madison, wisconsin

the only person in the world who is smarter than glenn reynolds writes one of my favorite blogs. it's a great mix of legal issues and "american idol" analysis ... and she's based in one of my all-time favorite cities in the country: madison, wisconsin.

a. and i took a weekend trip to chicago and made madison our halfway point. since ann posts lots of pictures of her current hometown, i thought i'd do the same ...

every saturday there's a ginormous farmers' market that surrounds the state capitol building.



it got so bad that a. and i had to walk on the grass -- a no-no in hippieville USA -- just to navigate through the crowds. and while there are all sorts of healthy, fresh veggies at the market, we got there at 11 a.m. and i had one thing on my mind:



all the crunchy granola types were out. hell, if they weren't, i'd have been disappointed.



i was sorely tempted to ask her where i'd be voting, what war they were referring to, and if that vote also included a vote for more federal funding for a green time machine to go back to 1968 when the hippies might have been relevant ...



this was incredibly colorful -- sadly the exposure didn't turn out well ... and while it was near the PFLAG booth, i think this place was selling veggies and fruit. regardless, it was intensely colorful.

here's a slightly less "we're here/we're putting a rainbow umbrella near the capitol/get used to it" shot of the capitol building.



and after a long trek down state street, in search of two-for-$15.98 t-shirts at steve and barry's ... we had to stop at the most famous market in the world:



and what did our quest, in the 90-degree-plus heat and humidity, get us?



modeled by hannah and sarah carroll ...



purchased by the lovely a., but modeled by "saras" carroll.