Trip from Minneapolis to home (playlist)

In Holly's Dad's F-150 we put a little over 10% of the miles that were on the (it was brand new).  Big, big thanks goes to him.

We switched out what played and who was playing, we ran into some of the limitations of Sync (which is still pretty cool), but even on the way home we played from my normal list and here is what was played:

Song Title	Album	Artist
Cataracts (Live)	iTunes Session	Andrew Bird
Catch & Release	Swoon	Silversun Pickups
Catch Me If You Can	The Quilt	Gym Class Heroes
Catching On Fire	Apollo 18	They Might Be Giants
Caught A Lite Sneeze	Boys For Pele	Tori Amos
Cecilia	The Best Of Simon & Garfunkel	Simon & Garfunkel
Cecilia	Bridge Over troubled Water	Simon & Garfunkel
Cellphone's Dead	The Information	Beck
Celtic Storm	Another Nickel for the Pope	The Mighty Regis
Cemetery Drive	Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge	My Chemical Romance
Centaur	This Right Here Is Buck 65	Buck 65
Ch-Check It Out	To The 5 Boroughs	The Beastie Boys
Party Over Here	Sad Clown Bad Fall No. 10 - EP	Atmosphere
Help!	1	The Beatles
Like This	Feed The Animals	Girl Talk
MX Missiles	The Mysterious Production of Eggs	Andrew Bird
No More Long Years	Matt & Kim	Matt & Kim
Don't Take Your Guns To Town	The Essential Johnny Cash	Johnny Cash
See You When You're 40	Life For Rent	Dido
Americareful	To All My Friends, Blood Makes the Blade Holy - The Atmosphere EP's	Atmosphere
As Long As We're Together	Please Kid, Remember	Andrew Morgan
Wonder Woman	The Deathtrap Dilemma	Mediocre Superheroes
Neon for You	Crush	My First Earthquake
On Melancholy Hill	Plastic Beach (Deluxe Version)	Gorillaz
When I Don't Know My Name	Grubby Ernie	Grubby Ernie
Pas de Cheval	Pretty. Odd.	Panic At the Disco
Stop Whispering	Pablo Honey	Radiohead
Family Time (live, Featuring Judah Marley, Original Song from Ziggy Marley's "Family Time")	Tuff Gong Worldwide World Music Sampler	Ziggy Marley
Do You Know What I'm Seeing?	Pretty. Odd.	Panic At the Disco
Squeeze Box	My Generation - The Very Best Of The Who	The Who
Everybody Hurts	Automatic For The People	R.E.M.
Barco de Papel	Entre la Ciudad y el Mar	Gustavo Galindo
Battlescars	Action	Punchline
Dañs Bro-Leon	Celtic Wedding: Music of Brittany	The Chieftains
In This City	Tomorrow's Stars From Sxsw	Iglu & Hartly
One Love/People Get Ready	Legend	Bob Marley & The Wailers
Don't Push	Home for an Island	The Exit
Ball Of Twine	Skylab EP	Manplanet
Famous Last Words	The Black Parade	My Chemical Romance
Get Fly	You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having	Atmosphere
Daisy Girls	Lure The Fox	Haley Bonar
Burning Down the House	The Best of Talking Heads (Remastered)	Talking Heads
Obscured	Today	Smashing Pumpkins
Daytona 500	Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers	Wu Tang Vs The Beatles

The past few weeks...

At work, my normal level of stress has gone up quite a bit, due to a project I am working on reaching a major deadline.  While after this weekend is over, this should calm back down to a nice and normal level.  At least I hope so.  Work has once again started to take over my life in a fashion that I do not like.  Anyways, I'd talk more about it, but I wouldn't want to express an opinion about work one way or another.

A little over two weeks ago, we had a wedding to go to and decided to make a weekend of it, so we headed up to the metro of Chicago for a visit.  Our fist stop on our weekend was to go to the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio.  After getting a bit messed up in our directions (thanks Iowa sign that misled us to go to Chicago almost all the way on I-80), we made our way up to the Oak Park area of the metro.  We avoided large chunks of traffic due the fact that it was the middle of the day.  You could tell the difference, though, once people started getting out of work that Friday.  We made our weight to the home and studio and even though it took us longer to get from Des Moines to Chicago, we planed for delays, so we were still early.  On a side note here, I normally struggle with staying awake on the drive to and from Cedar Rapids, probably cause I know it so well.  On the way to and from Chicago, this was not a problem in the slightest.  The people at the studio were nice enough to move our tour up from the last tour of the day to the one that was just leaving (moving forward about an hour).  This worked out well for us.  After the tour we wondered around the neighborhood to check out a number of other FLW designed or remodeled or etc homes.

Frank Lloyd Wright Oak Park Home and Studio

We drove over to the Unity Temple, thinking that perhaps we could make it in time to make the tour.  We didn't get there in enough time, but did get to take some nice photos of the outside.  Which turned out to be a good thing, since when we visited again, the day outside wasn't such a good day to take pictures.  I really like the way that it looks on the outisde.  It certainly looks different then most churches.  Oft times it seems as if churches go the cheap route (rent a space), generic route (this building looks like all the other buildings like this), or the classical cathedral style (this looks like all the other cathedrals, but cheaper.  Being from a religious tradition that I see more and more try to become the McDonald's of churches...at least in the way that they are built.  I see the same light fixtures and etc in many of these that I visit the same as all the other ones.  Instead of allowing for man to glorify the talents that he has to glorify God (in his mind, not mine), we have decided it's better to save money on these things.  Has our own greed overidden the wonder that we can create in the buildings around us?  Anyways the outside of the building was creative, and you can't really understand how this would necessarily be a good thing from the outside, but that was to be found out.

Unity Temple, Oak Park, ILAfter we took several pictures, we still had plenty of time before our dinner reservations, so we headed back to the neighborhood, after a short break at the Oak Park Library, to take more pictures. One of the first ones of the second trip was the Edwin H. Cheney House.

Edwin H. Cheney House, Oak Park, ILIs it odd that the house where FLW stole the wife of the person that paid him to build the house is under disrepair?  It did strike me as a bit funny.  We walked around, saw a few more homes and then headed down to the Marion Street Cheese Market.  We had a nice dinner, I drank copious amounts of water (I held back most of the day).  It was quite a nice dinner, I would go there again, quite delicious.  After dinner we headed over to Ben and Allison's home.

This was the first time I saw Ben, at least that I remember, since a time in college where I was, shall we say, less than sober.  Being that both Shannon and I are both not the best in situations in new places with new people, this actually went pretty well.  The situation puts you in a weird place. I have been following Ben on Facebook and twitter for quite a while and so when it comes down to it I do have a vague idea of what is going on in their lives, without the benefit of hearing the stories told in a more direct format.  I felt pretty comfortable as we sat out on their lovely porch and drank some wine (Shannon had a vodka lemonade) and told some stories from all over the place.  Some memories from high school and college, some closer in time to present.  I had some nervousness about doing this, but when it came down to it, I was happy I did and would like it to continue.  After a while, we headed out to go check into the Hotel we were staying.

Lets just say that the Lodge (Hyatt) at the McDonald's Campus (Oak Brook) is kind of hard to find.  Parking is inconvenient, no free (or even cost effective) internet, but the hotel is pretty nice.  It also has, apparently, the nations oldest buckeye tree (or at least the sign in front of the tree said as much).  We got in late and after going through a maze of hallways, we crashed.  The next morning we got up early, ate a mediocre and pretty expensive breakfast at the hotel and headed to the University of Chicago campus to go to the Frederick C. Robie House.

Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, ILWhile we were allowed to take pictures inside the house, we did sign something stating that we could only use them for private use.  Being that, I one could interpret this place as either, I'd rather not post these.  Even on Facebook, where my wife posted a number of pictures, she didn't include any of the internal pictures we took.  Anyways, once we entered the house, I immediately fell in love with all the design elements of the house.  From the open spaces to the geometric shapes, the art glass windows, I felt like this could be my home, or at the least the kind of home that I would like to live in.  Not that I could come close to affording a house like this.  I guess for me the only real flaw with the house, for how I would want to live, would be the servants areas.  I wouldn't really want the kitchen to be so separate from the rest of the house.  But, if I were to depend on servants, it would make a whole lot of sense to have it separated that way.  One day, perhaps.  Anyways, after our tour we bought things and headed back to Oak Park to visit the inside of Unity Temple.

Natural light brightens up the entire inside.Lines create continuityinside Unity Temple, Oak Park, ILThis is a church I could go to, even if it was just to spend some quiet time.  My mind is not often calm or at peace, but upon entering here, I felt the sort of calmness that I like to have from time to time.  The thing I like the most about this is that there are no bad seats and there are so many places to sit that you get differing views to help keep your mind, at least on the building, if not the topic being talked about.  You see that generic church buildings?

We headed back to Oak Brook and had some Chicago Style pizza with Nathan and Jenny and their kids.  Then we spent the afternoon getting ready and then went to Wade and Kelly's wedding.  We had a lot of fun at he wedding and it was nice to see them both after so long and to see them both so happy.  The next day we went to the Brookfield Zoo with the Mattas.  I do like zoos, but zoos with a hangover aren't the nicest thing.  We did an abbreviated tour and headed back home.

The following week (last week) Shannon and I celebrated the 4th anniversary of our wedding.  We went to the place that catered our wedding (wow has it gone down hill) had some cake from the place that baked our wedding and groom cake, served by the place that catered our wedding (clearly the the cake was older then it should have been).  It kind of put a downer on the whole day.  Coming back from the downer, I'm still happy that she's in my life even after all these years.

Chicago Trip

Day 1:

• Frank Lloyd Wright House and Studio
• Perhaps Unity Temple (FLW)
• Dinner somewhere nice (still up in the air)

Day 2:

• Frederick C. Robie House (FLW)
• Perhaps Unity Temple (FLW)
• Giordano's Pizza (with friends)
• Wedding

Day 3:

• Lincoln Park Zoo or Brookfield Zoo

The kittens are tricksey and maybe a little evil

So here we see the kittens, on the work shelf, laying on my wifi access point just below the sensor of the air sprayer with the intension of keeping them off the top shelf...

Very tricky.

Podcasts I Listen to

Humor - This keeps me going through some days, some of them are laugh out loud funny, some are close to getting cut (TESD is just getting too long).

• APM: The Dinner Party Download RSS Link
• APM: A Prairie Home Companion's News from Lake Wobegon RSS Link
• The Digg Reel (Quicktime Small) RSS Link
• Dilbert Animated Cartoons RSS Link
• Jay and Silent Bob Get Old RSS Link
• Joe Genius (Small MP4) RSS Link
• NPR: Car Talk Podcast RSS Link
• NPR: Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! Podcast RSS Link
• Old Jews Telling Jokes RSS Link
• Onion News Network RSS Link
• Onion Radio News RSS Link
• ROFL (Quicktime Small) RSS Link
• SModcast - SModcast.com RSS Link
• Tell 'Em Steve-Dave! - SModcast.com RSS Link
• Wiretap from CBC Radio RSS Link

Money / Economics - Keeps me up to date on how the money things are going.  Planet Money's stories are often very interesting and give an insight as to what is going on in the world.  When I was feeling very out of sorts because of all the financial nonsense that was going on, Planet Money really broke down a lot of the things that were going on.

• APM: Marketplace RSS Link
• APM: Marketplace Money RSS Link
• APM: Marketplace Morning Report - First Edition RSS Link
• Freakonomics Radio RSS Link
• NPR: Planet Money Podcast RSS Link
• World Business News RSS Link

Tech - Clearly...I'm interested in technology.

