Rescheduled Shamrock Club Picnic

 

Today I worked from home, and I didn't want to run into that crazy stalker woman again, so at lunch I drove to Governor's Island and took a walk there. Seriously, if that woman had confronted me while I was on the property of her condo association and told me to get lost, that wouldn't have been strange (except for the part where I still can't figure out how she knew I wasn't one of the hundreds of other people who live there), but the fact that she followed me home to see where I live really weirded me out. Governor's Island was lovely, and maybe I'll just do that from now on, since being salaried means I don't have to watch the clock as carefully on my lunch break.

In the evening Travalon and I went to the Shamrock Club picnic. The woman who takes lots of photos took two of me, one with Travalon and one with my Irish teacher, but they are both terrible. In the first one my red eyes are a lovely contrast to my Kelly green shirt, and in the second one they are closed. Usually this woman takes good photos. The Currach played background music, and I knew every tune they played. It was so much fun to see everyone, and while the weather was hotter than we'd expected, at least it wasn't storming like the day the picnic was originally scheduled.

On the way home I suddenly thought of an activity book Ma Hat's parents had given me (or my brother?) about the origins of making movies, with activities like flip books and stuff. What I remember is the images in it were REALLY racist, but as a kid I thought they were cool cartoon creatures and didn't realize they were supposed to be black people. I tried to do a Google search and even asked ChapGPT if it had any idea what this book was (it vanished long ago), but no dice. Sometimes I see stuff like that in antique shops, and it reminds me of how cool I thought this book was, because I had no idea at the time that it was insulting other people. Weird that there was still stuff like that around in the 70's, and it's embarrassing to think how enamored I was of it.

At home I dug around in the closet, trying to find the missing chin rest and shoulder rest for my good violin. I did poach the chin rest off the crap violin, which has no bow and no E string, but then I did find the other chin rest deep in the closet, so I put both back on the respective violins. No luck finding the shoulder rest, and I still have gut strings for the D and the G, so I may still get relentlessly mocked by the other fiddlers, but at least this makes me feel a little less weird. Restringing it might be too much to do before my fiddling class, but it's possible I'll have time to buy a shoulder rest on Saturday.

Today I apparently confounded DuoLingo:

Also, Jilly Moose sent me this photo of her moose herd chillaxin' on her bed:

Travalon and I will get a chance to see the moose herd in person tomorrow night. Stay tuned...

Famous Hat

Night Mares Are Champions!

 

Yesterday I worked from home and went on a walk in my neighborhood. Here is a lovely pink hydrangea.

When I used to walk with a neighbor, we would illicitly walk on the riverwalk belonging to another condo association all the time. We never thought much about it, since they come into our private areas too, like I have seen them on our dock, watching the sunset. I don't walk on that riverwalk much anymore, but yesterday I did and thoroughly enjoyed how beautiful it is. The strange thing is that some woman saw me, and even though about five hundred people live in that condo complex, somehow she suspected I didn't belong, and she followed me (unbeknownst to me) to see where I lived, and then she yelled at me. While I was wrong and admit it - yes, I was trespassing - the episode really weirded me out. What gave me away? She was about my age but had dyed purple hair, which is not what you'd expect from someone so slavishly devoted to rules. Ugh - hope I don't ever encounter her again!

Today I worked on campus, and I went up to a colleague's office in our building to see if we could figure out how to do payroll adjustments. Her window is much higher up and facing west, so when I heard the train outside, I went to see if we could see it from that vantage point. It was like a little model train from up there, but I could clearly see it. Then she joined Seabird and me for a walk on the Lakeshore Path, where we mostly talked shop. I spent the rest of the day doing payroll adjustments, now that we had figured it out. We had to get a third person online to walk us through the first one - how efficient is a system if everything has to be learned by committee? 

This evening there was a lantern ceremony in commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima (we attended the one four years ago), but Travalon said he'd rather go to the women's softball North League Championship game featuring our own Night Mares. At first they were ahead of the Minot Honeybees, but that team is very tough and pulled ahead by one. The Night Mares tied it up, then at the top of the seventh inning, the Bees got a run in. (They had two home runs during the game.) I was very hot after eating too much of a giant soft pretzel, and I went for walk to cool off, away from the body heat of the crowd, and then of course in the bottom of the seventh a Night Mare hit a home run just before I got back, so I heard it but didn't see it. So they were tied up, and then a runner stole second base, and then she stole third base, and then a batter hit a line drive right through center field, giving her time to run home - game over!! The Night Mares are the North Woods League Champions! I was so excited that I cried a little. Interestingly, two of the Night Mares have the same last name and go to school here, so I wonder if they are sisters? Also, their pitcher is amazing, although she did flag a bit toward the end and walked some players. Anyway, it was a tough win and a very exciting game, so I'm glad we went to it. Still, next year I'd like to go back to the lantern ceremony.

