DuoLingo Podcasts

 

I had this morning off of work, so I used it to do something very thrilling: going to a land-use meeting at our village hall. The president of our condo association and I both went, but it was about making a road private that goes between two other condo associations, so it didn't really involve us. Then I did laundry and practiced Spanish on DuoLingo before trying to take a walk in the shade, but the landscapers came today (I thought Tuesday was their day) so it was too loud where I usually walk in the shade. I went over to another condo association's shady area... and their landscapers came too! Lawnmowers everywhere!!

The rest of my day was just as exciting. I worked all afternoon, and then Travalon and I went swimming in the outdoor pool at our health club, which was lovely but not exciting. The one exciting thing that happened today, if you can even say that, is that Bea decided to back a business proposition. Bea is a character in DuoLingo, and in the French version she has a podcast where people call in with business propositions, and if she likes them (which would happen about half the time), she agrees to work with them. She has the same podcast in Spanish, but this time she never likes people's ideas. To be fair, they have some really weird ones, like a shop that only sells purple clothes or a coffee shop only open at 5 am. Today someone proposed an interactive map for surfers with all the symbols explained, and Bea loved this idea, so she said she would work with this person. And by "podcast," I mean a two-minute conversation. All the characters have podcasts, even Falstaff the Bear, except Eddie the jock. His son Junior has one where he discusses the weird things adults do. (Junior is eight.) Bea actually has two, because she also has one about traveling the world and finding out interesting things. I'm not sure why poor Eddie doesn't get one of his own. He's the gym teacher; the art teacher, Oscar, who is terribly pretentious, has one where he critiques people's "antiques." Then again, I can say from having visited many antique shops, that pretty much anything qualifies as an antique, no matter what its age is.

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20's Night at the Illinois Railway Museum

 

Yesterday I dressed up in my trainiest outfit.

Check it out: train hat, train shirt, train bracelet, caboose mood ring, and train tote bag. (It says "Train Nerd.") Travalon wore a train shirt too, and we drove to the Illinois Railway Museum. When we got there, I thought maybe I should have dressed like a flapper, because it was 20's Day there, and lots of people dressed for the decade. I should add, 1920's, not the decade we are currently living in, because in that case you could say that I did dress up for the 20's. Some women had amazing dresses. 

There were three trains running on the mainline, and we got to ride two of them. First we rode one with a steam engine and two cabooses - we went in one of the cabooses.

Then we went on this cute two-car red and green train that went a lot faster, so we caught a wonderful breeze. We went out into the surrounding countryside and saw a deer watching the train. (Sorry, no photo of that.)

Here's the inside.

We also rode two trolleys.

This cute open-air one from Veracruz is maybe easier to see in the video.

We have lots more videos so watch for a supercut at some point in the future. We took a walk around the grounds and took photos of cool stuff, like this crazy front of a train.

And this cool sign.

And this cute trolley that wasn't running.

And whatever this is.

And these crossing signals. Remember these - we'll come back to them.

In the evening there was a concert of 20's hot jazz by a band called Badass Gumbo. They came on the train we hadn't gotten a chance to ride, and then they played. Here's a tiny sample.

Meanwhile, a hot air balloon floated serenely overhead. Unfortunately Travalon was having technical difficulties with his camera, so we only got cell phone photos. Here is the best one.

Travalon had bought a soda from the taco stand where we got dinner, but the top was not a twist-off, and we didn't have a bottle opener. The woman next to us suggested using a spoon she had, and that worked! She had a middle school-aged daughter and a preschool daughter who was enchanted when Travalon and I made our new conductor hippo (sorry, no photo yet) and Niko dance, and when the concert was over, she hugged me and said goodbye. Then they told us we could all ride the train, so Travalon and I got on it with our lawn chairs, and when the little girl saw me on the train, she hugged me again! By then it was dark, and we saw fireworks from the train. What a magical day! 

Remember the crossing signals? Here they are at night.

And here's a video of one in action.

