I hope my readers had an excellent weekend. Mine was
definitely enjoyable! On Friday night, Travalon and I met Jilly Moose and OK
Cap at the Essen Haus for fish fry, then Travalon headed home and we ladies
headed to the Monona Terrace to hear a salsa band. We only heard the last three
songs, so we talked about going for a drink at the Tiki Bar at the East Side
Club, but we decided instead to get one at the hotel right next the Monona
Terrace. They have a very swanky bar called Olive where you can get $10 cocktails,
and Jilly Moose and I had one called 40 but Hot that was, as the name implied, VERY warm. It was chocolate liqueur with Cointreau and cream – so good! OK Cap had a
maple Old Fashioned.
Saturday morning Jilly Moose met Travalon and me at the
Coffee Gallery, then he and I headed to Milwaukee. We went to Mass at St.
Josephat’s Basilica, where the offertory hymn was one of my favorites, “Let All
Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.” The organist ended on a major key chord, which is
known as a Picardy Third, and since the tune is “Picardy,” I wondered if he/she
did it on purpose as an inside joke for all us music nerds out there. After
Mass Travalon and I went to dinner at a hotel called the Iron Horse, which has
a really cool patio overlooking the river. A former coworker of his was
supposed to be working at the bar on the patio, but nobody knew where he was that
night. A ditzy twenty-something hostess asked if we were this guy’s parents.
What?!?! Maybe if I’d started at age fifteen… I guess to young kids like that,
we all just look OLD. Then we went to the Riverside Theater to see Diana Krall,
a jazz singer and pianist who was the embodiment of my adolescent fantasies of
what I’d grow up to be. She was not only fabulously talented, she was also very
funny, and her backing band was amazing – the violinist at one point played his
instrument like it was a mandolin, and he was better than I am on the actual
mandolin. It goes without saying that his violin playing is much better than
mine. The stage was decorated with several old radios that lit up inside, and
on a screen behind the performers they sometimes showed old footage of people
from the 1920’s dancing. Afterwards we stopped at Coppers Pub at Country
Springs, and everyone there knew Travalon, including one of his instructors
from college. That guy is also friends with his brother – what a small world!
Yesterday I went to Light Bright’s baby shower, and as
usual, my team won the trivia game but I was not even close to guessing the
mother-to-be’s current girth. We had pizza and ice cream cake – so much for my
diet. Light Bright is having a boy, and the theme of his nursery is fishing, so
there was an undersea theme to the shower. I got her a baby book that was on
her registry, but lots of women made her gifts, like quilts, blankets, and
onesies that said “Future banjo player.” Later in the afternoon, Jilly Moose
and I joined OK Cap at her outdoor pool, and soon Luxuli joined us. Prairie Man
was with her, but he had Michaela the Dog with him, so he didn’t swim. He
called Travalon, who came over and brought Rodney. We did get a talking-to for
having dogs on the property, because apparently they have a strict no-dog
policy. Travalon brought Rodney home, and OK Cap was asking the condo president
if it’s OK for guests to have dogs, but he said no. Just then Prairie Man drove
by in his loud pickup truck with Michaela beaming out the window at us, so
Luxuli and I couldn’t stop laughing. What timing! We aren’t sure if the condo
president saw her… We ended the evening with dinner at the Nau-Ti-Gal. It was
too late to go to the East Side Club, but hopefully soon we can all make it
over there.
Famous Hat
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