Madison and home

On Thu I woke up too early, but since I was already awake we decided to hit up the basement taxidermy exhibit, which was yet again no disappointment.
That evening we went to my favorite place, the Union to meet up with Michelle's CS host, who was strangely there with her boyfriend watching her ex play a show. It was especially strange the fact that she could not be seen by her ex because she had been banned from watching his shows. We spent the entire night there drinking beers with some CSers who came out and Jennifer, Jennifer's new man, Hanna, Terra, Jeff, and for a pleasant surprise, Jen's mom and stepdad, Craig. Craig and I shared a moment when I was shocked to hear him going on about nutrition and how horrible and unsustainable our industrial food system was, and then I told him my feelings on unions. Hands were shaken and mutual shock was expressed.
I got way too little sleep and had to get up very early for my presentation. I had only practiced twice and was fairly nervous. It actually went pretty well and I think that the people were good to me due to my obvious newbieism. It felt good to be presenting and be the expert in front of all these people.
We drove around the Dells a bit and hiked out to this nice secluded spot to look at the nice nature that does indeed exist there. We got back in time to meet my mother, have dinner at the Essen Haus and head back to the union to watch this bluegrass band. Their songs were all the same. Brandy made the comment that songwriting must be the easiest part of the guy's job. But they had a great stage presence and were fun to watch.
Fri I finally got the sleep I needed.
In the morning we went to the farmer's market and then up to the top of the capital from which there is a great view of the city. I met my mother's cousin, who is a geology professor UW, for the first time and we had lunch together. He is a talker and get right into it about why he thinks global warming is overrated and is a dangerous thing for environmentalists to get too excited about. He gave some compelling evidence about the self-selection of climate scientists and the fact that your career is basically over if you do not totally accept warming, and some other facts about the reliability and variability of data, meaning that it is still very uncertain. The danger in everyone embracing it, even for the good intention of reducing pollution is that if it proves to be false, then those who have attached to their goals the importance of fighting global warming will find that they suddenly not taken seriously. Anyway, interesting discussion.
On Sunday I was dismayed to find that my favorite restaurant in Madison, Clevelands, had been renovated to be a nicer Greek place. Fuck that shit. I hope they go bankrupt, greedy fools.
We ended up taking way too many stops and back roads and didn't get to our camping spot on Lake Erie until two. My one experience with Ohio state parks leaves a negative taste in my mouth. First of all, they are insanely expensive, $21 for a tent spot, which was no more than a paved parking space with a few square feet of grass and a picnic table. Then, at seven in the morning there were these fools with a power blower right outside making ridiculous amounts of noise so that I could no longer sleep. Seems someone had decided to waste a bunch of stimulus money on some make-work which included having several people doing the job of one to repave a perfectly fine camping road. I mean come on, it's a camping road so even if it wasn't already completely smooth, who cares? I don't mind that someone decided to create jobs for people, but they could have at least been doing something useful like removing invasive species or bringing back swamps. I'd rather they were on welfare than doing useless work.
Despite the early start we again made so many stops that we didn't get home until after two. On the bright side, I got to get some pictures of the Healthline bus rapid transit in Cleveland.