Photos of the Tenney Park Bird Party

 

On TV they keep showing how lots of countries are lighting up their landmarks blue and yellow in solidarity with Ukraine. It's a lovely sentiment, but I feel like we should be doing more than lighting things up. However, we don't want to get into a nuclear war with Russia, so we do have to tread carefully. There's a forty-mile-long convoy of Russian army equipment headed to Kyiv, and I keep thinking that if we could blow that up, we would take out a lot of their hardware. Forty miles! War sucks. Like everyone else, I am pulling for the scrappy Ukrainians and their scrappy comedian president, but how long can they hold out while we just watch, too afraid to help? At some point we'll have to do something, because sooner or later Putin will attack a country in NATO, and then we'll be obligated to help. The correspondents who are in Kyiv always seem to stand in front of this gorgeous white building with gold onion domes, so I googled it and found out it's the Monastery of St. Michael. It was an ancient building that the Soviets tore down in the 1930's and replaced with administrative buildings, but architects had secretly made drawings of it so that sixty years later, when Ukraine was independent again, they could rebuild it. And now will the Russians destroy it again?

On a lighter note, I got this sticker from DuoLingo. It would have been so fitting if I'd gotten this on Twosday, 2/22/22, but alas, I got it the next day.

Here are some pretty orchids I saw on Saturday that I didn't remember seeing last time.

When Travalon and I were walking along the canal yesterday, we saw this mushroom drawn on the underside of a bridge. My regular readers know I find mushrooms not only delicious, but totes adorbs too.

Travalon took some photos of eagles in Sauk on Saturday.

Tiffy and I didn't have good cameras with us on Saturday, so we couldn't take photos of the bird party at Tenney Park. Travalon took some photos yesterday. Here you can see tons of geese came from the south to join the bird party.

In this photo you can see scaups and red-headed ducks.

This is a goldeneye duck.

Here is a scaup next to a mallard that is dabbling. The scaups are diving ducks, so they are harder to photograph because they keep going underwater.

And here is another scaup, and I'm not sure what the duck to its left is. The female?

I had to google some of these ducks, and ask the hive mind on social media to ID others, but I know mallards when I see them!

For some reason a ton of the Canada geese were heading towards this house, which I found hilarious. Was there a party I didn't know about?

This is apparently a female bibbed mallard, which is a cross between a mallard and a domestic duck.

And this is the bibbed mallard drake.

This is the sunset over the jetty at Tenney Park locks.

This scaup looks like he's laughing!

Then Travalon caught him in a more sober moment.

I don't know why bird parties make me so happy. Maybe seeing all the birds hanging out together, looking like they're having fun, lets some of their joy rub off on me. Tiffy and Travalon enjoyed the bird party too, and on Sunday a ton of people had gathered to watch them, so it's not just me.

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Vitamin Sour

 

Yesterday I finally got my "Chrismas" cards in the mail, with Travalon's help. He really wanted to go see eagles in Sauk, since the weather is finally warming up so they might not be hanging around the dam much longer. He set off, while I waited for Tiffy to get to town. She and I got lunch at the Daisy Cafe, then we went to Olbrich Gardens, where the orchid show is still going on. She wanted to walk some more after we got done going through the outdoor gardens, so we went to Tenney Park, and out on the lake, right near the locks, there was an open area of water with a real bird party going on. There were lots of Canada geese, several types of ducks, and about a half dozen swans. A woman with a fancy camera said they had dirty necks, and we didn't hear them yelping like puppies, so I hazarded a guess that they were trumpeter swans rather than tundra swans. 

When Travalon got back to town, the three of us went to the Caspian Cafe for dinner. They were having a special on Georgian dumplings, so we split an order of those before our main courses, and we also split a piece of honey cake. Then Travalon dropped us off at the Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble concert; he went to the bookstore and then picked us up afterwards. Once we got back home, Tiffy headed back to her house.

This morning there was a Diocesan Appeal video in lieu of a homily, but it actually appealed to me because the bishop was talking about how our faith journey is a pilgrimage, which is how I look at it too. My OTHER choir director played "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" for the communion hymn, and he ended it on a major chord - yes, he ended "Picardy" on a Picardy third! The usual crowd were at brunch, then Travalon and I went to Tenney Park, and he took photos of the geese and all kinds of ducks, but the swans were not around. We did see a couple of gulls. We walked along the canal and went to the chocolate shop on the way, but as usual it is closed to restock, so we went next door to O'so Taphouse, and I had a sour beer, since that's what they are known for. Most beer is tasty, but for some reason I crave sour beer as if it has something in it my body needs. I joked that it was "Vitamin Sour," but I wonder - could it actually be Vitamin C? Then I was a little buzzed. It had been a while since I did any day drinking, and it was so enjoyable to walk in the sunshine while pleasantly buzzed. 

In the evening we went to Pizza Brutta for dinner, then Travalon dropped me off at band practice while he went to a little bookstore/coffeehouse/bar, which he really enjoyed. My band hadn't practiced in months, and Mandy was happy to get out of the house, but she was really out of tune, and her strings sounded so dead. It's time to replace them. Worse, I was having trouble playing. I have had tendonitis in my right wrist since December, and I keep meaning to get a brace but keep forgetting. It doesn't hurt constantly, but when I make certain motions it does, and playing with a pick is one of those motions. Then I panicked, because my identity has been "mandolin player" my whole adult life, and what would I do if that was no longer true? The pandemic didn't bother me much, since I figured it was temporary, but what if my wrist was so bad that I could never play again? Then I would just be a low-level civil servant, not part of a musical group. However, I did figure out a way to play that wasn't nearly as painful, so maybe I'll be okay. But it was a terrifying moment to think I might not be able to be a musician anymore.

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My Madtown (and Birthplace) Dialect

 

Today I took the New York Times dialect quiz (which you can find here), and it said I was either from Madison, WI (nailed it!!), Aurora, IL (kind of random, but not that far away), or... Rochester, NY?? That last one really got me, because in fact I did spend the first two years of my life in Rochester, NY, but I spent the next sixteen in Rochester, MN, and that wasn't showing up in my dialect at all. Yet somehow I absorbed enough of the local dialect as a toddler to have some upstate New York in my speech? That's crazy! My results said that because I call athletic shoes "sneakers," that means I am most likely from Rochester. I guess I also call them "tennis shoes," but usually sneakers, or just sneaks. Like, "I have to get a new pair of sneaks soon because these are getting holes in them." (Based on a true story.) Apparently Aurora is because the words "cot" and "caught" don't rhyme for me, but an informal poll of the Night Prayer folks indicated that the whole Madtown crowd feels that way. And I cannot for the life of me remember what gave away the fact that I have spent my entire adult life in this crazy capital city on an isthmus. The one Minnesota thing I remember people mocking in my speech when I first arrived was how I made every sentence sound like a question because I ended on an up note. So, for example, they would ask where I was from, and I would say something that sounded to them like, "Rochester, Minnesota?" and they would laugh and say, "Aren't you sure?" I have it on good authority (a Swedish person) that this is from Norwegian; while Swedish has a very sing-song melody to it, Norwegian just goes right up the scale. So how did we indicate actual questions in Minnesota? I can't even remember, and I must not do it anymore, because nobody has commented on it in decades. I'm all Madison (and upstate New York) now!

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Minor Car Troubles and Even More Minor Taxes

 

Some time ago I had an unfortunate run-in with a snowbank while trying to avoid someone else, and then a couple of weeks ago I started hearing a strange noise from the front of my car. Where I had run into the snowbank, a part of the bumper was hanging down, but not the outer part, some inner part. I propped it back into place, but as soon as I started driving, it got loose again. Then Richard Bonomo tried to tape it up, but it immediately came loose again. Plus, as I was walking to my car after getting off the bus one evening, I heard a puzzling flapping sound... and then realized it was the tape, now loose and flapping in the wind. So today I dropped the car off at our neighborhood car repair shop before work, and the bus stopped right in front of the shop on my way home, so I went to get my car. They had secured the loose piece but were skeptical that it would hold... and sure enough, as I started driving home, I heard that same strange noise again. I guess this will never end until I get a whole new bumper. But I can't complain too much, since Noelle has been a trouble-free car until this episode that was totally not her fault.

This evening the condo association president and I did the taxes for our association. Now I have only done personal taxes, so this was a new thing for me. Our association gets a tiny bit of interest income on our savings account, and none of our income from dues are taxable, nor are our expenses deductible, because they are all used to run the association. So really it was much simpler than doing personal taxes, and we ended up owing the feds $6 and the state $2. All in all, a painless experience.

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Happy Twosday!

 

Today there was an ice storm, so Travalon and I both worked from home and never even left the house. As my regular readers know, I will go outside on the coldest of days just to get some fresh air, so I was going a little stir-crazy, but it was so icy out that our condo association president sent an email to everyone saying just stay in the house. I still got my five miles in from walking around the house, and my Ring of Kerry challenge is almost done. Here my goal was to get done in early March so I'd get my medal in time for St. Patrick's Day, and at this rate I may finish by the end of this week! 

Did everyone stop at 2:22 pm to enjoy the fact that it was 2:22 2/22/22 on a Tuesday (Twosday)? As someone in our Night Prayer group pointed out, it will be even better at 10:22 pm because in military time that will be 22:22 on 2/22/22, so I'll have to pause at that moment. 2:22 this afternoon was just before I went into a very contentious meeting, and maybe the less said about that, the better. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, and I think someone will end up getting fired, so very stressful. My role was just to ask clarifying questions, so I felt a bit helpless as things spiraled out of control. Yikes!

As my regular readers are no doubt aware, I have always loved mass transit, so it surprised me that lately I hate commuting by bus. In the pre-COVID times, I had to get going much earlier (I've negotiated a later starting time), yet I loved riding the bus into campus every day and seeing things like Castle Place on the right, and further down the road a house made of part of that eponymous castle on the left. Upon further reflection, I realized that ridership is back up to pre-COVID levels, but bus routes haven't increased to accommodate the extra riders, so the bus is so packed that it is downright dangerous. A couple of weeks ago I was hanging onto the straps from the ceiling (since there was no room to sit), and the driver lurched forward so fast that I almost landed in someone's lap. I could have crushed some tiny little undergrad! And who wants that? I don't want to be part of a news story about how my being fat killed a member of America's Future. I can see the headline now: "Overweight Gen Xer Squashes Underweight Gen Zer!" Talk about intergenerational strife! Yikes!

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Photos from the Zoo

 

As promised, here are some photos from the zoo yesterday. First, the polar bears:

The lion always likes to sit on this rock:

The alpacas were kind of giving us the side-eye:

These are bactrian camels. We don't have dromedaries at our zoo.

Here you can see both kinds of flamingos, the light coral ones and the dark coral ones:

This hornbill seems to be new. It is much smaller than the ones at the Milwaukee Zoo.

This is one of the white-handed gibbons. They like to sing.

In fact, once I was visiting the zoo with a woman from church, and the gibbons were singing (kind of more like whooping), so she sang Gregorian chant to them, and they were fascinated.

An update on the fight from yesterday: our coach was fined ten grand, and the other coach was fined forty grand and suspended for five games. Nobody wanted to press charges.

(Jilly Moose, feel free to skip this paragraph.) We had gotten some oyster mushrooms from Mother Fool's Coffeehouse, and tonight Travalon brought home fixings for quesadillas, then he fried the mushrooms and put them in the quesadillas. Oh my goodness, were they ever delicious! We will have to get those mushrooms again! Travalon says they would also be good on chicken breasts.

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Fight at the Badger Basketball Game

 

One thing I forgot about yesterday is that we stopped by Delaney's Surplus Sales on Highway 12, because we had never been there but I kept hearing good things about it. They had quite a random collection of stuff, and I got a coral-colored umbrella and a purple velvet scarf for a grand total of $8. My regular readers may remember that coral was our wedding color, so next time it rains I can put the umbrella up and reminisce about the happiest day of my life.

Today was so beautiful. It got all the way up to 50 F. Kathbert, Travalon, and I took a long walk behind Edgewood College and through the zoo. Travalon took some photos, but we both forgot about them until now, when it's too late and I'm too tired to bother air-dropping them onto Boethius, so look for those tomorrow. Travalon had decided being outside was better than going to the Badger basketball game, so he missed the big fight afterwards. I heard about it and assumed it was between the players, but it actually started between the two head coaches, and then the Michigan head coach smacked our assistant coach in the head! After that the players got into it. Since Travalon had taped the game, we were able to watch the fight, since it was captured on camera as part of the regular airing of the game. Whoa! I guess the Michigan coach was mad because our coach called a time out toward the end of the game when we were so far ahead, but isn't that allowed? I don't quite understand the problem. Is only the team that is losing allowed to call a time out? I was unaware of such a rule.

Tonight Travalon watched the NBA All-Star game. I remember watching one a couple of years ago, when Giannas was a team captain, but this year I just didn't have a lot of interest in it. It doesn't feel like a real game, just a bunch of great players making amazing plays. Steph Curry made a half-court shot, and Giannis put up a lot of points. It was very cute when he had his little son on his shoulders after the game. Such a little guy on top of such a tall guy! Maybe someday his son will be very tall too.

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Antiquing and Eagle Watching on a Cold Day

 

For some reason, after successfully giving my talk on fiscal responsibility to a bunch of teenage boys, I was in a slightly manic mood, as my readers may have been able to figure out from my last post. Poor Tiffy had to listen to me babble last night, but at least I worked from home so none of my coworkers saw how crazy I was, and I was amazingly productive at work, between hating on equal temperament and obsessing over how I'm the worst zodiac sign. And our tax preparer probably thinks I'm nuts because I was so down on "The Man" suppressing all the poor people.

Today I felt blessedly normal again, except that I forgot to make coffee in the morning. We were sitting around watching cartoons, and I kept thinking we were going to go do something... and then it finally dawned on me that we hadn't been properly caffeinated yet. After coffee we headed out to the Baraboo Antiques Mall, where Travalon got a Jim Morrison bobblehead (sorry, I didn't take a photo) and I found four rosaries. It's hard to see in this photo, but the one on the far left is a beautiful purple.

Then we drove out to Sauk and went to the dam, where we saw lots of mergansers but no eagles. Travalon took photos, but they didn't turn out. Then we went to the VFW Park, and we saw some eagles sitting in the trees across the river. The brown one is younger than four years old.

We went to Fitz's on the Lake for lunch and then took a walk on the trail that goes to Paradise Island, although we didn't go that far because the weather was in single digits. We came back to Madison and walked some more at West Towne Mall, which is livelier than East Towne Mall. Travalon looked for Funko Pops, but he didn't see any he wanted. We checked out the new Jamaican stand at the food court but weren't hungry enough to try it. We'll just have to go back. I was exhausted but still needed to walk another mile, so when we got home, I put my headphones on and walked to music. I could be on my deathbed, but when that beat drops, I have to move. And of course I have to get my Ring of Kerry challenge done in time to get the medal for St. Patrick's Day - that wasn't my original plan, but when I saw that it was a possibility, it became my new goal.

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The Worst Sign?

 

Today I was in no mood to listen to equal temperament, so I listened to early music all day long, especially "Ascendens Christus in Altum" by Victoria - I just keep listening to that over and over. (True confession: I'm listening to it right now.) Even when I needed to get a lot of steps inside because it was so cold outside, I listened to Victoria, Scheidt, Hammerschmidt, and Tallis instead of my usual hip hop and salsa. Imagine a world where intervals are pure - no, I don't have to imagine it, I can just listen to it! Thanks, YouTube! I wish I could have met Victoria. His music is so mystical, maybe he was too. It would be so great to have a conversation with him. Did you know he was half-Jewish? His mother was a Jew who converted to Catholicism, and he himself was a priest.

Lately I have been getting a lot of those click-bait articles on my main Google page about the worst sign for backstabbing, temper, etc., and of course mine is always the second-worst after Scorpio. The book I bought that doesn't glow under blacklight is about astrology, so I read their description of Capricorn, and it did sound pretty awful. So then I was thinking maybe it is a really bad sign to be born under, but today I saw a video of a guy who's a Gemini randomly asking people in a mall what the worst sign was, after he asked their own signs. Apparently he heard a lot of people say Gemini is the worst sign (which kind of fits with my experience), and the people he asked were all over the map, but not one said Capricorn, and only one was a Capricorn. Statistically we are the rarest sign, so apparently people don't hate us - they completely forget we exist. Probably most people figure the worst sign is whatever their ex or their frenemy is, and there aren't enough of us out there for people to have had bad experiences with us. I will note (because the guy did) that only one person said Sagittarius, so people aren't hating on Travalon either. And yes, Gemini was the one people said the most! I have known some truly atrocious Geminis, and some of the worst famous people are Geminis, so that rings true for me. But my colleague who walks fifty times faster than I do is a Gemini, and we get along really well. When I was a kid, most of my buddies were Geminis or Scorpios, but they always turned on me. Now I barely know any Geminis or Scorpios. Where do they all go in adulthood? I sure hope Victoria wasn't a Scorpio or a Gemini. I like to think he was a fellow Capricorn, but I guess we'll never know for sure.

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Talking Fiscal Responsibility with Teenagers

 

This morning I had a somewhat frustrating meeting. Another person and I are trying to help save a third person's job, but this third person is not doing themselves any favors by not doing what their boss asks. It's not like their boss is asking them to do something illegal or immoral, they just think everything their boss asks them to do is stupid and pointless, so they don't do it, and now they're being disciplined. I really don't know what to do about this. I mean, who hasn't had a boss ask them to do something stupid and pointless? That's just life. You can always ask why you are being asked to do something stupid and pointless, without phrasing it that way, of course, but you still have to do it. I'm just mystified that this person doesn't understand something so basic about life.

Over the lunch hour I went to a Just Bach concert, where our local harpsichordist played selections from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Now I'm a simple creature who plays the mandolin, and so I only want to play in four keys (G, D, C, and A if you really insist) and their relative minors, so a tuning system where those keys sound great and some (looking at you, F# minor) are completely unusable seems just fine to me. But well-tempered tuning is kind of brilliant in that all the keys are usable, but they all sound a little different, so each one has its own color. As I was leaving, I said to the host (my OTHER choir director's replacement) how good it is to hear something not in equal temperament, and another guy told me, "I tuned my piano at home like that." My response? "Wow, that's so cool!"

But the big thing I had to do tonight was give a presentation on fiscal responsibility to the teenagers where Travalon works. I was kind of scared - who loves public speaking? - but I felt prepared, with handouts discussing spending, debt, savings, and scams. Right when I got there, Travalon introduced me to the little kids he works with, and one said, "Your wife is so beautiful!" Aww! I felt a little intimidated to meet the teens: there were about seven of them, and they were all boys, so we didn't have age, race, or gender in common. But they actually listened to me, and one really connected and asked lots of good questions. I could tell I had gotten him thinking about his spending habits. Afterwards it occurred to me that this combined two sides of me I hadn't expected: the side outraged by injustice (like loan sharks preying on poor people who don't understand money), and the maternal side of me, because I felt motherly toward these boys as I explained how money works. Maybe they kind of picked up on how I was trying to save them from "The Man." Hey, if one kid remembers this talk before signing up for a loan with 60% interest, then it was a complete success.

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Hangin' Out with God

 

In yesterday's post, I didn't say what Travalon and I did for Valentine's Day. We had already exchanged presents; he got me opal and pink sapphire earrings to match my ring when we were at the mall recently, and I got him a little stuffed puffin for a donation to an organization that works to save the oceans. Last night we went to the Mexican restaurant near our house, figuring that they may be too packed to get into on Cinco de Mayo, but they may not be a lot of people's first thought for Valentine's Day. That worked well - we got right in and had our usual shrimp chimichangas. Then we split a piece of tres leches cake that was so large that I can't imagine a single person eating one. They must know everyone splits them, and so they make them extra big.

Today I had three meetings, and one was in person right after lunch, but I forgot to change from my sneakers into my good shoes. Oops! They were discussing named options for music performance majors, and most of them were instrument types, like strings or brass, but jazz was its own option, because they said jazz is so different than other types of music. That made me wonder why they didn't have a named option for early music, for those students who don't want to perform in the dreaded equal temperament, but they said they have enough options already. Odd, because I thought our university was trying to become a place known for early music. 

After work I went to adoration as usual, and I always get there at least half an hour early so I usually hang out in the library. Today there were people in the library, so I went up into the sanctuary. It was really beautiful with the candles flickering as darkness fell and the last light of day shone through the stained glass windows.

It looked as if the tabernacle was glowing.

I think it's just a reflection from the tabernacle candle, which is just to the left of this photo, but it's a really cool effect. I sat there and wondered why "social justice warrior" is an insult, and God pointed out to me that the people who think so are often the same people who say they are His most loyal followers, yet He constantly tells us how important social justice is. Like, blessed are they who thirst for justice. So I said, "Good point, God!" He is always making good points when I sit alone with Him. I would highly recommend spending some time alone with God. He has a lot of common sense and can be incredibly funny. He's fun to spend time with.

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Rich's Lunar New Year Birthday Party

 

Last year Rich's birthday was exactly on Lunar New Year (and apparently so was his actual day of birth, because if he had been born a day earlier, he would have been a Wooden Sheep instead of a Fire Monkey), but of course with the pandemic we couldn't throw him a big party. This year we made up for it, and a new guy to the group had a birthday on the 6th so we made it a joint party. Tiffy and I got there early, and I hung up the decoration I got in Chinatown in Chicago, then I went to hang up the garlands, but they were actually decals to put on the wall! Apparently I don't know how to read. I put a few up, but we have so many left that we could decorate for Lunar New Year until 2036. Then Tiffy and I chopped vegetables while another woman helped immensely by cutting up the chicken and then cooking the stir fry while I steamed the dumplings. Lots of other people brought food too: Jilly Moose brought a delicious Asian salad and the Dairyman's Daughter brought crab Rangoons, for example. The guy who always brings multiple desserts brought an Italian flag cake and a cheesecake, so this was on top of my black magic cake and the ice cream Kathbert brought, and Hockey Girl also brought treats from the Asian bakery. Nobody left hungry! Here are some photos. First is the cake I made and frosted with some help. I was going to make some sort of elaborate tiger cake for the Year of the Tiger, but Kathbert said, "Why not just make it have tiger stripes?" Indeed!

This is the Italian flag cake. Isn't it beautiful? It was also delicious - almond flavored!

Here you can see the decals on the wall that say "spring" and "lucky," and the flowers someone brought for Rich.

Jilly Moose took this photo of me bringing the Italian flag cake out to the other birthday boy as we all sing. The tiger cake is already in front of Rich, because we brought that out and sang to him first.

Yesterday morning after Mass, the usual people went to brunch along with Tiffy and a woman Rich used to work with. She mentioned that she plays the Baroque flute, so I told her that I hate equal temperament, and she did too! How often do you meet someone that you have something like that in common with? Then Tiffy, Rich, Travalon, and I went to get bubble tea. They had smiling pumpkin bread there. (We didn't get any, but I'm sure it's as delicious as it is happy.)

Tiffy and I got blue matcha lattes, and here is a photo of mine with Travalon's chocolate, coconut, and caramel concoction.

Then Tiffy, Travalon, and I shopped at a few shops on State Street, and I picked up a couple of things that I thought might glow under blacklight. And they do!

After Tiffy headed home, Travalon and I walked at the mall. I got a purse from the alpaca store, and it also glows under blacklight.

I also got a book, partly because I was interested in the subject matter, and partly because the cover looked like it would glow under blacklight. Big letdown - it doesn't. Then we had to get back for my Irish class, where we talked about past vacations, and one classmate said she thought of me when they went to Boise and there were a lot of Basques there. She went into a restaurant where people were actually speaking in Basque. So cool!

Apropos to both Irish and Lunar New Year, I got this sticker from DuoLingo this month:

Last year I didn't get stickers, but I did get badges. Here you can see them.

And now that I'm done with the Virtual Camino, I'm doing the Virtual Ring of Kerry. I am on track to get done and receive my medal in time for St. Patrick's Day. This view of where I was on the Ring was particularly beautiful. See the islands out there? They might be the Blasket Islands. I remember seeing them when we actually traveled on the Ring of Kerry.

So I have to keep walking, and today at lunch I walked with my colleague. You can see where we started out hot, then she slowed down to show me a photo of her son's dog, and we never got back up to her normal speed.

I was jogging to keep up with her during that first part, and she said, "People will think I'm so mean, that I go so fast that you have to run to keep up." I said, "They could just as easily think that I'm pathetic, having to jog to keep up with someone walking at a comfortable speed." Will I ever easily be able to keep pace with her? That remains to be seen.

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Gifted and Talented... Adults?

