Brainless Day

 

I recently found out that I can get a free subscription to the New York Times through my job, and so I have been enjoying Wordle every day. People told me I'd be good at it, and Prairie Man said the best word to start with is "canoe" because it has so many vowels, and that has served me well. Maybe too well, because yesterday Wordle asked if I wanted to put it into "difficult mode." No, I do not want to put it into "difficult mode" - I enjoy the illusion of thinking I'm a super-genius because I can usually solve it in three guesses. Life is hard - why should Wordle be unnecessarily hard too?

Last night as one of my Lenten practices, I actually got to bed something like on time, and it's just not working for me. I didn't wake up until my alarm yanked me out of a dream, and my brain never really woke up. For example, I was meeting with a person who is one of those incredibly good people, so decent that they almost don't seem real, like he would never do anything the least bit morally problematic, which has nothing to do with the story but I'm just painting a picture for you. We were paying a bill, and I had to multiply the per capita cost by the number of people, but then I forgot it was for four months and had to redo the form to multiply by four. I wrote out the check... and then put it back in my secure file cabinet and locked it. He said, "Um... don't I need the check?" Why yes, yes you do! I was just keeping it safe for you, see. My chair gave me a strong cup of coffee, and it turns out the two of them know each other, so I didn't even have to introduce them. I'm still a little unclear on how they know each other, but the university is like a big small town - everyone knows each other somehow. I am not sure who the Village Idiot is, so hopefully that doesn't mean it's me...

I walked with Hardingfele at lunch; we don't walk together that often because she usually turns me down. Today she said, "Maybe," and then when I asked her closer to lunch, she said, "Sure." It was a bit cold out, but no wind and very sunny, but she wanted to go into the Horticulture greenhouses. She thought it was wonderful in there, but I was dying in what my coworker calls my "sleeping bag coat" because it goes all the way down to my feet. I also have Spyder gloves that I paid a fortune for a quarter of a century ago, and they are just now getting holes in them so I should probably replace them. Those are some high-quality gloves! Hopefully they still make them - I'd like another pair exactly the same.

I'll try to get to bed on time again today, but after that strong coffee, it may be a waste of time. We shall see.

Famous Hat

Ash Wednesday 2025

 

I am still obsessed with "Ai No Corrida," and I wonder how many other wonderful songs are out there that I have never heard. For example, why do you always hear Post Malone on the radio but you never hear Thundercat? I wouldn't have known about his song "Dragonball Durag" if Colbert hadn't had him on his show. How do I find these great songs that don't get as much exposure?

Today: no social media reels for me! I'm addicted to these short videos. I was also trying to fast all day, and right at the end the chair offered me some cookies, but I said, "It's Ash Wednesday!" Then I apologized for being rude, but she said I wasn't rude. Guess I have to try harder...

The weather was terrible today, and I meant to take a photo out my office window of the "winter wonderland," but of course I kept forgetting. I walked outside on my morning break, but under the roof to avoid the snow, and for some reason my heart rate really spiked. Is that a bad sign? Am I about to die? I was hoping to walk in the big conference room overlooking the lake during my lunch break, and the online calendar said it was free, but someone was in there anyway. This time I know I didn't get the day wrong - it was just someone doing a video call. So I went outside again, and again in the afternoon, and by then the ground was icy. 

When I got to my car, it was covered with ice. I drove to a gas station, but the cover to my gas tank was frozen shut. My windshield wipers were also frozen (I should have put them up), but fortunately the snow had stopped by then, so I didn't need them. No idea what I would have done if I had needed them! I met Travalon at the church on the far east side for Mass, and when I told him about my gas cover, he looked online and found the liquid on the squeegees at the gas stations can help melt the ice. After Mass we went to the gas station closer to our house, and by then the gas tank cover had thawed enough for me to open it without using the squeegee, but the windshield wipers never got free even by the time I got home. Hopefully a night in the garage will thaw them out...

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Niko at Good Friday in the Gym

 

Today I was scheduled to take the afternoon off of work, and I thought about taking the morning off too but decided to go ahead and work. It's a good thing I did, too, because a candidate who is coming for a visit on Monday had all sorts of last-minute questions and emails he couldn't find which we had definitely sent to him, and then our guest speaker who was coming next week had her flight abruptly canceled, so I was trying with no success to cancel hotel rooms and catering charges because it was too last-minute. In my opinion, the airline should have to pay for all this. At least we only have to pay for one night in the hotel, and a professor said his students who were planning to come to the talk as part of his class can probably eat all the food.