Today after Mass, Travalon and I went to the Venezuelan restaurant for arepas, then I had my Brazilian drumming class. We are going to be in the opening ceremony for the Atwood Festival, and to my delight we got to choose which drum we would play, so I chose the little tiny drum. We spent a lot of time clapping the rhythms of the various claves, so I felt a little like a preschooler, but it was a ton of fun. I have always had trouble with the basic Cuban clave, but the one teacher wrote the pattern of four different claves on the board, and then it kind of made sense. He wrote (1e+a) (2e+a) for one-ee-and-ah, two-ee-and-ah, but it looked like Leta Zeta, so I thought that might make an excellent name for something. 

We were going to swim at the health club, since it was so hot, but we wanted to wait a bit so the kids would clear out. We waited too long and it started to rain; we debated about swimming inside, but we just walked around the air-conditioned house until the rain cooled things down and we could open the windows again. It's really been hot so far this summer, so it's almost as bad as winter because you really don't want to be outside much. It's so hard to get exercise in this heat, but I did discover that lifting my Frankie the weighted cat up and down while I walked around is quite a workout. She's like free weights, only much, much cuter.

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Driving the Betty Lou Cruise Yacht

 

My morning was not one, not two, but three meetings, and then I got the afternoon off. I took a long rosary walk that included an interruption by a neighbor and her little dog, then I watered my plants, and when Travalon came home, we drove out to Spring Green. Right now is when the prickly pear cacti at the Nature Conservancy land are in bloom, along with a lot of other prairie flowers. This is goat's rue.

This is tall cinquefoil.

This is lead plant.

This is blue vervain.

Everything was very green and lush.

For some reason most of the cacti didn't have blooms or even buds on them.

But we saw a few blossoms.

We also saw these interesting insects.

On the way home, we stopped at Festge County Park and saw this red-headed woodpecker.

We went to the overlook and could see what we thought must be Blue Mounds in the distance.

We also saw some butterfly weed.

We heard an indigo bunting, and then he landed on the sidewalk ahead of us.

In the evening we went on a Betty Lou Cruise, the Seafood Buffet one. The weather was perfect, and the captain let me drive the yacht.

Then he let Travalon drive it.

I had to keep remembering that it was just like a car, so if you turn the steering wheel to the right, the yacht moves to the right. I'm used to our neighbor's sailboat, where if you push the tiller to the right, the boat turns to the left. Of course I drive a car much more often than I help steer a sailboat, but in my mind watercraft go the opposite way from the thing you use to turn them. Still, neither of us crashed or capsized the yacht. Lest you think we are special, loads of other people also took advantage of the captain's offer to be captain for a few minutes. (As you can see, I was First Mate while Travalon was Captain.)

We passed the Governor's Mansion. (Travalon took this photo while I was driving the yacht.)

We passed the Capitol and campus. There was a jazz band playing on the Union Terrace, and they sounded fabulous.

There was a gorgeous sunset.

The light was reflecting beautifully off the windows of the buildings downtown, but that photo doesn't really do it justice.

The captain had been playing lame pop music during most of the ride, but right at the end he played sea shanties, so some of us sang along with great gusto. After the cruise, Travalon and I drove to Bierock and sat out in the parking lot, watching the fireworks after the Mallards game. They won, 10-6. What a wonderful Friday this was!

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Unexpected Freedom

 

Yesterday at work I got an email saying that I had eighteen hours of personal holiday to use by the 30th or I would lose it. I talked to my new boss at the training session, and the HR person was able to convert eight hours of vacation to personal holiday, but no more, since it had to be time I'd taken since my conversion to being salaried. That was my Juneteenth day off, for those keeping track at home. My boss suggested I take some time off today and tomorrow, but I had meetings in the morning both days, so I am taking the afternoons off, and then the morning off on Monday to go to a thrilling meeting about town planning that our condo board president suggested we board members should attend. So this is what I did with my unexpected freedom today:

