epic weekend

The weekend began on Wednesday when my very good friend Laura came to Madison from Samoa where she is a Peace Corps Volunteer (click here for her blog). I hadn't seen her for a year and a half so it was very exciting to meet up with her and her sister Mary for sushi (something Laura has been craving and was on her ominous "list of things to do in the US"). We met up downtown State Street at a restaurant called Takara. Mary also brought along some of her friends to dinner and the 6 of us ordered enough sushi to fill a boat! (Well a boat serving platter at least). We celebrated Laura's return to the States with sake bombs (a shot of sake placed onto two chopsticks that sit over a cup of beer, you pound the table, the sake shot falls into the beer and then you drink!).

Thursday was a friend's birthday so after my improv rehearsal (we had our show on Sunday) I met up with the camp crowd at the Crystal Corner bar to watch another camp friend's band called Dan Andreas Fault play. They were great!

Friday was Kelly's fabulous fondue-a-polloza birthday party. She made delicious chocolate and cheese fondue and had strawberries, breads, cake, marshmellows, etc to dip. It was quite the spread of food. She also somehow has a full bar in her kitchen, seriously, you name it she has it. After the party I went to meet up with some more camp friends visiting from out of town at the Essen Haus where we polka danced and drank German beer from boots into the wee hours of the AM.

Oh that Julia!

Saturday I awoke early to a phone call from Julia. She, Tracy, Jesse and Peter and I all planned to go to the Farmers Market and then watch Laura and Mary play rugby (UW-Madison women vs the Alumni). I ended up meeting them at the Come Back Inn for brunch. When I arrived they all had Bloody Marys and a side of bacon each! They explained that by ordering a side of bacon, their drinks were only a dollar each. I ordered a side of eggs and everyone got a round of toast. But as we were waiting for our food to arrive Jesse came rushing in and explained that he had been asked to referee the rugby game...which started in 20 minutes....and was 20 minutes away. We got our toast to go and enjoyed "toast in a box" on the way.

After being held up by some sort of Marathon that went directly past the car we wanted to drive to the game we finally made it around 10:30am (and didn't hit any runners)!

Jesse refs the game in a cool shirt. That is Laura doing some kind of Samoan dance ritual that no one understands...not even her.

Hanks sisters, enemies on the field but brought together again by beer and chocolate chip cookies.

After the game we got some food, took a little tour through the Capital and some folks hit up the infamous Mifflin Street Block party which involves drinking lots of beer and trying to avoid getting arrested which I guess about 400 people failed to do.

That night we went to see Sean's do stand-up comedy and then harassed some people who were working at the Johhny Depp movie shoot (part of which is happening at the Capital). They were driving a Universal Studios truck but no Johhny was in sight. :(

UMM except for Mali's MOM who met him up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin!!!!! (They are filming all week so I'm going to creepily hang out around the Capital and see what happens....)

JOHNNY DEPP!!!!!

Sunday was my Improv show!! We got there around 4pm for warm up and BLTs at the Coliseum Bar. At 6pm it started and was really fun. Lots of friends and family showed up to support us and it was a great way to end our 10 week Beginners Improv class. We are starting the Intermediate class this summer, so there will be another show if you are sad you missed it!

Now it is Monday and I have a really busy week and a half. I have a Final Thursday and 2 next week (plus other homework and a paper). There will def. be more fun pictures from the weekend to come so I'll be sure to put them up soon.