Wearing Many Hats to Confuse the Minions

 

This morning when I got to my office, I found Niko safely snuggled against his nameless girlfriend after two nights of bliss together, under the shade of a sunflower.

It was a bad day weatherwise, at least in the morning. I wore my warmest hat and warmest coat, and I walked outside in the driving snow at ten. Seabird and I walked under the overhang on the third floor at lunch, and she told me the postcard from Puerto Rico had just arrived. That was the one I sent to the FART 5 gang; the one I sent to our gang on the 8th floor came in just a few days. As we waited for the elevator, our boss appeared, and she said she thought someone had sent the postcard to her old department and that's why it took so long to get there. No word on how long the postcard took to get to Ma and Pa Hat...

In the afternoon a grad student I often chat with stopped by, and we talked politics as usual. I said how I have the Contrarian hat I wore today that I had gotten for the upcoming protest, but I also have the plaid tam with the red tasseled hat pin, and when I posted a photo of that on social media, my neighbor said her friend is making me an actual red tasseled hat. I said now I have three hats to wear to the protest, and the grad student said I could just keep switching them so Dear Leader's minions can't figure out who I am. That is not a bad idea... They are all soft, so I could easily put them in my pockets.

Travalon got home from work earlier than usual, so he went out to the dock and took more photos. The light was getting dim by then, so a lot of them didn't really turn out, but here are a few that did, of northern shovelers and cranes.

I can tell the others are of the two mallard couples (including Tux Duck), common mergansers, and ring-necked ducks, and there may have been a hooded merganser. Travalon also made two videos, of a muskrat swimming and what I'd call "duck porn," two mallards doing a mating dance, engaging in the act, and then the male has the zoomies afterwards while the female beats her wings. Those both need to be edited, but I may post them at some point, so watch for that.

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Hangin' Out with God

 

In yesterday's post, I didn't say what Travalon and I did for Valentine's Day. We had already exchanged presents; he got me opal and pink sapphire earrings to match my ring when we were at the mall recently, and I got him a little stuffed puffin for a donation to an organization that works to save the oceans. Last night we went to the Mexican restaurant near our house, figuring that they may be too packed to get into on Cinco de Mayo, but they may not be a lot of people's first thought for Valentine's Day. That worked well - we got right in and had our usual shrimp chimichangas. Then we split a piece of tres leches cake that was so large that I can't imagine a single person eating one. They must know everyone splits them, and so they make them extra big.

Today I had three meetings, and one was in person right after lunch, but I forgot to change from my sneakers into my good shoes. Oops! They were discussing named options for music performance majors, and most of them were instrument types, like strings or brass, but jazz was its own option, because they said jazz is so different than other types of music. That made me wonder why they didn't have a named option for early music, for those students who don't want to perform in the dreaded equal temperament, but they said they have enough options already. Odd, because I thought our university was trying to become a place known for early music. 

After work I went to adoration as usual, and I always get there at least half an hour early so I usually hang out in the library. Today there were people in the library, so I went up into the sanctuary. It was really beautiful with the candles flickering as darkness fell and the last light of day shone through the stained glass windows.

It looked as if the tabernacle was glowing.

I think it's just a reflection from the tabernacle candle, which is just to the left of this photo, but it's a really cool effect. I sat there and wondered why "social justice warrior" is an insult, and God pointed out to me that the people who think so are often the same people who say they are His most loyal followers, yet He constantly tells us how important social justice is. Like, blessed are they who thirst for justice. So I said, "Good point, God!" He is always making good points when I sit alone with Him. I would highly recommend spending some time alone with God. He has a lot of common sense and can be incredibly funny. He's fun to spend time with.

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Dino Soap!

 

Today was very, very, very cold so I was hopeful that there would be a lot of eagles around the dam in Prairie du Sac. However, the roads were still very icy, so we decided to stick closer to home. We went to West Towne Mall to walk, and there were not one but two of those alpaca wool shops there. Only one had rosaries, and Travalon didn't find anything he wanted, so we went to the antiques mall on Odana Road, where he found Dino soap!

