Slipjig at the Malt House

 

Today I worked from home, and at first my work computer wouldn't start - it would just smile at me.

I thought, "Oh no, is this going to be a reprise of yesterday?" but by the end of the day all the knots from yesterday were untangled. After work I went to Adoration, then I met Travalon at the Malt House to hear a band called Slipjig. Daithi was in the band, as he seems to be in every band, like Currach (another Irish band that we go listen to at Alt Brew) and Yid Vicious, a klezmer band. However, at the break I was talking to the mandolin player who had been to my left at the Irish session on Sunday (the older one, not the critical young hot one), and Daithi came over and said he was substituting for someone else. He seemed to know who I was, except that he thought I was an Irish teacher, so I had to admit that no, I am merely a student of the language. I'm starting to feel like Daithi is our local equivalent of that horn player Travalon and I saw in New Orleans years ago, where we saw three different bands on three different nights, and he was in every single one.

My cuddly rosary is so red, I noticed for the first time today that it seems to glow in the sun. And that usually means a thing will glow under blacklight. I hadn't thought of it in all these years, because usually neon colors like pink and orange and lime green glow, but red can too. Check it out!

And this photo doesn't even do justice to how beautiful the red wool looks under the blacklight.

The Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player had sent me an article about how a town in Germany that shares my married name is not allowed to use their slogan "I Love Wank" by the Ski Federation because while the word in German just means a slope or a bend in a river, it means self-pleasuring in British English. She said this is an example of the Scunthorpe Problem, where innocuous words can be banned by computer programs, because the name of the town in England contains a vile word for female genitalia. Apparently some computer programs will replace offensive words with less offensive ones, so for example one program replaced the word "ass" with the word "butt." Not sure why that is an improvement, but it did result in this wondrous word for the killing of an important personage: buttbuttination. I love that it is completely pronounceable. 

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Paradise for Train Fans

 

I have no idea why, but I can't get the hotel WiFi to work, and even my phone's hot spot won't work, which is really weird, so I'm actually writing this on Travalon's Chromebook. This means all the awesome photos we took today will have to wait for another day, but at least I can write something.

This morning I woke up from a weird dream where I was trying to find a video that had been taken off the internet, and then I was walking down State Street with Tiffy and we saw a flying fish fly by. "That's weird," I said, "we're not anywhere near the ocean," and then we saw all sorts of other sea creatures blowing by in the wind... and then I woke up. 

Travalon and I got on the road about 10:30 and didn't hit any bad weather at all. As we drove along, my regular readers will be stunned to know that I needed to make a pit stop. We were right outside of Rockford, and when we took the first exit we came to, we were heading right toward the Hard Rock Casino. Now they have Hard Rock Cafes in major cities all over the world, like Tokyo and Rio and Bangkok and Dubai and Sydney and London and New York... and now Rockford? The only thing rock-worthy to come from there is the band Cheap Trick, and Travalon doesn't like them, although to me they sound just the same as a lot of the other classic rock he likes. Anyway, he'd been hoping to see it, so here was our chance! He lost a dollar in the slots while I used the very nice bathroom, where a woman asked me all sorts of questions about my Third Eye toque. She asked if it were good luck, and I said, "It means you're aware," but I should have added, "of a deeper reality." Then Travalon and I went to the gift shop, and he got a T-shirt, but of course the only things I liked were jewelry and purses that were over $200, so I didn't get anything. It seems weird to get fine jewelry at a Hard Rock Cafe, but man, some of it sure was beautiful!

Our next stop was the Railroad Park in Rochelle. It's a little park with a museum (only open Wednesday-Saturday), public bathrooms that thankfully were open, a gazebo, and a picnic pavilion, all between two sets of railroad tracks. It's the junction of two major railroad lines, so trains are running through all the time, and we saw three just in our short time there. Travalon made some videos, which I probably won't be able to post until we get back home. Let me tell you, this place is paradise for train fans, and it's only an hour and a half away from Madtown, so we will be back at some point.

Our next stop was the Uptown Grill in LaSalle, which I have written about before. We stop there every time we go by, and we always get the parmesan-encrusted whitefish with lemon butter and capers. They also have a delicious bread basket with a slice of French bread, a slice of focaccia, and a fancy cracker for each of us, and I had what was basically fancy succotash for my side, while Travalon had garlic mashed potatoes. Then we split their dark chocolate brownie for dessert. This place never disappoints!

Once we arrived in Springfield, we went to our hotel and unloaded everything, including my family heirloom mandolin and an amaryllis someone had abandoned at a rest stop. (I think they didn't realize amaryllis go dormant, so they massively overwatered it and then left it on top of a vending machine - we'll see if it can recover.) Then we went to downtown Springfield and started at the Lincoln Home Historic Site, which was not open at that hour, and we walked to the old Capitol Building. We saw Christmas lights and heard a train with a horn so loud that it sounded like a pipe organ playing a crashing chord. Then we went to the Lincoln depot, which is where he left from for his inauguration, and we heard another train coming, but it was several blocks away, and it had that loud horn too. The ones in Rochelle just had a regular train horn, but the train we saw in Springfield was an Amtrak passenger train, so maybe that's the difference. We also saw a tall, ugly cylinder of a building, and I wanted to see what it was. Travalon said it was a hotel he was going to book us at because it overlooks the Capitol (the new one) (maybe both), but it had a bunch of one-star reviews that the WiFi didn't work, the heat didn't work, the hot water didn't work, the elevators didn't work, the restaurant was always closed, the pool was closed, etc. so he chose our current hotel on the edge of town. He said the manager replied to the bad reviews by saying that if more people stayed there, he could afford to fix all those issues. Indeed, it did look like not too many people were staying there. We went in so I could use the bathroom, and nobody was at the check-in desk. (Oh yeah, the reviewers said the staff were rude too.) I felt bad, since it's a vicious cycle: the more bad reviews they get, the less people stay there. But this is not my fault, nor is it my problem, so I just have to let it go. More than one person said the building makes a weird sound in the wind, which would keep me up at night wondering if the building were going to collapse, so I'm really glad we didn't stay there.

We went to a local restaurant called Abe's Hideout for a light dinner after that big lunch, and they were showing the Packer game, so that was perfect. The Packers were beating up on the scoreless Saints, so it wasn't an exciting game to watch. I brought half my flatbread back to the hotel because we have a fridge in the room, unlike that much-maligned hotel downtown. Then we went swimming, but the pool was far too small to swim laps, and there was no hot tub, so we didn't spend a lot of time there. I did say nothing had really gone wrong for us today... and then I had these internet connectivity issues. At least Travalon was able to get on the internet, with help from the front desk guy. I'll post photos soon.

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Remembering Random Things

 

Today was not a very exciting day. I was the only staff person in the office, and this afternoon the president of the whole university system was coming to talk, so I had some coffee in order not to fall asleep. It didn't even work, because I was fighting to stay awake, and then I really had to pee. I held out through his talk but had to pop out during the Q&A. However, I did make an important discovery on the way home: the shuttle ride is one rosary long.

Jilly Moose sent me a photo of the moose Travalon got her for her birthday during his trip up North. At my suggestion, she named him Chambord after the raspberry liqueur, since her moose are all named after coffee drinks or alcohol. I wish I could show you, but my computer just updated, and now I cannot get it to add a photo using Safari. No problem, I thought, I'll just do it in Chrome... and it refuses to even open Chrome. This is going to be a huge issue, since photos are a big part of my blog. I hope to have a resolution soon. Apparently this new operating system doesn't play nicely with Google, which is going to be an enormous issue.

Hold on - I just reinstalled Chrome and now I can add the photo!

The other day as I rode the shuttle to work, I saw a car with a license plate that said: "Zymurgy," and somehow I knew that meant fermentation, so the person was probably a home brewer. Then I was walking on the Lakeshore Path at lunchtime, and I heard a boat behind me and thought, "That's the Betty Lou!" and sure enough, it was. Why does my brain retain useless information like obscure words and the sounds of particular boat motors, but it couldn't remember the difference between a ketone, an ester, and an ether when I was taking Organic Chemistry? Maybe if I'd been able to retain that, I'd have a high-powered career as a chemical engineer or something. Instead, my brain only retains trivia, and probably not even the right trivia to win at Jeopardy or anything practical like that. Though our neighbor who took us out sailing said identifying the sound of the Betty Lou was extremely important on our lake, because you'd want to know if a huge boat was bearing down on you!

