Night Mares Game

 

Today I worked on campus, and Travalon had a helper at his job.

He picked me up from work, and we went to the Duck Pond to watch our first complete Night Mares game. This is women's softball, so there are seven innings, and they pitch underhand with an elaborate windup. The fun stuff between innings tends to be horse-related, so for example this horse race of people in costumes.

This photo was actually from the previous game we saw, or actually the last couple of innings that we saw. They also had "jousting" with two guys wearing inflatable horses and thwacking each other with pool noodles to Renaissance (not Medieval) music. Then they picked up the very period Super Soakers and squirted each other. Travalon made a video that I will try to post at some point. 

The Night Mares were playing the Mankato Habaneros, and they had a really good inning followed by one where their pitching was so bad that the pitcher walked four women in a row, so that the first one got home. And then the next batter hit a home run, so a grand slam! Suddenly the Night Mare's lead vanished, and they were down by one run, but at the bottom of that inning one player had a solo homer to tie things up. Then in the bottom of the sixth they got four runs, and at the top of the seventh it was one-two-three outs to win the game! I'm not sure why they had to make it so interesting with the bad pitching, or why the coach didn't pull that pitcher until after all those runs, but in the end they still came out on top.

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Disappointing Concert

 

Today was a quiet day working from home. I took these neighborhood photos earlier, but they are still relevant today. First, a fuchsia that some neighbors gave me is blooming.

This odd little vehicle even has a Japanese license plate. And when it runs, it is VERY loud, like a super amped two-stroke engine having issues. I don't know what it is.

After work, Travalon took me to Adoration and he went to the University Bookstore (and got more scotcharoo ice cream), then we went to Olbrich Gardens for another concert on the lawn like the one we went to some weeks ago, when Panchromatic Steel played. The performer this time was billed as an African singer-songwriter, and I should have been paying more attention to the second half of that description than the first one. I was all happy, expecting some African drumming, but this was a dude with a guitar. He may have been very black and speaking with an African accent, but his music was the same navel-gazing white boy music you hear at a typical coffeehouse. All that was missing was the espresso machine hissing in the background. At least the lawn was shaded, and there were lots of kids having a good time, and for some reason there are a lot of people really good with hula hoops in this town. We also saw one at the other Olbrich Gardens concert, and one at Steely Dane. The singer-songwriter then said after a few songs that he was taking a break, so we made our escape. Oddly, some woman at the front door said, "Are you heading home?" like she was accusing us of cutting out early. Really? Who cares? And I had an excuse, since I was leading Night Prayer tonight, as I typically do on Tuesdays. We did see a beautiful sunset on the way home.

So now I know - look up a performer online before going to a concert. At least there was no charge for this one. Travalon and I once spent some money on a jazz concert that was just awful. That's the danger with jazz: it could be Count Basie, or it could be Ornette Coleman. You have to know what questions to ask. Sorry - I can't find the post about that concert to link it here so you will just have to imagine me complaining about it.

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Octopus Wand in the Pool

 

Today I worked from home, then in the evening Travalon and I went swimming. There was some guy who insisted on going around the edge of the pool instead of taking one side and leaving us the other, so we swam around in the middle. After the guy had finally left, I noticed a toy stuck in the pool drain. I pulled it out and saw it was a clear wand with a pink plastic octopus on one end. 

"This must do something," I said to Travalon. Sure enough, if I pulled on the octopus, the wand became elongated. I tried elongating it under water and then smashing it back to its shorter length above water, and sure enough, it created a beautiful stream of water. I aimed at Travalon, so then he took revenge. Then I tried aiming it straight up, so it fell back down on me like a fountain, and Travalon said it was like an Esther Williams movie. Everyone else in the pool probably thought we were nuts because we were laughing so hard.

Way back in May, during the Forward game, I suddenly had a song pop into my head that I thought was by Steely Dan, but just a snippet. As a musician, I can hear the tune and all the instruments clearly, but I couldn't quite make out the lyrics, so there was no way to do a Google search. Google has this new functionality where you can hum a tune and it will name it for you, which Rich successfully used to track down a tune that had been haunting him since before I was born. (It was the Eurovision Winner for 1971, so I'm not surprised that he heard it constantly while living in Europe.) I was hoping to have the same luck, but Google couldn't tell me what I was humming. Odd, I thought I could hum at least as tunefully as Rich. I made a voice memo of the snippet of tune and then forgot about it until yesterday evening, as I sat on the porch with Travalon. Suddenly I thought of it again, and I said, "That song - it's not by Steely Dan, it's by Boz Scaggs. Name some of his songs, but not the big ones like 'Lido Shuffe' and 'Miss Sun' and 'Lowdown.'" He started naming songs, and when he got to "Georgia," I said, "That's it!!" and listened to my voice memo. Sure enough, it was a snippet of "Georgia." I guess I'm not good at humming, because neither Travalon nor Google could get it from the snippet I hummed for them.