I was happy about one thing: last year was the first time we didn't spend down our flex account for healthcare that I can remember, partly because we thought Travalon's procedure was going to be so expensive, but then insurance actually covered it 100%. I had just realized we could have been using flex spending all along for antihistamines, cold medicine, etc., so I made PDFs of all our Walgreens receipts that had FSA spending on them. (Kudos to Walgreens for having such a convenient system for this!) I submitted them yesterday, and already by the end of the day most had been approved. Today we got a deposit for $750, which feels like free money but it's really just my money that I put away coming back to me, kind of like a tax refund. And we'd already spent that money on over-the-counter drugs and COVID tests, so it was definitely just a refund, even if it feels like found money.

Despite how crazy it had been this morning, I took the afternoon off, since at that point all the fires were put out and hopefully any new fires can wait until Monday. I went to the Good Friday service in the gym, and the choir was amazing again. I squeezed Niko in my pocket and constantly shifted my weight during that really, really, really long Gospel, which they chanted so that was lovely. I was amazed by everyone else around me standing still - how do they not get tired and have to shift their weight? What's my problem? The only thing is that we didn't get to do the crowd parts, which I always feel bring home our culpability, as we're all hollering, "Crucify him!" Since there are no kneelers in the gym, we just stood through the really long intercessory prayer part too - usually that's so up and down. Every year I get kind of verklempt when venerating the cross, but I thought, "Not this year. I'm not really feeling it." But of course as soon as I touched the feet of the corpus on the cross, I began to cry. Is it a Pavlovian reaction, like I know I'm supposed to feel sorrow so I've trained myself to do so? Or is it supernatural? Right after that we sang "O Sacred Head, Surrounded," and that just made me cry harder. The only hymn that has even more Lenten lyrics that I know is "Ah, Holy Jesus." The people around me must have thought I was nuts, with tears running down my face. It was right at three too - the hour when Jesus died. So maybe that sounds depressing, but somehow it felt really good, like cleansing or something. I think the woman to my left was crying too, but the person to my right was a young guy, and if he felt contrition, he didn't show it.

It was a beautiful day out, finally feeling a bit like spring, so after the service I took a Stations of the Cross walk in the neighborhood. Here's irony: I had taken a rosary walk between work and the service, and of course I was in a little bit of a hurry, but due to fasting I thought, "Today I won't push myself." So all those times I walked as fast and hard as I could and didn't get vigorous minutes? Today I got not just vigorous minutes but even peak minutes when I was consciously trying NOT to push myself! I don't understand. Anyway, after the service I took my Stations of the Cross chaplet and tried to pray it, but I don't have the stations completely memorized, and sometimes the tiny pictures on the chaplet confused me: is that Jesus meeting his mother? Veronica? the women of Jerusalem? Or wait - is it Simon of Cyrene?

In the evening Jilly Moose picked me up, and we went to the East Side Club for their last fish fry of the season. Rich got there not long after we did, and we got soup and salad while waiting for Travalon. The waitress was so nice - she let us go to the salad bar even though we hadn't officially ordered yet. When Travalon arrived, we all ordered the fish fry. Man, was I hungry! And that was so many calories that my diet app didn't yell at me for eating too few calories today, like it sometimes does on fast days and it won't let me enter the day until I put in some fake calories. Fortunately they don't have dessert, but I was pretty stuffed anyway. Then we all hurried home in time for Night Prayer, led by the Dairyman's Daughter. I sang "Ah, Holy Jesus," since that is the hymn we always sang at the Lutheran Good Friday services. Of course, I couldn't do the part where on verses 2-5 we broke into a cappella four-part harmony. That always gave me the chills, it was so beautiful. Maybe someday I'll experience that again.

