Niko at the Easter Vigil Mass

 

Yesterday I had to go to a bank near East Towne to get access to our Union account, since I was voluntold to be the treasurer. There is a branch near our house, and a branch near the Vice President's house, but this branch was closest to the President's house. Ironically, he was sick, so he didn't come, but the Vice President and I met with a banker named Famous, who also hates being called Famy. Somehow the story of my band being onstage with a little frog came up, and I said too bad we didn't play the "Little Frogs" song about how little frogs have no ears or tails... and the banker at the next desk said, "I just learned about that song the other day!" How crazy is that?? It turns out we didn't even need the President there to add me to the account, so the deed is done.

Travalon's buddy was coming back from Florida with his wife, and his brother was supposed to pick them up at the airport but bailed on them to go out of state himself, so he asked Travalon to do it. We headed to the Milwaukee airport, stopping at a huge antiques mall where I found a couple of interesting rosaries, a necklace labeled "miraculous pendant" that was a Celtic cross inlaid with different color stones, and a very cheap plastic necklace that appeared to be a rosary with the starting beads and crucifix missing, so maybe I can fix that. We picked up Travalon's buddy and his wife and dropped them off at their car, then we took a walk at Brookfield Square Mall, which is in even sadder shape than the malls in our town. In Travalon's youth, it was packed every Saturday and was the place to be, but now more than half the storefronts are empty. Even Victoria's Secret closed!

In the evening we went to the Vigil Mass in the gym. They did have it beautifully decorated.

We got there just before things started and had to sit in the very back, but then we got a good view of the Easter fire and the priest marking the Easter candle. They ran out of programs, but thankfully the guy next to me gave me his. We started in darkness, and soon we all had lit our candles, but then to my surprise they turned on the lights before the "Exultet," which the deacon sang beautifully in English. I thought the lights weren't supposed to come on until the "Gloria." I was very happy to do a lot of singing, and I wore my new "miraculous pendant." The choir was amazing, and they had a small consort of instruments playing with them, strings and brass. I brought Niko with me, but I didn't squeeze him as much, since Travalon was with me so I didn't need to feel comforted. Nobody was accepted into the church at this parish, but the Mass still went for two and a half hours. Only at the very end did I realize we were sitting right behind a Polish faculty member, so we said hi afterwards.

As per a longstanding tradition I had with Rich, we wanted lamb after the Vigil Mass, so we squeezed into a not entirely legal parking spot at our church (where the Vigil Mass in Spanish was still going on) and ran to the gyro place on State Street. A woman accosted us and said why were people parking there? It was a Catholic church! We said yes, and Mass was going on, and she got all upset and said she didn't know, she isn't Catholic. The gyro place used to be open until all hours to get the crowd coming from the bars closing, but now it apparently closes at ten, so we had just missed it. I went into our church to powder my nose, and the weird woman was now in the church, demanding that a young guy who probably barely spoke English help her use the elevator. I texted Rich to keep an eye on her, then Travalon said there was a new Mediterranean restaurant open until 11 at the top of Willy Street, so we went there. We ordered lamb kebab wraps, and Travalon got an order of French fries that was so huge that we both ate some, brought the rest home, and still had enough to split today. Everything was really good, and they gave us free weird little baklava rolls that were green but tasted good, but the meat really tasted like beef, not lamb. I said something to them, and they claimed it was lamb but just cooked differently. I mean, it was delicious, freshly grilled, but it really tasted like beef. Later I saw the receipt they had emailed me... and it said two beef kebabs. Rich tried to get there after his Vigil Mass got done, but they had just closed so we went out and talked to him briefly. He said he saw the crazy woman, but she had safely left the church.

Today Travalon felt under the weather, so I left him at home and went to Mass in the gym. The homily was the same as last night, but the choir sang different pieces, and of course we sang "Victimae Pascali Laudes," only in English. During the Sign of the Peace, the guy next to me said I have a very pleasant singing voice. When I got home, Travalon said he would take me to the place where the pasque flowers bloom. This is much earlier than last year, but I'd seen people saying on social media that they were blooming already, and how fitting that pasque flowers were blooming on Easter. Here are some photos.

