Is This Supposed To Be Enticing?

A couple weeks ago, I traveled from Eau Claire, Wisconsin down to La Crosse.  Both cities are located on the far western side of the state.  The trip from Eau Claire to La Crosse was mostly on country roads.  It was a very pretty drive.  I passed through several small towns, including one called Elk Creek.  As I passed by the Elk Creek Inn Bar & Grill, I asked myself:  what the hell?  Now, you know I had to stop and take a picture of this.

Can you tell what it is?  This is, perhaps, a better angle.

Yup.  That's a big chicken on the roof.  Is that supposed to entice people to want to pull in and eat there?  If so, it didn't really work for me.  I didn't see that chicken and go, "oooh, yum...."  I was happy to just get a picture and keep driving.  It did make me laugh, though. 

For a whole host of reasons, I do enjoy my travels through Wisconsin.

Cats

My last blog post about a cat was a sad one-- the passing of my beloved Simon.  This is a happier post about Cats-- the Broadway musical.

Last Saturday night, Scott and I went to see Cats at the Overture Center downtown.  I had seen Cats many years ago.  Scott was a first timer.

The Overture Center for the Arts in downtown Madison is a really cool place.  It's one block off the Capital square and right at the cusp of the very hip and trendy State Street district.  It was packed down there last Saturday with people celebrating St. Patrick's Day.  Something Scott and I love about Madison is that, even when there are events involving a lot of people, things here just seem so accessible.  Getting to big, crowded events just isn't that difficult.  I guess that's the difference between "big" and "crowded" in a smaller town like this compared to "home".   For perspective, I believe Madison's population is less than a quarter the size of Columbus.

Anyhow, back to last Saturday.  State Street is an area where a lot of University of Wisconsin-Madison college kids hang out so, needless to say, bars and restaurants were swarming with kids drinking green beer and Irish whiskey.  Scott and I were looking for a spot to have a drink before the show.  We decided it best to look for something a little more upscale with the thought it would be less crowded with kids.  We found it.  An ultra cool place called "The Icon", right across the street from the Overture Center.  I borrowed the picture below from their website.




Scott and I had actually had a drink at The Icon before we saw the Blue Man Group at the Overture Center back in January.  Both times we've been there we sat at the bar.  Excellent service.  Excellent drinks.  This time, Scott had an Old Fashioned and I ordered a martini that had ginger vodka, some kind of ginger liqueur and orange juice.  Damn, it was good.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, Scott ordered us shots of Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey.

   
Martini on the right?  Loved it.  Had 2 of them.  Shot of Tullamore Dew in the front?  Bleck.  I never want to drink another one of those ever again.  Unless, of course, it brings me the luck of the Irish.  For some good luck, I'd have another.

After cocktails we walked across the street to the Overture Center.  I don't know all the history of the Overture, but the State Street entrance appears to still resemble the original structure of the building.


(picture from citydictionary.com)

At some point they apparently expanded/renovated/updated because this is what the other side of the exterior of the Overture looks like.

 
(photo from flickr.com)

The inside of the Overture is impressive.  It has a huge, vertically open lobby area.  The next two photos were taken looking up from 2 different angles from the ground floor of the lobby.

 

The purple color you see in the picture above is LED lights that change colors.  Groovy.

I love the inside of the theater.  I took these pictures from our seats.  (We had better seats for Blue Man Group, but our seats for Cats weren't horrible.)

The next picture I borrowed.  Obviously.  I couldn't take a picture like that if I tried.  Even though I want to.


  (picture from host.madison.com)

You get one quick opportunity after intermission to snap a shot of the Cats stage with cats actually on it.  I took advantage of the opportunity.

The show was good.  Amazing costumes.  Engaging music.  Incredible singing.  We enjoyed it.

So, back in January I wrote a post about buying tickets to 3 shows to get us through the winter:  one show in January (Blue Man Group at Overture), one in February (Viva Vegas at the Fireside) and one in March (Cats at the Overture).  It's somewhat hard to believe 3 months have passed since we bought those tickets and we have now seen all 3 shows.  That also means we got through another Wisconsin winter, which has to be one of the most mild winters on the books.  I have no complaints about that.

Goodbye to a Faithful Companion

My cat, Simon, died today.  I'm still in a state of disbelief about it.  He had been diagnosed with severe heart disease at the end of last year.  He was put on a lot of medication and seemed to be doing better for a while.  Unfortunately, treating the heart disease compromised his kidneys.  We took him to the ER at UW this morning.  They admitted him and planned to keep him for 3-4 days.  Although his health status was precarious, there really wasn't any indication his death was imminent.  Then, shockingly, a few hours later I got the call that he died.  They think he might have thrown a blood clot.  They said it happened quickly.

Scott and I drove back to the vet hospital and got to see him.  It was surreal to see him laying there, lifeless.  We got to pet him a while and I kept waiting to hear him purr.  We told him good-bye.  I wasn't ready to do that.  Not yet.   

I don't know what I'm going to do without Simon.  He was my faithful companion.  He would follow me around, stare at me adoringly, and purr so loudly.  He was one of those cats that when he purred it sounded like he was singing.  He was only 11.  Too young for a such a sweet boy to die.

I found this post I wrote about Simon last year.  http://juliemj.blogspot.com/2011/01/loverboy.html

Below is a picture of him this past Christmas.  I can't imagine my life without him. 

