Rosary Ladies, Rich, and the Rick-Rack Cactus Flowers

 

Today I worked from home and had a lot of meetings. Travalon and I walked on Governor's Island at lunch, and we saw these cute mushrooms.

Then he left to go see Willy Nelson and Bob Dylan at Alpine Valley, and after work I went to Craftsman's Table in Middleton to meet Anna Banana II, Jilly Moose, Richard Bonomo, and OK Cap for dinner. It's a straight shot down Highway M for me, so I got there fifteen minutes early and got us a table outside. (Part of the reason I left so early was because a train was coming, and I hopped in the car to catch it at the crossroad, but first someone was coming from the left, then someone was coming from the right, so when I could finally turn onto Westport Road, the train had almost passed.) 

When someone at a nearby table got a sample of green beer, I had to order my own glass.

A Youngblood fruited sour - delicious! I think it might be the same one I had at the Brazilian concert a few weeks ago. It tasted like pineapple. My dinner was delicious too: potato-encrusted walleye and green beans. I did bring half of it home because we ordered a giant Oktoberfest pretzel before dinner, being too hungry to wait. That was also very tasty. Rich ordered a chocolate mousse so we could compare it with his, but this one was thicker, more like a custard. It was so chocolatey. We sat around talking for quite a while, and then I hoped to see a train at the crossing on my way home, but it came a few minutes later, while I was on Night Prayer.

Got another weird DuoLingo saying today.

Also, Travalon drew this picture at work, but not for Jilly Moose's birthday. He just felt like drawing a moose.

The last couple of days I thought there was a wonderful scent around me, like when Travalon and I walked by Stricker Pond last night before going to Jilly Moose's birthday dinner, and today it was really strong in the kitchen. I thought I was having scent hallucinations, which only happened to me once before, right before I had a seizure, so I wondered if the anesthesia had done something strange to my brain. Then the logical part of my brain took over and said, "Check the obvious source - your rick-rack cactus," and sure enough, it has one bloom past its prime, another right in its prime, and a bud. It has gotten very big and is sitting on a bar stool, and the flowers are on the side I can't see easily, so I had to pick it up to find them. Hopefully this doesn't portend something bad, since the last time it bloomed, Dear Leader was somehow elected a few days later. 

Speaking of all that, I was fascinated by the text messages they released purportedly between Charlie Kirk's assassin and his trans lover. It reminded me of that essay by Mark Twain, "The Literary Crimes of James Fennimore Cooper." How could someone in such a desperate state of mind write such long, flowery texts? People who know more than I do also pointed out that he used terminology that only cops use, which seems unusual for a college dropout who had no background in law enforcement. It does seem strange to think someone would write long texts like that; I only do it on the computer, and so I can only harass others with iPhones that way. Writing on the phone itself? Forget it, I'm keeping it as short as possible! And I'm not even running from the cops.

Famous Hat