Hauser Prairie is up on a ridge, so you can get quite a view from there.

In the evening we went to Rich's house for Easter dinner. As always, he made rosemary lamb, and people brought various sides like salad and... French toast? The guy who makes fabulous desserts brought a mud pie, a chocolate orange custard pie, and a pistachio cake, and Rich had made chocolate mousse, but then he told us how he had set it out on the back porch to cool, and some animal peeled back the plastic and sampled it. He thought it was a bird because a raccoon would have made a bigger mess. He said someone was coming late, and he couldn't remember her last name but it was something like "neurology," and Mr. Dessert Guy said, "The nerve of her, coming late!" That took a minute to hit, but when it did hit, it hit hard, and I laughed for ten minutes straight. He had another good line when Cecil Markovitch said our old priest got mad when he joked that the baptismal tub was a cow trough, and Rich said, "But it is - he bought it at Farm and Fleet! Why would he get mad about that?" and Mr. Dessert Guy said, "It was when he called him Father Holstein," which is hilarious because it isn't that off from his actual name. There were a couple of people who had not been to Rich's before, but hopefully they weren't scared off - in fact, I feel like people (including me) were extra witty tonight, and the conversation was a lot of fun. I was wearing my "miraculous pendant," so maybe that helped. I'm tempted to wear it to work tomorrow to see if it helps there, but it's kind of big and very religious, so probably not appropriate for work.

Famous Hat

Niko at Good Friday in the Gym

 

Today I was scheduled to take the afternoon off of work, and I thought about taking the morning off too but decided to go ahead and work. It's a good thing I did, too, because a candidate who is coming for a visit on Monday had all sorts of last-minute questions and emails he couldn't find which we had definitely sent to him, and then our guest speaker who was coming next week had her flight abruptly canceled, so I was trying with no success to cancel hotel rooms and catering charges because it was too last-minute. In my opinion, the airline should have to pay for all this. At least we only have to pay for one night in the hotel, and a professor said his students who were planning to come to the talk as part of his class can probably eat all the food.

I was happy about one thing: last year was the first time we didn't spend down our flex account for healthcare that I can remember, partly because we thought Travalon's procedure was going to be so expensive, but then insurance actually covered it 100%. I had just realized we could have been using flex spending all along for antihistamines, cold medicine, etc., so I made PDFs of all our Walgreens receipts that had FSA spending on them. (Kudos to Walgreens for having such a convenient system for this!) I submitted them yesterday, and already by the end of the day most had been approved. Today we got a deposit for $750, which feels like free money but it's really just my money that I put away coming back to me, kind of like a tax refund. And we'd already spent that money on over-the-counter drugs and COVID tests, so it was definitely just a refund, even if it feels like found money.

Despite how crazy it had been this morning, I took the afternoon off, since at that point all the fires were put out and hopefully any new fires can wait until Monday. I went to the Good Friday service in the gym, and the choir was amazing again. I squeezed Niko in my pocket and constantly shifted my weight during that really, really, really long Gospel, which they chanted so that was lovely. I was amazed by everyone else around me standing still - how do they not get tired and have to shift their weight? What's my problem? The only thing is that we didn't get to do the crowd parts, which I always feel bring home our culpability, as we're all hollering, "Crucify him!" Since there are no kneelers in the gym, we just stood through the really long intercessory prayer part too - usually that's so up and down. Every year I get kind of verklempt when venerating the cross, but I thought, "Not this year. I'm not really feeling it." But of course as soon as I touched the feet of the corpus on the cross, I began to cry. Is it a Pavlovian reaction, like I know I'm supposed to feel sorrow so I've trained myself to do so? Or is it supernatural? Right after that we sang "O Sacred Head, Surrounded," and that just made me cry harder. The only hymn that has even more Lenten lyrics that I know is "Ah, Holy Jesus." The people around me must have thought I was nuts, with tears running down my face. It was right at three too - the hour when Jesus died. So maybe that sounds depressing, but somehow it felt really good, like cleansing or something. I think the woman to my left was crying too, but the person to my right was a young guy, and if he felt contrition, he didn't show it.

It was a beautiful day out, finally feeling a bit like spring, so after the service I took a Stations of the Cross walk in the neighborhood. Here's irony: I had taken a rosary walk between work and the service, and of course I was in a little bit of a hurry, but due to fasting I thought, "Today I won't push myself." So all those times I walked as fast and hard as I could and didn't get vigorous minutes? Today I got not just vigorous minutes but even peak minutes when I was consciously trying NOT to push myself! I don't understand. Anyway, after the service I took my Stations of the Cross chaplet and tried to pray it, but I don't have the stations completely memorized, and sometimes the tiny pictures on the chaplet confused me: is that Jesus meeting his mother? Veronica? the women of Jerusalem? Or wait - is it Simon of Cyrene?

In the evening Jilly Moose picked me up, and we went to the East Side Club for their last fish fry of the season. Rich got there not long after we did, and we got soup and salad while waiting for Travalon. The waitress was so nice - she let us go to the salad bar even though we hadn't officially ordered yet. When Travalon arrived, we all ordered the fish fry. Man, was I hungry! And that was so many calories that my diet app didn't yell at me for eating too few calories today, like it sometimes does on fast days and it won't let me enter the day until I put in some fake calories. Fortunately they don't have dessert, but I was pretty stuffed anyway. Then we all hurried home in time for Night Prayer, led by the Dairyman's Daughter. I sang "Ah, Holy Jesus," since that is the hymn we always sang at the Lutheran Good Friday services. Of course, I couldn't do the part where on verses 2-5 we broke into a cappella four-part harmony. That always gave me the chills, it was so beautiful. Maybe someday I'll experience that again.

Famous Hat

Niko at the Holy Thursday Mass in a Gym

 

Today Travalon dropped me off on campus on his way to work, since he's had to go in earlier this week. I had an in-person meeting, and I took the opportunity to water the plants and do the mail. Weirdly, nobody was responding to my emails, even though they didn't have out-of-office messages, except for someone that I just sent an FYI message to, and she said, "Thanks!" But of course the people I needed to get a hold of didn't respond. 

After work I took the bus back to where I'd parked my car, and then I drove to the church in a gym. It only occurred to me today that this church, being on Atwood Avenue, would count for a fourth of Street Fest, so every time I go to Mass there, I technically could be starting another round of Street Fest. The gym itself is not the most compelling place to go to Mass, but what draws me is the music. I was surprised not to see Mr. N'Awlins there, since he is almost always there on Sundays. Did he go somewhere else? Is he out of town? Who knows? 

I was wearing my cardigan with pockets, and I put Niko in a pocket and squeezed him during Mass. For some reason it's very comforting to feel something soft and fuzzy in your pocket. The Mass was long but beautiful, with responses written by the choir director and "Ave Verum Corpus" by Byrd after communion. Of course they sang "Pange Lingua" and processed around the gym with the sacrament, then they went into the community room, where everyone was welcome to join them... except there wasn't really room for everyone. At nine they were going to do Night Prayer, but I just went home and did Night Prayer over Zoom with Jilly Moose, the Dairyman's Daughter, and Anna Banana II. 

I keep forgetting to mention this, but while we were on our trip, I hooked the gardenia up to the automatic waterer. It must have liked that, because now it's covered with buds, and one opened a few days ago so the kitchen smells wonderful. It has four more buds, so hopefully it blooms again a few more times.

I have decided on a name for my dragon rabbit. It is so beautiful and mysterious, it needs a beautiful and mysterious name, and I was leaning towards it being a girl. After last night, I thought "Tenebrae" would be a perfect name, because it means "darkness" and is a feminine noun in Latin. Jilly Moose and the Dairyman's Daughter approved of the name, so she is now Tenebrae.

Famous Hat

Niko at the Tenebrae Service

 

Today I worked from home, and I thought it would be quiet because everyone's on spring break, but there are other non-faculty people like me who are working, and they all had questions. The good news is that I got a lot of stuff straightened out. During the day Rich sent an email to Jilly Moose, the Dairyman's Daughter, and me, asking if we wanted to meet before the Tenebrae service for dinner, and we all agreed that sounded like a good idea.

After work I grabbed my phone, my wallet, and my Niko, and I drove to St. Patrick's and found a parking spot on the street, although there were plenty in the parking lot. The others soon arrived as well, and we walked up to the Square and went to the first place we saw, the Argus Bar. It claims to be a "bar and grill," but inside there was no sign of food. However, when I asked the bartender for a food menu, his eyes kind of lit up, and he handed them to us. It was pub fair, burgers and chicken sandwiches, but the bartender said they could doctor up my fries with parmesan and garlic, and man were those good! I was the only one who chose the fancy option; the others had plain fries, and Rich had pub chips. 

We walked back to St. Patrick's and sat in a pew together, and my OTHER choir director sat behind us and asked if he could have a program because they had run out. As he pointed out, that was a good sign. The crucifix and all the statues were covered with purple cloth, which added to the somber tone, and there was an all-male (seminarians, I guess) chant choir that really made it feel sacred. The bishop was supposed to lead the Tenebrae service, but something came up, and the priest who told us hinted that it was serious but didn't give any details, so hopefully everything's okay with him. Tenebrae is basically Night Prayer with a candelabra on which they keep extinguishing candles until you are in complete darkness (except at St. Patrick's, where the light from the hallway bleeds in). Fortunately, since we do Night Prayer every night, I knew some of the words by heart by the time it got too dark to read our programs. (Why they bothered to write the stuff after the dark part is beyond me.) When there is one candle left, they take it into the sacristy, and then we all get to whack the pews with our hymnals to make a loud racket, until they bring the single candle out of the sacristy again and everyone falls silent. Not gonna lie, I got a bit verklempt at that point. I would highly recommend the Tenebrae service - it feels very Lenten, and very mystical.

As the four of us headed back to our cars, we still felt a lingering sense of mysticism... until Rich, who was walking in front of me, loudly farted at me. I complained and said he should walk in back if he's going to do that, and he said that's Kathbert's line, since she's the one he's usually farting on. So much for maintaining the solemnity of Tenebrae...

Famous Hat

Year of the Dragon Rabbit

 

I really don't have much to say today. I worked from home and then went to adoration like any Tuesday, and it was rainy and gloomy all day. I did think at adoration about how people are leaving the church in droves, and I can see their point.

Things the church says you have to avoid: crystals, evil eye protectors, astrology, and music with bad words, plus I'm sure a lot of other fun stuff. Sex for pleasure? Seems like it.

Things the church currently seems okay with: unfettered greed, lying, making fun of the handicapped, and all the other sociopathic things that a current presidential candidate does, plus letting women with difficult pregnancies suffer and die.

But something exciting did happen today - my dragon rabbit arrived!

I may have to take another photo of it to show off the designs on the backs of its ears. It is really cuddly, just as cuddly as Duck. It makes sense that expensive stuffed animals (they claim this one is handmade) would be higher quality. This is exactly what my gift card was for: something pricy I wouldn't generally spend my own money on, but perfect for free money. I still have another dragon coming, but they said that one won't ship until May, so stay tuned for photos of that one when it arrives.

Famous Hat

Charging the Headphones

 

Today I worked from home, and it was raining very hard this evening so we didn't go swimming. Instead, I danced around to some of my favorite songs from the early 90's with my bluetooth headphones. I do have a story about these headphones from last week, when they made that sad sound that means: "We need to be charged!" I found the cord I thought was for charging them, and it plugged into the headphone jack on my new computer, but no light came on. During Night Prayer I mentioned this, and Rich said, "You can't charge from a headphone jack!" Then I remembered there was another, orange cord, which I found after Night Prayer. Then I plugged in my headphones, and a little red light came on so I knew it was working. Now they are fully charged. More proof that I am not technologically inclined.

This is my favorite photo of my mother-in-law. I'm not sure how old she is; I think she was still kind of a newlywed because there's a photo of Travalon's dad (who died years before I met him) also at the same place. I love how she looks ready to take on the world.

You may remember this rosary I found at my church. I was intrigued because the starting beads are so pretty but the other beads are kind of the color of bodily functions.

Today I was particularly intrigued by that orange bead just below the centerpiece, and I had to wonder if it would glow under blacklight. Guess what? It does!

There's a certain look to most things that do. I suppose that's because regular sunlight has some ultraviolet light in it, so they glow a tiny bit in natural light.

Famous Hat

Not-So-Funday Sunday

 

This morning Travalon and I didn't really have to do anything, since we had gone to Mass last night. Eventually we did some cleaning, but like yesterday, I was surprised at how hard it was because I had so little energy. We went for a walk at Patrick Marsh, but it was very cold. We saw a lot of gulls and a couple of blue herons.

Travalon suggested we take a walk at East Towne Mall, so we did that too. I did barely get my 10,000 steps today and my 22 (actually 23) active minutes, so not a banner day for exercise. I was so exhausted that I didn't go to the Slow Irish Jam this evening, and I barely dragged myself to band practice, just to be abused by a somewhat new member of the band. Worse, nobody else really stuck up for me. I don't know if everyone was mad that I missed practices for our vacation and also going to Chicago, but after all, I can't spend every Sunday evening in town, and they all take vacations themselves. What the heck.

It was a strange day all around. At JC Penney's we saw a very pretty rosary, but I was shocked when they said it had originally been $750 but had been marked down to $200. Seriously? It looked like it was worth about $35 to me. Who goes to Penney's to buy valuable rosaries? And it wasn't made of semiprecious stones, just sterling silver and glass, with some mother-of-pearl on the crucifix and centerpiece. What on earth made it worth anything like $750? Obviously I didn't buy it.

Stranger still, I opened Google on my phone to look up a basketball player who had an amazing game in the tournament and who graduated from Travalon's high school in 2018. That seemed like a long time ago for someone still in college, so I was trying to find his age. Google of its own accord did a search on the term "demon faces" before I had entered anything for it to search for. It would be strange enough for it to conduct its own searches, but on that particular term? Spooky!

Thanks to Travalon for the title of this blog post.

Famous Hat

Palm Sunday Vigil Mass at Our Church

 

I didn't blog on Thursday because nothing exciting happened, and I couldn't think of anything creative to say. I did have a meeting that made me miss a move hour, but I got to see my buddies so it seemed like a worthy tradeoff. Maybe we need more words for "friends" in English, like they have in Romance languages, to distinguish people you are fond of from people you are really close to. Then I didn't blog yesterday because it was a quiet day of working from home and then talking to Tiffy.

This morning Travalon and I went to our church and cleaned the pews. I hadn't been in the sanctuary since December, I believe, when it was open for a Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe. (Our big conglomeration of four parishes is now called the Guadalupe Pastorate. There are worse names.) Rich seemed to be spearheading things, and the Single B-Boy was dusting the Stations of the Cross by climbing a very tall ladder, so I was glad I didn't have to do that chore! My distaste for heights must be getting worse the older I get, because in my younger years I practically lived in the choir loft, and today I got the heebie jeebies from being up there. Yikes! It's so high!

On the way home, Travalon and I went to the Tibetan restaurant, which we had to ourselves. In the evening it's fairly packed, but apparently for lunch they do more takeout business. Then we took a walk at Cherokee Marsh. When we got home, I felt very sleepy, so I curled up in bed with the cuddly rosary that glows under blacklight, and I took what I call a "rosary nap," as in I'm sort of praying in my sleep. The rosary sure is cuddly! Not sure why I was so exhausted - it's like an hour of scrubbing pews took it all out of me.

