Afternoon at Olbrich

 

Today I got to have a "sick day" from work because I had to take Travalon to a medical procedure. He was supposed to have a "responsible adult" to talk to the doctor and drive him home, but I was the only one available. The procedure went smoothly, and I got some DuoLingo done while it was going on. Duo the Owl thinks I'm faster doing Spanish lessons than he is rollerblading.

Since he hadn't been able to eat before the procedure, Travalon was ravenous, so we went to Silk Road, a Tajikistani restaurant near the hospital. I had this amazing thing that was tubes of grilled eggplant stuffed with lamb, in tomato sauce and some soft cheese like ricotta, so it seemed like Italian food. Travalon had a delectable chicken wing kebab. We also had a tea that was like warm lemonade with ginger and mint in it, which may sound weird but it was delicious, and for dessert we had cheese wrapped in phyllo dough served with pistachio ice cream. I highly recommend all of it.

We took a walk in Olbrich Gardens, which is gearing up for GLEAM, their annual light sculpture show, so the Thai Pavilion was not accessible. We saw these silver globes in the Sunken Garden.

We saw three colors of hibiscus, but the pale pink one was too far away to take a photo.

In the gift shop we bought a stuffed toucan.

Then we took a second walk on Governor's Island, and then we came home. It was unseasonably cool today, like a day in autumn, and really good for walking outside.

As promised, here are some photos from Travalon's visit to Horicon Marsh. I may post more tomorrow, but this is a sampling. He saw two of the three white birds: egrets, pelicans, and swans.

As usual, the pelicans were with cormorants.

The swans had teenage offspring.

They also saw pie-billed grebes.

What is this egret looking at?

And there were lots of these sandpipers.

Some of them were hanging out with ducks.

Then they saw a beautiful sunset over the lake in Pardeeville.

I may post more photos from his trip tomorrow.

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Octogenarian Birthday Extravaganza

 

Yesterday was "Go Live" Day for our new system at work, but I waited until today to try to do anything when we had an open lab. I was feeling all cocky that I had gone to all the trainings and tried all the situations in the test environment, while a colleague had not gone to any trainings and had no idea what to do. But pride goeth before a fall, and somehow my permissions were screwed up so that I couldn't do anything in the new system. I spent the whole time helping my clueless colleague, then I went for a walk in Allen Centennial Gardens over lunch with Hardingfele. First we gazed at the pond full of lilies.

Then we admired some green zinnias.

And we found one last prickly pear in bloom.

After lunch I went to help my clueless colleague again. I thought we were going to do an expense report, but first she wanted to order some paper. So simple!... except when we did a search for "paper," we got no results. We even tried the product number, and still it said no results. So as of yet, neither of us has done anything successfully in the new system.

I left work an hour and a half early, since I couldn't do anything anyway, and Travalon picked me up. We went to a birthday party for a Shamrock Club member. It was a big party for an age ending in zero, and the birthday boy wore an amazing shirt that said "Oldometer" and then showed the number flipping from 79 to 80. First a local Irish band played, the one we always see at Alt Brew, and then there was a pig roast.

People brought all sorts of sides and salads and desserts, plus there was birthday cake. We mostly hung out with other Shamrock Club people there, although I did talk to a woman who was a childhood friend of the birthday boy. I said she could join the Shamrock Club, and she did admit that both her maiden and her married name were very Irish. We also talked to the guy from New Zealand, who is always pleasant company. After dinner a funk band played, and most of the club members left, but Travalon and I really liked the music, so we stayed until the band took a break. When we got home, I saw that Lazarus is almost done blooming - each of those puffballs full of flowers now only has one or two blossoms left. They still smell really wonderful. I found my new shirt had arrived. It's perfect for Horicon Marsh:

I said I owed this blog two photos, so I'm actually going to post three, because two are the front and the back of the commemorative glass I got at the showing of Purple Rain.

And this is the little conductor hippo we got at the Illinois Railway Museum. Travalon has dubbed him Casey Jones, after a train conductor so famous that there is even a Grateful Dead song about him.

Isn't he adorable? I'd like to ride his train to a place where I can do my work because the system hasn't decided to lock me out. We shall see what tomorrow brings...

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Olbrich Gardens and the Arboretum

 

Today I met Anna Banana II for brunch at Crema Cafe, then we went to Immaculate Heart, which was open this time. The rosary display was gone, but we were able to go into the sanctuary. There is a kind of display on the wall out in the hall about the green scapular, like a setup in a high school for the basketball team that won the state championship in 1996, and I had thought maybe that was the Shrine to the Green Scapular, but we saw the actual shrine in the sanctuary.