Famous Hat

Niko at the Holy Thursday Mass in a Gym

 

Today Travalon dropped me off on campus on his way to work, since he's had to go in earlier this week. I had an in-person meeting, and I took the opportunity to water the plants and do the mail. Weirdly, nobody was responding to my emails, even though they didn't have out-of-office messages, except for someone that I just sent an FYI message to, and she said, "Thanks!" But of course the people I needed to get a hold of didn't respond. 

After work I took the bus back to where I'd parked my car, and then I drove to the church in a gym. It only occurred to me today that this church, being on Atwood Avenue, would count for a fourth of Street Fest, so every time I go to Mass there, I technically could be starting another round of Street Fest. The gym itself is not the most compelling place to go to Mass, but what draws me is the music. I was surprised not to see Mr. N'Awlins there, since he is almost always there on Sundays. Did he go somewhere else? Is he out of town? Who knows? 

I was wearing my cardigan with pockets, and I put Niko in a pocket and squeezed him during Mass. For some reason it's very comforting to feel something soft and fuzzy in your pocket. The Mass was long but beautiful, with responses written by the choir director and "Ave Verum Corpus" by Byrd after communion. Of course they sang "Pange Lingua" and processed around the gym with the sacrament, then they went into the community room, where everyone was welcome to join them... except there wasn't really room for everyone. At nine they were going to do Night Prayer, but I just went home and did Night Prayer over Zoom with Jilly Moose, the Dairyman's Daughter, and Anna Banana II. 

I keep forgetting to mention this, but while we were on our trip, I hooked the gardenia up to the automatic waterer. It must have liked that, because now it's covered with buds, and one opened a few days ago so the kitchen smells wonderful. It has four more buds, so hopefully it blooms again a few more times.

I have decided on a name for my dragon rabbit. It is so beautiful and mysterious, it needs a beautiful and mysterious name, and I was leaning towards it being a girl. After last night, I thought "Tenebrae" would be a perfect name, because it means "darkness" and is a feminine noun in Latin. Jilly Moose and the Dairyman's Daughter approved of the name, so she is now Tenebrae.

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Niko at the Tenebrae Service

 

Today I worked from home, and I thought it would be quiet because everyone's on spring break, but there are other non-faculty people like me who are working, and they all had questions. The good news is that I got a lot of stuff straightened out. During the day Rich sent an email to Jilly Moose, the Dairyman's Daughter, and me, asking if we wanted to meet before the Tenebrae service for dinner, and we all agreed that sounded like a good idea.

After work I grabbed my phone, my wallet, and my Niko, and I drove to St. Patrick's and found a parking spot on the street, although there were plenty in the parking lot. The others soon arrived as well, and we walked up to the Square and went to the first place we saw, the Argus Bar. It claims to be a "bar and grill," but inside there was no sign of food. However, when I asked the bartender for a food menu, his eyes kind of lit up, and he handed them to us. It was pub fair, burgers and chicken sandwiches, but the bartender said they could doctor up my fries with parmesan and garlic, and man were those good! I was the only one who chose the fancy option; the others had plain fries, and Rich had pub chips. 

We walked back to St. Patrick's and sat in a pew together, and my OTHER choir director sat behind us and asked if he could have a program because they had run out. As he pointed out, that was a good sign. The crucifix and all the statues were covered with purple cloth, which added to the somber tone, and there was an all-male (seminarians, I guess) chant choir that really made it feel sacred. The bishop was supposed to lead the Tenebrae service, but something came up, and the priest who told us hinted that it was serious but didn't give any details, so hopefully everything's okay with him. Tenebrae is basically Night Prayer with a candelabra on which they keep extinguishing candles until you are in complete darkness (except at St. Patrick's, where the light from the hallway bleeds in). Fortunately, since we do Night Prayer every night, I knew some of the words by heart by the time it got too dark to read our programs. (Why they bothered to write the stuff after the dark part is beyond me.) When there is one candle left, they take it into the sacristy, and then we all get to whack the pews with our hymnals to make a loud racket, until they bring the single candle out of the sacristy again and everyone falls silent. Not gonna lie, I got a bit verklempt at that point. I would highly recommend the Tenebrae service - it feels very Lenten, and very mystical.

As the four of us headed back to our cars, we still felt a lingering sense of mysticism... until Rich, who was walking in front of me, loudly farted at me. I complained and said he should walk in back if he's going to do that, and he said that's Kathbert's line, since she's the one he's usually farting on. So much for maintaining the solemnity of Tenebrae...

