This morning I took a walk with my neighbor, and we kept having to stop to talk to human neighbors and also our neighbors Inkle, Tasha, Paddy, and Lucy, who are all of the canine persuasion. Travalon and I also watched some cartoons, including something on YouTube about the forgotten cartoons of the 1970's. When Jilly Moose arrived, we headed for Port Washington, stopping for pizza in Lake Mills. I was saying that I'd love to play in a salsa band, but there isn't much call for salsa mandolin. What I actually wanted to play was Latin percussion, and I took a class in it once where I tried to play the claves, but it was very hard playing the 12/8 rhythm against the 4/4 time. To demonstrate how it sounds when done right, I found the song "Run Joe" on Travalon's Spotify, and we listened to it. Then we got to a dead zone, so we turned off the music and talked.
Port Washington was nearly twenty degrees cooler than Madtown and had a lovely lake breeze, and they also had a festival going on, which we hadn't known so that was a bonus. There was a salsa band playing, and we saw the food truck that sells the platonic ideal of a soft pretzel, and this time there was only one person ahead of us in line because apparently in Port Washington they don't know good pretzels like they do in Janesville. We had pretzels and danced to salsa, then when the band took a break, we checked out the rest of the festival. It was an arts festival, and Jilly Moose and I bought bracelets. Here's mine.
Then we took a walk (that was exactly an hour long, according to my FitBit) along the lake. Before we set off, there was this garden that I thought was so pretty with the reddish brown mulch.
Here are some photos of Travalon, Jilly Moose, and me in front of the water.
We met Tiffy at the Bayshore Park and Ride, then we went to the St. Paul's Seafood Company in Mequon for dinner. Tiffy and Travalon had the lobster boil, I had the lobster roll, and Jilly Moose had the cod. I mentioned how, when we got Sherbetta (who accompanied us on this trip) at the sock shop in Galena, I mentioned to the proprietress that there were no sign of the zodiac socks, and she seemed downright disgusted at the idea. That led to me googling sign of the zodiac socks, and when I went to show Tiffy and Jilly Moose their socks, we were all puzzled that they had a deer on them. Were you familiar with the sign of Virgo the Deer? Because I sure wasn't. Since I'd had an energy drink on the way there, I was kind of hyped up and made up a very brief rap: "Socks, socks, socks socks socks. I'm a Capricorn, I own a Chickacorn. Socks, socks, socks socks socks." A masterpiece right up there with "Toe! Knee! Togo Togo Togo!" Then I decided what I really wanted were socks with Stanley from
The Office saying, "I like Pretzel Day." Do those exist? (I just googled it, and yes they do!)
After dinner, we passed a place lit up like a Christmas tree that said it was "The Best in the State!" and then the front declared it was the "House of Corned Beef." Travalon said that was almost his nightmare place, but the worst would be the Kielbasa Castle. (Travalon thinks that sausage is the wurst!) Then his tire light came on, but the only place with free air is Kwik Trip. It seems like there is one Kwik Trip every mile and a half in the rest of the state, but somehow we were in a part with nothing but BP stations. On the plus side, Spotify made the most perfect play list we'd ever heard, based on "Run Joe." It played a lot of tropical songs we'd never heard before, and Louis Jordon songs, and New Orleans jazz. It was varied enough to never get boring, and every song was fantastic. One song had a chorus of gospel-sounding women singing in the background, so Tiffy, Jilly Moose, and I were singing along. I sang, "I've been searching for a Kwik Trip/Searching half my life/Got no pressure, can't take the highway/Says my nagging wife." Then the next song was by a guy named Duke of Iron, but the others didn't hear me so they thought I said "Duke of Ire" or "Duke of Dire" (which would be an excellent name for a band), and Travalon thought it should be "Duke of Tire," considering our predicament. After we dropped Tiffy off, we had to drive eight miles to find a Kwik Trip, and Travalon filled his tire up to 35 psi, but the tire light never turned off. It usually takes about a mile for it to realize the problem is solved, but we drove all the way back to Madison and it stayed on. Travalon went to the Kwik Trip right near our house, and it said the tire was at 34 psi, so if there's a leak, it's not that bad. Then suddenly he saw a button that he remembered the mechanics had told him he has to push, so when we got home, he pushed it... and it worked!!
Tiffy went to Arkansas for the long weekend, and she sent me these photos, which could be a photo essay called "A Tale of Two Churches."
The friend she was visiting has a brother who says that the longer a church's name is down south, the more likely it is that snake handling will be involved, so at least you would probably be safe at "House of God" there. The first one looks a lot like the shrine on Highway 80 in Nebraska, just west of Omaha. I would love to go back to that. Once I dreamed we all were there for Night Prayer, which would be highly unlikely since it closes at 5 pm except for special occasions. Still, it was a wonderful dream.
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