As promised, here are photos of the glow-in-the-dark crystals in sea shell shapes that I got at Atwood Fest.

They looked better under blacklight in real life than in the photo.

But they sure enough did glow!

And here is the orange Niko bracelet I got.

If you look closely, there are tiny hamsas on either side of the eye. I used to only see evil eye protector stuff in Galena, but within the last year or so it's become all the rage around here. They're traditionally Turkish, but it seems like Latin cultures love them, because you can find Evil Eye jewelry at every stand selling Central and South American stuff. This one came from one of those, you know the ones that always sell alpaca wool stuff. I'm clearly not the only one who's a sucker for these.

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Steely Dane and the Slow Irish Session

 

Today I wore my old sundress to Mass in the gym, because afterwards Travalon and I walked to Atwood Fest just a few blocks away, and it was a comfortable outfit to wear for our adventure. We wanted to see Steely Dane, a local Steely Dan tribute band, and we got there early enough to set up our chairs in a shady spot under a tree. Nobody else had bothered, since it was overcast, but as more people came, some others recognized the wisdom of our choice and followed suit. The band was too loud, so I found a tissue in my pocket, ripped it in half, and shoved one half in each ear. That worked just as well as real earplugs, which I hadn't thought to bring. Steely Dane did a lot of deep tracks, including one I had never heard before. As the concert went on, the sun came out, so then a bunch of people rushed over to our shady oasis, including an old colleague. So good to see her! The last couple of songs were bigger hits, of course. I had thought they would play for an hour, like Panchromatic Steel had, but they played for an hour and a half, so I was quite hungry when the concert got over at 1:30. We had some lunch from a Jamaican food stand, then we headed home.

I had just found out that morning that there would be a surprise birthday party for someone that afternoon, but it was in a town an hour away, so by the time we got home, it would have been a bit late to head there. Also, we were really tired and napped a bit. Then Travalon dropped me off at Muso for the Slow Irish Session that used to be at a coffeehouse. The place doesn't have dedicated parking, and all the street parking was taken because of Atwood Fest, so maybe that's why there were less people than usual. They had some crackers and cheese for us, and there wasn't all the ambient coffee brewing noise in the background, so I felt a little more exposed with less people there. Still, I kept up pretty well. They projected the music on a screen, so I cheated a bit and read it, but I did still try to play some of it by ear. Some of the tunes have become very familiar, so I don't need the music. My Irish teacher came with her concertina, but she just listened to us. Maybe since we weren't really beginners, we were going too fast for her. Also, she doesn't read music.

Travalon was waiting for me when I came out the door. He said it had just rained really hard, and indeed we did see a rainbow.

This is the second day in a row that there was water everywhere, even just a few blocks from our house, but at our place everything was completely dry. Looks like I'll have to water my outside plants tomorrow.

I forgot to mention that Travalon didn't mind missing the Terrace last night, because Wolverhampton was supposed to play in Florida at the same time. The game was delayed an hour because of rain, but finally they did play, and his Wolves beat West Ham. His goal is to someday see them play in person.

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Wiener in the Window and Street Fest 8

 

Sorry that I didn't blog yesterday, but after Travalon and I got home, we fell down the rabbit hole of watching 80's videos. The title of this blog post may seem risqué, but I assure you that it's not. Yesterday I worked from home, then right after work Travalon and I headed to the Duck Pond, where there was a triple header with two Night Mares games and a Mallards game. The Night Mares are the new women's softball team, and they had lost their first game to the Minot Honey Bees while I was working. We got there in time to see the last couple of innings of their second game (they only have seven innings), and we never saw them score, but they were so far ahead that they won. I got a new Night Mares shirt.

And Travalon got a Maverick the Bat Dog shirt.

Here's a better view of my shirt, though it is a worse view of me.

The Mallards played the Rockford Rivets, and at one point they hit a foul ball that flew right into the window of the announcer's booth, and everyone cheered when the announcer caught it and held it up, so he took a bow. The Mallards call foul balls "wieners" because they will give you a free hot dog for any ball that you turn in, an offer that no sane person would take. Which would you rather have, a tube full of questionable animal parts, or a game ball? Interestingly, the Night Mares call their foul balls "cheese curds," so they must offer an order of cheese curds in exchange for a ball. That is a far more tempting offer, maybe because their balls are a lot bigger. Hm, this is still sounding dirty. I found it a little sad that the most enthusiastic cheers for the ladies came from their own dugout, perhaps because they have spent a lifetime of not being cheered as loudly as men are. They certainly deserve to be. And the Mallards deserve to be cheered, because they also won. Afterwards there were fireworks that were quieter than usual because it was Veteran Appreciation Night, and veterans often get PTSD from loud fireworks. I took some photos, but they aren't much to look at.

Today Jilly Moose came over, then she, Travalon, and I headed down to Atwood Fest. We got there as the Handphibians were leading a parade through the festival, playing Brazilian drums, and then the steel drums played. I wore my Panchromatic Steel T-shirt for the occasion, but I feel like I should have worn something a little more hippyish. It was almost a Willy Street Fair vibe. Check out this umbrella, which really sums it all up.

And here is Panchromatic Steel. Thanks to Jilly Moose for both of these photos.

We were standing in the shade, and I was dancing around when a woman said I should get out onto the "dance floor" in front of the band, which was right in the blazing sun. I said, "My people were island people, but the islands were England and Ireland, so I have to stay out of the sun," but she didn't laugh, she just walked away. After all that dancing I wanted a baobab shake, but the West African food stand didn't have them for some reason, so we had jollof rice and frozen hibiscus juice. Jilly Moose went to an Asian stand and came back with curry chicken and Thai iced tea, so Travalon got us some Thai iced teas, since we couldn't drink our frozen juices. We also checked out the vendors, and I got some glow-in-the-dark crystals and an orange Niko bracelet. Photos soon. Travalon got some Scotcharoo ice cream, and Jilly Moose got a kava drink that tasted like a virgin mojito.

We listened to a lounge jazz group called Moonglow for a bit.

Check out the guitar - it's shaped like a crescent moon! Thanks to Jilly Moose for this photo. Then we went to the second stop on Street Fest 8, a brief stop at Willy Street Co-op for cold water, and our third stop was to walk on the paths at Olin-Turville Park, which is on John Nolan Drive. Jilly Moose took a photo of the beautiful view of the Capitol Building and Monona Terrace.

Our next stop was the fun shop on Monona Drive we have gone to before. Check out this hibiscus bush outside of it - it has two different colors of blossoms on it!

Just Bach were having a concert rehearsal for a concert tomorrow in Wausau which was mostly Bach, but one piece by Buxtehude. It was free, and it was at a new music venue called Muso. Check out the light reflecting through the stained-glass windows.

I thought they were doing a dress rehearsal, but they never did the Buxtehude piece, and when I asked the bass, he said they know that one well so they didn't need to rehearse it. He and the alto have a five-month-old baby with the poetic name of Rosalind and the prettiest big brown eyes, and some friends of theirs brought her by halfway through. She was such a good baby! She didn't fuss or cry at all.

I thought after all that relaxing in the air conditioning, I'd be ready to head to the Union Terrace to hear Panchromatic Steel again, but I didn't want to park far away, walk more, and fight the crowds. We decided to get dinner at the Mediterranean Joint, so another Willy Street spot for Street Fest, and see how we felt afterwards. All three of us were exhausted (me most of all), so when we got back to our place, Jilly Moose and I prayed the rosary, then she headed home. We needed to be on Night Prayer anyway, because Anna Banana II was leading it, and today is her birthday. She and I put virtual flower garlands on our heads, and Jilly Moose had a background of the hibiscus flowers from earlier today, but when Rich used a background of a shot of the earth from space, all we could see were his glasses and his teeth. I tried to take a screen shot, but I have no idea where it got saved to. If I ever find it, I'll post it here.

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Niko's Posse Poses for the Camera

 

There isn't too much to say about my day today. I worked on campus, and it was very quiet. Here is a photo of Niko and the gang on my desk.

As Travalon said, "Niko's posse."

I've been thinking about the two parties when it comes to abortion: one wants to outlaw it, and one does not but then makes things easier for expectant mothers, so that abortions go way down when that party is in power. Now imagine it was not abortion but murder of women. I think, as a woman, I would hope that it would be illegal for anyone to murder me, but I'd prefer a situation where my murder was prevented. It's cold comfort to have your death declared illegal after you have already been killed. I am in favor of real world results, and a party that creates a situation where women feel their only option is an abortion is worse than a party that allows abortion but creates a situation where women feel they do have other options. Also, I have deep concerns that women suffering pregnancy-related medical emergencies won't be treated because it could be viewed as an abortion, or that women who have a miscarriage and are already traumatized could end up in prison or even on Death Row because they lost a baby they really wanted. Talk about adding insult to injury! Or more like injury to injury. Interestingly, when male lawmakers have brought up punishing women for having abortions, and women lawmakers have said then let's also punish anyone (usually the man) who forces the woman to have the abortion, the men don't like that addendum. They have no problem with the idea of putting women in prison for having abortions, but perish the thought of the man getting in trouble! Makes you wonder how many of them have mistresses they might accidentally knock up, and they wouldn't care if she ended up in prison, but they sure don't want to go there themselves even if the abortion was their idea. Lots of hypocrites in public office. 

