Niko's Day at the Capitol

 

Today I had taken a vacation day, so Travalon and I went for a walk at Jackson's Landing. We saw four cranes there. He took some photos, but Blogspot is still being weird about loading them, so maybe another day. Then we went back home, and I got ready for my Day at the Capitol. I had been planning to wear the pink blazer I'd worn to the interview for my own job, but the instructions were to wear something cardinal red, and I do have something that color, but it didn't seem formal enough. Fortunately Travalon had a black suit coat that kind of fit me, and when I jazzed it up with a gold necklace and red-and-black earrings, it looked feminine enough. I grabbed Niko and headed to the Capitol, to represent the university in my capacity as an alumna.

The first thing you have to understand is that every road to our house seems to be under construction. I was going to take the long way to Highway M and go all the way around, but it's under construction. Our usual route is under construction, and the side road you can take to avoid it is also under construction. What genius planned this?? Don't they realize a lot of people live in our neighborhood, and now we're all trapped?? I did find a side road off the side road and somehow got to my usual parking lot, where the shuttle was waiting, but it doesn't go to the Capitol. Instead, I was going to take the Big Bendy B Bus.

My ride on the big bendy bus was anticlimactic on the way downtown, because I had to sit way at the front of the bus to hear the bus driver tell me which stop to take, and then when I got off the bus, I got confused and walked the wrong direction for a couple of blocks. Eventually I got to the Concourse Hotel, just a few minutes late, and it didn't even matter. Neither did my outfit - I saw people in pink, people in T-shirts, and just about everything you can imagine. Can they not read instructions? We had a lovely lunch while a group of undergrad women sang a gorgeous song, then the Chancellor spoke, and then there was a panel discussion about the housing crunch on campus. Oh yeah, before/during lunch there was some instruction on how to behave during our discussions.

Then we went to the Capitol, and a faculty member and I talked to the staffer of the representative from our district. That wasn't a hard sell, because he is totally in favor of the university, so the staffer was completely sympathetic to everything we told her. Then I was supposed to meet with another lawmaker in a larger group, but at first it was just his staffer, his intern, and I, so we chatted. Turns out this lawmaker is also very pro-university, so they also were in agreement with everything I said. Then a big bunch of people showed up, and shortly after that the legislator himself showed up, and more people dribbled in as we all discussed funding the university. 

After that discussion, I thought about going to some flash talks (they were ten minutes each) but got involved in the poster presentations of various grad students from all sorts of disciplines: social work, public policy, cancer research, etc. One was originally from Quebec City and said she felt like she was losing her French, so I suggested the dinners at the French House, which she had not heard of. After that I walked over to the Madison Club, a swanky private club we don't belong to because dues are probably more than we make in a year, and I sat with some very friendly people. Best of all, the one doctor I remember fondly from my years at the med school came over with his wife, and they both remembered me, so we had a wonderful time catching up. The room we were in was very beautiful, with the whole ceiling being a skylight, and there was an incredible spread of delicious food, plus an ice cream sundae bar. I chose chocolate topped with berries, whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry.

I saw the Big Bendy B Bus go by just as I got to the Square, and the next one wasn't for fifteen minutes. (I thought they were more frequent than that.) But this time I got on in the back, and then the bus was everything I'd hoped. I could see it bending as it went around corners, and it opened on both sides. It really felt like big city mass transit. It dropped me off right by the parking lot where my car was waiting for me, and then I drove home and beat Travalon by a few minutes. What a great day! Tomorrow is back to the workaday world for me.

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Wacky Brownie?

 

Today I worked on campus, and Seabird and I took a walk at Allen Centennial Garden. Here is a photo of the tulips in bloom there.

It was a gorgeous day, except for being very windy. There was some talk of bad weather hitting us, but so far there has been nothing but wind: no rain, and certainly no thunderstorms or tornadoes. I will not complain about that! When I got home, I sat on our porch and did DuoLingo. Got a sticker and some crazy comments after finishing lessons.

As promised, here are photos of the pelicans Travalon saw at the Sauk Dam on Saturday. Blogspot is only letting me load one photo at a time, so I will choose judiciously.

I love this photo, because it looks like the bird on the left has two bills, but it's really two birds.

And a couple shots of the Wisconsin River:

I don't know why Blogspot has been so weird the last couple of days with loading photos. Hopefully this glitch passes quickly.

I did forget to mention that when I went to the Brazilian drumming class, there were brownies. I tried one, and it was delicious, very dark chocolate and also banana-flavored. I asked, "Are there bananas in this?" and they said, "Yes, it's a banana brownie." Then as I was pounding the drum and working up a sweat, my sweat smelled like wacky weed. So what else was in those brownies?? But I didn't feel stoned, so maybe it was my imagination. Will they have crazy treats every week? I'll report back.

