Photos of Our New Stuff

 

As usual, today was a quiet day so not much to blog about. The most exciting thing is that I tried to sync my phone with the Mount Fuji Challenge so I don't have to manually log my miles, but I forgot to save it until late this afternoon, so I won't know if it works until after 9:30 tonight, and maybe I will only get credit for the mile I walked after I connected them. Anyway, here are some photos of our recent acquisitions. First is Tennessee Tuxedo, a penguin from a cartoon that used to be on in the 60's. Travalon got this at the little antiques shop we stopped at yesterday after Mass.

Here we have Boris and Natasha from the Bullwinkle cartoons. Travalon bought these during our last trip to the Maple Bluff antiques shop.

Travalon got this little figurine of Woody Woodpecker online.

He got Huckleberry Hound at the antiques shop we stopped at yesterday morning.

He got this Archie bobble-head at the Maple Bluff antiques shop.

These two bobble-heads are Bob Lanier and Jon McGlocklin, two legendary players for the Bucks years ago. Travalon got both of these online.

Here is the little glass mushroom I got at the antiques shop yesterday morning.

And these are various rosaries I got recently. From the left, one from the Maple Bluff antiques store, the one we got at the Valley of Our Lady Monastery, a one-decade one I got at Holy Hill, the little crucifix I got at the Sauk antiques store yesterday, another rosary from the Maple Bluff antiques store, a really interesting one from Holy Hill, and a cheap glow-in-the-dark one Travalon got me from the Maple Bluff antiques store.

And this is a cool mural we saw in Sauk City, right near the antiques store.

When the two rosaries I won in the auction arrive, I will post photos of them too. I also bought a couple of things that only cost a couple of bucks each: two little glass fish, and a teapot that looks like the clubs from a deck of cards. They looked cute online, but if not, I can always donate them to St. Vinny's and I will hardly be out any money.

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Webster Bluff

 

Today Travalon and I stopped at a little antiques shop on the way home from Mass, and they didn't have any rosaries, but I bought a cute little glass mushroom. (I will post photos of this stuff tomorrow.) Then we drove to Sauk, thinking that it was a beautiful day and we would go for a long walk somewhere in the area. We went to the antiques shop first, and I bought a little crucifix from Bethlehem. Then we stopped by the Valley of Our Lady Monastery and left a donation for a rosary. We thought about hiking on the Ice Age Trail section in Merrimac, but we saw some hunters in a field and remembered it was still deer season, so that might not even be open. Instead we went to Parfry's Glen, but it was closed, so we went to Devil's Lake. By then it was cold and windy, and I had not brought warm enough clothing, so we took the ferry back over to the south side of Lake Wisconsin and headed home. We passed a road that I saw went up a bluff, so I suggested we explore it, and we came upon Webster Bluff Park. This park has a path that goes right up the bluff, and it wasn't our imagination that we were going almost straight up, because my phone said we did the equivalent of eleven flights of stairs! But from the top there was an amazing view. Fortunately Travalon had brought his camera.

We got back just in time for my Irish class, and Travalon took off to visit another antiques shop in town that had not been open yet this morning. After the class I walked with my neighbor, and she somehow talked me into going to the Nau-Ti-Gal for onion rings. Travalon joined us and had a drink, and he told me the antiques shop he had just come back from didn't have much to interest him. They did have rosaries, but they were up for auction today. So I figured out how to get on the auction site and bid on the two rosaries, and now I see that I won them. So that's exciting. I also did join the Mount Fuji Challenge my aunt had mentioned, thinking it would be no problem getting 46 miles in two and a half months, but between the weather today and the fact that I am having foot problems (I think bunions), this may be a more difficult challenge than I had anticipated!

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Pheasant Branch and Small Business Saturday

 

This morning Travalon and I went for a hike at Pheasant Branch, and we ended up doing the whole loop. It's about five miles. We did not, however, climb the big hill. (I have climbed it in the past.) It was a gorgeous day, and tons of people were out. Tons of sandhill cranes, too - we saw a big bird party of them in the middle of the nature preserve. Here are some photos.

We did stop by the springs to watch them bubbling.

Here is a brief video. Travalon made a longer one, where you could see the little fish that live around them, but Blogspot won't let me post it so I'll have to work on making it a YouTube video at some point.

Here is a sign about the springs that has googly eyes, for some reason.

Then we went to State Street for Small Business Saturday, one of Travalon's favorite days of the year. He saves his change all year, and I had just gotten a prepaid Visa card from Michelin to thank me for buying brand new tires. We had lunch at the Globe, which is about the smallest of restaurants, and then we bought lots of random stuff. This first thing is a cuddly Christmas tree; if you look closely, it has eyes and a smile. And it even smells like a Christmas tree!

I bought some little plants, and I had $11 in credit from the plant store! (Because I've already bought too many plants...)

And I bought cool soaps - a sailboat and a Christmas soap!

Most of what Travalon bought were books and music, so not as photogenic, but he did buy this cool miniature guitar.

I also bought fancy chocolates that weren't worth taking pictures of: a lime and sea salt milk chocolate bar, a rose and black pepper dark chocolate bar, and a mocha dark chocolate bar. We also bought some shirts.