Famous Hat

Singing Our Way Through Illinois

 

Yesterday Travalon and I woke up fairly early and immediately went swimming in our hotel pool, which was wonderful. It was warm, and there was a bathroom right there. Our hotel was right by the Ohio River, and Travalon took a couple of photos. Notice that I am in a cold weather outfit again.

We went to downtown Paducah, which has a lovely riverwalk, but it was a cold morning so Travalon just took a couple of photos of the downtown.

Our hotel hadn't had free breakfast, just an overpriced restaurant, so we went to the Waffle House, since isn't that what you're supposed to do down South? The bacon, egg, and cheese bowl was a lot less calories with grits than with hash browns, so that was a no-brainer, and then we split a waffle with peanut butter chips for breakfast dessert. Actually, it turned out to be brunch, because we didn't eat lunch.

Illinois is a very long and maybe not so interesting state, so I suggested we take turns choosing songs to play that we could sing along with. Sometimes we chose one we could both sing to. This turned out to be a really entertaining way to pass the time, and we've never had such a good time driving through Illinois. We did stop in Vienna to check out an antiques shop; there were no rosaries, but Travalon got a book about haunted southern Illinois and a book about vintage comics. He took a photo of the town hall, or whatever this is.

I didn't need a workout, since the swimming counted for one, so we didn't need to take a long hike. I just walked more than usual at each rest stop, and they were strategically placed so that there was always one just in the nick of time. We did stop for a walk at Rend Lake, where we saw lots of gulls, and I saw a couple of cormorants, but while we were driving so no photos.

We got to El Paso, Illinois, a bit after five, and their big antiques mall was open until six. We looked around, and I even went up the scary stairs to the second level, but there were no rosaries. We did find some other things, and then I saw a cool Chinese stringed instrument, so Travalon bought it for me for an early anniversary present.

It's called a "yueqin," according to the tag. (Ignore the price; it was not nearly that expensive.) Now I just need to learn to play it.

We got to La Salle at 6:30, which was perfect for dinner (though honestly a lot earlier than we usually eat), so we went to the Uptown Grill and had the parmesan-encrusted whitefish, just like we had for lunch on the start of our long journey. Travalon said all the singing was really energizing for him, so he wasn't tired on the drive at all. We got home around ten, unpacked, and went to bed.

Today I worked from home and went through my hundreds of emails. Travalon and I had both thought we should work on our patience for Lent, and mine was certainly tested this evening. On the way to Adoration a truck towing something pulled out right in front of me and then drove way under the speed limit. Just as my adoration hour was ending, Cecil Markovitch called to say he'd completely forgotten about Adoration, but he was on his way. Fortunately there was someone who was going to be there until he arrived, so I was able to head home... and then there were emergency vehicles in my lane, and nobody would let me move over. Welcome home, Famous Hat! 

Famous Hat

Pensacola and Driving Through the Deep South

 

This morning it was cold and rainy. Travalon had to get his oil changed because it was at 15% life left, so he looked up a nearby oil change place and went there... but it was closed. He went to another one... but there was a forty-minute wait. So he went to a third place, getting lost on the Florida State campus, where there was a race going on so a bunch of roads were closed. Finally he found the place and got his oil changed. Meanwhile, I was happily doing DuoLingo and writing in my diary Mariah. Travalon got back just before checkout time, and we headed out... and then he saw there was an oil change place practically across from our hotel in the opposite direction from the one he'd been directed to. Why didn't that one come up first? Who can understand Google searches?

We somehow went south a bit but then found our way to Highway 10, which I really liked because it had a rest area every time I needed one. One had a sign that the toilets were out of order, but they had pretty decent port-a-potties. We stopped for lunch at Beef O'Brady's, a Florida chain, in Defuniak Springs. I had a surprisingly healthy lunch of blackened grilled shrimp, rice, and broccoli. 

The beach we usually go to, Grayton Beach State Park, had flood warnings for the roads leading into it, and besides the weather was miserable, so we just headed straight for Pensacola. Once there, we took a walk around the Palafox Pier and the Plaza de Luna Memorial Monument, featuring a statue of Spanish conquistador Don Tristan de Luna. Here are some photos.

