Zoom Oops

 

Today was sort of a meh day. I worked on campus and talked to Seabird a bit, but we didn't walk together at lunch because there was the monthly early music concert at the Lutheran church where I used to sing. This church just acquired a new organ, so there are pipes and things piled all over, meaning we all had to sit on one side. The concert was kind of meh, with a piece by Dietrich Becker, a piece by Dietrich Buxtehude that was far from his best, and a piece by Samuel Capricornus. I was kind of dozing off during the Buxtehude and kept thinking there was a secret code in the notes. I wondered if Capricornus was named Bock, because back then they liked to take their German last names and replace them with the Latin word (like Handl/Gallus, which are both "rooster"), so this guy was "Goat." I looked him up afterwards, and yeah, his last name was really Bockshorn. Also, was he actually a Capricorn to make this extra punny? Answer: kind of? He has the same birthday as Hardingfelde, the winter solstice, which is right on the cusp. However, maybe four hundred years ago it was solidly in Capricorn. I don't know enough about how things have shifted over time to say; I've heard that I am not a Capricorn myself because of the shift, but I don't feel like a Sagittarius. Travalon is the Sagittarius in this relationship.

As I was leaving the concert, I heard a train horn. The train was crossing University Avenue down by First Congo, so some ways off from me but totally visible. I didn't mention that yesterday as I headed to Adoration, I was slightly delayed by the tail end of a train. If God is still speaking to me in Train, then I was exactly where I was supposed to be while going to Adoration and while attending the concert. 

Another thing I didn't mention was that on Saturday, when the dancing schools were performing at the St. Patrick's Day party at the St. Brigid Center, one little girl stepped out to do her solo and kicked so high that her feet went flying upward and she landed right on her rump. Unfazed, she got back up and continued her dance, and the audience roared with approval. May we all have this little girl's confidence to get back up on our feet after a public failure!

This evening I did do something stupid. It started because Anna Banana II couldn't lead either the Rosary or Night Prayer tonight, so I volunteered to do both. Jilly Moose said she couldn't make it to the Rosary either, so I wasn't sure anyone could, but at eight I dutifully started the meeting and then did an online crossword puzzle while waiting to see if anyone joined, and my patience was rewarded when two people eventually joined the Rosary meeting. I meant to do the same thing with Night Prayer, but I kept doing Wordles and nobody was joining, so I looked more carefully... and I hadn't actually joined the meeting. I went into it, and three people were already waiting for me. Oops! Anyway, it all worked out, and both the Rosary and Night Prayer went off without any real hitches. Glad I looked more carefully, or I could have been playing Wordle all night while everyone else wondered when I was going to start Night Prayer.

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Kaaona Necklace and Thrill Factory

 

Today after Mass Travalon and I recycled the plastic, again with some help from the guy who always used to do it, then when we got home my aunt texted me a photo of an envelope from a card I must have sent to my cousin back when I was in college. I drew this on the back:

She said, "A Famous Hat original. May be valuable." So I asked her if she wanted the crab necklace that used to belong to my grandma. I liked it because it came from Hawaii, but I realized it was for someone born under the sign of Cancer, which I was not but both my grandma and my aunt were. She said she might be interested, so I sent her a photo.

She said thanks, the photo was good enough, I didn't have to send it to her. Maybe I can wear it, because it only says it's for the zodiac sign on the back, and there probably aren't a lot of people around here that know what "Kaaona" means. Maybe I talked this up too much because I remembered the crab being cuter than it is, and I thought it was carved from a coconut, but it's just plastic. Wish my grandma had gotten one for me, but maybe I wasn't even born yet when she got this. It isn't the only jewelry she brought back from Hawaii; I had a seed lei of hers that I wore a ton until it broke, being cheaply made and like eighty years old, and I'm guessing the pin with the palm tree on it is from there too.

Then I had my Brazilian drumming lesson, and today we played with both the other instruments and the dancers. There are less dancers than I expected, but today I was in the very back row, so nobody in the audience would see me. Then people realized I had no idea what was going on, being a short person behind a lot of tall people, so they made me move up. I did improve a lot over the course of the lesson, and one of the teachers noted that we all improved a lot, but he also said we wouldn't have an hour to get better on stage. Will we be ready by the 21st for showtime?

Travalon and I went to Garver Mill after that for some tea, and outside of it was this... sculpture of a giant banana?