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Important Work Meeting on the Union Terrace

 

Today I worked on campus and walked with my colleague at lunch. I showed her my Year of the Pig necklace and she confirmed that it was the Chinese character for "pig." She said, "Why would you wear this?" so apparently it's not a thing in China to wear your sign in jewelry fashion like it is with Western zodiac signs. I said, "But I am a pig - that girl told me so in Spanish. I should wear this necklace to the health club and wave it in her face: 'Soy cochina! Es verdad!'" Sorry, I am too lazy to figure out how to make the upside-down exclamation points in Spanish. Why? Because I'm a pig!

Usually we have our staff meetings on Wednesday at ten in a meeting room overlooking the lake, but today we met at 3:30 on the Union Terrace. The chair bought a pitcher of beer, even though she didn't partake of any, and we sat around chatting about not much work-related stuff. Travalon joined us and had some beer too. The chair was a little weirded out that some deans were sitting at a nearby table and only drinking water and lemonade at their outdoor meeting, like they would judge us or something. It's not like we constantly drink alcohol on work time, and I really don't think the deans were paying any attention to us. It was a beautiful day, a bit cooler than it has been lately, so Travalon and I hung out some more after all my coworkers left. We had cheeseburgers and corn on the cob, then we headed home and played some tennis, but we were terrible. Maybe it's partly because the balls are so bounceless, but we did find one that made that satisfying "ponk!" sound when you hit it. We sat on the dock for a little bit after tennis, then I joined a meeting of the "secret" club I'm in to discuss chasing your dreams. I don't think I'll chase the dream I once had, of being a man who was making $21 bills with my face on them, and when the police hauled me away, I asked, "How did you catch me?" 

During Night Prayer, Rich was very tired, and when I asked why during our chat afterwards, he said, "I picked up a virus," so I said, "How did you do that? Did you buy it a drink?" He also asked when exactly people started using the term "merch" for merchandise, so I said, "October 23, 2011 at 5:34 in the evening." I guess I've been in a jocular mood all day, ever since confusing not one but two coworkers by pointing at the ceiling and saying, "This isn't the best ceiling I've ever seen, but it's up there." Of course, as my readers may remember, my own office ceiling is so scary that it has been known to suddenly develop an ominous crack as I sat below it. But that's just par for the course for the Killer Building.

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Travalon and the Tattoo Lounge

 

Today was a quiet day; I worked from home and walked by myself, since my neighbor has moved. I did see these pretty hydrangeas in the neighborhood.

And this very red salvia.

When Travalon came home from work, I was just popping out for my afternoon walk. When I came back, our most obnoxious neighbor was peering into his car, but she stopped when she saw me. I feel like she was looking for something to report to the board, but I'm one-third of the board, and anyway, what could he have in his car that is breaking the bylaws? She's deeply weird. When she complained to the board president about her next-door neighbor having his garage door open all the time, the president replied that she had hers open at least as often. She said, "But I need to have mine open so my dog can go in and out!" and the president reminded her that the dog was supposed to be on a leash. He never is (he wasn't today), but right after that she did put a leash on him... and let him run free with it dragging behind him. After all, the bylaws just said the dog needs to be on a leash, not that anyone actually needs to be holding the other end. When she had three boats at the pier, renting other people's boat slips, the president asked to see the ownership documents for all three boats. Did she ever throw a fuss!... and then she had one boat at the pier. And I'm sure I blogged about how she once dumped all her empty beer cans in our recycling bin. She's a winner, that's for sure.

Travalon was concerned about the weather forecast, and he didn't want me caught in a terrible storm in my little car, so he drove me to adoration and then went to a bar. He wanted to go to something called the Blue Velvet Lounge, thinking that sounded like the name of a dive bar, but it was a tattoo parlor. I don't know why that struck me as so funny, but I laughed for five minutes straight. I joked about how he was going to go in there and ask for a seven and seven, since that's his favorite drink, and he'd come out with a tattoo that said "7&7." Now I really want to get him a temporary tattoo that says that. I said a lot of tattoo parlors are now styling themselves as "lounges," and he said, "I need to get with the twenty-first century."

This was the sky when I came out of adoration - no storm.

