Milwaukee '08

Forty-eight hours ago, snow covered most of the ground here to the depth of more than three inches, in places. Like this.

A couple of days of 40-plus temps made liquid of it all, including a number of doomed snowmen on some of the lawns I regularly drive by.

We took the occasion of warmer weather to drive to Milwaukee for the day, making it the first trip of 2008. I can't call it a resolution, but I've decided to make my carbon footprint as large as possible this year through travel. Actually, I try to do that every year, with more or less success. Anyway, up north of the Wisconsin line we saw where beer is made -- macrobrew stuff -- ate breakfast in the afternoon, and lingered under glass domes as the sun set. I got misdirected at times while driving (lost is too strong a word), but I also came to a contrarian conclusion about a in-car GPS-based navigational aids as a result, namely that I don't want one. (In fact, I'd already decided that; yesterday was confirmation.) More on that later.

Some of the trip involved large, rounded shapes. Such as a brew kettle in Miller Valley:

And one of the Mitchell Domes: