Hello again. Long time no… write? Read? Not see...
I don’t know about anyone else, but it has been a fast and
furious few months! And there’s no slowing down (traffic jam, speed bump or
scenic routes) in sight!
Life has been going great, if only I could remember what
I’ve been doing! Personal life-wise, not much going on, sorry to say. The
holidays came and went with all the fun and good food that they always entail.
Mom and dad are doing well, if only mom would stop trying to find new and
inventive ways to injure herself. Austin has a new job and seems to be enjoying
it, or at least enjoying the income (you can never quite tell with that one).
Sherlock and Watson are doing fantastic and finally getting along a little
better now that Watson outweighs Sherlock (and he’s only a little over a year
old).
Work life-wise, things are busy as ever. We finally had our
BRC audit (product safety and quality management system), which has been a year
(or longer) in the making. With only a mild mental breakdown or two, we passed
with flying colors and are already ramping up for this year’s rendition, which
is why I have a reason to write again! A coworker and I were shipped up to our
corporate offices to observe (and maybe help but not really) with their
internal audit as they prep for recertification. More importantly, it gave me a
fantastic excuse to go see a friend in Wisconsin for the weekend! Ironically,
she’s a friend I only have because of our divisions transition into BRC, so
we’ve come full circle, I guess!
Despite spending part of the week curled up in the bathroom
with food poisoning (or the stomach flu, we’ll never really know), I was more
than excited for the good food and fun that the weekend entailed. After driving
from Green Bay to Wausau, Sam and I ate some delicious tapas and tacos at a
local restaurant in Stevens Point before spending the evening watching Split at
her apartment (sorry for kicking you out of your bed, Jed. Sort of. It was
comfortable).
The next morning, we had breakfast at an adorable little
dinner. The place was… unique, with bald eagle wall paper and a wide variety of
coffee mugs (no two were the same from what I could see). The other patrons
were some of the most interesting characters that I’ve had the pleasure to
eavesdrop on (sorry for the bad manners grandma!). The food was pretty good,
but the environment definitely made the experience!
Next, we packed up and headed to Madison for the weekend –
better food and better bookstores! It was a beautiful drive to get there,
especially with all the snow on the ground (yes Sam, I know you’re sick of it).
Google took us a weird route through the countryside, but the barns and rolling
white hills were gorgeous. After a brief stop at target (had to get a swimsuit
for the hot tub!), we checked into our hotel and headed into downtown Madison
for an afternoon of adventures!
Beautiful Barn w/ Quilt in WI
We started out our adventures at Michelangelo’s Coffee House
(we’ve got the coffee and wine bar in Norman). It was an adorable coffee shop
off the main road through downtown Madison. Their tea was pretty good (I got
peppermint, to help with the stomach stuff) and Sam’s scone was delicious! We
kind of just wandered down State street, looking in shop windows and hunting
for a decent bookstore. We popped into one called Browzers Bookshop for Used
& Rare books, a local independent bookshop that was incredible. Honestly,
we probably could have spent hours just in that bookstore! The shop had some
old, beautiful books on the shelves, and it was so peaceful and quiet. The
adorable woman running the store told everyone who came through about a book (I
think signed by Einstein?) worth $1000 they had for a year that she finally
sold. She was so excited about that story!
We wandered back down the other side of state street and
stopped in another bookstore, A Room of One’s Own. It was another cute, unique
little bookstore, but with more of the modern-day collections. Sam and I found
two books with which to restart our book club (we have a commitment issue
apparently). We also both made an impulse buy of a little gadget to hold open
the book for you which was adjustable to the various “standard” book sizes,
which was so cool!
We had an early dinner at a local Indian food restaurant,
Mirch Masala. It was on the upper level of one of the buildings off State St.
Like usual, Sam and I over-ordered on food, but it was totally worth it. To be
fair, this was my first real meal
since Wednesday night. And it was mouthwateringly good. We had samosas, which
were hot and like a warm hug in your mouth. After the samosas, we both tried
some soup, daal (lentil) for Sam and chicken for me, which was fantastic. Next,
Sam was white girl basic and had chicken tikka masala (she said it first and it
was so good) and I tried chicken biryani (basmati rice with chicken, nuts, and
spices; also incredibly good); obviously we had to order all of this with a
side of naan bread, both traditional and garlic. Like I said, our eyes were
bigger than our stomachs, but we made a decent dent and took the rest for
leftovers.
At this point it was maybe 630pm and we headed back to the
hotel to read our books, run to the gas station to get some snacks, and pass
out for the evening. Real party girls, I know. We were in bed by 10…
Sunday, we were up and moving pretty early (see previous
note on bed time lol) and headed to the Lake Geneva Ice Castle. It was another
beautiful drive, albeit on a very cold day (I think Madison topped out at 11
degrees that day; we started at -3). We had breakfast and coffee at a
coffee/bike shop at Lake Geneva called Avant Cycle Café. Tea wasn’t as good as
at Michelangelo’s, but the scones were delicious! We wandered up and down the
street, stopping in a few little shops, before heading out of town to a local
brewery Sam wanted to check out (wasn’t quite what she expected).
Avant Cycle Cafe
We headed back to the lake for our Ice castle appointment at
230. From what I could tell, it’s made right on the lake, which was cool. You
walk through a tunnel into the main area of the castle, which is open to the
sky, while slogging through a 6-12 inches of ice chips. Not snow, not slush,
straight ice chips that don’t give you any support while walking like snow
does. It was a workout! But it was worth it for how beautiful the castle was!
It was small and not quite what I expected, but totally worth the trip. We
probably only stayed inside for about 15 minutes, but we were losing the
feeling in our feet! Now, I dressed warm. I had on my fur-lined Timberland
combat boots, wool socks, a nice new INSULATED coat that I bought specifically
for this trip, and a ski cap. It was COLD (yes, I know an ice castle is made of
ice and ice is cold - sue me). It was absolutely beautiful to walk through,
with archways and little rooms throughout.
To regain the feeling in our feet, we hopped in the car and
headed back to Madison for the evening (with big plans, let me tell you). We
stopped to eat at a Venezuelan/Latin American cuisine place called La Taguara.
Adorable restaurant with DELICIOUS food. There used to be a similar restaurant
in Norman called Amazonia (just discovered it was closed when I googled it to
remember the name). It was very traditional food without the typical
American flair, and it tasted so good after freezing our buts off at Lake
Geneva.
We headed back to the hotel for an evening of reading, hot
tubs, and movies before another early bedtime. The next day, we had brunch at
Café Hollander, which was good but not the best food we’d had for the weekend.
The restaurant had a great vibe though! We did a brief bit of shopping at Lush
before heading back towards Steven’s Point and Wausau for me to catch my
flight. All in all, a fantastic weekend!
Cafe Hollander