• AppJudgment (Quicktime Small) RSS Link
• The Apple Byte (SD) RSS Link
• Buzz Out Loud (MP3) RSS Link
• Bytejacker (Small MP4) RSS Link
• Car Tech Live (MP3) RSS Link
• Diggnation (Quicktime Small) RSS Link
• Future Tense Podcast feed RSS Link
• HD Nation (Quicktime Small) RSS Link
• Mac Quick Tips RSS Link
• NPR: Technology Podcast RSS Link
• Security Now! RSS Link
• This Week In Google RSS Link
• this WEEK in TECH - MP3 Edition RSS Link
• Tech News Today RSS Link
• Tekzilla (Quicktime Small) RSS Link
• Tom's Top 5 (Small MP4) RSS Link
• Windows Weekly RSS Link

Culture - While I don't much care about the lives of the people in culture, this gives me a nice overview of everything.

• NPR: Culturetopia Podcast RSS Link
• NPR: Pop Culture Podcast RSS Link
• NPR Topics: Music Interviews RSS Link
• Rotten Tomatoes Show Link
• Sound Opinions RSS Link
• The Totally Rad Show (Small MP4) RSS Link

Food - mmm...food.  There have been other things on this list, but I either grew tired of them or they were inconsistent.

• APM: How to Eat Supper from The Splendid Table RSS Link
• APM: The Splendid Table RSS Link
• Food Mob (Small MP4) RSS Link
• NPR: Food Podcast RSS Link
• NPR: Hidden Kitchens Podcast RSS Link

News - A general set of news stories.  Top stories of the day plus some others.  I probably need more in here.

• 60 Minutes - Full Audio RSS Link
• Need to Know | PBS RSS Link
• NPR: 7AM ET News Summary Podcast RSS Link
• NPR: Religion Podcast RSS Link
• NPR: Story of the Day Podcast RSS Link
• NPR Series: You Must Hear This RSS Link
• NPR: World Story of the Day Podcast RSS Link

Stories - All 3 of these are must listen to podcosts.  They are often the highlight of my listening day.

• NPR: Snap Judgment Podcast RSS Link
• The Moth Podcast RSS Link
• This American Life RSS Link

Science/Enviroment - Fills my need for science.  Radiolab is quite the show going quite in depth on concepts and making them easy enough to understand for a general audience.

• NPR: Environment Podcast RSS Link
• NPR: Hmmm.... Krulwich on Science Podcast RSS Link
• NPR: On Science Podcast RSS Link
• WNYC's Radiolab RSS Link

Opinion/Politics - The older I have gotten the more interested I have been in politics.  These tend to fill my need.  It's all Politics and Shields and Brooks do a good job of not being a talking head pass the opinion on.

• President Obama's Weekly Address RSS Link
• Penn Point (Small MP4) RSS Link
• NPR: It's All Politics Podcast RSS Link
• Real Time with Bill Maher RSS Link
• Shields and Brooks | PBS NewsHour Podcast | PBS RSS Link

Catching up on Podcasts...

After the Great Internet Outage of 2010 about a month back, I downloaded a whole lot of podcasts that I hadn't been able to listen to.  To keep some semblence of being caught up, I did get the video ones by an alternate method, but it took about 3.5 weeks to catch all the way up.  For me, I generally listen, during my walk, while I prepare food, eat breakfast, during work, etc etc.  Even with all that time, I still have so many coming in and going out that it get's kinda hard when I miss a day or two, let alone a week.  I thought it might be interesting (at least to me) how long it would take.

