Meet Martina Skobic at VIVA Gallery in Viroqua, WI. The VIVA Gallery Cooperative is a group of local artists coming together to showcase art. They began business as a cooperative in April, 2004. Their mission is to create an awareness in the Viroqua community of the variety of art that is being made right here at home. Their gallery provides a welcoming place to see art, foster the imaginaition, and give inspiration. For more information please visit their website at vivagallery.net.

Millions of dollars, thousands of speeches, hundreds of days.  Campaigning for the 2012 Iowa caucus has been going almost since the votes were counted in 2008, and now voters finally get to decide.  It’s been a rollercoaster ride that is about to come to an end, and with its conclusion begins the 2012 Presidential race. No doubt you will hear a lot from me over the next 11 months, but for now you get to hear from someone else.  News 8 Reporter Jenna Troum is almost as big a politics junkie as I am, and she has kindly agreed to contribute to this blog.  Jenna’s first installment of many….. ——— What’s wrong with being a “career politician?” It’s a term that’s been thrown around like an insult for years. Most recently, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney used it as a weapon against Rick Santorum in the days leading up to the Iowa Caucus. Romney [...]

We’ve all seen rainbows during rain showers, but do rainbows form during snow showers? This was a very interesting question posed to me by a viewer, so I thought I’d share the answer with all of you. First, let’s go over the formation of rainbows. Three conditions must be met before a rainbow can form: 1) It must be raining. 2) The sun must be shining. 3) The observer needs to be standing in between the sun and rain, with their back to the sun.   When rain falls from the sky, it falls in a spherical or drop shape (they get the drop shape from gravity pulling on them as they fall to the ground). When a ray of sunlight reaches the raindrop, some of that light enters that drop and refracts (or changes direction/bends as it enters the raindrop). White light (sunlight) is made up of all the colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, [...]

I have decided to move my blog to a different URL in the hope of attracting more of an interested target market. I’m also able to play with a new look and feel of my blog, which fits in with the tone and atmosphere much, much better. Please feel free to visit my new blog page frequently, as I will post all my future updates to that site. http://musiclivereviews.wordpress.com Thanks fans, I’ll see you there! -BC

With the lockout coming to an end, about 5 months of the NFL offseason is about to be crammed into 1 or 2 weeks.  Outside of the draft at the end of April, rosters saw no change from what we saw when your team walked off the field for their final game in 2010 because of the lockout. The beginning of March usually marks the beginning of free agency.  And veterans slowly signed throughout the summer until training camps kicked off.  Now teams have under a week to double the size of their current roster as they can carry up to 90 players during camp. Free agency can make or break your football team even though there are general managers like the Packers’ Ted Thompson who usually sit still while other teams hand out blockbuster contracts.  Thompson though will still have some tough decisions as there’s around 10 of his players who [...]

3:30 am this morning my alarm started beeping.  I sat up confused for a second until my brain caught up.  ”Oh man - I’ve got to go back to work…” Now let me state clearly here that I really, really love my job.  And I swear I’m not just saying that because I know my boss reads these posts.  (although I do have an outstanding boss) I am so fortunate to work for a company that puts family first and allows me to take the time off that I did.  But it was still so hard to close the door and walk away from that sweet baby girl today.  Why is it that the last 8 weeks of pregnany seemed to take forever - but 8 weeks of maternity leave goes by in the blink of an eye?! It’s funny - when my maternity leave was up with Finley (the baby who [...]

I know the posts have become less frequent, but we’re still here, I promise!  Finley just turned 14 months old the other day!  Can you believe it?  I feel like just yesterday I was in the delivery room waiting for her arrival.  She is a ball of joy and a terror all wrapped into one.  The other week a friend of ours who happens to be a day care provider said, “wow, she’s really into everything.  I’ve never seen a child that busy.”  That was very telling for us and basically confirmed that we weren’t going crazy.  She’s a tornado! Finley’s the complete opposite of Katelin in many respects.  With Katelin, we didn’t have to worry about much at this age.  With Finley, well…. Recently, she came around the corner with a handful of those so-called “baby proofing” outlet covers and a big grin on her face. It was almost like she was saying to me, “look [...]

Calls started pouring into the newsroom at just about 10:10 pm Wednesday night. Reports of a blue ball with a red tail hurling toward the ground. Apparently whatever it was was so bright it did light up the sky for a few seconds. Then a couple minutes after you’d see the fireball then you could hear what was described as a “sonic boom” or “really loud thunder”. Meteorologist  Cory Malles says it could very likely be a meteor breaking up as it entered the atmosphere. If you have any pictures or saw what happened let us know about your experience. We’re heating from callers all over the state and consistently they tell us it was headed East in the sky. We’re still waiting to see if there are any meteorites left on the ground that could help verify what it was.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j1JEuVTiGc