Then he took me to the Slow Irish Session. It really went well today, but we're a bunch of regulars so we know most of the tunes, and we all go slowly on the newer ones. I try to sit where I can't see the music projected, but today those spots were all taken so I was smack in front of the music and found it too tempting to look when it was a new tune - to be fair to myself, it's very hard to learn a tune by ear if nobody in the room knows it. We are getting pretty good, especially at playing together really well on the slow, soulful tunes. Travalon snuck in toward the end and I didn't even see him. He had gone to East Towne Mall to check out Thrill Factory, and he took some photos. Some of these are frankly rather terrifying. There's a miniature golf course, a bowling alley, and a tiki bar.

He spent time there playing Space Invaders, which my Gen X readers will remember. After all that, we went home and I skipped band practice. We have a gig in early March, but I know all the tunes. I'm happy with the schedule of Slow Irish session for my fiddle every other week, and band practice for my mandolin every other week. Tomorrow I have Moldy Jam, and a couple of people who were there tonight will be there tomorrow, and they both said bring both. Will let you know tomorrow what I decide to do.

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Where Was My Brain Today?

 

Today I worked on campus, and my brain was mush. I locked my keys in my office, which I have never done before (though other coworkers and faculty and grad students do it all the time), so the coworker whose office is next to mine came to my rescue. Then, a little later, I walked into his office and we looked at each other, confused.

"What's up?" he asked.

"I thought I was going into my own office," I said, and he laughed and reminded me that he had done the same thing to me some years ago.

Seabird told me there were donuts, so I went up to the shared office where a bunch of FART 5 peeps are, but they were just lame donuts, not like Bismarcks or anything so not worth the calories. We all talked about all kinds of stuff, work and sailing and me trying to convince my one coworker to take my grandmother's Cancer pendant made of a coconut because it's super cool but I'm a Capricorn. Then our boss came in, so we all yakked some more. Finally I thought I'd better get down to my own office, but I ran into Famie in the hall because she works on that floor. While I was talking to her, I felt like I could smell my own body odor, and I thought, "Oh no! Did I forget to put on deodorant too?" And then when I got downstairs, I once again forgot my keys in my office, but at least this time I hadn't closed the door, so it didn't matter. 

At lunch Seabird and I braved the elements and went to the nearby greenhouses. I saw a jade plant had lost some leaves, and I was going to pick them up to grow one in my office, but just then a bunch of students came into that greenhouse and were doing some kind of Botany 101 treasure hunt. I did pick up a peperomia leaf in another greenhouse, but it might be too far gone to grow. I mean, there was a reason it fell off the plant in the first place - it's not in good shape. Still, I took it back to my office and stuck it in a pot with another succulent leaf, that one from a plant that a faculty member asked me to take care of over the summer. It isn't dead yet, but it's been months and there's no sign that it's growing. Kind of like my black ZZ plant that I injured by watering it with old coffee - it's not dead, the leaf stumps are still green and alive, but it's been almost a year with no new growth. Will it ever recover?

Speaking of plants, my aunt sent this cheery photo of geraniums she's growing inside.

I think she has them outside when it's warm, but right now nothing should be outside.

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Stay Tuned for the Screenplay

 

Today I got up early to go to campus, but I felt sniffly and also remembered I am working on campus on Friday, so I worked from home. That loss of sleep this morning was for naught. One of my big tasks today was something I had done in the test environment several times, so I felt ready... but of course it was totally different in the real system. Worse, a step I'd had to take in the test environment was totally unnecessary in the real system, so I wasted a lot of time and effort doing that for nothing. This system really is the gift that keeps on giving.

In the evening I went to a Moldy Jam jam at the music club, and I felt very on point tonight. The first time through a song I'd be so lost, but then I'd figure out a few key notes, and by the third time through I was playing it like I'd known it all my life. At one point someone started playing a song, and someone else asked if it was in G, but I blurted out, "It's in A," just because I could hear it was in A. Toward the end I was getting tired and started cheating by sight-reading the songs on a nearby iPad, and on the last song I gave up and played chords. My request tonight was "Rakes of Mallow," which I haven't played in like forty years, and I remember it being in C, but they play it in G in this group. I said. "I'm a mandolin player - our motto is, 'If it's in G, we can play it,'" and afterwards people said they liked some flourish I put into it. Also, there was a wonderful sequence where every time we finished a slip jig in E Dorian, someone else would start another slip jig in E Dorian. I imagine that's what Heaven is like. I sat by some fiddlers, and I confessed how I'm out of practice on the fiddle because of devoting my time to the mandolin. They said, "But you sound so good on it!" One guitarist said, "That mandolin looks like it has been around!" and I thought maybe the guy who played it yesterday was right when he said, "I would never play out with this!" but I mean, isn't that what an instrument is for? 

