Pagode Player Yet

 

Check it out - Niko can wear the backpack he fits into! So he can carry his shelter around with him!

Also, I swear neither of us set her up like this, but this morning Valerie the Vulture was gazing longingly out the window, like she'd rather be soaring high above our roof.

This morning after Mass there was a Care for Creation meeting, and three of us were from Moldy Jam. Then Travalon and I took a walk in the woods, and I saw lots of lovely woodland flowers, like very light violets.

And very dark violets, as well as yellow violets.

And my favorite woodland flower, the Jack in the Pulpit.

Before my drum class, only two people were playing pagode samba, including the one woman in the group. She asked if I liked pagode and I said yes, and she said she is trying to form an all-woman pagode group. Wow!! The whole reason I joined the drumming collective was because I actually wanted to play pagode, so it looks like my dream may come true! Of course, with what time? I'm already doing a lot of Irish fiddling and old time fiddling and two other kinds of Brazilian music, the choro and the drumming. But I will make it work somehow! If you are wondering how to pronounce "pagode," it's Pah-GOH-jee. Also, one of the guys in the current pagode band has a catamaran, so it's not entirely impossible that I might someday get a ride on it, if I keep hanging around.

After my very hard drum lesson, my one buddy asked me where I was going next with the fiddle, so I told her about the Slow Irish Session, and she wanted to check it out. Then Travalon and I went on a walk and found a beautiful lakeside park.

We saw some beautiful flowers and trees on this walk, like these purple and white violets.

And a couple of Japanese red maples, so beautiful with the late afternoon light shining through their leaves.

Some very red tulips.

And some very fragrant lilacs.

There were a lot of people at the Slow Irish session today, including Famie (but not the red-headed flute player), my ex-bandmate who always comes, a couple of current bandmates, and my drumming buddy just listened but said she might come back with her guitar. We played some tunes nobody knew, so I had to look at the music, since I can't learn by ear if nobody knows the tune. We also played some we know well. One guy who came for the first time said he would just listen, but they have all sorts of instruments at the music club, so he ended up borrowing a mandolin. Apparently people donate instruments to the club, so I may unload some of my many instruments. Not my violin or mandolin, of course - they're family heirlooms, and I use them constantly - but maybe the mountain dulcimer a coworker made me buy from her decades ago, or the woodrow that the Former Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player gave me recently that I haven't had time to learn to play, or the bowed psaltry my former neighbor gave me. And definitely the "garbage" violin, if they would even take it. I would keep the tamburitza, the balalaika, and the sitar because they were all gifts from Travalon, and I do plan to learn to play them. And of course I'd keep the ukulele, which I play monthly, plus it's a souvenir of Hawaii. I'm not sure the music club would even want my rebec, and maybe someday I'll get to play early music again. Then there's the odd guitar-like instrument I bought at a silent auction - should I keep that or give it to the club? Oh, and my electric mandolin isn't going anywhere either, because it's come in handy at the most random times. As you can see, I have a lot of thinking to do.

Keep Pa Hat in your prayers. He may die tonight. He was going to have his big 80th birthday later this month, but it looks like that won't happen.

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Day at the Capitol 2026

This morning I thought I could get going a little later than usual to get to the Day at the Capitol, but then I wasted too much time and wasn't sure the Big Bendy B Bus would get me there on time. Two girls behind me were threatening to beat each other up, but then they both abruptly shut up. You don't get that kind of thing on private mass transit. I sat in the back and enjoyed how the B Bus feels like big-city mass transit. I got to the Concourse Hotel a few minutes late, but the presentation hadn't started yet, so I had some Second Breakfast and sat with an older gentleman and a woman from India. There was a presentation about talking points, and this year we had handy apps that gave us our schedule and all sorts of information. Here is the swanky ceiling of the room.

My first meeting was with a legislator from my district who is also practically my neighbor - he lives like a two-minute drive away. I met with his staffer last year. Another alumnus and I talked to him, but it was preaching to the choir because he's on the University Committee and is totally in favor of everything we brought up. He gave us Blue Books, and we had our photo taken with him.

Then I went to the break room they had set up this year and logged into the app to upload the photo, do a post-meeting review, and send a thank you email. There were some other people there too, and we walked back to the Concourse for lunch while the Chancellor spoke, followed by a panel discussion about nuclear fusion. 

Last year I didn't go to any flash talks (10-minute talks where faculty discussed their research), so this year I went to a number of them. They were in a room with some very odd lighting. Here is the skylight.

I thought the lighting made my beret look more yellow, but this photo doesn't really do it justice.

I went back to the break room, where they suddenly had coffee and cookies from Panera. I opened the box of cookies and took one, and suddenly a big, ugly insect flew in and landed on a cookie, so the guy in charge of the room grabbed the cookie and threw it, along with the insect, into the trash. It looked like some kind of wasp. That was certainly startling! Then I met with the staffer of my state senator, along with a bunch of other people including a guy I ate lunch with, the guy I had eaten breakfast with, his bubbly wife, and the woman from India. We had our photo taken in the Senate chamber.