Once I logged off of work, I went for a long, very hot walk with my former neighbor, who came back to the old neighborhood to say hi to everyone. Afterwards she gave me some peaches. Then I talked to a guy who is writing a book about people who feel disillusioned with the church or other Christians but choose to stay anyway, and he seemed very happy with my contribution. Guess I'm efficient, too - he said the interview would take about forty-five minutes, but after twenty minutes he said I'd given him plenty of information. Travalon came home not long after that (he has short hours at work at the moment), and he wanted to go to a new coffee shop on Atwood called Forward. He got some "deconstructed cake" mocha concoction with Ghirardelli chocolate, blood orange, and oat milk. I didn't want caffeine that late in the afternoon, so I got a rose French soda, which was as delicious as it was beautiful.

(I had already drunk some of it before thinking of taking a photo.) We hung out there for a while, and that was my afternoon vacation today. Then we battled terrible traffic so I could attend another organizing class with my Union peeps. Tonight we were supposed to do role-playing, but fortunately there wasn't time for everyone in the class to get up and act in front of everyone else. I think I could handle the role of Reluctant Worker, but not Union Organizer. The weirdest rule (that everyone who did the role-playing broke) was that we weren't supposed to say "we" but "you," which seems really counterintuitive. I guess the emphasis is what the Union can do for the other person, but I thought the whole point is that it is all of us working together. We had pizza, and there was a leftover piece for Travalon (it was - don't read this part, Jilly Moose - mushroom pizza), but that wasn't enough for him for dinner, so he used the parmesan garlic sauce we got in the "Welcome Home!" package we got at Make Music Madison to flavor some chicken wings. He gave me three little ones, and they were very tasty. Maybe I should have taken a picture of the stuff in the package. It was so random: dishwasher pods, his and her deodorant, some sauces, and I can't even remember everything. I think it was the deodorant that got me: "Welcome to your new home! Now stop stinking!"

I was going to take a late rosary walk in my high vis gear, but when I stepped outside, it was sprinkling, and I could see lightning in the distance. I came back inside just in time before it began to pour, but then I realized I should bring in the dracaena in a pot with no drainage or it would drown, so I got soaked anyway. Plus the plant already got soaked, and not long after that, the rain stopped, so my heroic effort was probably for naught. At least I tried, right?

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Cactus Catastrophe

 

Today I worked on campus, and late in the morning we had a meeting about the new ticketing system that ran way over, so Seabird said she didn't have time to walk before our afternoon training in the new system. I walked with Hardingfele, and we went to Allen Centennial Gardens. Here are some photos.

Meanwhile, Travalon went fishing at Salmo Pond, and he caught a panfish.

(He let it go again.) Then he came and picked me up, and we went to St. Charles Station for dinner. He said his chicken wings and shrimp and grits were delicious, and so was his banana hurricane. (I tried them all, and they were indeed delicious!) I had the four-course meal with the theme of strawberries, so it started with strawberry bruschetta, then the next course was supposed to be a salad with strawberries, but it didn't arrive until after the main course, a chicken leg with strawberries and mashed potatoes and peas. Then for dessert they toasted a cornbread muffin and put strawberries and whipped cream on top. The drink to go with it was a strawberry mojito, but I didn't feel like a drink after the shandy last night. 

Hardingfelde had been texting me yesterday while I was at the movie about a cactus someone was giving away. She sent me a photo.

Travalon and I went to pick the cactus up tonight after dinner, and it was fine in the car on the trip home, but as soon as Travalon started carrying it up the stairs to our house, the top couple of feet broke off. We both got pricked while trying to fix this problem. Eventually we got both parts upstairs, and I stuck the broken-off part in the dirt in hopes that it will root. (Why there is a spider plant in the same pot, I couldn't tell you - they have very different watering needs.) Anyway, this might work; years ago I saw a faculty member carrying the top of a yucca he had cut from its roots, and he had the pot in the other hand. He said it used to be Dr. Cheung's plant, and he didn't want it in his office anymore. I took both the pot and the hacked-off top of the plant, and the top rooted but the roots grew a new top, so Dr. Cheung the plant has two tops now. No idea why the faculty member didn't just ask if anyone else wanted the plant before hacking it to pieces...