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Boating and Breakfast Bear and Wading in the Plover River

 

Now that I'm back home, I can post photos of our adventures. I will blog about yesterday, with photos, and then I'll go back and add photos from Saturday and Sunday in the upcoming days.

Yesterday we went to Dixie's Coffee for breakfast again, and then we came home and took out the rowboat at the resort on Rest Lake, only we paddled instead of rowing it. Apparently we didn't work too hard at it, because my FitBit didn't even give me credit for active minutes. We went around the island, just like we had three years ago. Here are some photos.

Then we hit the road and stopped in Minocqua to hike on the Bearskin Trail.

We stopped in Wausau for lunch at a place called the Breakfast Bear. Their logo is a bear that is French toast, with an egg for his snout.

Look, it's Mr. Fat's twin brother!

Travalon had Hawaiian French toast and I had a savory Dutch baby with ham, gruyere, mushrooms, and lots of leeks, and we both had Italian hot chocolate, which rivals the Parisian hot chocolate at the late, lamented Chocolaterian. Thus fortified, we drove to Iverson Park in Stevens Point to wade in the river. I had somehow not packed my swimsuit, so we couldn't swim, but it was very cold (spring-fed), so wading was good enough. I don't think I would have wanted to plunge all the way in!

We decided not to get on the freeway but went to Portage to go by Lake Wisconsin. We stopped in Paquette Park there, where there are three bridges and a fountain and some art.

We took Highway V along Lake Wisconsin, enjoying the views, and got home before eight. At one point we passed over the freeway and saw how backed up it was, so our decision was a wise one.

Today I worked from home and still had the loaner computer, so everything was a fight. Its track pad is very sensitive, so it sometimes deleted things I didn't want deleted or replaced text I didn't want to replace, and then it wouldn't open things when I asked it to. The good news is that my new computer is all set up in my office, so tomorrow I get to try it for the first time. Also for the first time, I will be paying for parking. There is a new park-and-ride set up here on the North Side with a shuttle to campus every quarter hour during peak times, and then every half an hour during slow times, and it drops off right near my building. This means Travalon won't have to drive me to work, and I won't have to take the bus at ridiculous times and be crowded out by students. I thought I'd have to pick up my parking pass tomorrow and then take it for the first time Thursday, but today they sent an email saying there was a week "holiday" for people to park if they hadn't picked up their passes yet. I am picturing this being way more relaxed than the bus, but tomorrow I'll find out for sure.

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Noelle the Honda Civic Gets Repaired

 

This morning Travalon drove me to work in my suddenly very loud car Noelle, then he took her to the dealership to get fixed, and they gave him a free ride to work. Usually he works right near the dealership, but of course today was the day they were in a building nowhere near that. However, he discovered that Tiffy's sister and brother-in-law were big donors to this building. It's some sort of community arts center. Noelle's exhaust pipe had rusted out, so $500 later she is all better. We had won $40 worth of taxi coupons seven and a half years ago, so Travalon finally used them for getting from work all the way back to the dealership, and he came and picked me up from work in a newly quiet Noelle.

I had two meetings at work today, and this is when being perimenopausal comes in handy, because one meeting that usually lasts about twenty minutes was running way over an hour, and I was going to miss my move hours, but nobody questioned why a lady of my age would pick up some paper and fan herself vigorously. And it worked! I got my move hours! There was a fan running behind me, so people must have thought, "That must really be a bad hot flash!" but I was more concerned that my funk was getting blown at them, since my colleague and I had walked at lunch, and I'd gotten kind of sweaty. I was so thirsty after that, I wanted something more than water. I never drink soda, but there had been some leftover cans of Sprite and Coke after our grad student welcome lunch on Friday, so I hoped something would still be left. I really wanted a Sprite, but I would have even settled for a Coke. When I got back to our building and looked in the fridge in the break room - what joy! There was a single can of soda left, and it was a Sprite! Just for me!

The really annoying thing is that I am still using the loaner laptop. I thought my new computer was supposed to get set up today, but nobody ever contacted me about it. I was also supposed to learn if I'd gotten parking at the new university parking lot here on the North Side, complete with shuttle service, but again... crickets. If this doesn't pan out, I'll either have to get up really early to take the bus, or else Travalon will have to drive me to work every day. I'm afraid that the option wasn't popular enough so that they might have decided to scrap it. Hopefully I'm wrong. It was perfect for me!

