Milwaukee Art Museum with Tiffy

I am sort of watching the Super Bowl, but I really want Kansas City to win, and right now San Francisco looks poised to completely destroy them, so I've sort of lost interest. Even the ads aren't holding my attention tonight, so I am blogging.

When Travalon and I went to the zoo a couple of weeks ago, we saw this beautiful sunset:

A few days later, we were on the Capitol Square, and this fire hydrant covered with snow looked like a curly-haired dog to me.

Then I was waiting for the bus after work one day, and look what came to the bus stop! But they didn't let me get on board. The license plate says: "Yummy."

Our house guest is back! Isn't she adorable?

Friday Travalon and I had a quiet evening. He made fish, I finished the puzzle, and we hung out with the dog. Saturday he hung out with the dog more and went to a college and a high school basketball game (and the Badgers beat Michigan State), while I drove to Milwaukee and met Tiffy at the State Fair Park and Ride. She is a member of the Milwaukee Art Museum, and she got me in free. We had lunch at their cafe (with the member discount), and as you can see, we had a beautiful view.

The view from upstairs in the museum was even better.

For some reason in all the bathrooms they had this odd sticker on the mirror that says: "What inspires you?" and has an icon that seems to be a camera. I took them up on this and took a picture, and it turned out kind of okay because you can see my colorful jacket that I got at a fair trade shop in Galena, Illinois.

Tiffy wanted to see a display of prints, and this one made me laugh. The title was something along the lines of, "He Subsequently Pursued a Career in Photography."

Right outside of the print display was a bunch of glass figurines I really loved.

And I liked this glass sculpture too.

There was another display of paintings owned by a renowned collector, and I really loved this Van Gogh painting of the public garden in Arles, France.

Outside the art gallery there was this little bright yellow fake house. Art?

Then we walked downtown and saw this beautiful building.

We rode the Hop, which is a free streetcar, and then we went to an Ethiopian restaurant. We ended the evening with a trip to Purple Door Ice Cream, where I had lemon cardamom and raspberry chocolate chip ice cream. What a wonderful day in Milwaukee!

Today Travalon, Michaela, and I drove to Sauk, where we saw lots of eagles and went on a lovely walk, then we went to the park in Merrimac, but there was a big sign that said no dogs allowed in the park. We drove up one side of Lake Wisconsin and down the other, and we stopped to see the two small islands and the one large island. We also saw the Merrimac Ferry hibernating for the winter:

It was ironic, in my view, that it was a beautiful, sunny day on Groundhog's Day. We had thirteen straight overcast days, but the day you don't want the groundhog to see his shadow, of course he does.  Six more weeks of winter... Still, it was wonderful to see the sun again, and it was an unseasonably warm day, so we really enjoyed it.

Here are some short videos of things in Milwaukee cycling through color changes. The first is a group of glass globes at the Milwaukee Museum of Art, with a surprise ending. (There was a very boring art film showing at the museum, of three views of things in Milwaukee like smokestacks and streets in an industrial area of town, and the description said: "The protagonist of the film is time," which struck us as terribly pretentious.)

This is a building in downtown Milwaukee. Travalon thinks it is part of Marquette University.

And this is a clock outside of the swanky Pfister Hotel.

Hey! Kansas City came back to life and won the Super Bowl!! Yay!!

Famous Hat