We saw pelicans and a cattle egret.

Then we drove to Mobile, Alabama in time for 5:30 Mass. The church was an unattractive modern one, and I forgot to take a photo of it, but the music was surprisingly wonderful. The opening hymn was another of my Lenten favorites, "Forty Days and Forty Nights," and the closing hymn was that one with the chorus that goes, "Praise the Holy Trinity, Undivided Unity..." but we only did two verses and skipped the one about the Holy Spirit. Even the communion hymn by Marty Haugen wasn't horrible; it was his setting of Psalm 23. I was a bit confused at communion time because a guy came down our aisle, so I thought he would be distributing communion from the back, like they sometimes do at these huge, modern churches. He saw me looking at him and held up a host, so I received it... and then I realized he was going around giving them to people who had mobility issues. So Travalon went up with everyone else to receive from the young priest, and I sat in my pew and sang Marty Haugen.

As we drove on US Highway 45 through Alabama, it was very eerie. It has a weird vibe even in the daytime, but at night it's really eerie with the trees close on either side. We listened to Delta Blues, which is some eerie music, to add to the feeling. I'm not one to like scary movies, but being slightly scared like that was thrilling, so now I get it. In Mississippi the highway widened to four lanes, but we saw some deer that almost ran in front of us. I have always gotten an eerie feeling from Alabama and especially Mississippi, like I can feel the ghosts of angry, murdered black men watching me. The sign for Mississippi, with the S's that look like nooses, did not help. This is the first time I've stayed overnight in this state - I feel like those people who pay a lot of money in Savannah to get locked in a basement overnight with supposedly thousands of ghosts of Confederate soldiers. 

It was after eight when we stopped in Waynesboro for dinner. There were a bunch of chain restaurants, but not even Southern chains like Waffle House, just McDonald's and Burger King and Hardees, like that. We drove around a little and found this place.

The smokehouse was closed, but next door there was a bar and grill that was very lively. We were ignored by the waitresses until the bartender walked by and I caught her attention, so she waited on us. I was happy to go somewhere local, and Travalon had a barbecue burger so at least he got his barbecue. I had chicken with sides of broccoli and macaroni and cheese.

We got to Meridian about a quarter after ten, but the pool was open until midnight (said the front desk lady; in the pool itself, it said it closed at ten) so we hurried down there. It was a lovely, warm pool, but weirdly you had to go outside to get to it in its own building, and we swam for about twenty minutes. Three young guys came in and toked up in the corner by the hot tub, so we weren't sure about using it, but we did go over... and it was cold. This is not the first time I've encountered a pool warmer than the hot tub. Then we couldn't get the key card to open the door to the hotel, so I asked one of the three young gentlemen, figuring they would be highly motivated to get us to leave so they could smoke their wacky weed in peace. One guy came and opened another door just to the left of the one with the key card reader that we hadn't even noticed, so then we felt a bit stupid. Of course, it's like 40 degrees out there, so we weren't inclined to spend a lot of time looking around while dressed only in wet swimsuits.

Travalon wanted me to include this photo.

These are the panthers he was hoping to see yesterday at Homosassa Springs. I guess they are really good at hiding, even in a small enclosure. No wonder they're so hard to spot in the wild!

Famous Hat

Bird Party in Pink

 

Yesterday Julie the taxi driver picked us up in time to get us to the Ash Wednesday service at 8. It was only a communion service, not a Mass, although I'm not sure why since there was a priest there. The opening hymn was one of my favorite Lenten ones, "Again We Keep This Solemn Fast." There was a host on the ground beside me, so I picked it up and gave it to the priest afterwards, since I assume it was consecrated. He himself was white, but he seemed incredibly grateful that some white tourists had bothered to come for Ash Wednesday. Not that many people were there, but a couple of other white tourists also came. I think a lot of people were going to the evening service, which wasn't even a communion service but just a prayer service, and it was being held jointly with the Anglican church next door. There are two main roads on Bimini, the King's Highway and the Queen's Highway, and all the churches seem to be in a row on the Queen's Highway.

We went back to the Fisherman's Village to wait for Jay the taxi driver, and Travalon took a photo of this giant chair.