Podcast Count	Time Left (d:hh:mm:ss)	megabytes	Sample Time
78	1:02:39:24	1,340	08/13/2010
43	0:23:00:11	803.8	08/14/2010 12:23 PM
46	1:01:00:53	913.9	08/14/2010 6:04 PM
32	0:22:36:42	765.9	08/14/2010 6:11 PM
33	0:22:19:08	750.7	08/14/2010 8:41 AM
40	1:03:51:36	943.9	08/15/2010 10:42 PM
48	1:05:09:15	1,019.7	08/16/2010 7:46 AM
41	1:05:16:32	921.7	08/16/2010 9:05 PM
35	1:01:12:43	886	08/17/2010 8:32 PM
22	0:20:27:48	681.6	08/18/2010 5:43 PM
31	0:22:15:05	845.6	08/19/2010 7:37 AM
24	0:19:26:38	670.1	08/20/2010 5:!5 PM
29	0:22:40:05	743	08/20/2010 10:28 PM
19	0:20:25:46	631.2	08/22/2010 8:15 AM
11	0:07:36:35	275.1	08/24/2010 5:55 PM
23	0:11:16:39	612.5	08/25/2010 6:52 AM
22	0:10:24:41	490.6	08/26/2010 6:11 AM
25	0:10:45:50	544.6	08/27/2010 8:25 AM
21	0:13:55:12	494.5	08/27/2010 6:02 PM
29	0:16:23:20	671.8	08/28/2010 6:56 AM
24	0:15:20:11	549.6	08/29/2010 10:38 PM
25	0:14:29:51	629.8	08/30/2010 7:29 AM
20	0:05:01:00	436.5	08/31/2010 6:20 PM
18	0:06:06:44	424.1	09/01/2010 7:46 AM
4	0:01:16:07	53	09/01/2010 5:53 PM

George

Oft times you were good, sometimes you were bad. You begged for anything in a tin can, you ran around the house like your tail was on fire, and oft annoyed us. But you were a very good cat and it was hard to see you go.

You'll always be my little bear.

Welcome to the World Kellen!

Early this morning, at 1:51 AM, Kellen Jakob Boelman, was born. He weighs 7lbs. 3oz. and is 20" long.

According to his father, mother is doing well to.

Congrats Val and Brandon!

Frank Lloyd Wright Weekend (Taliesin, Wisconsin)

Our trip from Dubuque, Iowa to Spring Green, Wisconsin was fairly uneventful. We first went to our hotel..er lodge that we were staying at The Round Barn Lodge first, though on thew as we saw the Spring Green Fire Department / EMS building, which just struck me as very pretty.

Up close you can kind of tell that it's not super special construction or anything, but it still looks very good, and fitting for the area, I suppose.

The Round Barn Lodge was chosen because we were on the off peak rates, which are quite a bit less expensive then the regular rates. It was clean, the staff was helpful and quiet. Though we did have a bit of a problem in Dave and JoAnne's room with one of their neighbors being a bit loud, though they did quiet down, not too late. Apparently during the night, there was a firetruck that came near by our hotel...That's what Dave and JoAnne said, I never woke up...so I had no clue.

For dinner that night, we headed over to The Bank Restaurant and Wine Bar. As the name suggests, it is a converted bank. We sat in the vault room, so we had a little bit of privacy (I think perhaps it was the Brother Ali t-shirt I was wearing that got us separated from the other guests). I have to say that dinner was pretty good. Certainly a surprising experience in a small town. Though I don't think it was really worth what was paid. Maybe 10-15% less would've been more fair. I had a glass of Boom Boom Syrah (which is one of my favorite wine grapes) from Washington, which was really quite good (I have since bought a bottle). I guess my biggest complaint had to do with my dessert.

First, all three of the cupcakes were surprisingly dense. I don't know if this was on purpose, or not, but I guess I'm used to light and fluffy in my cupcakes. My biggest problem was with the rightmost cupcake, which was gingerbread with crystallized ginger on top. The problem I had is ginngerbread does not have the same flavor as the crystallized ginger, so the crystallized ginger just dominated over the pretty good taste of the gingerbread. So if there was a lot less and a lot smaller pieces or no crystallized ginger at all, it would've been better.