Fireside Theater

Last Saturday was the Madison fishing expo.  The Saturday before that, Scott and I went to the Fireside Theater.  Fireside is located in Fort Atkinson, WI- which is about a 30 minute drive from our house in Stoughton, all on back country roads.  It was a mild, sunny Saturday when we drove over there; a very pretty drive.

Fireside is a dinner theater.  I had heard several references to it since moving to Wisconsin and seen a variety of advertisements about it.  We decided to check it out while this show was playing:

I really didn't know what to expect.  All-in-all, I ended up liking the show, but the dinner part of it was kind of.....tacky.

I'll start at the beginning.  Here is the outside of the building.

Folks arrived starting at 4:45 PM.  The show wasn't scheduled to start until 7:30 PM.  I was wondering what would occur during that 2 hour and 45 minute window.  My fear was that we would all be herded as a large group.  Thankfully, that wasn't the case.  After picking up tickets at will-call, you could go at your own pace until the show started.  There are several shops in the building down a long hallway from will-call to the dining and theater area.  The shops looked cute, but we didn't go in any.  Rather, we quickly found the bar.

The bar area was sunken and had a dark, cozy atmosphere.  I especially liked the chairs.  Very retro.  Loved 'em.

Our bar tender was a young kid who didn't even look old enough to serve alcohol.  He was friendly, though, and shared with us it was his first night on the job.  Scott asked what kind of draught beers they had.  The kid looked a little puzzled and asked, "Can you give me an example?"  God love him.  He didn't know what "draught beer" meant.  After a brief tutoring session with Scott in which the young man learned that "tap" and "draught" beers are the same thing, we were in business.  The poor kid was really embarrassed, but he apologized and we joked about it and we left him a big old tip. 

There is a limited dinner menu at Fireside but I was glad that  you could order dinner whenever you wanted to between the 4:45 arrival time and the 7:30 show time.  After a drink at the bar, Scott and I made our way to the dining area.  The Fireside website indicated dress should be "dressy to business casual".  Um, really?  Here was kind of the first clue that "dressy to business casual" might be overdoing it a bit.  This is what was on the dining table.

Cheap salt/pepper shakers, butter pats in a bowl and a paper coaster under the water glass.  I don't have a problem with any of these things, but "dressy to business casual?  How about jeans and a sweatshirt...?

They serve a 5-course meal at Fireside.  The appetizer on the limited menu that night was guacamole.  You don't need to check your glasses.  You read that right.  Guacamole.

It actually tasted pretty good.  It was served in a bowl, on a paper doily, on a black plastic plate with water spots on it.  The chips came in a basket, wrapped in paper napkins.  "Dressy to business casual".  Riiiiight.

The most expensive bottle of wine on the menu at this "dressy to business casual" place was under 20 bucks.  Hey, that was all good for us.  We ordered the malbec.  I love malbec's; that's my go-to wine.

Now, there were plenty of other drinks we could have ordered.  For example, I saw a couple sharing what appeared to be a grasshopper--- one drink, two straws.  Ain't that cute?  Or, the ladies at the table next to us ordered some kind of....I don't know what it was....a fruity-type drink with these huge......"things" in them.  They weren't really umbrellas.  I don't know what they were, but you know I had to get a picture.

Can you see those big round colorful things?  WTF.  I don't know what they were, but they were right up in that "dressy to business casual" place.  When I see things like this, I don't think "dressy to business casual" in Wisconsin.  I think bikini and tiki hut in the Caribbean.

After our guacamole appetizer and French onion soup came the Caesar salad. Interestingly, this one had slices of lunch meat on it.  I think I laughed out loud when I figured out that's what it was.

This will be my last reference of this nature in this post, I promise:  A Caesar salad, with strips of lunch meat, served on a black plastic plate. "Dressy to business casual."  Riiiight.

OK.  I'm done with that now.

The basic meal you paid for when you purchased tickets to the show was some kind of pork chop with stuffing.  Scott and I opted to upgrade from the limited menu.  He got steak and I got salmon and scallops.  The food wasn't great, but it was quite decent.  Decent enough for Scott to spill on his shirt.

Is he cute or what?

Our table was towards the back of the expansive dining area, near a waterfall.

The waterfall was nice.  Because I promised, I'm not going to make a reference to the stack-able chairs at the dining tables and the lattice and how that doesn't really scream "dressy to business casual".  I promised I wouldn't.  So I won't.

After dinner and another drink at the bar (which I'm sure we needed), we walked by the fire (they don't call it Fireside for nothin') to the theater.

The theater is small, but still comfortable.  There is seating on all 4 sides of the stage and a balcony.  I suspect all the seats in a theater this small are good seats.  We were in the third row.  The middle of the stage rises and drops.  For the show we saw, the band was on that part of the stage and they got raised and lowered between acts.  The performers worked the perimeter of the stage, around the band.  The picture below shows the stage and the seating.  They removed those yellow cones once everyone was seated.  During the show, the performers went up and down the stairs on the 4 corners of the stage as they segued from one act to another.

Scott and I both enjoyed the show.  It was all singing and a little bit of comedy from an MC.  They sang a bunch of rat pack songs (you know I love Dean Martin, right?) and Celine Dion and it wouldn't be a Vegas show without a little Wayne Newton.  And there were others.  They even had a couple show girls.  I thought all the performers sang really well. 

Scott and I have been living a pretty fun life here in Wisconsin and the trip to the Fireside Theater fit right into the fun, tacky dinner and all.