Then we went to Olbrich and walked around outside, where we ran into a grad student from my department and her mom. She was wearing her doctoral robe, but she isn't getting her doctorate until the fall. Her mom doesn't really speak English, so we just smiled at each other. Here is a pretty flower that was near the bridge to the Thai pavilion. 

We went into the conservatory and saw lots of blooming orchids, including this interesting one called Gallo Gallo. Isn't that Spanish for Rooster Rooster?

I had to go home and join a meeting for an hour, then Anna Banana II picked me up, and we went to the Arboretum and sniffed just about every blooming crabapple tree and lilac bush. October may be a visually beautiful month with good weather, but May wins because it doesn't just look beautiful, it smells beautiful. This interesting tree didn't have a scent, but I thought the flowers were so pretty. 

It is called a pink mountain silver bell tree, which is a colorful enough name, but I like to think of it this way: Pink Mountain silver bell tree, so I can wonder where Pink Mountain is and long to visit.

We met OK Cap for dinner at the Great Dane, then Anna Banana II went with some other Night Prayer folks to a praise meeting, and I waited on a lovely porch for Travalon to pick me up. I got three decades of the rosary prayed as I waited, so maybe tonight in bed I can finish the other two, because of course it got late. I'll try to post the photos from Travalon's good camera tomorrow.

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Visit from My Relatives

 

Sorry for the long silence - I had relatives visiting from out of state, the same ones we visited in Colorado back in December. Friday I worked from home, then when Travalon got home, we went over to my aunt and uncle's hotel room with the mandolin, and we all went to the nearby Japanese restaurant we remembered liking so much (and it's still really good!) before jamming. My uncle plays the flute back in Colorado with a neighbor who plays guitar, and he has a playlist the two of them use. He had a small playlist for him and me, called "Denise" because I'm Da Niece (my idea, so direct all rotten tomatoes at me), but he accidentally started playing the neighbor one, and I loved all the songs because they have three chords and are in G or E minor or A minor. Guitarists must like the same things as mandolinists. My aunt joined us on the tongue drum, and she really added to the sound. Travalon sang the songs he knew, so it was really a family affair.

Saturday my aunt and uncle wanted to go to brunch at the place where another aunt had gotten a rhubarb pie, so we picked them up and went there, and it was really good. (Unfortunately, nine days until rhubarb, though.) Then we went to Horicon Marsh and saw lots of egrets and pelicans - photos soon! It just got too late once again to deal with them. On the way there, we introduced them to the wonders of Schultz's Cheese Haus - lots of free samples, and we got chocolate and cheese and liqueurs. Sadly, the naturalists told me neither the white-headed goose nor Grasshopper the Whooping Crane has returned this spring. The white-headed goose was getting on in years, but Grasshopper is relatively young, so what a bummer. The male of the pair of whoopers who lived over by the boardwalk died of a disease, so his mate has left for the Necedah marsh. With so few whooping cranes in the world, it's a tragedy to lose even one. Of course, Grasshopper had paired with a sandhill crane, so the Crane Foundation kept taking their "whoop hill" offspring to raise in captivity, to keep them from polluting the bloodline further. I'm not sure how I feel about that, since this hybridization happened in nature and wasn't like some guy going, "I want a lion with stripes!" (Ligers are sterile anyway, so they can't pollute any bloodlines.) When we got back from Horicon, we had dinner at the Tibetan restaurant, and then we jammed some more.

Sunday Travalon and I went to the earlier Mass at the church closer to us, and we saw the couple we have hung out with on occasion. Then we picked up my aunt and uncle and went to the Venezuelan restaurant near their hotel. Breakfast arepas - yum! We went to the Arboretum, where the lilacs are just starting to open and the magnolias are mostly past their peak, and it's a mixed bag with the crabapples. My aunt and uncle wanted to rest and do some stuff back at the hotel while I had my Brazilian drumming lesson, but of course Travalon had just dropped me off and driven away when I discovered a sign that said the instructor was sick so the class was canceled. Fortunately he answered the phone right away and came back to get me, and we hung out at the Tiki Bar at the East Side Club until going back to pick up my relatives. We all had dinner at Bierock, then my aunt and uncle came to band practice with me while Travalon hung out at Leopold's. My uncle doesn't read music too quickly, so he prefers to play by ear. I advocated for slow waltzes and possibly familiar polkas (Beer Barrel, Pennsylvania), but we did play some Ukrainian music which had him really lost. At least we didn't play the stuff that changes meter in the middle of the song! He said he enjoyed it but that it was very hard, and maybe he would have had an easier time if our bass player had been able to make it. Our accordion player was back for the first time in months after recovering from a broken leg, so I think that made everyone feel like we were starting from scratch again.

