Shamrock Club St. Patrick's Day Party 2026

 

Today after Mass and recycling the plastic, Travalon and I had to hurry up to Waunakee for the Shamrock Club St. Patrick's Day party. We bought fifteen raffle tickets and then watched the Trinity Irish Dancers put on a show before dinner sitting across from the Irish Person of the Year. When Travalon asked him what the secret is to being named Irish Person of the Year, he replied, "Be born Jewish." He is Jewish, but his mother died when he was very young, and his stepmother was Irish so he learned a lot from her. He is very entertaining - he said in his capacity as Irish Person of the Year, he was declaring a Club song, which was that "I'm a man you don't meet every day" song you always hear at Irish singalongs. Despite all our raffle tickets, not one of our numbers was drawn, but someone gave Travalon a ticket because their number had been drawn multiple times, so he got some Irish tea and a tea towel that is green but not particularly Irish - it has owls on it. I wore the shamrock socks someone gave me at the last Shamrock Club party because his numbers kept getting chosen and ours never were. We are always unlucky that way. We didn't have any of our tickets drawn at the wild game feast either.

Then we had to rush to the cemetery because Richard Bonomo decided we would put flowers on Mr. Why's grave today without consulting me about whether it was a good day. It was a beautiful day weatherwise, so after Rich took the requisite photo of Kathbert, Pete the Sailor Man, me, and himself in front of the grave to send to Mr. Why's family back in Singapore, Travalon and I took a walk at Jackson's landing to try to see swans. It was too swampy to get to the place where we might have been able to see them, but he did take a photo of Mariner's from across the river. You can see the lighthouse that I hope they spare when they build the new restaurant.

We went back to Cherokee Marsh and saw a young eagle on a muskrat lodge.

There were lots of common mergansers.

I like this photo of a male mallard and female common merganser gazing at each other.

I heard a woodpecker and thought it was the pileated one, so I followed the sound and discovered a trail we had never seen before - we will have to come back and explore it. We went to the spot where we had seen swans last week, but all we saw were a ton of scaups.

This is another kind of duck, but I'm not sure what. It looks a bit like a ruddy duck, but not reddish enough.

Travalon also got some shots of goldeneyes, but they aren't clear enough to post. We went to Tenney Park too, but we didn't see anything there. Then we came home, and I prayed a rosary while fighting to stay awake. At one point I lost the fight and woke up thinking, "Who is that oil baron? Hey, don't get stuck on that magnate!" which is a pun, since "magnate" sounds like "magnet" and things get stuck on magnets. So that's what my brain does when it's supposed to be reflecting on the Third Glorious Mystery - it writes dad jokes. And not even good ones, if in fact it can be said that there are ANY good dad jokes...

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