A Bloy and his Blog

Despite the threat of rain, I decided to do some exploring today and visit a park I’ve never been to before, Yellowstone Lake State Park.

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Several months ago I talked about the possibility of moving into a cohousing development next year. Unit costs are beginning to be finalized for the project and despite the goal for the development to be affordable, unit costs are WAY too high for my meager librarian’s salary. Consequently, I will not be moving into that cohousing project.

While the costs made it an impossibility for me, I was also having second thoughts about the whole cohousing concept. I’m not sure how much I would enjoy things like having meals in the common house on a regular basis. Perhaps it’s just a little too communal for me.

At least I’ll be able to continue to enjoy the antics of the neighborhood adolescents, like the group that decided to hang out for a couple hours in front of my condo this evening. Oh, what fun!

Taken at the Arboretum yesterday.

I was one of the 81,704 people at Camp Randall Stadium today, watching the Wisconsin Badgers literally run over the Northwestern Wildcats, winning the game 41-9.

After running back P.J. Hill scored a 60-yard touchdown run on the second play from scrimmage, I thought we might be witnessing the start of a big blowout. But the score at halftime was actually fairly close (17-9), because of a three Wisconsin turnovers, and the solid play of Northwestern’s redshirt freshman quarterback, Andrew Brewer.

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My kitchen remodeling project is moving along. Yesterday, my brother and I installed the tile. I had never done tile before, so I was very lucky to have Steve around to help me out with that. It really wasn’t that hard of a job to do, although cutting it to fit around the electrical outlets was a tedious and exhausting process (especially considering the only tool we had to cut those L-shaped corners was a small hand saw). For every half-inch of cutting we needed to do on those porcelain tiles, it took about five minutes. Yes, my right arm was a bit sore this morning.

We installed the tile in the space above the sink, ran it the full length of the counter (about six and a half feet), and up to the bottom edge of the upper cabinets. It looks great, even without having the grout in there yet (hopefully, we’ll do that sometime this weekend).

I spent most of today spackling and putting primer on the walls where that oh-so-beautiful wallpaper used to be. Paint goes on tomorrow. Hey, I might actually finish this project!

In a couple of weeks citizens in Wisconsin will be voting on two referendums. I’m voting NO on both.

One referendum is asking if the State should institute the death penalty for capital crimes with DNA evidence. Wisconsin hasn’t executed anyone for the past 150 years, and I certainly think we should keep it that way.

The death penalty has always struck me as being a tool of vengeance, which I believe is morally wrong.

read the rest of: Just Say NO

I got to see my great nephew Adam in his Halloween costume tonight. Here he is with his Grandmother (my sister-in-law), who made the swashbuckling jacket.

Say it with me now… “Arrrrrrrr!”

Sorry about the downtime folks. Last week there was a DNS issue with my hosting company, which I thought was fixed. But I discovered it was happening again today. Basically this site wasn’t working if you went to ‘www.bloy.net’, but it was loading fine if you went to ‘bloy.net’ (without the www).

Anyway, the support technician promised me the problem has been resolved.

Last night I went to the Bob Dylan concert at the Kohl Center here in Madison. When you go to see such a legendary performer, you bring a lot of expectations along. After all, you’ve heard those classic songs a hundred times before, in their original recorded form.

Over the past several decades, Dylan hasn’t been one to reproduce the song’s original studio sound in concert, and he certainly doesn’t sing the same way he did twenty (or even ten) years ago. However, the outstanding backing band, and that sometimes raspy voice did have more than their share of shining moments. That was especially true when they performed the bluesy songs like “Lonesome Day Blues” or “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” (a song from his newest and highly acclaimed disc, Modern Times). Musically, another strong moment came when the band opened the encore with another of the new songs “Thunder on the Mountain.”

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It was a great day for a hike yesterday, so I did a little exploring and headed to New Glarus Woods State Park.

read the rest of: November hike