I took the day off of work yesterday, and I took my aunt and uncle to brunch at Crema Cafe, since they remembered it fondly. It's very close to Olbrich Gardens, so we went there afterwards, and then we grabbed the mandolin and headed back to their hotel room. There was a Mexican restaurant right across the street, so that was convenient for Cinco de Mayo. My uncle and I ran over and got us shrimp enchiladas with green sauce (shrimp fajitas for him), and then we actually got to enjoy the patio, since it had been cooler most of their visit and not conducive to sitting outside. When Travalon got off of work, he joined us with some Leinie's Lime, which went perfectly with the zingy green sauce on the enchiladas. We never did get around to jamming, because the guys were having one conversation and we ladies were having our own, and we just talked until it had gotten kind of late to jam. Besides, I had to work today.

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Wacky Brownie?

 

Today I worked on campus, and Seabird and I took a walk at Allen Centennial Garden. Here is a photo of the tulips in bloom there.

It was a gorgeous day, except for being very windy. There was some talk of bad weather hitting us, but so far there has been nothing but wind: no rain, and certainly no thunderstorms or tornadoes. I will not complain about that! When I got home, I sat on our porch and did DuoLingo. Got a sticker and some crazy comments after finishing lessons.

As promised, here are photos of the pelicans Travalon saw at the Sauk Dam on Saturday. Blogspot is only letting me load one photo at a time, so I will choose judiciously.

I love this photo, because it looks like the bird on the left has two bills, but it's really two birds.

And a couple shots of the Wisconsin River:

I don't know why Blogspot has been so weird the last couple of days with loading photos. Hopefully this glitch passes quickly.

I did forget to mention that when I went to the Brazilian drumming class, there were brownies. I tried one, and it was delicious, very dark chocolate and also banana-flavored. I asked, "Are there bananas in this?" and they said, "Yes, it's a banana brownie." Then as I was pounding the drum and working up a sweat, my sweat smelled like wacky weed. So what else was in those brownies?? But I didn't feel stoned, so maybe it was my imagination. Will they have crazy treats every week? I'll report back.

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Travalon's Fish Story

 

Today I worked on campus, and my colleague had the day off so at lunch I walked by myself at Allen Centennial Gardens. Here are a couple of photos.

During my afternoon break, I was walking along a path that doesn't have a view of the railroad tracks when I could hear a train whistle in the distance. I ran as fast as I could (which is not all that fast) to a spot from which I could see the train just as the engine pulled into view, so I was able to see the whole train. That was my big excitement today.

Travalon's big excitement was that he caught a northern pike at Governor Nelson State Park.

It was too small to keep, so he let it go. They aren't good eating anyway, from what I hear. Not like those catfish he caught - those were delicious!

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GLEAM 2023

 

Tonight Travalon and I went to Olbrich Gardens for GLEAM, their annual light art show. This year it started in the conservatory with some cool lights.

Then we went out into the gardens. The first display (sorry, no photos) was something where you typed a phrase into a website, and it created a flower display using some sort of code. We could see some rainbow trees in the distance.

As we walked along, we came to a place with doors you could open, and then you would see different scenes, but the lines were very long to get to open them. Instead, we checked out this elephant.

There was a really cool display of flowers that would light up if you danced on a flower-shaped dance pad, but none of the photos turned out. Travalon got a good video, which I will try to post soon. Then we went to a place with a bunch of disco balls. Here I am! Bonus points if you can spot Niko too.

This was kind of an interesting display near the Rose Tower.

We climbed the Rose Tower and saw what looked like fake fireworks in the distance. Then we went through a field of lanterns and saw the rainbow trees closer.

We wound our way through an "enchanted forest" with faces like this in the trees.

Then they began to sing and tell bad jokes! For example, "You really went out on a limb with that one!"

In the Sunken Garden, we saw the things that looked like fireworks from a distance. They were supposed to be giant dandelions.

I was hoping to post a couple of very short videos, but apparently Blogspot won't let me post even 5-second ones, so I'll have to make a movie of all the videos and then post that to YouTube and link it here. So that's something to look forward to. After we returned to the building, we had adult beverages; I had something with blueberry, basil, and lemon. It was... interesting. I can't decide if I liked it or not. By the time we finished our drinks, we were the last ones there except for the volunteers, but as we walked back to the car, lots of other people were coming out of the outside gate, so we didn't shut the place down. I would highly recommend GLEAM. It's very cool.

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