"We’re given menus, but they’re in Portuguese. The waiter has a handful of English words and as best as..."/"Asbestos? They had asbestos?!"

Meade interrupts me in the middle of my reading of Nina's post about her trip to Cascais, Portugal, which you can get to from here if you take "two Madison buses, three separate flights, one Lisbon bus, and finally one Portuguese train."

The Great Glen Way.

Nina's in Scotland, knocking herself out, hiking the Great Glen Way — with lots of photographs and narrow escapes.

Photos from Rome.

Very enticing. And more the next day. With plenty of ice cream, etc.

"On the side streets, I come across the occasional small hut selling the basics that I knew from childhood: sorrel for soup, flowers, pickles..."

"... and sauerkraut with grated carrot. And young beet leaves for spring borstch."

Nina travels 20 hours to weekend in Warsaw — attending a wedding — and has lots of pictures and inside insights.

"I look up, waiting for my friend, the one infused with love. There she is. See the tip of her blond head?"

"Oh, but wait, there’s another couple in love. Wow. It’s everywhere."

***

I love kissing in public. Come on, everyone! Do it today! Do it until somebody yells "Get a room!"

What's with Althouse?

She's not blogging, not much anyway. She's — what? — in Ohio for Spring Break? Who goes to Ohio for Spring Break.

Well, that picture is from last Tuesday, when I was meeting Nina for some laughing and serious talk at Barrique's Wine Cave on Monroe Street in Madison. Nina memorializes the confabulation at the end of this long post, thusly:

Tuesday – I paid the price for my protracted recline on the ER bed the previous day. I had classes and endless meetings and appointments to get through and it was a tight fit. Luckily the day ended with a glass of wine with my most happy friend. I suppose you don’t remember my suggestion that mental health requires putting in hours with happy people? I did that tonight.

I'm aiming to spill the happiness, my friends, so be happy here.

Squid ink bubbles?

I was with you up to the squid ink bubbles. Then I was kind of grossed out. Nice to see Boston again though, via photographs. I'm here in Madison, Wisconsin, eating Milk & Honey Granola. It's quite delicious. Chez Althouse, where we love Milk & Honey Granola, "It's quite delicious" is an oft-invoked allusion to a favorite movie...

Hunh. Well, uh. What is the, uh, "vromborova polevka"?

It's a potato soup. It's quite delicious.

Oh, well, that's great! I'll have that.

Vromborova polevka... that looks like something my linkee could easily translate without asking the waiter.

Anyway, as I often say, I'm here in Madison, Wisconsin. But spring break looms, and I will break out of Madison before long. Where am I going? You'll have to wait for the photographs, and I will let you guess. But it won't be Boston, and it won't be the Sahara Desert, and it won't be a forest in Poland, and it won't be India or Scotland or Montauk, Long Island. And there won't be any squid ink bubbles, I don't think.

Nina waits.

For all sorts of things.

Blogging from Normandy on D-Day.

Nina writes (with many photos):

Exactly on the midnight of this day, in 1944, the Normandy Invasion began. D-Day. And it started with the Allied army capture of this bridge. The first soldier to die in the invasion, Lt. Brotheridge, is buried nearby. The family Gondree installed a commemorative plaque by his grave. They live in the house that was the first to be liberated during the invasion. This house.

086 copy, originally uploaded by Nina Camic.

Much more at the link.

Should I rethink my antagonism toward men in shorts based on this photo?

015 copy, originally uploaded by Nina Camic.

He's French.

For more pictures from Normandy, read Nina's blog, — which is so full of pictures right now that it's very slow-loading.

Changing hotels in Cassis.

Nino saves the day for Nina in France.

And scroll down — she went to Warsaw in January too. Nina has some strange mania — I can't understand it — for going places way out of season. Is it the light, perhaps, for the photographs? I've noticed that bright sunlight is almost always terrible. Or is it something about the animal behavior? Look at that peacock on a park bench, and check out the ears on that red squirrel.

"This season makes me think that individualism is way overrated."

Nina writes:

Isn’t it true that most people view themselves as being quite independent, carving their own path, listening to some internal voice rather than conforming to the (petty) demands of others?

It seems that the time you most like to do your own thing is when what is expected is too annoying, too displeasing, uncomfortable, grating.

If you place two individuals in the same room and both view themselves as being extraordinarily independent, what happens?...