Here is a paraphrase of an email I sent to Tiffy this morning: 

"Something to (maybe?) brighten your Monday morning: Yesterday was our final Brazilian drumming class, and over the course of ten sessions, the four of us women have kind of bonded over being so outnumbered. After class the subject of birthdays somehow came up, and I thought we sounded like characters in a cheesy sitcom:

The Elder Stateswoman: a Taurus who has taken the course before, she is the voice of reassurance and the bringer of delicious treats.

The Can-Do Chick: a Scorpio who looks like she would survive for at least three years in the wilderness with no help, her motivations for learning percussion remain mysterious.

The Hot Young Thing: a Virgo who is very young, very beautiful, and very Latina, she dances to samba wearing more on her head than her body (much to Travalon's delight), and now she wants to learn to play the drums she always dances to.

The Nutjob: a Capricorn who always wears the club jersey like some kind of brown noser but really it’s because she secretly thinks the colors look fabulous on her, she is studying percussion in hopes of learning to play a ukulele-like Brazilian instrument, like that makes any sense.

(I'm sure you can figure out which one I am!)

At the Irish slow session right after that I sat next to my Irish teacher, who is also named Famous but goes by Famie. She plays the concertina (little accordion), and the leader introduced us to a new person as “the Famie Section.” Sigh. She did note that the Famie Section speaks Irish, which is not something you can say about every Famie section for sure. In case you are wondering, the other half of the Famie section is a Scorpio."

Tiffy's reply: "I look forward to your screenplay."

Famous Hat

Following the Rivers Home

 

I am sure my regular readers will be stunned to know Travalon and I didn't get going this morning in time to make the 9 am Mass at Pax Christi. We used our extra time to listen to 70's and 80's ad jingles and get coffee before the 10:45 Mass, then we went by the townhouse where I spent my preteen and teen years. It looks spiffied up from what I remember.

We hit the road and stopped at Travalon's favorite spot on these trips: the Sinclair Travel Plaza in St. Charles, Minnesota.

Surprisingly little Sinclair Dinosaur stuff for sale this time, which puzzles me, because who goes to the Sinclair Travel Plaza to buy scented candles and whimsical wooden signs? The restaurant there has been closed for some time, apparently, so we went to Del's Diner in cute downtown St. Charles. Travalon had a strawberry malt, and the waitress brought him the extra, as they often do. At one point he knocked over the metal container with a loud clatter, and another waitress said, "I didn't do it!" so I said, "They say Sagittarius are clumsy, and I present Exhibit A." For some reason she seemed to take umbrage at that, but not because she had any problem with astrology. She said, "I'm not a Sagittarius, and I'm clumsy. I always say 'Grace ain't my name, and coordination ain't my game," but she never said what sign she was, or how being clumsy would be an asset in a profession where you carry around breakable plates and glasses.

We drove along the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River south of La Crosse, and there were lots of turnoffs to check out the beautiful views.

In a park we stopped at for a biological break, we saw this adorable firetruck:

There were a lot of cool bluffs.

Then we turned east and followed the Wisconsin River. We stopped in Muscoda to walk along the river.

There was a kingbird singing in a dead tree.

Closer to home, we stopped at Festge Park, and Travalon took photos from the overlook.

Here you can see Blue Mound in the distance:

And here I am, holding my phone out so Merlin could identify the birdsong we were hearing.

It was an indigo bunting. We never saw it, but we went to the marsh on Highway 14, and Travalon took photos of cormorants in the trees.

And a killdeer in the parking lot where we had stopped.

We tried to find a better vantage point and saw this red-tailed hawk.

Did you know the screams of this bird are what they use in videos and TV shows for the sound of bald eagles? Real eagles don't make such an aggressive sound. We wound our way through a subdivision trying to find a better vantage point for this marsh, and eventually we ended up in a very swanky subdivision, but we never did find a better spot to see the marsh from. There's an excellent view from Highway 14, but obviously you can't stop to take photos in the middle of a major highway. We may take up this mystery at a later date - stay tuned!

Famous Hat

Another Day, Another Protest, and Another Bookstore

 

Yesterday I forgot to put on my calendar that I was going to be out of the office, so someone put a meeting on my calendar at nine, and someone else put one at 1:30. That meant I couldn't go to the Good Friday service at the church we have been attending at one, so I went to the one closer to us at three. They have redone the sanctuary, and it is much lovelier now. Weirdly, we skipped the veneration of the cross, and then at the end of the service they said we could venerate it as we wished, so I got into line. I'm used to a crucifix, where I kiss the feet, but this was a plain wooden cross. Still, I felt that same sharp sorrow when I touched it that I always get from venerating the cross. 