Jay took us to Nate's Bakery, where we had ordered guava duff, but the woman there said we had never called to confirm, so they hadn't made it. We got some guava bread instead, and that was really good. Then Jay took us to Shipwreck Beach, where the water is an incredible shade of greenish blue, and there is the wreckage of a Haitian ship. Travalon says Jay told him it happened in 1923.

We saw our shuttle, the Jaune II, coming across the water from Florida.

More shots of the gorgeous beach.

Then Jay took us to Radio Beach, where the locals hang out. Travalon took this photo of painted coconuts with his cell phone.

We sat in the shade of these trees for a while watching the waves and the clouds.

Here is our shuttle at the dock.

We took a very arduous walk along the beach, since we sank deep into the sand with every step. It was almost like quicksand. Then we went to a tiki bar on the beach, and I had coconut water right out of a fresh coconut!

Here is the tiki bar.

We walked down to the Craft Market and bought brightly-colored tie-dyed souvenir T-shirts. This museum was right across the street.

Then we went to Ebbie and Pat's, a seafood restaurant right over the water. Here was our view during lunch, which was amazing deep-fried lobster.

We saw a seaplane land right in front of us!

These are gulls. Some of them have a laughing cry.

We also saw pelicans.

This shuttle picks up Silver Level patrons of the hotel from the airport on South Bimini.

This bird stood so still on a pile of discarded conch shells that I thought he was a statue. I asked the waitress about this, and she laughed. She said he is waiting for little crabs to come out of the shells, and then he eats them. I asked her what kind of bird this was, and she said a goolie bird. Of course, the waitress the day before said that mysterious long-tailed bird eating my French fry was a little chickie chick.

I think this might be the antennae of a crab hidden in the conch shell.

We also saw these cute little fish from the dock. And when I was using the restroom, there were gaps between the floorboards, and I saw a nurse shark swim beneath me!

There were some murals around the restaurant. Ebbie is a champion fisherman, and he catches everything made at the restaurant. His wife Pat runs a convenience store, and we got a postcard for Ma Hat there. I'm curious to see if it ever arrives; I also sent one to the gang at work, so we'll see if that one ever arrives.

This is the convenience store.

We went back to the hotel and explored the harbor, then we went up to the top floor to see the sunset. Here are more photos of the infinity pool. I took the first one with my cell phone.

The tram came to take us to the port, and there were so many of us that Travalon and I were practically sitting on top of two sixty-something ladies. At the port we had to stand for an hour, waiting for the ferry, because it had gone to Freeport first and was running a bit behind. There was no bathroom there, but somehow I survived. I did ask one of the customs guys if there was a bathroom there, and he said no, so I asked, "Is there anything I can duck behind?" and he doubled over laughing. One of the ladies we had sat with on the tram told us she ducked behind the building.

Once we were all safely on the ferry, I got into line to buy some water, and the other lady we had sat with on the tram said she had bought a voucher for three cocktails but only wanted one, would Travalon and I each like one? Would we? As far as I know, there is no prohibition against drinking a Bahama Mama on Ash Wednesday! So then I was buzzed while praying the rosary, and the rocking of the boat was very exhilarating. Hardly anyone seemed seasick this time, but someone did throw up in one of the sinks in the women's bathroom. I have to hand it to the ferry crew - they quickly cleaned it up. For some reason a teenage boy from Argentina who was sitting across from us kept asking me questions. Also, there was an insert on the seat ahead of me advertising a commemorative Balearia cup (free refills), and it was a beautiful turquoise, so I decided I wanted one. (Balearia is the company that runs the ferry.) I went up to ask for one, but the crew are more fluent in Spanish than English, and I realized I didn't have the vocabulary to ask for a turquoise commemorative cup. They said that they were $4 each but they didn't have any, so I went back to my seat and got the insert, and then they said they had the display one, which I could have for free because it was dirty. Sorry, no photo yet - soon.

We landed only a little later than scheduled, but by the time we got settled in our hotel, it was nearly midnight, so we just crashed. This morning was crazy because a bunch of people were at the hotel for a cruise that was leaving this morning, so the breakfast area was totally packed. We ate at a table in the pool area. Then we set off for the Everglades, and we passed the Hard Rock Casino, that looks like a guitar. At night it is lit up red, but we were too far away to get a photo of that. We passed right by it this morning.