Famous Hat

Stay Tuned for the Screenplay

 

Today I got up early to go to campus, but I felt sniffly and also remembered I am working on campus on Friday, so I worked from home. That loss of sleep this morning was for naught. One of my big tasks today was something I had done in the test environment several times, so I felt ready... but of course it was totally different in the real system. Worse, a step I'd had to take in the test environment was totally unnecessary in the real system, so I wasted a lot of time and effort doing that for nothing. This system really is the gift that keeps on giving.

In the evening I went to a Moldy Jam jam at the music club, and I felt very on point tonight. The first time through a song I'd be so lost, but then I'd figure out a few key notes, and by the third time through I was playing it like I'd known it all my life. At one point someone started playing a song, and someone else asked if it was in G, but I blurted out, "It's in A," just because I could hear it was in A. Toward the end I was getting tired and started cheating by sight-reading the songs on a nearby iPad, and on the last song I gave up and played chords. My request tonight was "Rakes of Mallow," which I haven't played in like forty years, and I remember it being in C, but they play it in G in this group. I said. "I'm a mandolin player - our motto is, 'If it's in G, we can play it,'" and afterwards people said they liked some flourish I put into it. Also, there was a wonderful sequence where every time we finished a slip jig in E Dorian, someone else would start another slip jig in E Dorian. I imagine that's what Heaven is like. I sat by some fiddlers, and I confessed how I'm out of practice on the fiddle because of devoting my time to the mandolin. They said, "But you sound so good on it!" One guitarist said, "That mandolin looks like it has been around!" and I thought maybe the guy who played it yesterday was right when he said, "I would never play out with this!" but I mean, isn't that what an instrument is for? 

Here is a paraphrase of an email I sent to Tiffy this morning: 

"Something to (maybe?) brighten your Monday morning: Yesterday was our final Brazilian drumming class, and over the course of ten sessions, the four of us women have kind of bonded over being so outnumbered. After class the subject of birthdays somehow came up, and I thought we sounded like characters in a cheesy sitcom:

The Elder Stateswoman: a Taurus who has taken the course before, she is the voice of reassurance and the bringer of delicious treats.

The Can-Do Chick: a Scorpio who looks like she would survive for at least three years in the wilderness with no help, her motivations for learning percussion remain mysterious.

The Hot Young Thing: a Virgo who is very young, very beautiful, and very Latina, she dances to samba wearing more on her head than her body (much to Travalon's delight), and now she wants to learn to play the drums she always dances to.

The Nutjob: a Capricorn who always wears the club jersey like some kind of brown noser but really it’s because she secretly thinks the colors look fabulous on her, she is studying percussion in hopes of learning to play a ukulele-like Brazilian instrument, like that makes any sense.

(I'm sure you can figure out which one I am!)

At the Irish slow session right after that I sat next to my Irish teacher, who is also named Famous but goes by Famie. She plays the concertina (little accordion), and the leader introduced us to a new person as “the Famie Section.” Sigh. She did note that the Famie Section speaks Irish, which is not something you can say about every Famie section for sure. In case you are wondering, the other half of the Famie section is a Scorpio."

Tiffy's reply: "I look forward to your screenplay."

Famous Hat

Sunday Morning on the South Pier

 

This morning Travalon felt really rotten, so we were glad we didn't have to go to Mass. Neither of us slept very well in the hotel room. However, we did want to see the lakeshore while we were in Sheboygan, and we needed coffee, so we went to the South Pier and stopped at an ice cream shop that served coffee as well. Man, was it some delicious coffee! They had a train running around the edge of the ceiling.

Then we walked along the pier and discovered the coffee shop Travalon had originally been aiming for, but it was extremely busy, and our coffee was so good. Also, the smell of the baking waffle cones was heavenly. It was very beautiful on the pier and made me think of mornings in Florida. We saw a pink firetruck across the river.

We saw a restored boat from the 1930's.

We saw a blue heron.

It flew away as we got closer.

Here is the lighthouse at the end of the North Pier.

In this photo Travalon took of some ducks, on the horizon you can see the two mysterious things we saw in the distance. Travalon thought they were boats, but they didn't move.