I found three rosaries. They are on the righthand side of this photo. The two I bought at the mall are on the lefthand side. The furthest left one has an interesting configuration, because the starting beads that most rosaries have between the crucifix and the loop are actually in the loop. I have never seen that before, but I have seen rosaries without the starting beads at all.

One fun thing about collecting rosaries is that you never know which ones will randomly light up under blacklight. Here are the little bracelet rosaries I bought at East Towne Mall for $2 each, and you can see that on the lefthand side of this picture, the two blue ones don't light up, but the green and purple one, the yellow one, the orange one, the coral one, and the hot pink one all do.

Sometimes just a few beads light up, like on the wooden rosary from Mexico that Tiffy gave me, the one that looks like it's made of candy, where the two bright pink beads light up. Or the Murano glass rosary I found in Eagle River, where parts of certain beads light up. Sometimes unexpected ones light up, like a green plastic rosary made by the Dairyman's Daughter's aunt. And of course those cheap "boat" rosaries that are $1 each light up, as do all the glow-in-the-dark rosaries. I still need to make rosaries with the beads I got specifically to light up under blacklight. One of these days... Meanwhile, I have sorted the other rosaries by color and am redoing the mandala to be a rainbow. I have red through green in place and need to do blue and purple. Then I need to figure out a place for the black, white, clear, and wooden rosaries in the rainbow.

Irish class was fun tonight because we practiced ordering food and drinks. Then Travalon and I braved the cold to walk over to Mariner's for our Valentine's Day dinner. He had steak and lobster, and I had steak and shrimp, and then we had chocolate mousse for dessert. Yum! Now I am very full and very sleepy, but I have to stay awake because Richard Bonomo is bringing us an easy chair that belonged to Kathbert's late mother, and it would be rather rude of us to be in bed when he arrives after he hauled it two hours south for us.

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Anniversary Trip to Lake Wisconsin

Friday I had to work half a day because of a Very Important Meeting, then Travalon and I drove to a very cute little cottage on Lake Wisconsin for our sixth anniversary.

Across the street is a park with this gorgeous view, and we walked out onto the sandbar visible on the lefthand side of the photo.

Further up the river, we saw a sandbar with a volleyball net on it! Super fun! We drove along the lake and went for a walk on the path to Paradise Island. There is a little marsh along the path.

Then we took the ferry, but you can't get out of your car because of social distancing. We drove to the park in Merrimac with the incredible views of the lake, and I took some pictures.

Owl's Head Bluff

Paradise Island

We got a fish fry (bluegill!) to go from Hooker's Resort, and we came back to the cabin in time to see this spectacular sunset. The first photo is from Travalon's camera, then two from mine, then one from my phone. You can choose which one you like best.

Then we hung out inside the cozy cottage, looking at photos on my computer. Here are a couple of pictures of the inside of the cottage.

I posted a photo of the sunset on social media, and a former coworker recognized the view because her grandparents had a cottage nearby that was still in the family. She and her cousin (another former coworker of mine) were excited to learn that it was five doors down from where we were staying. You can distinguish it by this red arrow.

Yesterday morning Travalon and I took a short walk to find the other cottage, but of course we didn't bring our good cameras, so when a young bald eagle landed on a sandbar right in front of us, we couldn't get a decent picture of it. Then we drove to the Necedah Wildlife Refuge, passing through Necedah on the way, and in town there was a lake with two swans on it.

Just inside the wildlife refuge, we saw this pair of nesting whooping cranes.

Then we went for a walk on a boardwalk and saw this interesting plant. A type of willow?

We heard some unfamiliar bird sounds, kind of like geese but not exactly, and then we rounded a corner and saw over a dozen swans, some on nests.

Since that trail was so wonderful, we wanted to go to another one, but the road was washed out and muddy in some parts. We made it pretty far along, but then we did get stuck. I felt weirdly calm about this, even though we were in the middle of nowhere. I began to pray the rosary, and before I could start the third decade, some people came by in a pickup truck and towed us out. Look at what a mess Noelle was!

