Jolly Bob in Bloom Again

 

As promised, here is the video of the Holiday Train:

I hope that it was worth the wait.

Also, here are our stuffed Christmas trees, which all have smily faces, though it's hard to see on the middle one:

Today after Mass, Travalon and I met Tiffy at the Venezuelan restaurant for brunch. They have a display with a child's dress and a tiny ukulele.

I wonder if it's playable? After Tiffy left, I went to my Brazilian drum lesson, which was delayed because two members of the official Brazilian drumming group who had just gotten back from Rio de Janeiro gave a presentation. I got there a little early for the presentation, which was supposed to start a half hour before our lesson (spoiler alert: it didn't), and I heard the official group practicing. They have people singing, and I thought how much better I'd be at singing than drumming. How do I get that gig? Might as well use those three semesters of Portuguese I studied thirty years ago, right?

Travalon picked me up afterwards, and we went home to watch that disappointing Packers game, though I suppose it was not a disappointment for my uncle who lives in Denver. It's always the worst when the Pack look good early in a game and then just fall apart. I kept thinking I smelled a wonderful fragrance, so I asked Travalon, and he smelled it too. It smelled like when Jolly Bob bloomed two years ago, and when Lazarus bloomed this past summer (they are both dracaenas), so I went into the loft and found this on top of Jolly Bob:

Greg is a dracaena too, but it has never bloomed. I don't even know if it will survive, since it's leaned against the windows in the living room, being too tall to hang out anywhere else in our condo, and right now that has got to be way too cold for a tropical plant like Greg. Anyway, I sent that photo to Tiffy, and she sent me a couple of cool photos of her orchid and her Christmas cactus in bloom, with Christmas lights in the background.

The ukulele group was asking for stories that we could "blame it on the ukulele," so I sent the story of my first ukulele lesson. The leader said, "That is a unique story." I even dug up the video of it:

I will note that my brother's response to this video was, "I hate you!" Of course, he was in Minnesota, which can be very cold in mid-March, while I was gazing out at the ocean in a tropical paradise. That was probably the highlight of my ukulele's existence, because I doubt if it was being dragged out into the cold just to not actually be played at the East Side Club Christmas Party.

Famous Hat