Then we did something inadvisable and went to the Chocolate Shoppe on our way home to get matcha green tea ice cream. As if that wasn't bad enough, we got them in waffle bowls edged with chocolate. So good! Now I REALLY have to stop eating sugar.

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Late Night Ice Cream Run

 

Last night Travalon and I did run to the Chocolate Shoppe in Middleton to get some This $&@! Just Got Serious! ice cream. We got there ten minutes before it closed, and there was no line full of old and young people, just a bunch of teenagers goofing around, I suppose the people who worked there and their friends. The ice cream was so good! It was a fun little adventure that didn't take very long.

Today I worked from home, and I saw these pretty flowers in the neighborhood.

The pink flowers look like stargazer lilies (and smelled like them too - mmm!), and my phone thinks the tall red flower is a pontechium. I have never heard of that before, but then I've never seen a flower like that before. It's very cool.

Some more DuoLingo bragging:

Do you care? You know you do! Heck, once I even finished first in the Diamond League!

This evening Travalon and I went to the health club to swim. I just love that. I wish summer could go on forever. Maybe we could have May and October, and there is something exciting about the early thaw, when the birds start migrating through, but I don't really need winter. Travalon pointed out that all the people who moved to Florida and say, "I miss winter so much!" don't ever actually move back. I think they miss some idealized winter evening when they don't have to go anywhere and can watch big, soft flakes spiraling from the sky while the neighborhood is festooned with Christmas lights, but that's not how most of winter is. Most of it is after the Christmas lights are down, and you have to either drive through the snow to get to work or wait outside in the deep cold and growing gloom for the bus. Hard to romanticize that.

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Lake Kegonsa Boardwalk and Cone Crawl 2024

 

This morning I still felt under the weather but went to Mass anyway. In the bathroom at church (actually, in the gym) I saw that my eyes matched my muumuu - both were bright red. Back home we debated about going to the county fair but decided to check out a new boardwalk along Lake Kegonsa. We also decided to do at least part of the Cone Crawl:

Free mini ice cream cones! We went to the Chocolate Shoppe closest to us and got these adorable little cones full of ube chai ice cream. If you are wondering about ube, it is a purple sweet potato used in Japanese cuisine. I've only had it in desserts, but maybe they use it in savory foods too. Anyway, it was delicious. And aren't they cute? Each stop had a different ice cream flavor or vegan flavor you could choose from.

Then we went to the boardwalk and walked that tiny cone off. Here are some photos of an osprey nest which seems to have a bush growing in it, and some other ospreys that were hanging around on top of the telephone wire contraptions.

These three are a sequence: (grooming), "Yeah?" "What do you want?"

And more osprey poses:

We saw lots of wildflowers in bloom.

Bergamot

My phone refuses to ID this flower, but it does have a REAL ladybug on it and not one of those Asian beetles.

St. John's Wort

Broadleaf Arrowhead

Amphibious Bistort

Bee Balm

Wooly Mullein

This one looks like a saguaro cactus, with two arms.

Blackberry Lily

Golden Toadflax, or, as I know it, Butter and Eggs

We saw other sorts of birds too. Lots of gulls, and these three. Now my phone can ID birds as well as flowers.

Eastern Kingbird

Common Grackle

Song Sparrow

The boardwalk went through a marsh beside the lake, and there were lots of lovely views.

That may be our friend the kingbird in that last one. The path continued on after the boardwalk ended, apparently going all the way to Lake Kegonsa State Park. It was woodsy and beautiful on the part we explored.

As we were heading back, gray clouds gathered above us, and we could hear the distant rumble of thunder. We did go to another Chocolate Shoppe that was on the way home, where Travalon had the free bourbon pecan pie flavor and I had the passion fruit Italian ice. He also ordered a regular dish of Zanzimint, which is their ultra-dark chocolate Zanzibar Chocolate flavor swirled with mint. So delicious! We hurried home so I could do Irish, but only two of us were there besides the teacher, so we talked (in English) about rowing and sailing and this crazy presidential race and all sorts of things. The weather grew more ominous as we talked, so I didn't venture forth to the medium Irish session I have not tried yet nor the jazz concert in Allen Centennial Gardens. We talked about swimming and then hitting a Chocolate Shoppe near our health club that was giving out the delicious "kitchen sink" flavor "This $&@! Just Got Serious!" but we ended up just relaxing at home. Who knows? This Cone Crawl goes until 10 pm, so we might just make a late-night run to get some Serious $&@!. I heard they were out of the prize bags for hitting all nine stops by midafternoon, so some people out there were able to put down nine tiny cones in short order. Probably college-aged guys, is my guess.

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