Capitol Couch

Wednesday, October 16th.

Today we took Dan's grandmother out to lunch at an Olive Garden restaurant. We all enjoyed the food very much as well as the chance to get out and around. And when we returned to her apartment afterwards she agreed to "pay" for her lunch by giving us a sneak preview of the Mozart sonatas she will be playing at a recital next week for her 90th birthday celebration. Not many 90-year old ladies have the musical talent that she does, let alone the courage and willpower to perform a piano recital in front of 80 people. We were both quite mesmerized.

Later that afternoon we convinced her to get back in the van with us so we could all go downtown Madison for a photo-op at the State Capitol building. We parked in front of the Capitol and met up with Dan's aunt Connie, her friend Raoul and a guy named Jack from her office. We carried the couch to the top of the steps in front of the Capitol to catch the last rays of sun and then all piled on and around it for a group sofa-picture. After that we packed the couch back in the van, took a quick tour of the inside of the Capitol building and headed back home.

That evening we went over to visit Dan's friend Susie whom he knew from his year in Chicago. She is now an art major at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and lives in a big house just outside the center of town together with four other people. She'd invited a group of friends over for dinner that evening and we were lucky enough to be included among those friends. The vegetarian dinner she'd cooked was absolutely great and as a testament to Susie's great personality her friends were all interesting and friendly people with great stories to tell of their art, their travels and their lives in general. While Susie's house-mate Isaiah and a friend of his spent the evening in the kitchen brewing pumpkin beer and scenting the house with the wonderful smell of pumpkin pie spices we sat in the living room listening to great music (which included Fela Kuti's afrobeat orchestra, a 45 with recordings by some Jewish boys' choir and Stevie Wonder albums played at everything but the right speed). Towards the end of the evening Susie's house-mate Erin to over and sat in the living room for hours playing mellow riffs on his Rhodes piano.