This evening we went to Palm Sunday Mass at our church. It was the first time I've been to a Mass there since July. They do have Mass every Saturday at 8 am, but come on. Rich was there too, and afterwards the three of us went to dinner at a Mideastern restaurant on State Street. At Mass we sang "My Song Is Love Unknown" to a tune I'd never heard, so at Night Prayer I sang it to the tune we always sang it to at the Lutheran church where I used to sing, which is called Rhosymedre. That's one of the main characters in the short story I wrote using hymn tune names for all the characters and places, "Polyhymnia." So it was kind of a nostalgic evening, going to my old church and singing a hymn I haven't sung in years. 

Today Rich sent me a photo of the silly fake aquarium I got him for his birthday.

Look how big the fish got! That is what I thought was supposed to happen, judging by the sample aquarium they had in the shop in Bimini, but it sure took long enough. As a reminder, this is how it looked the day after Rich added the water.

And a bonus photo of a cruise ship in Fort Lauderdale.

Tiffy took that photo. She went to Florida a couple of weeks ago.

Famous Hat

Night Owls Unite Against Daylight Saving Time!

 

Today I worked on campus, and some doughnuts appeared in the break room, but I refrained. Then my colleague and I went for a walk at lunch, and some guys down on Library Mall were handing out churros and hot chocolate, so we caved. They wanted to encourage people to vote. I did walk up the huge hill, so maybe I burned some of that churro off. Back in the office, I told a coworker that there were doughnuts, and he said, "I know - I brought them. Didn't you see my announcement on Teams?" Ever since Teams updated, I don't get notifications, so no, I hadn't seen his announcement. I also forgot yesterday was his birthday - I ALWAYS forget his birthday, even though it's St. Joseph's Day so you'd think I could remember. So boy, did I feel doubly stupid.

Today I googled "Who decides when Daylight Saving Time starts?" because I am beyond fed up with the way they keep changing the date. It used to go from April to October, so only half the year was in Fake Time, but then it snuck into late March and early November... and this year it started in mid-March and will end in late November. The Powers That Be want to make it year-round because people spend more money when it's lighter in the evening, but I'm tired of them trying to make us non-morning people get up earlier and earlier. I found an email address to rat on municipalities who don't bother with Daylight Saving Time, and I emailed them to stop it already, we see what they're doing. And... it bounced back. When I told my sad story at Night Prayer, Richard Bonomo found the email of an actual person, so I may try again. Or maybe I should write to my congresspeople and say I won't vote for anyone who keeps sneaking more and more of the year into Daylight Saving Time. It's a crime against humanity!

Famous Hat

More Photos of Chicago and the Green River

 

Happy St. Joseph's Day! Today I worked from home, then I left a bit early for my annual checkup. (Spoiler alert: I'm healthy but fat.) At Adoration I was thinking about "feminine" versus "masculine" religion. The feminine, or liberal, religion used to drive me crazy, the way it says we're all fine the way we are and we should all just love each other, but now I'm starting to pine for that after the masculine, or conservative, religion that says most other people are evil and the enemy. Then it occurred to me - they are two sides of the same coin, avoiding the real battle which is with the evil within ourselves. The liberal religion says there is no evil, which is a terrible thing to say because then you don't fight the evil within yourself, but at least they love the sinners. The conservative religion turns the battle outward and says the evil isn't in me but in those other people. Any religion that makes you hate other people does not come from God. Just sayin'. I'm not sure why the masculine religion feels the need to create outside enemies - you would think the interior battle would be exciting enough for them. It's certainly challenging enough for me.

As promised, here are more photos of downtown Chicago. In some of these, we were upriver from where the dye was, so the water is regular old murky color. I'm sorry that I can't do a better job of telling you what you're looking at; the tour was so interesting, and I retained almost nothing from it.

I hope you enjoyed these photos of Chicago's eclectic architecture and the bright green river.

Famous Hat