In other plant news, a mostly dead corn plant dracaena that Hardingfele had scavenged for me on the street (sense a pattern?) came back to life under my loving care, so I called it Lazarus. I moved it outside with a couple of other monocots, a dragon tree dracaena and a ponytail palm, and now it has a bunch of buds. Since it's the same type of plant as Jolly Bob, which bloomed a couple of winters ago, I imagine it will smell just as good. I'm waiting impatiently for the buds to open. I'll take a photo, although the flowers aren't much to look at. It's the fragrance that's so spectacular.

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Purple Rain

 

Today I worked on campus because we had another open lab to do training in the test environment of the new system. I also walked with Hardingfele at lunch, but it was hotter than I expected, and I was overdressed in my purple top and khakis. Travalon drove me to work and picked me up, and in the evening we went to a showing of Purple Rain at Flix Brew House. We saw this motorcycle there.

A couple watched us take these photos, and I noticed the woman was wearing purple and also a Prince symbol necklace, so I said. "I'll bet you're going to the same movie that we are." It turns out she is originally from France but apparently loved Prince so much that she moved here...? And that motorcycle belongs to her and her husband - it's a replica of the one in the movie. I was a bit surprised that she didn't have a favorite song by Prince; my two favorites are "Erotic City" and "Alphabet Street." 

They gave all of us free commemorative glasses (sorry, no photo yet) as we went into the theater. Neither Travalon nor I had seen this movie before, and a lot of it made us laugh, but I'm unclear if it was supposed to be funny or if it just seems funny now and almost forty years ago it would have been cool. When Morris Day sang his song about doing "The Bird," the women next to us (who looked way too young to have seen the movie back in the day) were laughing so hard that I couldn't help but laugh. Even the ending made us laugh with how cheesy it was. There isn't a whole lot of plot, just two rival bands and of course the leaders of both bands want the same woman, and in Prince's band there is some intra-band strife, mostly in the form of the two women in the band (who seem to be together, if you know what I mean) always trying to get the band to do songs they had written, and Prince insisting no, only he wrote the songs. I'm not sure if the movie is supposed to be autobiographical, because in that case Prince comes off like a big jerk. At least Morris Day is funny, even if he is a horn dog. I mean, they both are, so pick your poison. Morris Day was just a horn dog, but Prince was a bit malicious. Why the girl chose him over Day is a mystery to me. Maybe she should have formed a threesome with Wendy and Lisa in the band.

There was a special drink for this showing called the "Raspberry Beret," which was a raspberry shandy. However, they wouldn't serve it in our commemorative glasses. Mine came in some sort of Jurassic Park glass that had a picture of a dinosaur and said, "Clever girl." Maybe applicable to the drinker?

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What Year Is It? 1984?

 

Today was a very blah day for me. I worked from home and had two meetings, but I never left the house because it was so hot. Around five I thought about stepping outside, since it had cooled off a bit, but it was drizzling, and now it's storming out. Travalon had bought me a necklace holder for my rosaries, so I put some of them on it.

As you can see, it's not full yet, but it already weighs a ton. This isn't anything like all my rosaries - I will need at least two more of these things. What I'm hoping to find is a commercial-sized one like they display necklaces on at department stores. Maybe then I can take these off of this smaller holder and use it for actual necklaces, since I have quite a few of those too.