We also passed a very cute church called St. Vincent's on the way to the pier, and I thought we could have gone after all, since we could no longer do the errand we were planning to do this morning on account of Travalon's cold. However, he said he was too miserable to sit through Mass this morning, but after the walk he did feel a little better. He said it was the fresh air, although as you can see from the photos, there was plenty of haze from the Canadian wildfire smoke.

On the drive home, we saw this water tower with a picture of a water tower on it. So meta!

Today was my last Brazilian drumming class; it wasn't originally scheduled to go this long, but we missed one when one teacher was out of town and the other was sick, so they kindly had a make-up one. I brought Miss Mandy with me because there was an Irish slow session after that, and the guy who plays the cute little instrument in the Brazilian band asked to see her, then he asked to play her. Now I don't let just anyone play my antique mandolin, but as I said to him, "Of course! You can probably play it better than I can," and I was right about that. He played a little bluegrass. He and some other experienced drummers joined us for this class, where we all played really heavy drums, and afterwards we had delicious chocolate cake made by one of my fellow students. She and the other two ladies in the class and I chatted for a bit afterwards - I think we kind of bonded over being so outnumbered by the guys. One thing that surprised me was that they had said this lesson would be jersey-friendly, but only one other guy wore his besides me. Another thing that surprised me was that they said these jerseys are a secret and shouldn't be worn in public until a performance on the 23rd, and don't post photos on social media before then. Too late - I had already worn mine to the Irish session the day I got it, and I already posted a photo on this blog.

Travalon had been listening to a really great band at the East Side Club, but we figured when he came to pick me up that there wasn't time for me to go hear them before the Irish session. We went to Garver Mill and had a slice of pizza, but oddly the people right before us had ordered the same two flavors (drunken ravioli for me, sausage and pepperoni for Travalon), so there was some confusion over whose pizza was set out. This isn't the first time our weirdly specific order was the same as someone else's; longtime readers will remember when we got someone else's pizza because we both ordered a large with one side vegetarian and one side sausage. What are the odds? The Edgerton Little League team came in to get ice cream, and I said they probably didn't care about the drumming jersey, and since five people read my blog, that didn't seem like a high-risk activity either. Even though everyone at the Irish session already had seen this jersey, I did ask if Travalon had anything else sitting around in the car for me to wear, and guess what? He had an Irish rugby jersey he was going to wear to the Shamrock Club picnic that was postponed due to weather. So I put that on once I got to the music club. I said, "You aren't supposed to see this jersey I'm wearing so I have to change," and they all thought that was pretty funny. What are the odds that I'd change into something so apropos?

The Irish session went really well. My Irish teacher and the red-headed flute player were both there, and we all talked about the upcoming Irish Fest courses. I am enrolled in an "Intro to Irish Fiddling" course which said "No beginners," which seems weird for an intro course, but I assume they mean no people who have never picked up a fiddle before. I am also taking Intermediate Irish because my Irish teacher assured me that I'm too advanced for Beginning Irish. "That's for people who don't know the language at all," she said. She did try to talk me into taking the advanced Irish class she's taking, but I don't think I'm ready for that. Speaking of languages, this morning DuoLingo finally figured out that I know some Spanish, so it kept giving me placement tests. I got the following stickers all within ten minutes.

Crazy, huh? Usually it takes me about half a week to go up an increment of one, and today I went up forty units in ten minutes! 

When Travalon and I got home, we went out on the dock to watch the sunset. It was beautiful and strange because of all the smoke in the air.

Travalon brought his good camera.

The lotuses are blooming now.

They probably smell good, but we can't smell them over the smoke in the air. For some reason in our neighborhood it smells very smoky. I didn't notice it elsewhere in town, or in Sheboygan. It must have something to do with the lay of the land around here.

Famous Hat

Not Even a Beer Pop at the Wedding

 

OK, so I am blogging twice in one day because we have enough time this evening, although it was a challenge to get on the WiFi here for me. Travalon had no problem, but my computer kept saying it was encountering an error, and even my hotspot wasn't working... until suddenly it was, so now you will be blessed with a second blog post in one day.

After I blogged this morning, we hit the road and had lunch at a Jimmy John's in Waupun. We drove until getting to Sheboygan Falls, where we took a walk at Riverside Park. We still had a little time before Travalon's high school buddy's daughter's wedding, so we went to find the actual falls. Here they are!