 

One of my classmates from Irish has been posting stuff on social media lately about how all of us kids who had to go to Gifted and Talented programs were led to believe we would somehow have a fabulous future, but it was never explained to us how to achieve it. She, like me, is a low-level public servant, so we have respectable jobs with good pensions but not what anyone would call an amazing career. This got me to thinking about how when I was a kid in Catholic school, there were three of us in first grade who went to the fifth grade classroom for reading. I have no idea what ever happened to the boy, so maybe he is working on the cure for cancer or designing rockets or something, but I know what happened to me - I'm a blogger with a minuscule following and a semi-professional musician with a state job to support my music habit - and the other girl is a disaster. She moved out to Seattle and barely works, and she never married but just had tons of flings. I was telling this to my buddy from the Union and the bus, and he said he also had to go to those Gifted and Talented programs as a kid, and now he's a low-level public servant too. You would think we would be faculty members, not the hourly drudges supporting them. How about the faculty members - were they Gifted and Talented as children? Or are you more likely to be successful if you're kind of smart but not one of those super smart kids that stand out? Were we all so embarrassed to be singled out for our brains that we tried to blend in, and so now we're living very average lives? Or did the kind-of smart kids learn to work harder and so they succeeded more? I'd love to hear from a Gifted and Talented alumnus who is what the world would call a resounding success. 

Or am I not looking at this the right way at all? Maybe we really smart kids cared more about what made us happy than outward success, so we just got jobs that would pay the bills while we lived interesting lives on the side, while the less smart kids grew up playing the game, so they have more money but less happiness. As possible proof for this, I submit the fact that there was an article in our campus newsletter about faculty who have interesting hobbies, and I thought, "Huh, EVERY staff person I know has interesting hobbies. Are they so unusual among the faculty that they have to highlight them?" For example, the woman who first posted about this teaches Irish dancing. Maybe the faculty are so busy working that they don't have time for interesting lives. So then maybe we hourly workers really are the smart ones!

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Yes, We Know Each Other!

 

Totally apropos to yesterday's post, this morning a woman who looked familiar got on my bus, and she sat right behind me. Then she got off at my stop, and she walked into my building, and she got on the elevator with me. She turned to me and said, "Your name is Famous, isn't it?" I said, "So we do know each other?" and she said we used to work together in the private sector... but that was two decades ago! I asked her name, and as soon as she said it, I remembered that she had organized a choir at our company for Christmas one year. Those of us who showed up were actually pretty good singers; I sang alto, although my natural range is soprano, because I can do harmony, and we had a tenor and a bass who were unreal. They sang in barber shop quartets, and they totally kept us together and in tune. So we strolled around the building singing a cappella Christmas carols in four-part harmony, and people popped their heads out of their cubes and said, "That's you guys singing?!? I thought it was a CD!!" Anyway, my old coworker has been working in her department for about two years, but basically remotely until now, which is why I hadn't run into her until today. How crazy is that??

Here are a couple of photos. First, Travalon sent me this photo of our houseguest.

These are colorful snowmen in front of the building next to mine on campus.

I believe there is a daycare in that building, because I often see children playing around the building, accompanied by some young women, and the children were building the snowmen. The color is probably food coloring, since I remember that Hardingfele's daughter made a blue snowman that way. These are a little more colorful - pink and blue. It almost looks like some sort of deranged gender reveal party for snowpeople.

Famous Hat

Do We Know Each Other?

 

The houseguest we have over now and then is visiting again, and she has major FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out, as all dogs do. To be fair, so do lots of humans (Exhibit #1 is myself), but with humans, FOMO is about fun, or what they call craic in Irish (pronounced "crack.") I truly believe with dogs their FOMO is all about food. "You're getting up? You're going into another room? You're going to eat something without me, aren't you? I knew it!!" Though dogs like craic (and weirdly, so does spellcheck), so maybe they also are afraid fun will be had behind their backs. On some level, we aren't that different than dogs, at least simple people like me. We like food, and we like fun, and we hate to miss out on either.

I have this weird problem where lots of people look familiar, but most of the time when I ask a random stranger if we know each other, they say I don't look familiar to them. One time a woman did agree that I looked familiar, and I even knew her first name, but we never did figure out how we knew each other. I have learned to stop asking random strangers if we know each other, but last summer I was introduced to a young couple, and the man said we had already met. I admitted that I didn't remember that, but I did remember meeting his girlfriend. She took real umbrage at that and insisted we had never met before, so I tried to defuse the situation by asking how they had met, but she was hostile about that question too, so I just gave up and hoped I never had to see her again. And I haven't, but not long ago I saw one of the grad students in our department, whom I hadn't seen since before COVID started, and I realized that they looked very similar, so that was who I was thinking of. Oddly, this grad student is also a prickly person, so I tend to avoid her too. Hey - maybe they secretly ARE the same annoying person! After all, I have never seen them in the same place at the same time...