For breakfast, we headed over to the Spring Green General Store Cafe, which was quite good and inexpensive (Shannon and I ate for under $20, if I remember right). A good hearty breakfast before a day of hiking.

We stopped by the fire department (see above) on our way out of town to take a few pictures. We headed over to the Taliesin Visitor Center. This building used to be a restaurant, and is (partially) again. But it is very nice and has a great view of the Wisconsin River (I think that's what the river is), across the road.

I love the geometric shapes that are inspired by Wright. My brain just loves them...I can't really explain it. I believe that's me in the background there...

We wandered around the store for a bit... If we had the money, we could have spent a whole lot (there were these chairs, about $1k each, and a table, near $6k and a ton of other things). So when the time came, we gathered up and headed out on the ~4 hour estate tour.

We got on the mini-bus and started off at the Unity Chapel (the private chapel of the family of the Lloyd-Jones, including Wright). We saw the grave marker of Frank Lloyd Wright (he's not actually buried there).

There were other markers there of the family since the building was dedicated in 1886. Apparently it is tradition in the family to get married and etc in the building. We then headed to the Hillside Home School.

Apparently people still live and learn here in the school. We actually heard a few. I was really quite sad that we couldn't take pictures inside the building. There were great shots that I could have gotten, were I able to...but I can understand why, to some extent. The building was certainly showing it's age, or the inability to maintain and upkeep it at the level that it probably should be. There were certainly areas where I was shocked as to how much age was showing. Kind of detracts from the whole mystical ideal that I believe is tried to be put forward with Wright.

We went through various areas of the building, the drawing studio, around the building, the theater and then headed up to the Romeo and Juliet Windmill.

The windmill has been rebuilt and restored, and the area provides a great view of the surrounding area. The concept is that the taller building, Romeo, protects and breaks the wind for the shorter building, Juliet, who supports Romeo. Certainly a nice story.

We passed several other buildings on the estate, which had been used for other things, but are now occupied by the Fellowship members, including Tan-Y-Deri. We also passed the more then appropriately named Midway Farms building. as we headed on towards the home and personal studio of Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin.

We met Sherpa, the cat, and headed up to the terrace to have tea, coffee, water, and a rest before we continued on. The terrace had a wonderful view, which just seems natural of the area...

Even Sherpa enjoyed the view.

After the break, and my fat ass needed a bit of one, we headed in and saw courtyards, indoors, and several buildings. The inside itself, in certain areas, I found pretty frustrating (again with me being taller then the "human scale"). When I look back through the pictures that we took (they got less, because the camera that Shannon was using was running out of battery power (didn't bring the spare battery), I noticed that many different views of the building could be homes in and of themselves.

To me, the use of space, indoors, often seemed to be highly experimental, which I also got the impression that things would often get remodeled based on who was coming or etc. So something that weren't so annoying at say, Cedar Rock, were more troubling at Taliesin. The designs were still good, and provided great views, and again, I would've loved to be able to take pictures.

So in this last picture here, we have a shot through the grate, where you can see the burned out timbers of Taliesin II and III (the original burned all the way down, I believe).

While I can understand the emotional reason for rebuilding, to me, I often find myself complaining that I am not given the time to do things right the first time... I suppose if he had planned a bit, that end of the building wouldn't be having the problems that it is (it's basically built on the ashes of Taliesin II). That really kind of bugged me. Then again, it was his own house, and I suppose he can do what he wants with it.

After our tour ended, we bought some things at the store. We got some coasters, a Christmas ornament (continuing the tradition of getting at least one ornament a year), magnet and a few other things (maybe a Christmas present or two?). Then headed over to Mineral Point and had lunch at Brewery Creek Inn. I had a pint (I wasn't driving), and it was pretty good. The food was pretty good, though they did mess up Dave's order.

We did do a little, not much, searching for some Wisconsin cheese, and Dave bought some cheese curds, and then headed home. At one point, I think everyone but Dave was napping in the car.