The wedding was at a Lutheran church, and it wasn't part of a service, like the Lutheran weddings I remember going to before, or all the Catholic weddings I've attended. I hadn't counted on it being so short, so I said to Travalon that there was a 4 pm Mass three minutes away, and he thought that sounded like a great idea. However, there was a visiting priest from Myanmar who spent the homily time droning on about the political situation there, and while I'm very sympathetic, we are not currently in such a fabulous political situation ourselves. (Do we even still have a democracy? I guess we'll find out the next time we're supposed to have elections.) Also, Saturday evening Masses are usually short, but because of the guest priest, this one was running long, and when we left, the two bathrooms were both full. I thought, no problem, I'll go downstairs... and they had locked the downstairs!! What?? What a very strange church.

It was all good, because when we got to the reception at a converted loft in Sheboygan, it was still cocktail hour. We saw another high school buddy of Travalon's and his family, who had sat right in front of us at the wedding, and they told us we should take a Polaroid photo of ourselves to put in a scrapbook for the bride and groom. I took a photo of them, then they took a photo of us, and I took a photo of the photo.

This isn't a great photo, but Polaroids never are - the fun is watching the photo develop. As you can see, we dressed all Hawaiian. Nobody else did, but you know what? Who cares? We found our table, and it was right by the DJ, who was blasting music and then adjusted his speaker so it was blasting right at us. Since all of us at our table were of a certain vintage (and I was by far the newest vintage), it seemed odd to put us right by the loud music that the kids love. At least we were near the windows and right in front of the bridal party table, as if we were VIPs. I was plugging my ears, so a guy at our table said he could go to his car and get me some earplugs. I assumed he meant he had a bag of cheap earplugs, but he came back with a really fancy pair and washed them off for me. They were AMAZING: I could hear people talking, but the music seemed really faint. I ended up talking to the woman next to me a lot (her husband was an old friend of the bride's father, Travalon's buddy), and she said she liked every kind of music except country. I said me too, except old country like Johnny Cash and stuff like that, and she concurred. She said, "I don't know why," so I said, "I do - because I like my music minor key and syncopated, and country music is almost always major key with a straight beat," and she thought about that and said it makes sense, that's probably why she feels the same way. 

Travalon and I both had the baked cod for dinner, which had an amazing sauce on it but twice as much potato and half as much vegetal matter as I would have liked. One woman at our table was a vegan, and she had ordered the vegetarian lasagna, but it had cheese on it, so she couldn't eat any dinner. She and her husband (another old friend of the bride's father) had another party to go to anyway, so they didn't stay long. I hope there was something there for her to eat... We bid them adieu, and then ten minutes later I remembered her husband was the one who had lent me the earplugs, and I have no idea who he is. Guess they're my earplugs now. I assume he forgot, but honestly he may not want them back after I've used them, and he did mention that he never used them because he had an even better (!) pair he always used.

The woman next to me and I were confounded by the first dance song, the groom and his mother dance song, and the bride and her father dance song, which were all slow, sappy country songs we neither knew nor liked. However, partway through that last one, the DJ suddenly switched to "Low Rider" by War, and while it's not my very favorite song by War (that would be "Cisco Kid"), any War is excellent funk music, so the whole crowd cheered. The DJ announced the floor was now open for dancing, so Travalon (who has caught my cold and had been suffering since during Mass), suddenly felt energized enough to dance. The DJ played some Whitney Houston, then one of my favorite songs of all time, "September" by Earth, Wind and Fire (why no Oxford comma??), and a couple of ABBA songs, and we were amazed to see all these young kids who loved and sang along with these old songs from our youth. One young guy was an amazing dancer - he moved like he had no bones! But after the obligatory "All the married couples get on the dance floor! Now sit down if you've been married less than X years" dance, to "Falling in Love with You" by Elvis (which was weirdly the processional at the wedding), the music changed back to country - peppier country, that you could dance to, but still not my jam at all. Travalon was feeling worse, so we decided to call it a night. And one odd touch was that there was no cake, just Culver's frozen custard, several flavors that were unlabeled so I took reliable old chocolate. Travalon had some swirly thing with graham cracker crumbs in it.