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Vaguely Annoying Day

 

Today was sort of an annoying day. First thing in the morning I had to get an eye exam, and I forgot about all the annoying things they do, like blow air in your eyes and dilate your pupils. I couldn't read, but they told me I'd be safe to drive home. So I carefully headed down the road and wondered who around me had such a loud car... and then I realized it was MY car! It hadn't been that loud on the way to the appointment. Tomorrow we will get it checked out.

Work was annoying, because besides having dilated pupils, I was using a loaner laptop that took three times as long to do anything on as my old work computer, which is being replaced. It seemed fine to me, but they are supposed to be replaced every five years, and it has been six years. There seemed to be complications with everything I tried to do, but somehow it was a very productive day anyway. Then Travalon came home and drove me to adoration, so that I wouldn't have to use my loud little car. On the way home we ordered take-out Chinese, and the ice cream place is right next door, so Travalon got his beloved scotcharoo. I wasn't sure I'd have anything, but they had a new flavor, rhubarb crumble, which was wonderfully tangy and full of little pie crust pieces. So good! 

We could see a beautiful sunset on our drive home, but by the time we got there and Travalon could grab his camera, it was mostly over. He did get a few lovely photos.

Another thing I am vaguely annoyed about is that my sponsor child Nicolas, who lives in Bolivia, just moved out of the area so he is out of the program. This keeps happening to me: I had a girl in India, two different boys in Haiti, and a girl in Uganda, and they kept getting kicked out of the program for various reasons, like parental noncompliance or not progressing in school. (Are they calling my sponsor child stupid?) Nicolas has been around for a number of years, so I thought I'd finally have one age out of the program, but no. I have until September 12 to pick a new sponsor child, or they'll assign one to me. I'm wondering if I should just quit the program. It's disheartening to keep losing your kids. And Nicolas seemed so happy where he was, playing soccer and joining a band, that I can't understand why his family would move him away from all that. And there's no way to stay in touch once they leave the program - they just disappear into the world. Do they ever think of me? Who knows?

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The Lion King

 

Last night, after my adoration hour, Travalon and I went to The Lion King. I saw the animated movie years ago, but this is a stage play with lots of fantastic music and awesome costumes. We bought a stuffed baby Simba, which I forgot to take a picture of, so I'll try to post one soon. I remember liking the movie well enough, but I really loved the musical.

Today I had to work on campus, and it was a cleaning day, so we cleaned a bunch of the common areas. I found a five euro cent piece, so I joked that it was my tip, and my boss joked that we should split it five ways amongst the five of us staff people cleaning. That would be a little more than a penny each. Our chair had brought back chocolates from Belgium, so we indulged quite a bit... and then a faculty from another department I've been helping out brought me good local chocolates. I may have slightly overdosed today...

Hardingfele and I went for a walk over lunch, and we went to the Allen Centennial Gardens. I was going to share photos, but Blogspot went and put them on in reverse order again, so I'll just talk about my day and then explain the photos. After work I took the bus to the Labor Temple and met some Union peeps for a bean feed, which is basically hot dogs and beans. Travalon hates both things, so he refused to join us, not even for free beer, and it wasn't Bud Light either but Spotted Cow. Then he and I headed home, and he watched the Florida Panthers beat the Carolina Hurricanes to go to the finals. He said I should post some photos of Stanley Panther celebrating.

These are flowers I saw on my afternoon walk on campus. They are Eastern blue stars.

These flowers are from the Allen Centennial Gardens. I loved this very dark iris so purple it's almost black.

This is an ornamental onion, according to my phone.

I went into Photos this evening to listen to the four videos Travalon had made at our gig, which happen to be four of my favorite songs we do: "Black Mountain Rag," "Give Me Your Hand," "Metsakukkia," and "Ashoken Farewell." Then I noticed something called "duplicates," which I had never noticed before. Perhaps Boethius I never gave me that option. Apparently I had duplicates of a lot of photos, including all my wedding photos, and there were some where I had not just two but four or six or even thirteen of the same photo! I like to think that getting rid of all those duplicates freed up a lot of space. I'm not sure why all my wedding photos were duplicated (probably user error when I was trying to put them into an album), but some of the others were from when certain photos on my phone, usually sent to me by Travalon or others, would get downloaded every time I hooked my phone up to the computer. Now that everything is backed up to the Cloud, I don't seem to have that issue anymore.