One of the craziest things I've seen in the last few days is the number of people who said on social media that Dear Leader was the only logical choice for president because he wouldn't get us into a Mideast war now saying how smart they think he is for getting us into a Mideast war. To be fair, there are still people on the right who are angry with him for bombing Iran, and I have a grudging respect for them, but man does it feel like we're living in 1984 - of course we've always been at war with Oceania, not Eastasia. Until next week, when it will switch around again. Weirdly, Dear Leader, who is an atheist who only worships himself, gushed about thanking God for bombing Iran. If anyone wonders why Christianity is declining in this country, I give you Exhibit A: Why Would Anyone Follow the Religion This Guy Claims to Profess? Stealing from the poor to make the rich richer? Bombing countries that were following their treaties? Mocking the disabled and dehumanizing women and minorities? It's the antithesis of Christianity as taught by Jesus, but I'm not going to claim the "no true Scotsman" fallacy and say these people aren't true Christians, because if they say they are, then that is what Christianity is here and now, in our country. Ugh. It used to not be true of Catholic churches, but lately Catholics are moving to the right of Evangelicals, so I go to a church where nobody discusses politics, and I keep my head down. Once upon a time my old parish downtown used to have people to the left and to the right of me, but after the pandemic all the leftists bolted, so what's left of that parish seems to be these far-right Qatholics, people who get their news from randos on the internet because even FAUX News is not far enough to the right for them. There may be people like that at our new parish, but I have not run across them, and there's a lot going on there about donating to the poor in other countries and taking care of the environment. It's very focused on the group, not the individual. After all, if I were not going to be part of a religion that cares for all of us, what was the point of being a human during this lifetime? I might as well have been a panther again.

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Make Music Madison: The Sequel

 

Today I wanted to go to a Quebecois jam at noon at a coffee shop on the east side, but I wanted to wear my muumuu to Mass and not the jam so we came home in between. (Also, that way I didn't have to bring my mandolin to Mass.) That was maybe not the right decision, since it was almost 12:30 by the time we got to the coffee shop, and I was famished and had to eat lunch before playing. A woman leading the jam saw me come in and brought me a packet of the music with a QR code for the website. I said, "Oh, I already know this website," and she said yes, the creator tries to keep it user-friendly, but personally that is not the description I would have used for this website. Somehow I ended up in the fiddle section and became best friends with the three women around me playing fiddle. OK, that's an exaggeration, but they were all so friendly. Also, to my shock, two of them had seen my band listed on the Make Music Madison website and had wanted to see us, but they were playing themselves at the same time, and the third one played with one of our fiddlers later yesterday evening at Folklore Village.

Travalon didn't stick around for the whole jam, but he did drive me there because he is a prince among men, so after the jam I said we could do whatever he wanted. He mentioned that the Brazilian drumming group was playing at Garver Mill, so we went there and watched a subset of the big group play, including one of my teachers and the guy who plays the little ukulele-like instrument in the other Brazilian band, and another student was one of the girls who danced to the drumming. The girls had elaborate costumes that didn't cover all that much of them, and Travalon enjoyed that. While that was in the air-conditioned comfort, the two bands we wanted to see next were outside, so we found a shady spot. The Forward Marching Band played first, and then Mama Digdown's Brass Junction plays New Orleans street jazz, stuff like "Iko Iko." Travalon really liked them too. I liked all of it.

It had been a day of a lot of music and very little exercise, so we thought we could escape the heat by swimming at Governor Nelson State Park. However, a sign said caution, there was E. Coli in the water, so we went to our health club instead. I was afraid the outdoor pool would be packed with kids, but it really wasn't too bad, and we were able to commandeer a small patch of the deep end to swim around in. Apparently it has been too long since I've been swimming, because twenty minutes of it and I felt like (and still feel like) my arms might fall off. Also, it felt like a lot of effort on my part, but my FitBit said only three minutes of it was moderate exercise, and none was vigorous. Why do my FitBit and I disagree so often? I will feel like I'm walking at my top speed for twenty minutes, and it will say four minutes of that was any effort, and then another day I'll be barely able to walk above a slow saunter and it will say vigorous exercise for the whole twenty minutes. It's a mystery. It bases it all on my heart rate, but why does my heart rate have so little to do with my lived experience?

