Yesterday we went to Mass in the gym again, and the choir sang two songs that I've sung in choirs myself. Then the postlude was a Prelude in G Minor by Buxtehude! I love this church! And it had a very pretty little tree outside of it.
Afterwards we picked up Tiffy and went to Ha Long Bay, a restaurant we've been wanting to try for a long time but it's always too busy. Apparently 11:30 on Sunday is the time to go! Tiffy told me the deep-fried noodles they had on the menu were really good, and I will say that they are a revelation. They are still chewy, fat noodles, but with a deep-fried exterior. So good!! Travalon got the curry duck he had liked at another restaurant, and he said theirs was even better. (My colleague remembered Travalon's duck fondly from the time we had gone with her and her husband to a Thai restaurant, but she couldn't remember what it was, so she ordered one duck on the menu, her husband ordered a second kind of duck, and her son ordered a third kind... and not one of them was the one she remembered Travalon ordering.) Rich joined us for a bit too, then he headed off and we three went to the Arboretum. Here are some photos. This first one is the leaves of a ginkgo tree, looking like little gold fans.
This is a tupelo tree by the main building.
Even Tiffy's foraging cousin, who is a big mushroom expert, didn't know what these cute little mushrooms were.
This is a larch, the only deciduous conifer that I know of. Tiffy said Deciduous Conifer would make a great band name, so I said it could be Larch Tamarack and the Deciduous Conifers. (A tamarack is another name for a larch.)
The wooden triangle thing is an art installation, a stylus on a wire in a box of sand, so when the wind blows, it creates a "drawing."
This is the big tupelo again.
We saw four turkeys, but apparently Travalon only made a video of them and didn't take any photos. As we walked under the colorful trees, I joked about the Red Bull that had been in our shots the night before, that we didn't know until we drank them. I said maybe that's the secret ingredient in everything, and Tiffy asked, "Not beandzdzdz?" She just got an ice cream maker as a reward for a job well done at work, and I said maybe she should make some Red Bull and beandzdzdz ice cream. She thought that sounded awful, but I said red beans are used in all kinds of desserts in Chinese cuisine. "Red Bull and red beandzdzdz ice cream," I said, but she didn't seem sold on the idea.
I was the only one besides the teacher at Irish class, so good thing I didn't skip it! Then Travalon and I drove south of Milwaukee to see China Lights, like we have other years. This year the theme was "Under the Sea," and he got lots of great photos and a fantastic video of the volcano, so I'll post those soon. We planned to have dinner there, but our first attempt was a bust because we ordered fried crawfish, and they were whole crawfish but you can only really eat the tail, so it wasn't that much food for $15. Worse, we'd ordered pumpkin bubble teas, but it was really just orange Kool-Aide with bubbles in it, for which they charged us $7 each. After we had seen just about the whole display, we came across a stand selling pizza, but our pizza slices were cold. When we asked the guy to heat them up, he just took them, threw them away, and said he'd make fresh ones for us. I hate wasting food, and we had to wait quite a while, but I have to say that the hot, fresh pizza was very tasty. So lesson learned: maybe it's best to eat BEFORE going to China Lights. We'll remember that next year, when we will hopefully remember to go before the VERY LAST DAY, and if you buy tickets online, you have to buy a family four-pack. However, Travalon pointed out that the price for the four tickets was the same as two tickets at the door, so we weren't out any money, and at least this way we had tickets. What a bummer if we'd gone all the way there just to be told they were sold out.
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