Poor Travalon is really ailing now - he seems to be even sicker than I was on Thursday - but he did help me come up with a title for this blog post. Because he was loaded up with cold medication, he didn't indulge in any of the free beer, soda, or wine available at the bar. (Neither did I, but that was more for the sake of calories.) He remembered a story I told when, years ago, Tiffy and I were visiting our old college friend at her parents' house in Sheboygan, and her father, who spoke Sheboyganese, asked us, "You girls want a beer pop?" It took Tiffy and me a few moments to decipher that he was asking if we wanted a beer or a soda, not a beer-flavored soda. In Sheboygan for some reason they eschew conjunctions - at Mass I once heard a priest say, "The body blood of Christ." No idea why. And they have such a heavy accent that I struggle to understand them, like once at a previous job someone called to have me mail him something, and he said he lived on "Tent Street." I asked him to spell it, to be sure, and he said, "Tent! It's spelled Tent!" so I tried to verify: "T-E-N-T?" and he got very angry and hollered, "No! Tent! Eight! Nynt! Tent!" True story.

Famous Hat

Tropical Night at the Outdoor Theater

 

I am doing something unusual - blogging in the morning - but I probably won't blog tonight and didn't want to get too far behind. Thursday I didn't blog because there was nothing to say. I was too sick to go to the funeral for the woman who was a pillar of our parish, and I took the afternoon off of work (I was working from home) and just rested. In the evening I didn't go to the Quebecois jam at the leftist brewery either, which I had been looking forward to. The air quality was terrible due to smoke from Canadian wildfires, but I put on an N95 mask (the one Hardingfele gave me a few weeks ago) and walked very slowly outside, but due to the virus my heart rate was so elevated that yesterday my FitBit said I had really overdone it and should take it easy.

Yesterday I worked from home and kept pounding the Mucinex, so I had a productive day since that really helped keep the virus symptoms at bay. Now I have to give some exposition to explain the evening: the Dairyman's Daughter, as my regular readers may remember, can get cheap tickets to the outdoor theater if we go on a particular Friday evening. When the list came out, Tiffy and I discussed it and felt like going so late on a Friday was too much, and the only one we wanted to see happened to be a night that Travalon and I had already purchased Mallards tickets for, so she and I got full-price tickets to a matinee on a Saturday later this month. There was one other play I was a bit interested in, called Anna in the Tropics, about a Cuban family, but Tiffy wasn't really interested. Very recently the Dairyman's Daughter reminded us that she could get tickets for the remaining shows, and only Jilly Moose was going to Anna in the Tropics, so I asked Travalon if he would want to go, and he said sure, it's not Shakespeare and it's about Cuba. Meanwhile Rich, Luxuli, and Prairie Man said they were going too, so it was going to be a big crowd. The Dairyman's Daughter knows someone who works at the outdoor theater, so he said he could get her ticket for free... and then he got all our tickets for free! I feel very bad that Tiffy didn't get in on this deal, but it all happened very rapidly, and she was on a road trip out west so I didn't want to bother her, and I had no idea the tickets would be FREE.

So yesterday evening we all met at Grandma Mary's Cafe in Arena for fish fry, except for Luxuli, who was stuck in traffic in Michigan and couldn't get back in time. I thought about calling Tiffy, but Rich offered the ticket to Kathbert, who turned it down, and then another woman from our old church, who took it. She couldn't join us until the play, and she was wearing a perfect tropical print dress so I complimented her on her sartorial choice, and she seemed annoyed and said that was just what she had worn to work, she had no idea she'd be coming to the play. Now she is a socially awkward person and maybe didn't mean to come across that abruptly, but I mean, that's an even better story, so why not play it up? "I know, isn't it crazy? I had no idea I'd be coming to a play about Cuba tonight!" As it turned out, the play was not set in Cuba but in Tampa, Florida, where the Cuban family had a cigar factory in the 1920's and had hired a lector to read novels to the workers as they did their monotonous jobs. He started with Anna Karenina, and there was a lot of drama involving adultery and a shocking ending. If I had read the novel, I would have liked it even better, but I did enjoy it, although I think some of the group didn't. 

Going up the hill at the outdoor theater is part of the experience, but I was a little afraid of going into a fib with my weird heart rate issues, so the Dairyman's Daughter and I took the shuttle up the hill for the first time. I then ran into one of our faculty members, who was there alone because her wife had to run back to Russia to care for her ailing mother, and she had never been to the outdoor theater before. She teaches a course on Anna Karenina, so she was really looking forward to the play. Things worked out well in that I had to go to the bathroom about three minutes into the play but managed to hold it until intermission, when I made a mad sprint to the bathroom and then couldn't find the group. As I stood there alone and bewildered, our faculty member found me, so we had a great conversation about the play, and then she didn't have to stand around all alone during intermission herself, so it all worked out perfectly. Best of all, since Travalon drove, I didn't have to make that long drive back in the dark. That is always my least favorite part of going to the outdoor theater.

When we got home, look who we found on our front door!

And here he is from the other side.