[I] no one bends, then, unless you’re both on the same planet with your individualism (and it can happen, but how likely is that?), you’re going to be running past each other all the time.

Don't do it!

I don't know what "it" is, but it sounds really important. Am I being a troublemaker?

Nice photo at the link. Is the girl really dreaming? Or is she terribly unhappy? Look at her eyes.

Madison schools canceled for cold.

All the Madison area schools are canceled today for cold, including the schools in Madison itself. Madison schools are always the last to close. I know that from my many years of checking for school closings when my sons were young. I'd watch a long list of cities and towns scroll slowly across the TV screen, and even when the list was long, Madison would still be missing. Madison almost never shuts down for snow, and the main reason is that we expect it and, because we have enough snow and enough money to make it worth preparing, we prepare. But there is nothing to be done about cold. No trucks can plow it out of our path, and dealing with it must be left to individuals and families. It's up to them to figure out how to prepare for the winter, and if they are to send their children to school on the coldest days, they've got to figure out what kind of clothing to buy and spend the money for it.

Right now, the temperature in downtown Madison is minus 15°, with wind chill calculated at minus 31°. If weather like this were quite common, the school authorities might assume that parents had gotten their act together and committed the family funds to buying proper outerwear for their kids. But it really isn't rational for them to spend this kind of money on their kids -- who, of course, constantly grow out of things. Like a southern city that shuts down whenever it snows, parents are right to have no plan for clothing their children to go out on really cold days like today.

Even if you assumed that all parents did what informed, rational parents should do, the school district would need to conclude that attendance will be so low that the schools should close. In real life, some parents would decide to send their kids out in the warmest clothes they had, and children could get hurt. It's best not to create the conditions for that to happen. Keep the kids home.

But how about the University? We never close! I canceled class once in over 20 years, because it was in the middle of a big storm, but even then, the University didn't close. We're all adults here, and you're expected to dress yourself properly. Certainly, by the time you're old and smart enough to go to law school, you should know what to do. Your mom and dad aren't dressing you anymore. You're responsible for yourself. The institution isn't going to protect you from your mistakes. If we were, I'd be going up to every other kid I see on campus on bitterly cold days and telling him or her to put on a hat.

Here's a picture Nina took on campus on Saturday. See the woman on the left? She represents a theory of mine:



There is never a day in Madison when more than half the students walking outside on campus are wearing hats. But folks, if you're reading this, mom wants you to wear a hat.

The young woman on the right also has a good idea with the scarf over the face. If it's less than 4 below, you need a scarf over your nose or you can feel the air icing up inside your nasal passage. Take that as a sign that you need a scarf. And look at how both women are completely unprotected from the waist down. The hatless woman appears to be wearing canvas sneakers. You really do need a long, down coat and some kind of warm shoes.

But you are adults, so look out for yourselves.

And lest anyone think that I've written this post to cast doubt on theories about global warming, let me say that if you've read this post with understanding and without the usual emotional static, you should see that the implication is that people are less prepared for cold when they encounter less of it. The new -- I think it's new -- phenomenon of closing for cold is -- if anything -- a sign that we've been having warmer winters.

Languedoc.

Nina returns for the harvest. Seriously, if you are into wine or France, you need to hang out over on Nina's blog. Even if you abstain from wine and hate France, you might want to go there just because the colors purple and green are beautiful:

"Those moody French [models] just don't know how to work it."

Jeffrey owes his victory to the exuberant Marilinda, Project Rungay contends. Yeah, look at the picture of the French model in the same dress (with "too much tootie"). The American model made us understand the crazy dress.

Are you sad that Vincent left? His limited vocabulary was getting scarily conspicuous. Every damned dress he makes "turns me on" and "gets me off." Fortunately, when eggs got thrown in Paris, the eggy goo got on Michael's dress, not Vincent's, or the graphic depiction of Vincent's favorite trope would have freaked us out.

But Michael was the one with the blue dress, so we liked the accidental political allusion.

ADDED: EW interviews Vincent. A choice nugget:

Did you think any of the judges understood you?