The woman from India and I went back to the break room and did our post-meeting stuff in the app, then I went back to the flash talks. They had munchies there too - there was so much food today that I ate about a day and a half worth of calories, so tomorrow I'll just have to eat half a day's worth of calories. It wouldn't be such a disaster, except it followed right after that conference yesterday where they also overfed us. 

Because I still hadn't eaten enough apparently, I went over to the Madison Club with the couple from the meeting, and the woman from India joined us. This year we were in a room upstairs overlooking the Monona Terrace and the lake, and at one point there was a rainbow, but for whatever reason those photos aren't downloading to my computer from the cloud. They're on my phone... We had lots of fancy hors d'oeuvres and free wine or beer and a sundae bar. Then I took the B Bus (where a guy behind me on the phone said he was "Gangstafied") home in time for the Shamrock Club board meeting on Zoom, followed by the Rosary on Zoom, followed by Night Prayer on Zoom. Now I am Zoomed out. I also went up seven flights of stairs at the Capitol today, and even thought I got riding the Big Bendy B Bus and going to the Madison Club off my bucket list last year, it was just as fun this year. I plan to go every year if I can, but next year there will also be a similar thing in DC on St. Patrick's Day, so I'll probably skip that. I'm sure it's awesome, but St. Patrick's Day should be for Irish stuff, not politics.

I guess those photos from the Madison Club are not going to show up tonight. Instead, enjoy some more photos of wood ducks, courtesy of Travalon.

There was also a great blue heron.

It was much larger than the ducks.

I heard a little blue heron was seen in Sheboygan, which is weird because they usually stick to the East Coast, but we have seen plenty of them in Florida.

There were also photos of the green heron, and a couple of cormorants by the island, but those weren't in focus enough to post.

Stay tuned tomorrow when maybe I will have photos from the Madison Club for you...

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Panda Farewell Party

 

Today Travalon did something really fun - he went to a farewell party at the zoo for one of the red pandas. They had brought in a new male after the previous one died, but he and the female are not interested in making baby pandas together, so they're going to send him to another zoo and bring in a different male panda. I get it, pandas - I wouldn't want to be forced to breed with some rando either. Travalon saw a couple of our Shamrock Club buddies there, and he made some videos of the pandas eating their special cake that were so cute that my coworkers were entranced. It got too late for me to make a movie of them tonight, but hopefully tomorrow. Here are some photos. 

The farewell card. Travalon signed it for both of us.

A hornbill who lives nearby.

As usual, the aardvark slept through all the excitement.

Travalon saw this event on Facebook, but Kathbert also alerted him to it. I, of course, could not attend because I was working on campus today. During my first meeting, I was annoyed by the sound of everyone's voice. My second meeting was canceled - yay! Just before my third meeting, I remembered that one person who attends is on leave, so I ran upstairs to 1111, the big FART 5 office, to ask her replacement to join us, but she was on a Teams call, and oddly nobody else was around. There were some sesame blondies, so I helped myself to one before going downstairs and sending her a message. She did get done with her previous call and joined our meeting, which only took 15 minutes, so then I could walk at lunch with Hardingfele before HER meeting. We walked in the Allen Centennial Gardens and saw fritillaries.

Hardingfele said, "I thought fritillaries were butterflies," and I said, "They are. But these are fritillary flowers. They're both named after a Latin word for a checkerboard." Or so I read. Then we saw one of those little white cabbage butterflies, and Hardingfele said, "Look - a fritillary!" but fritillary butterflies are big and orange with a checkerboard pattern on their wings. We did enjoy all the blooming verbenas. Everything is so early this year, which is surprising because it was cold for so long. I guess all the tornados woke the flowers up? 

One semi-miraculous thing did happen today: as I was on my way to work, I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be watering my neighbor's plants, but for some reason I hadn't done it in... well, I couldn't remember. Since before Easter? It was hard to concentrate at work, but I called Travalon before he left for the panda farewell party, and he went to our neighbor's place and said the plants were still alive. He took photos and sent them to me, and I could see they were a bit stressed but nowhere near dead. Phew!!! After work I watered them well and picked off all the dead leaves. Why did I suddenly forget to water them at the same time as my own plants? My subconscious must have been trying to tell me, because lately I've been thinking about how Ma Hat once gave me a peperomia cutting that I set behind another plant so I couldn't see it, and by the time I remembered, it was withered up and dead. Or when someone I don't even know that well dumped a tiny aquarium on me that had belonged to a friend of hers who died, someone I never met, and I totally forgot she had done it for over a week, and by the time I remembered, the fish were all dead. They were just little tetras - I'll bet goldfish would have survived. They're resourceful. Both of those events happened decades ago, and I thought I was more responsible now, but even last week when I watered my plants in the plant room, and then the plants in the kitchen, and then the plants in the loft, I thought, "Is that everything? Yes!" Wrong!

