heard the whistle for the train)

We hope everyone had a wonderful 4th!!