It was a good weekend trip, and even though I'm a bit disenchanted with some of the stuff surrounding Frank Lloyd Wright, I think we'll be taking more trips to see stuff. Perhaps to Mason City (day trip), Chicago, and maybe more, depending on how things go. I also appreciated having Dave and JoAnne on the trip, because they've traveled to way north east Iowa more then we have, so they knew of good views to stop and see.

I also liked that other then the trip home, we basically took our time, had many stops, didn't have everything planned out (a nice combo of planned and seat of our pants).

I would suggest visiting Cedar Rock...and soon, because apparently the Trust for the house and grounds, which is not funded by the state, will run out in ~2 years. And after the trust runs out, it is unknown as to what will happen.

Frank Lloyd Wright Weekend (Cedar Rock, Iowa)

So a week ago (10/24/2009), Shannon, Dave, JoAnne, and I headed out to see a few Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. This all started with a documentary that we saw on IPTV. While the documentary wasn't the best (kind of rambling), it got us talking and thinking that hey, that's it's not to far to Spring Green, WI (under 300 miles) to see Taliesin (east). After doing a bit more research we found that there was an Iowa state park called Cedar Rock, which is a Frank Lloyd Wright signature house. Which means that he designed the house, furniture and etc. Which is something that he insisted would be for the best.

The signature tile for Cedar Rock:

The house itself on the outside is absolutely beautiful. Clean lines. Though with the flat roof and Iowa and winter and rain, I could see out it could create problems. The roof is actually kind of a bowl, so not only does it collect rain and snow, it keeps it. Still looks good though.

Outside shots of the house:

The house overlooks the Wapsipinicon River and has a boat house which is also impressive. I especially like the long narrow windows on the side of the building.

According to our DNR guide, the Walter's were actually looking for something like the boat house, to have as a summer home. Simple, practical and etc. If I remember right, the original budget for the house was $18,000 ($~174,324.75 in 2009 dollars) and ended up costing $~150,000 ($~1,344,205.39 in 2009 dollars). So it went a tad over budget. Though according to the DNR guide and our guide at Taliesin, was kind of common with his houses.

While he designed the house to the scale of the owners of the house, it made problems for those of us who are above his so called "human scale". I did like, to some extent, how the areas where people are not meant to congregate (entryways etc) and I could see how it really opened up the areas of the house where people are to meet and congregate. Because of the differential, it made those areas just feel more spacious. Shannon already posted a whole bunch of pictures on her facebook page, so I'll keep my selection of indoor pictures to a minimum to the things I really like about it.

So the living room has a great look, with near floor to ceiling windows, so it makes for a great place to sit in the sunshine or have a great view at night of the surrounding areas.

Nothing says love like a heart shaped ashtray.... I know I already made that comment, but still, I find it funny, but it's still a great looking ashtray, though it probably wouldn't look as good if it had actual butts in it...

Great wood color, mirror and just gorgeous serving things.

If I remember right, this was the "poor man's stained glass". Though placed lighted pieces of glass really accentuated the room and added color. According to the DNR guide, when placing the glass, they never put it back in the same location after cleaning it, because it was meant to be moved around.

It's not really the bedroom, but the wood color...I love the wood color.

While the kitchen was small, it seem very practical and easy to use. Though I would still want a bigger one...but that's just me. I have kitchen envy (not necessarily of this house, but of many houses).

After our tour was complete, we talked with the DNR guide for a bit and she told us about a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Cedar Rapids (who knew?) and Johnston (really?), but they're not open to the public.

After our tour, we headed back to Independence, Iowa and ate at Bill's Pizza and Smokehouse, which was...well...mediocre at best. After lunch, we headed over to the park and mill museum across the street and wandered around a bit. Took some pictures, had a little fun.

We got back into the car and headed to Dubuque. We took a break and spent some time with the views from Eagle Point Park. I admit that I do give my co-workers a bit of crap from time to time for coming from this area, however, it really was beautiful up there. Though the city itself...

Afterwards we headed up to Spring Green, Wisconsin.