A new life; same as the old life?

A one night flying stop in Cleveland, right by Progressive Field and it was hotter than hades!   Real feel was almost 100f, which I guess compared to home in IL with a real feel today of 115f, it was positively temperate.  We are en route to visit our friends in Cape Cod, via Cleveland and another friend in upstate NY (more about that here). We plan on dipping our toes in Lake Erie tomorrow, as last time we passed by, it had to be the warmest open water I have ever experienced! The boss asked some travel groups what they recommended for a quick stop and the Cleveland Museum Of Art came out in the top three, (wikipedia internet photo to the right by this individual ) along with a restaurant/diner called Tommy's, so that's what we did! The Museum of Art, of course did not impress the teenagers, and Tommy's was just OK if I am honest. The milkshakes were good, but I had a "pie" which was more of a weird wrap in some kind of dough. It tasted OK, but was very odd, and ...

A few weekends ago, over 4th July weekend, we decided to string a few days together and go away for the weekend.  We left it a little last minute to decide, and so choices were limited.  We settled on Madison, as we had not been in a few years, as we knew House On The Rock was cool to visit, and the kids had not been in a few years. You can find out more about that here . Lorraine however, resourceful as always, also found out about a place called Epic Systems, which is a difficult place to describe! It is a health records software company base in Verona, WI, started in 1979 by a lady in her garage, by the name of Judith (Judy) Faulkner . Not sure why she decided to do what she did with the campus, but it is, in a word, EPIC. There are a few pictures below, but I also linked a couple of video tours that really capture the place.  In short, there are several buildings in the campus, each of which has a theme. Anything from Heaven to Hell, Wizardry (Think Harry Potter), Med...

As you may have read in another post, we recently spent some time in Madison, WI. One of the attractions we stopped into, was an eclectic place called The House On The Rock, put together by a guy called Alex Jordan ; check him out, it is quite the story of a man with a dream, realizing that dream over many years. As I mentioned above, it is a strange place. He was, what in today's terms would be called a hoarder, but also eccentric, as evidenced by the Infinity Room pictured below from the outside.  You can visit the place every day of the year, and they make it really spectacular for Christmas, with ornaments, it seems on every flat surface.  Collections range from the most incredible carousel, to doll houses and dolls, wagon wheels, to circus sets (gotta be seen to be believed), a gazillion carousel horses, to self paying musical instruments, and mechanical machines that play music, and perform; to old weapons, sailing and ocean memorabilia, Tiffany lamps, and incredible org...