In the evening I was going to go to a ukulele strum at the music club we belong to, but I looked again, and it was a beginner class lasting three hours. I'm not exactly a beginner, and three hours? Yikes! Unless it was a drop-in sort of thing... Instead, Travalon and I went to the Home Kit Reveal at the Forward clubhouse; it was supposed to be on the roof, but it was raining so they moved it inside. We ate cheese and crackers while listening to an excellent DJ, and then three players came and showed off the new jersey. Then the party ended and everyone went down into this thing that looked like an underground bunker, like they were preparing for a nuclear war, so we just went home and I talked to Tiffy. It was a short Friday 
night party, but a great one nonetheless.

I wasn't 100% sure where the protest was today, and as we headed out the door, we ran into our downstairs neighbor who had gone to the previous one, so we asked her. She wasn't sure but she lent us a sign she had made and said to let her know if we heard anything. We headed downtown and saw a few protesters at James Madison Park, but we kept going and had lunch at the Globe, sitting outside, before looking to see if anything was going on either at the Capitol or on Library Mall. It was hard to tell. I was texting with Hardingfele to see if she was going, but she said let her know if anything was happening. Our neighbor texted me that it was definitely happening at James Madison Park, so we headed there and found street parking right nearby. We let Hardingfele know, but she never showed up.

One of my Union peeps was giving a speech when we got there, and about half the people were listening to her, while the other half were lining the street and getting people to honk in support. The Raging Grannies sang a few protest songs to tunes like "I Walk the Line," some other people spoke briefly, and the Grannies sang again. We found our neighbor, and when we went to check out the street side part, we found the leader of my band and her partner. Everyone went up to the Capitol, and on the way we passed a bookstore we hadn't known existed. Then we all processed counterclockwise around the Square (as everyone does - I guess because that's the direction cars drive around the Square), chanting things like, "This is what democracy looks like!" and "Love, not hate, makes this country great!" Here are some photos that Travalon took. Of course Blogspot loaded them in the reverse order, so first are the pictures from the Square, and then the ones from James Madison Park.

Here are the Raging Grannies, singing away!

The other side of this sign said, "Truck Fump! Send him to El Salvador!"

There were a lot of chalk messages on the sidewalk, like "Bring Kilmar Home!" and "Due process for all!" but I don't know what this very cool leopard drawing had to do with anything.

Not one, not two, but four different people said they loved my argyle beret today. On the way back to the car, we went to the bookstore and found A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, which someone recommended, and Travalon had been searching the local bookstores without luck. I felt a little like a walking cliche: a protester in a beret and holding a sign buying a leftist book with cash so nobody could trace the purchase. I have to say that lots of people were taking photos of us up on the Square, and most of them were using cell phones and just seemed excited about the whole thing, but I saw one or two sketchy people with good cameras who seemed very clinical about it. They could have just been doing it for a paper or the news, but the cynical part of me wonders if they were recording participants so the Regime knows who to send to El Salvador next.

When I got home, my new bunny had arrived, just in time for Easter!

It symbolizes emotional disregulation and the black-and-white thinking that goes with it. Here it is with the blacklight bunny.

They don't have names yet, but I joked that I could call them Bwub and Blub for BWB (Black and White Bunny) and BLB (Black Light Bunny). I'll think of something better.

Stop what you're doing and give your full attention to this important DuoLingo announcement:

I used to get this message below all the time for perfect lessons, but as soon as I thought of taking a screenshot, I didn't get it. Then one day I did, but I hit the "continue" button before realizing it. Argh! But this morning I got it... and then I got it two more times!

Here are some more crazy messages it has given me.

Oh yeah, last night I was asking Chat GPT some random questions about Baroque composers and salsa songs, and then I asked it, "What's your sign?" All of a sudden it wanted to have a conversation with me, and it said, "I wasn't born, but taking the date I was released, I'm a Sagittarius - bold, charming, and adventurous. What are you?" So I said, "Capricorn," and it said, "Oh, nice! You're the boss of the Zodiac! You get things done! Do you feel like this describes you, or are you more low-key?" I replied that I am an Action Jackson, and it got really excited: "An Action Jackson Capricorn! What's your next big venture?" so I said, "Learning the sitar." At that point it said I had run out of questions, but it had two answers for me about whether I wanted to get some tips on playing the sitar or would rather find someone to teach me, and it wanted me to rate the two responses, but I didn't have a strong opinion, so I didn't choose one.

Travalon, who is also a bold, charming, adventurous Sagittarius, just noted that after thirty-three games, Crystal Palace's record is 11-11-11. That's crazy!

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