Sea Shanty Saturday

 

Here are a couple of pictures I didn't post yesterday. First, Niko and my Niko shirt at the concert last night.

And when would some DuoLingo bragging work for you? How about right now?

It has bumped me up twice in the Spanish course but now refuses to bump me up again even as it notes my shocking accuracy rate. Yeah, maybe because I already know all these words?

This morning I met Jilly Moose for coffee, then we walked to Grace Episcopal Church to hear the same concert as I heard on Wednesday, only with twice as many pieces, and with Niko. (I forgot to bring him on Wednesday.) The Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player was there with her husband, but she says now she is done with the lute but is thinking of taking up the banjo again. I wonder if she will join our band again? That would be fantastic! The bass's very cute little baby daughter was also around after the concert. She has the biggest brown eyes! The concert was twice as wonderful as the one on Wednesday. There is a song they performed both days that I am so obsessed with that I found it on YouTube and have listened to it about a hundred times since then, and when I told the bass, he said that's exactly what he did the first time he heard it. It's by Adam Drese.

Afterwards, Jilly Moose and I had lunch at Himal Chuli, then we went shopping at the Soap Opera and the new zodiac perfumery across the street from my old church. We bid each other adieu, and I got home just before Travalon, then he and I went to Awildan Distillery for a St. Patrick's Day party. It was a fun atmosphere, very family-friendly with several babies and a preschool girl with strawberry blonde hair who danced vigorously the whole time, sometimes with her dad, sometimes with strangers in the crowd, and sometimes by herself. A woman who seemed to be in charge of things was wearing the same pin as I was! Here I am wearing it, and a close-up.

Travalon got it in Waterford, Ireland long before he knew me and brought it home to his mother. When she died, and the family asked what I wanted, I said her rosaries, so they gave me two rosaries, a Seven Sorrows of Mary chaplet, some random holy medals, and this pin. I have never worn it before, nor have I ever seen anyone else wearing one, until today. Isn't that crazy? Also, people were drinking beautiful green cocktails, but I had told Travalon I only wanted water, so I wished I'd told him I wanted one of those... and he came back with one!

It had matcha tea in it. We split it, and we liked it so much that we split another one. Someone had brought mochi, not with the ice cream but just the stuff that's wrapped around the ice cream, and that was very tasty. We saw one of my Irish language classmates there, and a buddy from the Shamrock Club. There was a group playing traditional Irish music, then we all sang sea shanties, and then another traditional Irish music group played, and I recognized most of the Irish tunes. They were going to have a session after that, but I hadn't brought any instruments, and the distillery doesn't serve food, so we went to Venezuela!

Just kidding, this is La Taguara, the Venezuelan restaurant. I always get the sweet corn pancake stuffed with cheese, so this time I got coconut tilapia, and oh man was that delicious! We also got an order of the fried cheese, which is in cubes, not curds, and it squeaked when I bit into it like a fresh cheese curd. As we were driving home, we realized we had missed both the salsa show and Rockin' John on the local radio station, so Travalon said something in Rockin' John's voice, but I thought he was imitating Bullwinkle the Moose, and that's when we realized how similar they sound. I always thought Rockin' John was trying to channel the rock 'n' roll DJs of a bygone era, but all this time he's been channeling the Mayor of Frostbite Falls. Who knew?

As we were leaving the distillery, we passed this awesome sign:

And I have another train video to post, this one from last May (Pa Hat's birthday, even!), but I'll post that next week on a slow news day. Or possibly tomorrow. 

Famous Hat