Shrimp in My Shoes

 

Today I worked on campus, and I saw a rainbow. I sure have seen a lot this summer!

I walked with my colleague at lunch, and we bemoaned how hard it is to be thin at our age, and how all the good foods raise your cholesterol. Then I got a shock, because a new expense hit my purchasing card... and it was something I had bought for myself personally! It was from the Union, and I must have bought something for work so that credit card was still on file. I think I got that fixed, but I still have the strange situation of two hotels in Norway who both said our guest stayed there the same night, and they even have exact times for when she checked in and out. What??

Travalon picked me up from work, and we went downtown to see Panchromatic Steel play at Jazz at Five. Now I have been to Jazz at Five several times over the years, and it was always at the top of State Street, but we got there and there was nothing going on. We thought we heard the sweet tones of steel drums around the Square, so we followed the sound and found the concert, which hadn't quite started yet - they were still doing sound checks. It was a beautiful evening, so sitting in the shade of the trees listening to steel drums, I could almost feel like I was on the islands. About an hour in they took a break, so I tried to go into the Capitol building to use the facilities, but it had closed literally two minutes earlier. I went all the way back to State Street and snuck into a very popular pizza place, then when I returned and told Travalon, "I had to run all the way to Ian's Pizza!" some other people said, "Oh, you could have just used the bathroom in the hotel across the street." Oh man.

Our next adventure was getting some food. There was a food truck called Quick Chef, and Travalon got a fried catfish po' boy while I got a grilled shrimp po' boy. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but these were tiny little shrimp swimming in a sea of mayonnaise and mustard, and they fell all over the place as I tried to eat. One fell in my left sandal, but I had to wait until I was done with the sandwich to do anything about that. Oh man, was I ever a mess afterwards! I hope some birds enjoy those shrimp on the ground. 

We thought the concert would be done by six-thirty or seven, tops, but it just kept going so I looked it up on my phone, and it was going until eight. I hated to tear myself away from steel drums, but I'd promised to pray the Rosary with the ladies, so we got up to leave... and I realized there was a shrimp in my right sandal. Shrimp in both sandals?? Travalon said "shrimp in my shoes" had to be my blog post title. I guess it did add to the tropical vibe. As if the evening hadn't been crazy enough, as we were leaving, we ran into our most annoying neighbor, who was complaining that not enough people had come to hear the band, although we thought it was a pretty good-sized crowd. There were even children frolicking. 

We headed home, and as we were driving north on Sherman around seven-thirty, we saw the Quick Chef food truck driving toward us on Atwood, then it turned into where Feed Kitchen is. (Which makes sense, since that's where all the food trucks live.) We wondered if the concert had really ended just after we left, but then I figured the food truck must have run out of food, so why stick around? A successful night for them, and for Panchromatic Steel, who had a famous steel drum player joining them. He has written other things too, like for example you know how everyone knows you are Gen X if you count to twelve like this? "One two three four five, six seven eight nine ten, ELEVEN TWELVE!" He wrote that song for Sesame Street. So we were in the presence of greatness tonight. It's very humbling.

Famous Hat