We hiked on some other trail and then went to Necedah and got a car wash. The coolest part was the "tri-color wash," when it squirted magenta, teal, and yellow soap onto the car. It made a beautiful abstract design on the windshield, but I had changed into a lighter coat, so both my camera and my phone were in the backseat in my other coat pocket. By the time Travalon grabbed my other coat, the soap was already rinsed off. Alas, I have no photo or video of that. But look how clean Noelle is!

We were all hiked out, but we took a short walk at the Juneau County Wilderness Park on the Petenwell Flowage.

Then we went to Fitz's on the Lake and had a delicious dinner in our car. They are doing carhop service during social distancing, so we sat in our car and gazed at the lake (sorry, I didn't think to take a picture of that view) while we ate our anniversary dinner. I had coconut shrimp with bang bang sauce. So good! There was so much food that I brought plenty home for breakfast this morning.

Today it rained all day for our actual anniversary, nothing like the beautiful day six years ago when we got married. Here is a view of the geese enjoying the rain. I laughed at one that ran as fast as it could over a sandbar, but it was running to bite another goose. How mean!

We had a lazy morning eating leftovers and watching Mass on my computer, then we drove along Lake Wisconsin. We stopped at Columbia Lake, a much smaller lake with a power plant on it. In this picture, it looks like the smokestack from the power plant is creating the oppressive clouds.

We found a path around the lake and started to walk on it, but it was very cold. We did see two sandhill cranes and a great blue heron, but the wind picked up and literally began to howl, so we hurried back to the car. We drove along the south side of the lake, over the causeways and by all the islands, then we went to Sauk and took a walk at the VFW Park. We went to the dam; we didn't see any pelicans, but I did see an eagle fly by. So we had plenty of bird sightings this weekend for our anniversary. I'm glad Travalon likes to look at birds as much as I do - I definitely married the right guy!

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A Romantic Stroll down Memory Lane

If this quarantine is making us all crazy in different ways, my kind of crazy is getting too involved in the inner lives of large water birds. At Night Prayer last night I feel like they were a bit nonplused by my concern over a lonely whooping crane and an infertile goose, so today I will focus on something maybe a bit more normal to be interested in: my own romantic story. Travalon and I took a very nostalgic walk at the Arboretum, but before that, we flew kites with our neighbor, then we drove out to Sauk, where we saw pelicans by the dam. If I ever come back as a bird, maybe I would choose to be a pelican. They look like they are having the best time soaring over the bluffs and then landing on the water and bobbing around like a bunch of rubber duckies. They were sure enjoying the water currents from the dam!

Then Travalon and I went to the Arboretum, which was still busy but maybe not as crazy as I'd heard it was earlier today. The magnolias are blooming, just like when we had our wedding photos taken there six years ago.

And here is the gazebo at the end of the wetland boardwalk where Travalon proposed to me almost seven years ago.

This is the first thing I saw as his fiancee.

Just below the gazebo these yellow flowers were blooming.

And - sorry, I can't seem to blog lately without mentioning big birds - here is one of the pair of cranes that always nest by the wetlands boardwalk.

These are some azaleas (or maybe rhododendrons) blooming in the Arboretum.

We also stopped by Rich's house to see if the tulips I rescued last year from around the Carillon and in front of the Botany garden were blooming, but only this one was.

However, my grape hyacinths (from the set of blue bulbs I bought from Hardingfele's kid years ago) were going nuts. Here are just a few of them.

And this is a bunch of violets, some purple and some white, growing in Rich's yard. I think they are just "weeds," but I like them.

Flowers are why I love May so much! (That, and the perfect weather.) Here are some from around my neighborhood.

Look at me, MC Hat! Rich enough to have a personalized fence! Just kidding. This is the shadow from the Whaler's Cove gated community's fence.

And here are the cranes who always nest in our neighborhood.

They seem to be as in love as Travalon and I are. Soon we will have been married six years, and they have been the six happiest years of my life.

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