Isn't he just totes adorbs?

Famous Hat

Limerick for Our New Work System

 

This morning my throat felt a bit scratchy and I was coughing a lot, but I went to work on campus because we were going to have our biweekly meeting on the Union Terrace. Only... it rained all day. I did go to a co-working meeting with some other FART 5 members, but the thing I was going to work on got sidelined because a whole bunch of summer positions didn't transfer over correctly from the old to the new system, so I had to update them quickly before the payroll calc tomorrow. I was so confused that my new boss came down and helped me. Then I tried to create a new customer in the system so I could pay a group in Germany, but the system said I could only have one primary address. I was confused, since I had only entered one address. Thinking it had accidentally duplicated somewhere, I deleted it... and then the system told me it required an address. What?!? 

By the time we were supposed to have our meeting, my former boss decided we would go to Union South, which is closer... but their big bar area was closed. So we went across the street to a bar called the Library, which was around even when I was in college. Our current chair as of the start of this month couldn't make it, but our former chair came, and when my former boss poured me a glass of Spotted Cow, she said she'd like to see me cut loose. I said, "Nobody wants to see that, since my basic mode is Poet." She wanted me to make up a poem, so I came up with a limerick about the new system:

        There once was a system that sucked,
        Into which some odd things had been tucked.
        We didn't understand it
        And asked who had planned it,
        Because now we're all royally... screwed.

This was a big hit with my coworkers, and my former boss said wasn't there a song where you expected the end of each line to be a bad word and it wasn't? So I started singing, "Miss Suzy had a steamboat," etc., and another coworker said she remembered that from the depths of her childhood, so we started talking about the folklore of children's songs. Eventually Travalon joined us, and he enjoyed some beer and chatting with my guy coworker. 

After we got home, I abruptly lost my voice. I was supposed to lead Night Prayer tonight, but even with no voice that would have been difficult, since I was blowing my nose constantly. Did I catch a Minnesota virus? Anna Banana II thinks it could be caused by the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. There was an air quality warning today, which I hadn't been aware of, and Seabird and I did take a brief walk at lunch, but it was pretty rainy so we cut it short. Anna Banana II kindly prayed the whole rosary aloud tonight, because I could not contribute, and I had to use the chat function in Zoom to communicate. Toward the end of the rosary, a very big great horned owl flew into a tree outside our window and stared at me. Travalon saw it too. It was huge!

Here's hoping tomorrow I feel well enough to go to a funeral. Nothing tragic, she was in her 90's, but she was a pillar of our old parish.

Famous Hat

Over the Stone

 

I forgot to mention that on Sunday at Pax Christi Church, the singers were unbelievably good. You would think you were listening to a professional group, not a random church choir. Apparently they expected all the congregation to be musically literate as well, because the music for everything we sang was projected onto screens at the front of the church. I didn't care for most of the music, except the psalm setting, which was minor key and had an ethereal descant.

Yesterday was extremely hot. I worked on campus, and since everyone I walk with at lunch was working remotely that day. I just walked in the shade on the third floor and prayed a rosary, until I got too hot and walked around inside. Neither view was very interesting. After work Travalon and I went swimming, and a boy of around seventeen swam under the water toward me. He had the whole width of the pool, but as I moved over, he kept coming toward me, until I was backed up against the edge of the pool. Then he started to come up between my legs, so I did what any normal woman would do - I kicked him, and when he emerged to the side of me, I said, "Jerk!" Now I hold no illusions of being sexy, but this was more of a power thing - despite my being his elder, he wanted to show that he was more important than I am because of his gender. It's an ugly trend I've noticed among young guys, especially in religious circles. This kid obviously didn't expect me to fight back; he meekly said, "Sorry," and left the pool, chastened. I will never back down and allow a man to feel superior to me just because he happened to be born male. That's ridiculous.

Today I worked from home. It was also a very warm day, so during my lunch break I went over to the nearby woods across from the bluff and took a vigorous walk, according to my FitBit. This may have been because I was attempting to avoid the mosquitos. The shade was wonderful, but it always seems to come with bugs, so pick your poison. After work Travalon drove me to Adoration, and as we were heading there, we saw a train on the bridge over Troy Drive. We kept trying to find places to pull over and watch it, but the roads are narrow there, and every place we found, someone came up behind us and we had to move. It was a very short train anyway, and we didn't get a video of it. But Travalon was very happy because he had never seen a train on that bridge.

While I was at Adoration, Travalon walked down to the Union Terrace and saw this coot very close up.