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Make Music Madison 2025

 

Today was Make Music Madison, and I got swag:

I just wanted that to be the first photo on this post, because then it shows up as the thumbnail when you look up my posts. This morning Travalon and I relaxed, then when he went to turn on the air conditioning, he discovered that a mourning dove had built a nest on the window ledge outside our bedroom, so that we couldn't close the window. We looked at it, and there was a baby bird in it, so we couldn't knock it off the ledge. Mourning doves are notorious for building their nests in the worst possible places - there is an entire website devoted to stupid nest location choices by doves - and I wasn't surprised since I kept hearing the thing calling outside our window early in the morning. I wanted to take a picture of the baby bird, but the mother came back, and I didn't want to frighten her away so sorry, no photo.

When we did get going, we went to Garver Mill to have pizza and check out a flea market, and somehow we got really good parking there. Next Travalon ran into a local bookstore to find a new biography of Judy Garland, but they didn't have it. 

Our next stop was the grand opening of our favorite chocolate shop in town, or I should say grand re-opening in a beautiful new space. Even the bathroom was gorgeous. We got there at a weird moment; we just wanted to get some chocolate and then hear the local Latin jazz band, but they shooed everyone out for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. However, I begged to buy chocolate because my time was limited due to my own gig, so they let us get some bonbons, and then they shooed us outside for the ribbon-cutting.

We sat in the shade, listening to the Latin jazz band, until they took a break at exactly the time I thought we should leave. We headed home and rested a few minutes until we had to head to my bandmate's driveway for our own Make Music Madison gig. Travalon took photos and videos.

Someone else took this photo. It makes me laugh because the shadow makes it look like I have a mustache.

We were told to wear our black band shirts, and as you can see, I was the only one who did - even our leader, who made the proclamation, did not. She also told us to arrive fifteen minutes early and then arrived just before we started herself, and she held us up by several minutes because she had to tune. I'm kind of at the limits of my patience with her at the moment. She was also really struggling with chords, and in the videos you can hear me playing chords, but not her. However, on one song the fiddles were really struggling with the melody, so I jumped in and played that. I guess that's the role of a mandolin: "Clean up on Aisle Fifteen!" Show up where you're needed. As always, afterwards people said they really liked it when I played tremolo - that's a crowd pleaser. Nobody asked about my instrument, but they may have all seen it before. We had a surprisingly large crowd, maybe twenty people at the peak, and I think they were all friends of various band members. It was VERY hot, and as you can see, I had to sit in the sun more than the others. (The audience were all in the shade.) I debated about bringing my other mandolin, but the old taterbug mandolin is a real trooper, and she had no problem with the heat. The bassist and I agreed that it was hard to play when your hands are so sweaty, and the instruments do tend to go a bit sharp when it's so humid out, so we had to stop and tune now and then. Anyone who has ever been to an early music concert where they use period instruments will be familiar with this concept.

Travalon and I went home and had a light dinner of hummus and protein sandwiches in pita that only needed to be microwaved, chicken for him and falafel for me. Then we went to Warner Park, which is so close to us, to hear a band called Hirt Alpert. With a name like that, we expected they would play music of Herb Alpert and Al Hirt, and that is exactly what they did. The sponsor for that spot was Witkins Realty, and they were giving away the rainbow koozies and welcome packages for new home owners. They gave me one of each, even though we have owned our condo for eleven years. Can you believe that?

Our final stop was Rennebohm Park, which is very far from us, to hear a big band called All That Jazz. We only got to hear the last twenty minutes of their set, but it was worth the trip - they were so good! Travalon found both bands on the Make Music Madison website. Since it's on a Saturday this year, we decided we should actually hear some other groups besides mine for once.

I still needed steps, and I had not prayed a rosary, so I put on my high vis garb and took a walk outside in the dark.

No idea why my eyes look so crazy in this photo. Maybe I was thinking how crazy I was to go from air-conditioned comfort to the heat and humidity outside in the dark. We are cooling the outside a bit because we can't close the bedroom window, and Mama Dove must love it because now she is constantly on the nest. I can't say that I blame her.

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