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Model Train Museum Video

 

Today an exciting thing came in the mail: my Camino medal! I have to admit that it is not as pretty as my other two medals, for the Mount Fuji walk and the Road to Hana, but it's a much bigger accomplishment. Those were only 46 and 64 miles, but this was 480 miles. Here are photos.

These photos are from our stay at the bed and breakfast on a boat in St. Paul. For some reason I didn't post them, and I don't know why. They're from the deck outside the pilot house. The first one is from my phone and the second one is from Travalon's phone.

And from that same weekend, here is a video compilation I made of trains at the Twin Cities Model Train Museum. The Christmas Train and the Roller Coaster were videos I shot with my phone, while the more elaborate setup with several trains is from Travalon's good camera.

The first couple of videos were so short, I figured Blogspot would let me load them directly onto the site, but for some reason it wouldn't do it, so I had to use iMovie and then put the final product on YouTube. It must have something to do with my new phone, because with my old one I could load a video up to a minute long without having to go the YouTube route.

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Labyrinth and Orchids at Olbrich

 

Today Travalon and I went to Mass and brunch with Rich and the two other (besides Travalon) Sagitarii for the first time in ages, and they were having very "guy" conversation about firearms and sports video games, so not the most exciting for me. It was a beautiful day, so Travalon and I went to the labyrinth at Olbrich Park. It is made of old Christmas trees and greens, and it smells wonderful. Too bad that the snow is so worn down that the footing is treacherous. 

This was a mandala-like arrangement in the center of the labyrinth.

We bailed on the labyrinth and walked through the park, admiring how shards of ice had been pushed up like tiny mountains near the shore of Lake Monona.

We could see the Capitol dome and the Monona Terrace from there.

One thing we didn't see was a snowy owl. There are three in the area around Lake Monona, and other people have been posting photos of them on social media. It was even in the news! The only birds we saw were in the conservatory at Olbrich Gardens.

They were having their annual orchid display. Travalon and I took photos.

There were also some bananas, not ripe yet.

Because it was such a warm, sunny day for early February, we took a walk out in the gardens and went to the Thai Pavilion.

Here is the view from the top of the Rose Tower, so that I can truly say I have photographed this view in every season.

Since the labyrinth had been my idea, I asked Travalon what he would like to do next, and he said check out a general store on Willy Street called Hazel. He bought me this tiny, handmade monster there. It doesn't have a name yet.

I had missed Irish class for two weeks in a row, first because I didn't realize we were having it and didn't see the email (which was sent on the Saturday we were at Tiffy's house) until after it was over, and then of course last weekend I was so sick. Today I went, and we talked about vacations, so that was fun. The word for "snorkeling" in Irish is so weird (snorclail or something like that) that even our leader wasn't sure how to pronounce it. I also blew their minds by saying I lost a fight with a butterfly in Montgomery (I didn't know the word for moth), and they understood every word of the Irish but couldn't make sense of it until I explained how the luna moth was too strong for me to move her from the sidewalk to the grass. They did say I have the craziest stories, which is probably true. They haven't even heard the one about how I took a hostage in our church parking lot and forced him to help me teach catechism because he was parking illegally...

After Irish class, Travalon and I took a short walk around the neighborhood. Our neighbor still has Christmas decorations on his dock, which makes me happy.

When we came back into the house, I checked my FitBit, and I had exactly five miles. Now that I have finished the virtual Camino, I am walking the virtual Ring of Kerry. Travalon and I saw part of it during our honeymoon, and so far the street views are gorgeous. This is much shorter than the Camino, so in theory I could have my medal just in time for St. Patrick's Day - so fitting! It has ogham on it, and I am wondering if it is a secret message. Someone who did the Pyramids of Giza virtual walk said that the scarab on that medal comes off and is a decoder, so they decoded the hieroglyphics on the medal and found that they said: "Way to go!" I'm very excited to see if there is a secret message in the ogham on the Ring of Kerry medal.

Famous Hat