My prepaid Visa card is all used up! Then we came home and did a Zoom call with my aunt and uncle from Colorado. When I told them about how we did the Ice Age Trail challenge, my aunt mentioned there is a Mount Fuji challenge where you walk, run, bike, or somehow move 40 miles. She said I should google it, and that there's a beautiful medal for when you complete it. Now I have to decide if I want to register for this new challenge and, if so, do I do the regular version where you only get a medal, or the upgraded version where you get a T-shirt too. Because if there's one thing I need, it's another T-shirt. I only have three dresser drawers stuffed full of them.

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Meditation on the Scourging of Jesus

 

I took the day off of work, and on one of my walks with my neighbor, I saw some little black and white ducks on the river. She said, "I can't see them - I forgot my glasses in my hurry to get out the door." (We have FitBits that demand we get 250 steps per hour, and she was running out of time.) Just then we saw the garbage truck (very early - it usually comes around noon, but then it usually comes on Thursday), so she ran home to get her garbage can out. I saw Travalon coming toward us, so he and I grabbed our good cameras and took some pictures of the cute little buffleheads, as well as some mallards.

In  case you are wondering, the buffleheads with the big patch of white on their heads are males, and the ones with a stripe of white on their heads are females.

Travalon did Door Dash today, then he and I took a walk by the Yahara River. We had gorgeous views of the sparkling blue water, but we hadn't brought our good cameras and didn't think to take photos with our cell phones. Then we stopped by the pond in Waunakee where we saw the bird party late last autumn, and there were a few ducks, but nothing like what we saw last year. Travalon did take a picture of the pond (with the glow of the sunset in the background) with his cell phone.

Today while I was home by myself, I prayed the Seven Sheddings of Blood Chaplet, and while meditating on the Scourging, I suddenly realized that slaves were regularly scourged too. The white men doing the scourging probably saw themselves as good Christians, but Jesus Himself is closer to the black slaves being scourged. Then I thought about how often the message of Jesus has been twisted around to justify suppressing the poor and doing violence to those with less power, which is pretty much the polar opposite of His actual message. After all, being scourged, then being mocked, and then being forced to carry the instrument of your torture yourself sounds a lot more like the experiences of slaves in this country than the self-proclaimed "good Christian" white men who were doing this to them. And then I wondered: when am I the suppresser thinking that I am doing God's will? My observations are that the people who consider themselves the best Christians are the ones most likely to be doing things in direct contradiction to the actual teachings of Jesus, so it is worth the effort to ask ourselves: do I just think I am a really good Christian? Or am I actually behaving like one?

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Thanksgiving 2020

 

This was an unusual Thanksgiving for all of us, I suppose. Richard Bonomo hunkered down with just his housemate to have dinner, so Travalon and I decided to go to the Concourse Hotel. Then Rich said another guy we know had wanted to come to his house for dinner but he had also turned him down, and Travalon loves talking about classic rock with this guy, so he called him and invited him to join us. I walked with my neighbor in the morning, then Travalon and I went for a two-mile walk at Jackson's Landing in the late morning because we had signed up to do the Virtual Turkey Trot (it raises money for the Boys and Girls Club), and then I walked with my neighbor again. I ended up walking seven and a quarter miles today, but that probably isn't enough to walk off the delicious Thanksgiving dinner we had at the Concourse Hotel. And our dinner companion is a wonderful conversationalist, so it was a delightful time. When we first got there, another table of people were just leaving, and they had a big soft white dog who wanted to say hello to everyone, so I got to pet her. I didn't expect a dog in a restaurant, but she was very well-behaved, even though I suspect she is a teenage dog and will get even larger. She seemed like a familiar breed, but I couldn't think what. Our dinner was pumpkin soup (or salad, but we all chose soup) to start, along with fresh bread with tangerine-honey-thyme butter. Then we had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and green beans almandine, and for dessert, pie. Travalon and I chose the classic pumpkin pie, while our dinner companion chose apple pie. We were talking so long that I started to feel really sorry for our waiter - maybe he had his own Thanksgiving dinner to go to, and we were holding him up! We did tip him generously for having to work on a holiday.

As we walked around downtown, a lot of the storefronts are boarded up in case of riots, and some of the artwork on the plywood rivals that in Black Cat Alley. It's done by local artists.

This was on a pasty shop - it's a talking pasty!

A timely message - and really, a timeless one:

This is the time of year on Famous Hat when there will be lots of pictures of Christmas lights. I'm not sure if the Overture Center is lit up for Christmas, but it sure is beautiful.

And I tried to take a picture of the lights on Monona State Bank, but it's not that great. I took a closer picture as we drove past, but that's really out of focus.

We drove around looking at some of the Christmas lights that are up, but I'm sure there will be more as we get into December. This is a little video of the wreathes on the fence at Whaler's Cove in our neighborhood.

Between all the walking and all the eating, I am feeling very sleepy now. Fortunately I have tomorrow off of work and can sleep in. Hopefully I don't have a dream as weird as the one I had this morning when I slept until 8:30, about these creatures that looked like foxes with human faces. I was the only one who saw them, and I didn't have a camera with me, but someone said, "Oh yeah, those are marmots," and then I was puzzling over whether he meant marmots or marmosets. He said, "They were considered sacred by the Native Americans." Oddly, the Dream Dictionary does have an entry for Marmots (apparently they symbolize deceit and falsehood, and I am being misled in some aspect of a relationship), but there is no entry for Marmosets. What do you know about that? Though I will note that there is an entry for Monkey (and marmosets are a type of monkey) that says seeing one symbolizes deceit. What's with all the deceit?? Who's deceiving me??

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