Saturday in Mad City

Well, I am spending my first full day in town (Lake Mills, actually) for the first time in four years. Madison certainly isn't Florida! It is a beautiful sunny day outside, but a bit cooler than I'm used to and the usual wind coming from the northwest. First thing I did was borrow a sweater from David.

Driving into Madison, I made a side trip to Sun Prairie, the Madison 'burb we lived in for our 26 years in the area. Altho' we lived in Sun Prairie, we lived on the west end, just off the first exit from Madison. We were Madison-oriented the entire 26 years and I really considered myself a Madisonian rather than a Sun Prairieite. Anyway, Sun Prairie has changed markedly since our departure. While the downtown area is still the same, Main St, west of downtown to the U.S. 151 intersection has been updated, with a median and some trees planted in the median. While our first home on Sunfield St and the neighborhood looked the same, our second home and Castle Drive is maturing from its development in 1987.

After that tour, I headed down to Madison's Capitol Square and the Dane County Farmers Market, a weekly event around the capitol building from late spring 'til late fall. One of my longtime friends, Glenn Clark, is a baker and his Sugar River Country Bakers has had a stall here for years. In fact, one of the primary things I wanted to do was visit Glenn and get some of his delicious scones. I purchased a package and Glenn gave me a complementary one, to boot (breakfast for the morning). I had also thought about an elephant ear from Oakwood Bakery but seeing they were humongous (about 14" or so across), I decided to pass and just savor Glenn's scone, instead.

After doing the Farmers Market, it was down State Street to the UW Library Mall and the University Bookstore, one of my hangouts for 26 years. It has changed quite a bit. Instead of the usual two floors of books, plus the basement full of textbooks. While the basement remains the same, the general books cover about 1/3 of one floor and that's it. The biggest change I saw was the replacement of the University Square shopping center, a single story quad with a court in the middle with a high rise of about 8 or 9 stories with various shops on the ground floor. Some of the shops on State St have changed but it is still as eclectic as it ever was.

Lunch was at one of my favorite Chinese restaurants, Happy Wok, where I had my favorite meal, garlic chicken. It was then on to the Mousehaus Cheesehaus for some seven year old cheddar, something I have sorely missed (not that I really need it). Finally, back to David's where I'm just gonna take it easy while David and JoJo attend a wedding reception this evening.

Looking forward to worshiping with my F/friends at the Madison Friends Meeting and meeting JoJo's family at a birthday celebration for her grandfather tomorrow afternoon.