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Chicago, Brazilian Drums, and Irish Tunes

 

Yesterday I wasted too much time in the morning and then had to rush to Cecil Markovitch's house to meet him, the Single B-Boy, and the Dairyman's Daughter for our whirlwind trip to Chicago. We drove down and got to the Italian restaurant where we had dinner in almost exactly three hours. Dinner was wonderful (I had my favorite black squid-ink pasta with seafood), but the Single B-Boy and I had to run back across the busy street to Cecil's car, me so I could put my leftovers in Cecil's cooler, and the B-Boy to take his contacts out. We must be living right, because the traffic seemed to pause for us both ways. The B-Boy did point out that it would be a lot more efficient for Cecil to cross the scary road once, to get his car and drive it to the other side of the street, than for two people to cross the road twice, but Cecil wasn't buying it. Then we all walked to the concert venue to see the Tallis Scholars sing works by Palestrina and Lassus. They were amazing! On the drive to Chicago, Cecil had asked the name of the plantation where some of my ancestors had lived, and all I could remember was that it was a very English-sounding name starting with H. Halfway back to Madison, I remembered: Hollingsworth! So the B-Boy looked up the Hollingsworth Plantation in Virginia, and it was in Cecil County, so they were all joking that Cecil and I could be cousins. 

Meanwhile, Travalon went to a powwow in town, and he got a stuffed eagle. 

Then he went to a bar in Lyndon Station.

He went to Mirror Lake and to the dam in Sauk, where he saw lots of pelicans. I will post photos tomorrow. Then he went to a movie about the band Talking Heads, and one of the members was there for a Q&A afterwards. So he had a great day too.

Today after Mass we went for a walk on Governor's Island, then Travalon dropped me off at the place where my first Brazilian drumming class was held. Because I have no experience, they put me on one of the big drums where you just hit the downbeat, and it was so much fun! The woman to the left of me was a dancer, so she had good rhythm, but the guy to the right of me... not so much. It was quite a workout, but after that I went to the Slow Irish Session, and my bandmates all showed up except for Hardingfele. It went really well, and the leaders declared it "the best session ever!" We had all sorts of crazy instruments besides the usual fiddles, mandolins, guitars, whistles, and accordions, like someone brought a large harp, and someone else had an autoharp, and one guy was playing the melodica, which is a keyboard that you blow into. 

When we got home, we went out onto the dock, and Travalon took some photos. Here is the goose that got its egg stolen by the mink.

What is Tux Duck laughing about?

A beautiful sunset.

And Travalon's King Arthur bear arrived!

Also, his little creatures are happy because Wolverhampton won!

I believe this means they are now safe from relegation. However, the Bucks are losing, so this is probably it for their playoff run.

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The Cutest Egg Thief

 

I worked from home today, and it was a busy day with a lot of people pestering me, and a long meeting to work on the final report for our committee on agism in the university. In the morning Travalon and I went down to the dock, and we saw a pair of common mergansers flying and Tux Duck swimming around.

We also saw a mink stealing an egg out of a nest.

The egg was pretty good-sized, so I figured it was either from a crane or a goose. How sad to lose a crane egg, but frankly we don't need any more geese. 

I had to work late to make up time and heard the train go by just before I got done, then I went down to the dock and saw a Canada goose sitting on the nest the mink had raided. I said to it, "If you had been there, that mink wouldn't have stolen your egg. Did you notice one was missing?" but it ignored me. I also saw two male northern shovelers, two coots, and a pair of blue-winged teals. When Travalon got home, he went down to the dock and took these photos. First, a male mallard.

Here he is with Tux Duck and a pair of northern shovelers.

The northern shoveler is a handsome duck with a very large bill.

I wonder if northern shovelers are becoming more common? I remember seeing my first one at Horicon, and how exciting it was, and then last spring they were around our dock, and this spring they have been around for quite a while. I would love it if they stayed here and raised a family.