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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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Conversation with a Robot

 

Today I worked on campus, and at lunchtime Hardingfele and I went on a walk and then went to see the two new robots in the newest building on campus. They can converse with you, in a manner of speaking. We asked them all sorts of dumb questions (me: "what's your sign?" robot: "I don't have a zodiac sign, but I'd like to think I'd be a fun one like Gemini." Gemini? Shudder! AI really is evil!), and at one point it sounded like it said something in German, so I asked if it spoke French. It said no, and when I said, "But you speak German?" it asked if I remembered what it said in German. I said "Nein," but it asked what I was counting, so Hardingfele said, "Specific gravity." It asked if this were for physics or engineering, so she said, "For pee," and I translated, "For urine composition," but the robot politely ignored that. Then I asked if the robot could sing. It said no, unfortunately, but what would I have wanted it to sing? For some odd reason the first thing that popped into my head was "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple, but before I could say anything, Hardingfele hollered, "Smoke on the Water!" and I said, "No f--king way! That's what I was going to say!" The robot completely ignored my swear and cheerily said that great minds think alike, so I added, "And dirty minds think aloud." Hardingfele said, "We have to get back to work now!" and the robot said, "Have a good day!" I hope nobody is making a transcription of our conversation with the robot...

Then I got a bill for a routine appointment I'd had online, and insurance covered nothing. I called to find out if that was because it was an online appointment, but they told me I don't have insurance. I said then who am I paying all these premiums to? Hopefully we can get this all figured out - I sent them a copy of my insurance card.

We had a Union meeting at six, and I usually get home about fifteen minutes before that, so I figured I'd have some time to change into play clothes and get settled before the meeting. Of course today the shuttle was really late picking me up, so I was already late for the meeting by the time I got home. I hadn't eaten yet, so I muted myself and turned off my camera to have a bite to eat, and just after I finished eating, there was a knock at the door. I almost ignored it, but I did get up and open it, and it was our downstairs neighbor with a Red Tasseled Hat for me and one for Travalon!

Here I am wearing Travalon's hat. He said I look like Dumb Donald from Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

Here he is for reference.

Travalon will not be wearing his at the protest, but I'll wear mine. Maybe I'll take that grad student's idea and switch between this hat, my plaid tam with the Red Tasseled Hat pin, and the Contrarian hat. Keep the baddies on their toes!

Jilly Moose sent me a photo of the moose she needle felted.

This is a craft form I know nothing about. I know a lot of people who crochet, including my current boss and the woman who works with Hardingfele and goes to our church. Good thing I don't know how to knit or crochet, or I'd probably have even more hats than I do now.

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The Return of Tux Duck

 

Early this morning I had to get up to powder my nose, and when I got back into bed, Travalon's stuffed rhino Rodrigo had moved over to my side of the bed, so I snuggled him. Then I dreamed that I took him to work and lost him. Here is a photo of Rodrigo for reference.

I went back to sleep and woke up seven minutes after my alarm should have gone off. I could see that it was set, but later I realized that it was set an hour later because Friday I worked from home. At least I won't have to reset it for tomorrow... 

Somehow I got to work on time, and at a quarter to noon two coworkers and I went down to get the pizza that was delivered for the grad student lunch. They were welcoming the candidates who are considering coming here for grad school. Then Hardingfele and I walked outside, since it was so beautiful out, and when we got back, we had leftover pizza. Then I had a very long meeting in the afternoon for the Academic Staff Assembly, not nearly as interesting as the University Staff Congress meetings. Maybe I just need to get to know people, because at first the Congress meetings were just a way to get out of work, but by the end I was really into it and knew a lot of people and sat on a lot of committees. It's a bummer to have to start all over again. Then when I got home, I realized Niko was still at work, snuggling against his girlfriend. She doesn't have a name that I can remember.

I was sure there is a picture of the two of them together, but I can't find it now. I've actually had her longer; she came into our house in February of 2022, while Niko arrived in June 2023. I brought her to work right away, and so Niko comes with me to work to see her. Now they get to spend the night together - ooh! Scandalous! It will actually be two nights, since I work from home tomorrow.

This morning I got another DuoLingo sticker:

Roddy is unimpressed.

Travalon took some photos off our dock this morning. Tux Duck is back!

And so are the blue-winged teals.

You can see their blue wings as they fly away.

Here is a male cardinal hanging out by the tennis court.

Then Travalon went to Cherokee Marsh again. He saw common mergansers.

Two couples! A double date?

Here are some mergansers taking flight.

The swans who were hiding yesterday were back today.

The flicker is still around.

This isn't the clearest shot, but I think the duck in front of all these common mergansers is a pintail.

Travalon found a spot with lots of scaups and ringed-neck ducks. They look almost identical, except that the ringed-neck ducks have designs on their bills.

This isn't the clearest photo, but their mating dances are so ridiculous that they're delightful.

Everything is migrating through right now. Soon we'll have to go to Patrick Marsh and Shoveler's Sink to see if we can find red-breasted mergansers, since there don't seem to be any (yet) at Cherokee Marsh. Once the ice has melted off the lake, the loons will migrate through. I don't know how long we have the swans with us, but we'll enjoy them while we've got them!

Famous Hat