Crazy Weather Thursday

First, I must say I am wiped out. I've successfully completed six of my seven events, plus meetings, plus schmoozing, plus everything else. I have one more tomorrow and then I am finished.

After I left the show today, I took a drive to old haunts, including a rental house I stayed at in my previous job -- more than 20 years ago. This was a lovely house, but it was stuffed to the gills with country kitsch. No corner was left undecorated with clutter. A goose with a dress on; fake flowers; cute little signs, primitives, fake pot belly stove. We always would sit in the living room which had these beautiful beams and a picture window to the pool and dream about stripping the place of all interior decor.

I hadn't been by there in years, and from the amount of crap hanging from trees, lining the driveway, it seems like the original occupants may still live there. Or else they sold to someone with their exact taste. One of my memories from decades ago was pulling into their driveway with a coworker when the people were still there and there were all these chipmunks, and the owner asked me in his best Wisconsinese, "Those are chipmunks, do you have chipmunks in New York City?" We said yes, and later my coworker said to me that he wanted to say, "Yes, but in New York, we call them rats."

This is not the rental house, but the neighbor's house. I instantly remembered this deer which I swear is more than 30 years old. That deer has survived fire, flood, blizzards, draughts, and no doubt chipmunk invasions. But proudly he (she?) stands, looking only a bit worse for wear:

I hadn't eaten lunch so I went to this chain called Culver's which Melissa knows. I don't think there are Culver's on the East Coast. It's basically good burgers and ice cream. Each day there is a flavor of the day. I surrendered the first day to "turtle sundae" flavor which is caramel streaks and pecans in soft-serve vanilla. Had a cone. Yesterday was strawberry cheesecake which I have to say does not appeal to me, and today it was "rootbeer float" which also did not appeal to me.

Yesterday, people were talking about root beer floats which got me thinking. More on that in a minute. So a storm was brewing:

And then the deluge started. It was unbelievable... even the car was shaking. I felt as if someone was throwing buckets of water at the windshield. And the car would move a bit from the wind.

And, of course, the windshield wiper couldn't keep up with the rain and I was glad to be parked.

The rain stopped after about 15 minutes and it was just a flood.

Oshkosh folks and businesses are really into decorating with landscaping and flowers. I don't think you'd see something like this in an East Coast fast food.

I left the parking lot, and the sun came out and dried everything up.

There's an area of town by the lake with beautiful Victorian homes and I like driving there and looking at the houses. Some of them are just huge. I look at the ones for sale. Of the ones I saw, this was my favorite. I wonder how much it costs.

The house above is two blocks from Lake Winnebago.

Then I drove downtown. This is an opera house, built in 1883, which was also featured in that Johnny Depp movie "Dillinger." If you have any interest in historic preservation, this old building has a wonderful story. You can read it at grandoperahouse.org. It was renovated twice and the townspeople rallied to save it twice.

You can see "Opera House" here on the front.

Now, back to the root beer float. This is Ardy & Ed's -- straight from 1958 with carhops and home-made signs. It's been around forever and I hadn't been there in a number of years. Decided to have a rootbeer float which I don't think I've had in 50 years or more. My mother used to make them.

And here it is, looking wonderful. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the taste. Either the ice cream was old or else it was just too buttery, so I guess some things are better left in the past. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I dumped it.

This was another customer -- this cute little dog, and when the man was ordering, he was leaning out the window looking at the carhop.

Here's another thing we don't see in NYC, terribly long freight trains, and I've gotten stuck at a crossing and always, of course, when you're running late because they go on forever. I was going to wait and get a picture of the caboose, but this train just wouldn't stop coming.



And finally, one last thing we don't see much of in NY that fascinates me -- big skies with beautiful cloud formations. Just don't see more that a portion of the sky at once.