lab progress

Makin' progress in the WISL!

under construction!

Welcome to the Wisconsin Injury in Sport Laboratory (WISL)! As of today, Dave's lab is officially under construction!

Here's what the facilities crew got built today at the WISL...

I know it doesn't look like much, but Dave tells me that this platform is important because it will house the force plates that measure kinetics - the forces created when people land after jumping. The force plates are in this pallet of equipment somewhere...

...along with the Flock of Birds. Yeah, if you're not one of Dave's athletic training people and you're reading this, the Flock of Birds is a high-tech piece of equipment that according to Dave measures joint motion and activity. It does lots of other things, but I don't think you want me to try to translate what Dave is saying to me right now into something understandable to us lay people! So we'll leave it at joint motion.

But to help you better appreciate the step forward today with the Lab, here's some true "before" pictures. We'll be sure to keep you posted as construction continues!

Here you can see where Dave framed out the platform in tape. So we've moved from tape to wood! Big step.

cupcakes for dinner

Friday night was the Iron Cupcake competition in Madison! Kinda like Iron Chef, but with cupcakes!

And we were the judges! Yes, for a mere $6 entry fee, we joined up with a cupcake-loving crowd of Madisonians. We picked up our 10 mini cupcakes from the 10 bakers and got to tasting and voting!

Since the event was held at the Washington Hotel Coffee Room, the bakers had to incorporate coffee into their cupcake creations. Yum!

Iron Cupcake Madison was also a fundraiser for the REAP Food Group in Madison. So we could feel good about our calorie-laden cupcake consumption!

One more thing - I'm so glad we went to Iron Cupcake because it meant we discovered the Washington Hotel Coffee Room! The coffee shop is beautiful! Spacious, but comfy-cozy with huge windows looking out over Monona Bay and across the water to downtown.

I didn't snap a picture of the view from inside, but Dave did get a shot from outside. Check out the great view of the Capitol from the lawn.

excitement

There were two blooms on this orchid when I bought it and now there are three!

So excited I haven't killed it...yet!

what is it? #2

So if you missed the first installment of "What is it?" here's #2. The game goes like this. I post a picture of something that's new and different to me, something you don't see on the east coast or something unique to Madison. You leave a guess in the comments section on what you think it is. Whoever guesses it right is the *winner*! Maybe someday if we get enough people guessing we'll actually have a prize for the winner!

As seen on the campus of UW-Madison:

What is it?

Bells in Madison (part 2)

When Mom came to visit, we somehow ended up having an architecture-themed weekend. Last weekend with Dave's parents we explored what Mother Nature has to offer in Madison. In addition to the Madison-must-see spots, we ventured out to two new places Dave and I hadn't seen yet.

First stop, the Olbrich Botanical Gardens.

The gardens are in downtown Madison at the top of the isthmus. There's an indoor conservatory that was hot as a rain forest and smelled delicious!

There were birds living in the conservatory and they had a sloth, too! Can you seem him the tree?

The outdoor gardens are gorgeous, too.

I didn't take enough pictures because I was too focused on winding through the paths to find the Thai Pavilion.

One of our favorite things at the gardens was the garden kaleidoscope.

Inside the bowl are plants of varying colors and textures planted like slices of pie. The bowl rotates and you can look through the eyepiece to see a kaleidoscope view of the plants! So neat!

After a day of seeing the sites in Madison, we were ready to explore outside the city limits. We took a quick drive north to Baraboo. Doesn't that just sound like a fun place? There's actually a lot to do up in Baraboo, but we had our sites set on the International Crane Foundation. ICF claims to be the only place in the world where you can see all 15 species of cranes. Who knew?

ICF does a ton of conservation work. They hatch and reintroduce whooping cranes into the wild, even training them the flight path to Florida by using a ultralight aircraft.

photo courtesy of International Crane Foundation

Here's the current whooping crane couple. And yes, we heard them whoop!

fall feet