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Native Campus Tour and Sichuan Dumplings

 

Today I did something really fun: I took a Native campus tour! Hardingfele's department had organized this tour, which is one that they regularly do on campus, and I just tagged along with her and her coworker who goes to the same church we've been going to. Of course the Madison area, called Tee Jope (Four Lakes), is Ho-Chunk land, but our guide spoke Ojibwa, and I know how to say "Thanks!" in that language. (It's something like miigwich.) Also, hello is "Boo Zhoo." I know this from a TikTok guy who does the Ojibwa Word of the Day, but I don't know a word of Ho-Chunk. We spent a lot of time at the Union talking about Native languages and stuff, and then we walked really fast up Bascom Hill to talk about how the land used to look, and then we walked really fast up Observatory Hill to talk about effigy mounds and the lakes. The guide said if all the effigy mounds were still around and we hadn't built all the campus buildings right on top of them, this area would be a Unesco World Heritage Site. Hardingfele said to me as we were walking that this guide was taking too much time, why couldn't he get to the point? and I said, "You haven't spent much time around Native people, have you?" She said, "Not really." I figure the culture of storytelling and having a relaxed sense of time is part of the tour, along with the history. But then I had to leave when the tour ran long, and I remembered I was chairing a meeting at two.

The Chair of the Central Committee is on vacation, and as the Vice Chair, I had to, you know, chair the meeting. I had a script to follow, but I still felt like when I was a kid and was second chair violin in the orchestra, and one day the first chair violin was sick and had to miss a concert, so I had to step in to replace her as concert mistress. Yikes! Being Number Two has always kind of been my schtick. The other committee members commended me on running a tight meeting, since the Chair tends to ramble a bit. We had a high-up guy give a report, and we all asked him some good questions, but the Chair would have asked some really pointed ones, so he seemed surprised that we were more lowkey. Maybe that's just my vibe - I was a really hyper kid, and then I must have used up all that energy, and now I'm lowkey most of the time, unless something is really unjust.

In between all that, I processed a ton of scholarships, and after getting home, I just sat on the porch, watching birds, until Travalon came home. I saw a big flock of cormorants flying north, and a redstart, and a nuthatch, among other things. We went to Lola's for dinner because Thursday is their World Music Night, and the DJ played a lot of cumbia, some salsa, and some other stuff. I enjoy cumbia but don't love it as passionately as salsa. It's from Colombia, and the beat always makes me think of a horse clopping along. Another reason we went to Lola's was because they have sticky toffee pudding on their spring menu, and to my surprise they also have Sichuan dumplings. I wonder if the owner is a Steely Dan fan? That's a line from "The Glamour Profession": "Sichuan dumplings, now that the deal has been done..." Since I am a Steely Dan fan, I had to get that. The sticky toffee pudding was delicious too, but a word of warning: the little skillet it comes in is VERY hot, don't touch it like some stupid Famous Hats might have done. Luckily I have an aloe plant at home.

In case you were wondering, this is what DuoLingo thinks parties look like.

I mean, these parties do look lit. 10/10, I would go. Maybe it's just the music notes that won me over. Do you suppose they're listening to cumbia?

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Ukulele Strum: Country-Rock Royalty

 

Here is proof that Crystal Palace currently has an 11-11-11 record:

Today I worked on campus and went to an early music concert at noon with Hardingfele. We ran into another bandmate there, so the three of us sat together. In the morning I had two meetings, so it was hard to get any actual work done, and then in the afternoon my former boss was in a meeting, so he couldn't help me with something that was supposed to get done by 4:30. Oh well. Yesterday I was frustrated because he couldn't approve my time, not being my supervisor anymore, but my current supervisor couldn't approve my time because she wasn't my supervisor when I worked the hours. Fortunately someone above either of them approved my time, because I am not doing this job for free!

I brought my ukulele to work with me today, and on the shuttle I was holding it in such a way that it looked like I was cuddling it, like it was my emotional support ukulele. Then after work I went to the Lone Girl for a ukulele strum, and this evening we did all songs by people who are both in the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, like Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley. That was a lot of fun, and I was delighted to discover that "Jolene" has only three very easy chords, so now I can play it around the house. Travalon met me there, and we had a late dinner after the strum. The black and bleu burger is so tasty, but I swear that I can feel it clogging my arteries. 

Here are some photos Travalon took down at the dock. First is Tux Duck.

The northern shoveler in the waning light of the sunset.

And here he is with his mate.

And here he is with Tux Duck.

A pair of Canada geese. Travalon asks: what do they call them in Canada?

And here are some blue-winged teals.

I don't know where these ducks go in the summer. They all seem to disappear by the end of May. The other day we were talking to a neighbor who said there was a pair of ducks that hangs out in her yard, and I thought it was probably Tux Duck and his mate so I tried to describe him, but she said no, this duck has a yellow and green body and a white head. What?? I am not aware of any duck that looks like that. People seem to be very bad at describing birds. When I told Tiffy about this conversation, she said it sounded like a Packer duck decoy. What kind of duck would you attract with that? I should have asked our neighbor if it had a big G on the side.

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