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Magical Marsh Day

 

Yesterday I worked from home, and my neighbor is back, so we walked together. Travalon got some baby crane photos that I will post soon, but there will already be a lot of photos on this post just from today. Because Travalon booked so many hotels in Florida, he got a free night at a hotel, but it had to be used before Memorial Day Weekend, so tonight we are staying at a hotel in Waupun. On the way up we stopped at Patrick Marsh and saw lots of pelicans.

In Waupun we met a friend who lives here for lunch, then we went to Horicon Marsh. Our first stop was the boardwalk on the auto tour. I was bummed that the Old Marsh Road is closed until the beginning of June, since that's where we saw the yellow-headed blackbirds before, but as soon as I stepped on the boardwalk, the magic began. I saw a whooping crane flying away, and I heard what sounded like someone playing jazz trumpet, which seemed like a strange thing to do in the marsh. Then I realized it was two swans flying around, trumpeting to each other. They landed, and everyone was looking at them because they were so close to us. They were HUGE!

We saw a lot of egrets too, and in the distance we saw a whooping crane - the one I had seen flying away. Then we heard it bugling! Here is an egret with the green around its eye showing. That means it's in breeding season.

Here is a male blue-winged teal.

Another egret.

Then the whooping crane flew by us!

And there were lots of baby Canada geese. This family only had one gosling.

The trilliums (trillia?) were in full bloom.

And this tree looks like it has a secret door in it. Who lives in there?

We saw pelicans flying by, and then we had seen all four Big White Birds at Horicon.

As we drove along the highway, we saw a yellow-headed blackbird sitting by the side of the road, so we parked the car and crossed the road. By then he had flown away, but I heard his call... and then we saw him!

There were also a lot of coots, and I had always hoped to see a baby coot with its bright red feathers on its head, but we didn't see any babies. We did see ruddy ducks with their turned-up tails and bright blue bills.

Sadly, we also saw a dead beaver by the side of the road. Here is a much larger goose family.

And this is either a red-headed duck or a canvasback.

When we drove by another nature center that never seems to be open, we saw another whooping crane!

The nature center was actually open today, but when I told the naturalist that there was a whooping crane outside, she just said, "Yeah, he's always there." She also had no idea where to see baby coots. 

Here is a photo of the marsh from an overlook.

And yet another goose family.

We went to the nature center where we often see the white-headed goose, but we didn't see him again. People say he has been around this year. But look what we did see - a snow goose! He's much smaller than the Canada geese.

This pelican and cormorant seem to be best buddies.

Here is the pelican in a silly pose.

And four sandhill cranes flew right by us.

We were planning to go to Mass in Fox Lake at six, but just after five we passed the church in Horicon, which has Mass at five, so we snuck in during the first reading. There were five first communicants (although seven were listed in the program, so what the hey?), and the priest had one of those mustaches with the waxed curly ends like people had at the turn of the last century. He was young and seemed kind of hipster, but he did talk about Theresa of Avila's Interior Castle during his homily, so I liked that. Then we got to Fox Lake about halfway through their Mass, and the church was a lovely old one, so we decided to peek inside. Only, they lock the doors during Mass. (Did something happen once?) A guy saw us and let us in, and we tried to explain that we had just gone to Mass and only wanted to see the church, but he seemed so eager to have us come in that we felt bad for just peeking in and then leaving. I think they would have appreciated our presence a lot more than the big, modern church we went to!

Our friend works at a restaurant in Fox Lake, so we went there and saw her, but they had a forty-five minute wait, so we went to another restaurant we like there, but they were closed for a wedding. We ended up going to an old-fashioned diner and having deep-fried food and kiddie malts that were served in adorable cups with sea creatures on them, so we kept ours. Even that place had a bit of a wait, so we entertained ourselves drawing on an old Mallards ticket with "crayangles," triangle crayons provided by the diner, and a pen I had in my purse. For example, I drew a horse and noted that he was "out standing in his field," and Travalon drew a bunch of turtles racing and called it the "Okeefenokee Grand Prix." The only color crayons we had were Bluebird Blue, Gator Green, and Duckling Yellow. Then we came back to the hotel, swam in the pool, and hung out in the hot tub. I had to call Rich for technical support with New Boethius, but it was an ID10T error on my part. As usual. Otherwise, what a magical day!

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