I think Nina Garcia and at times Heidi understood a little more where I was going. I think what's his name, Michael Kors, didn't have a clue. He only related to what he liked, and he's a simple, pared-down designer. I don't know Tim Gunn's story. Actually, I do. Tim has been bad-mouthing me ever since the show started because I didn't choose to bow down to Tim. If he gave me great constructive advice, I would thank him, but if he tried other things, I would dismiss him. In a nice way, not a harmful way. He did not like that. So he in turn is digging a nice hole for himself for putting me down all the time. He's supposed to be dean of a design school. You don't speak about people that way.

Other things you don't do: You don't put down the guy that everyone who loves the show loves.

Nina's take on the movie, with photo.

Here I am at the pre-movie dinner:



Nina describes the movie here, linking my post from earlier today, and calls me out on two things that I have to defend myself against in her comments.

A blogger's work is never done!

The doomed lobster, Hermione.

Here she is, friends. She is doomed. We were just squealing and shooting photographs a la Annie Hall. And now I'm furiously writing this post, so that you can see our dear Hermione, while she still crawls the face of the earth, before she reaches apotheosis, in the form of our elaborate, Nina-cooked blogger dinner.

The guest of honor, the sacrificial lobster:



UPDATE: RIP, Hermione.



ANOTHER UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. And here's a picture of me at the dinner, taken by Tonya, whose birthday we were celebrating.



MORE: Here's Nina's explanation of how to make that soup. And here's Tonya's post which contains, among other things, the full list of amazing dishes Nina cooked up for us.

"There were very few women in law school."

So said Nina Totenberg on "Meet the Press" last Sunday. She was talking about 1981, the year Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. A lot of people have gone soft in the head over the O'Connor retirement. Can we please get a grip?

I graduated from law school in 1981. Law School was full of women then. The editor-in-chief of the Law Review was a woman both years I was on. The top three students in the class were women. It wasn't like: Wow, there's a woman on the Supreme Court -- now, I see that women can go into the field of law!

I remember in 1981 saying to one of my many women lawprofs that I was interested in going into law teaching. One of the things she told me was that it used to help to be a woman, because law schools needed to increase the number of women on their faculties, but unfortunately I'd already missed that boat. That was too cynical, of course, but my point is that it was something you could say with a straight face in 1981, so let's not pretend O'Connor was a lone pioneer.

Here's the whole Totenberg quote for reference:

[A]s the first woman--you know, young women today may not remember, but I was there and it was an incredibly moving moment when she was named to the court. And I covered the court back then and I was amazed at myself, at how emotionally caught up I was in it. At that point in the profession, there were almost no women judges. There were very few. There were almost no women lawyers. There were very few women in law school. Today, there are women all over the federal and state bench, lots of chief judges and state chief justices. The majority of law students in major American laws schools are women. So she essentially became the symbol, the opening of the doors, as she said to me in an interview last year. It sort of threw open the doors and the profession that was once an almost exclusively male club is now a totally integrated club.

This is, in fact, ridiculous.

Don't comp dessert! Comp the wine!

Nina has the scoop on last night's dinner at the Macaroni Grill, where they screwed up seating us at different tables, leaving me to draw on the butcher paper with the crayons they put out for kids.

It's really hard to do links to Nina's blog when she has photos, because she uses a system that produces a new link at each photo, but here's the beginning of the post.

Nina writes:

The hostess is most apologetic. The waiter is most apologetic. The manager is most apologetic. They offers us free dessert. What, we will then be forced to eat something for free that we wouldn’t have otherwise ordered??? My companion will have none of it. You want to comp something, comp the extra wine we’ve had to drink waiting for each other.

They do. M.Grill rules!

Here's the photo I took while waiting for Nina. I'd already ordered a whole bottle of wine -- $30 -- and was wondering how much of it I'd drink if Nina never showed.



UPDATE: Oscar and I do an intervention and get Nina off Hello and onto Flickr, at which point she does a big post about Poland with lots of pictures.

Photo advice.

Rick Lee has a lot of photo advice.

With a digital camera, one really should take a lot of shots of the same thing, trying different angles. When Chris and I were at Harvest last week, we shot over 300 pictures of each other during the meal, just trying to get good shots and thinking up new angles, composing different backgrounds. You can see the ones I saved in this Flickr photoset.

When we were out at Crave with the other day, I took a hundred shots of Nina -- trying to get a good portrait, but also looking for new compositions, like this one making the Cosmopolitans monumental.

Another portrait with a monumental drink -- and distortion from the glass that I love but that Chris might object to (don't, please, Chris!):



Hey, give me that.