You can see that it's a cousin of the gallinule. He came back and drove me to St. Andrew's, the little Episcopal church on Regent Street that often hosts early music concerts. Tonight a local recorder ensemble played mostly folk music; I was invited by one of the recorder players, a former choir buddy who now sings in the choir at that church. Pete the Sailor Man came too, and afterwards we all went downstairs for ice cream sundaes: Pete, the choir buddy, her husband, and eventually my husband too. This was all free. The concert was enjoyable, and while they are definitely an amateur group, the pleasant sound of the recorder forgives a lot of sins. My favorite was a Welsh tune called "Tros Y Garreg," which Google Translate says means "Over the Stone," but I also enjoyed a tango called "La Paloma," which I don't need Google Translate to tell me means "the dove" in Spanish. One of the recorder players put down her recorder and played the maracas for that one. A lot of people think of the recorder as a simple instrument used to teach children music, but I am in awe of really good recorder players, who will say things to each other like, "Play this piece on a soprano but use alto fingering," and they seem to be able to read every clef. At one point I could kind of play the alto recorder, but that was years ago. I also used to be able to drive stick shift, but if I were called on to do either thing today, you probably wouldn't enjoy the results. 

Famous Hat

Following the Rivers Home

 

I am sure my regular readers will be stunned to know Travalon and I didn't get going this morning in time to make the 9 am Mass at Pax Christi. We used our extra time to listen to 70's and 80's ad jingles and get coffee before the 10:45 Mass, then we went by the townhouse where I spent my preteen and teen years. It looks spiffied up from what I remember.

We hit the road and stopped at Travalon's favorite spot on these trips: the Sinclair Travel Plaza in St. Charles, Minnesota.

Surprisingly little Sinclair Dinosaur stuff for sale this time, which puzzles me, because who goes to the Sinclair Travel Plaza to buy scented candles and whimsical wooden signs? The restaurant there has been closed for some time, apparently, so we went to Del's Diner in cute downtown St. Charles. Travalon had a strawberry malt, and the waitress brought him the extra, as they often do. At one point he knocked over the metal container with a loud clatter, and another waitress said, "I didn't do it!" so I said, "They say Sagittarius are clumsy, and I present Exhibit A." For some reason she seemed to take umbrage at that, but not because she had any problem with astrology. She said, "I'm not a Sagittarius, and I'm clumsy. I always say 'Grace ain't my name, and coordination ain't my game," but she never said what sign she was, or how being clumsy would be an asset in a profession where you carry around breakable plates and glasses.

We drove along the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River south of La Crosse, and there were lots of turnoffs to check out the beautiful views.

In a park we stopped at for a biological break, we saw this adorable firetruck:

There were a lot of cool bluffs.

Then we turned east and followed the Wisconsin River. We stopped in Muscoda to walk along the river.

There was a kingbird singing in a dead tree.

Closer to home, we stopped at Festge Park, and Travalon took photos from the overlook.

Here you can see Blue Mound in the distance:

And here I am, holding my phone out so Merlin could identify the birdsong we were hearing.

It was an indigo bunting. We never saw it, but we went to the marsh on Highway 14, and Travalon took photos of cormorants in the trees.

And a killdeer in the parking lot where we had stopped.

We tried to find a better vantage point and saw this red-tailed hawk.

Did you know the screams of this bird are what they use in videos and TV shows for the sound of bald eagles? Real eagles don't make such an aggressive sound. We wound our way through a subdivision trying to find a better vantage point for this marsh, and eventually we ended up in a very swanky subdivision, but we never did find a better spot to see the marsh from. There's an excellent view from Highway 14, but obviously you can't stop to take photos in the middle of a major highway. We may take up this mystery at a later date - stay tuned!

Famous Hat

Hometown Visit: Swimming Snafus

 

(Thanks to Travalon for help with this blog post title.)

Yesterday I worked from home and was somewhat productive, then right after work Travalon and I hit the road. We made a stop at a Mexican restaurant in Mauston that somehow took two hours, but my seafood enchiladas were so good. However, during the long wait I'd eaten so many chips and salsa that I could only eat half my real dinner, and it sat in the car for two more hours before we got to my hometown. Travalon found this surprising flag in the men's bathroom of the (important!) Mexican restaurant.

What?? Why is this in a MEXICAN restaurant? It says "I love Puerto Rico." Huh??

The moment we got to our hotel room, I stuck my seafood in the fridge, then we swam in the wonderful pool that was shockingly full of children at that late hour, and then I went right to bed without blogging.