We got to the Everglades, but the Shark Valley Visitors' Center was so crowded that there was a long line to get in, and a sign said the parking lot was full, so we parked outside and walked in. They charge $35 a car and $20 per walk-in, but when I pointed out that it was unfair that we had to pay more when we had to walk further, the guy kindly charged us the vehicle rate. There were so many people that we couldn't get on a tram for three hours, so we walked on the boardwalk, but in the heat of the day not many birds were around. We did see some egrets and little blue herons together in a field.

We didn't stay long, so that we would still have the energy to get back to the car. According to my FitBit, it was almost an hourlong walk for our whole visit. I said we might have more luck in the swamp than in the marsh, because the swamp has trees so it has shade. Indeed, when we got to the Big Cypress Visitor Center, we went along their boardwalk and saw egrets, anhingas, alligators, and all sorts of fish.

Here is a snowy egret.

This is a cattle egret, which is much smaller.

Here they are together so that you can see the size difference.

This female anhinga was drying her feathers.

And this one was sitting in a tree right by us. We could almost reach out and touch her.

I know these fish are alligator gars.

This is another cattle egret. Later we did see a bunch in a field with cows.

Here is a snowy egret.

Another female anhinga.

As we continued along Alligator Alley, I saw a large, pink bird land in a tree. Travalon offered to go back to find it, but we didn't see it. We did see these bizarre storks.

I've never seen anything like that in Wisconsin! Here's a cattle egret.

Travalon said the pink bird was probably a spoonbill. As we drove along, we saw the most incredible bird party: it had spoonbills, egrets, ibises, and those weird storks.

Look at that crazy beak!!

Here are the ibises.

I want to hear whatever joke the spoonbill below is laughing at!

A young couple in a sports car pulled over to see what we were looking at. They spoke English, but it was not their native language. (I'm not sure what was.) I let them look through my binoculars, and they were delighted with the beautiful pink spoonbills.

We kept driving along Alligator Alley and stopped at the boardwalk we had discovered on an earlier trip to Florida. It never disappoints. We saw alligators, a great blue heron, and a snowy egret. We saw an anhinga swimming, but every time Travalon tried to take her photo, she dove below the water.

We stopped for lunch at the Cuban restaurant in Chokolashee, in the Ten Thousand Islands, where we had eaten last year. It was so lovely in the shade, but they stopped playing Cuban music because some guy with a guitar sang and played Grateful Dead and Johnny Cash, which I'm not totally opposed to, but it doesn't go with the ambiance. We had the red snapper again, and I had a watermelon liquado, the same color as the spoonbills. The owner (?) told us he had been kayaking earlier and was about ten feet away from some spoonbills, and he had seen a number of panthers, including a black one. I've heard of black leopards and jaguars, but not Florida panthers, so maybe what he saw was an escaped black leopard from a zoo. Anyway, here's my fancy (non-alcoholic) drink.

Next we went to the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, where we had gone hiking with Richard Bonomo on his birthday last year. It looks like a jungle!

We didn't see any panthers, but we did hear something interesting - I'm not sure if it was a bird or an insect. I didn't think to make a video of the sound. After that we drove north, and we found somewhere to pull over to take photos of the sunset.

Travalon said I could tell this story: we got to our hotel, and his key wasn't working for our room. Suddenly a guy opened the door, and we were very confused - had they given us the same room as him? But I asked Travalon to double-check the room number they gave us, and he had gotten it wrong. Luckily the guy just thought it was funny - he wasn't freaked out at all that we tried to get into his room.

It was late, and we hadn't eaten yet, so we walked to the bar and grill conveniently located next door to our hotel. A live jazz band was playing, but then the hostess said they were closing in five minutes. We ended up just going to McDonald's, which has taken all the healthy options off the menu so I just had a cheeseburger. I asked if I could have a kids' sized shamrock shake, and I think the girl felt sorry for me because they no longer had the three things I had tried to order, so she said that wasn't on the menu either but she could make me a tiny one for no charge. That was perfect - just a small taste of shamrock shake.

Time for some DuoLingo bragging!

The green owl doesn't give me time off, even when I'm on vacation.

Famous Hat