Today I had my leftovers for breakfast, and they haven't killed me yet. Travalon found a nonprofit coffeehouse called St. James online, so we went there for coffee and got free treats because it was their 13th birthday. Better yet, they are associated with the Catholic church across the street, so the very friendly people gathered there were happy to tell us Mass times. Since the church is six minutes from our hotel, this is what we will be doing tomorrow morning.

Ma and Pa Hat are moving to another apartment, but I'm confused about a lot of things. I thought it was assisted living, but no, it's just another apartment. Ma Hat had sent a photo of a bunch of books the people helping her refused to pack, so we thought we'd spend the day packing them, but when we got to their place, she said the movers had already packed them. She said they came and did it yesterday, and she thought about calling us and telling us not to come, which means I could have been in the Atwood Fest parade with the Brazilian drumming group. Then Ma Hat remembered she had stuff in a basement storage unit, so Travalon and I emptied that and brought the contents upstairs. We are both getting older ourselves and have sore knees, so this was a less welcome job than packing books that don't involve stairs. We took a break to take a walk along the Zumbro River, and Travalon took some photos.

We saw people tubing on the river, which looked really fun, but we have no idea where you rent tubes in town. I told Travalon how, as a kid, I used to follow the creek in our backyard to the Zumbro River, and along the side someone had a compost heap, but I had no idea what a compost heap was, so I thought they had killed someone and buried them in their yard, and that's what the bad smell was. Guess I was kind of Gothic as a kid.

After that we went with Ma and Pa Hat to a Mideastern restaurant that had good reviews online, but a sign on the door said it was closed, so we had a very late lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant, and Ma and Pa Hat treated us. Here is the colorful board they had advertising their various menu items.

When we got back, I sat on this chair that used to belong to my great-grandmother.

It turns out both Travalon and I were staring at this box while waiting for further instructions from Ma Hat:

She said we could pack glasses and mugs that were still in the kitchen, so we wrapped them until running out of newspaper. There is a pool at Ma and Pa Hat's current apartment complex, and by then it was in the shade, so Travalon and I decided to run back to the hotel and get our swim stuff, since we hadn't thought to bring it with us. When we got back, Ma Hat said oops, she forgot to tell us that you have to pay extra to use the pool, and she and Pa Hat hadn't paid this year, so we couldn't get in. That seemed so strange to us - whoever heard of an apartment complex with a pool charging extra for access? - but we just shrugged and went to a nearby park with a beach on a pond. Only, when we got there, a guy kept reminding us that the place was getting locked up in half an hour, so if we didn't leave promptly, we'd be locked in. We swam a few minutes at the beach, then we went back to our wonderful hotel pool, which had less kids than last night despite the much earlier hour. When the kids all invaded the pool, we moved to the hot tub and watched the sunset from there. I have watched many sunsets in my life, but I believe this is the first one I've seen from a hot tub.

There is a 24-hour Mexican restaurant just down the street from our hotel, so we went there for a light dinner after showering. Looks like I'll be having half a bean burrito for breakfast after eating too much street corn. The young girl taking our order sometimes seemed confused, so then I would speak in Spanish and she would understand, like with the burrito she kept saying, "Bean or beef?" and I'd say, "Bean," but she didn't get it, so I said, "Frijoles." And Travalon wanted a half order of rice, but she kept saying, "One order of rice?" so I said, "La mitad." Anyway, we got what we had ordered. Travalon looked online to see if there was any information about having to pay extra for the pool at Ma and Pa Hat's complex, and he found a wondrous review of the place that said, among other things, "There are murders here! A grandpa had his eyeballs yanked right out of his head! And the laundry facilities are out-of-date!" That made me laugh so hard - talk about anticlimactic! Not that torture is funny, but following it with such a feeble complaint just made me lose it. Another great line: "People are always trying to burn the place down, either by burning their food or actually trying to burn it down." This person also said there are actual new-Nazis living there, which I believe, judging by some of the tattoos I saw on people there.

As we drove back to the hotel, I suddenly thought of that lame kids' joke: "Guess what? Chicken butt! Guess why? Chicken thigh!" So then I made up even stupider ones: "Guess how? Chicken cow! Guess when? Chicken hen! Guess who? Chicken coup!" So that's the terrible joke I came up with: "What do you call it when the chickens rebel against the farmer? A chicken coup!" Is that even funny? Not really. But I think it's hilarious how not funny it is.

I hear the Atwood Fest parade went fine without me, but they got rained on. So that's what I missed.

Famous Hat