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.

Famous Hat

New Hat for the Church

 

Yesterday I worked from home because I was sick all night again from this weight loss medication. I cannot prevail against the doctor who wants me on it, especially now that I have lost sixteen pounds, at least according to the scale. I don't look different to myself, nor do my clothes seem to notice any difference, and certainly nobody else has said, "You look fabulous! Have you lost weight?" But man, these side effects! My FitBit told me to take it easy, and I had already gotten my cardio load for the day by walking around the neighborhood with Travalon at lunch, but I was very short on steps. How to get more steps without increasing my cardio load? Why, by putting the FitBit on my right wrist and then fiddling all night with Moldy Jam!

A woman who plays the mandolin seemed almost personally offended that I came with a fiddle instead of my old tater bug mando, but she sat next to me and even told me about how she goes to a Django Reinhardt jam (wish I could remember when and where she said it was), and they play weird chords like a C diminished. I said, "What's that?" and she showed me. She showed me a whole chart of how to make chords on the mandolin, so I could see I was making them all wrong, even good old G major and C major. She said I should take lessons with her teacher, and part of me thinks maybe that would be a good idea (maybe I'd finally learn to do an E major chord that isn't physically painful), but another part of me thinks nah, I've been doing it this way for years - why change now? This woman is a much better mando player than I am, and she said she used to play violin in a symphony orchestra, so she is undoubtedly a better violin player too. That's okay - it's not a competition. She had an iPad and was looking at the music, which I thought was not allowed at these jams, and she tried to get me to look at it too. I resisted until the end of the evening, when I was really tired and they kept suggesting songs I'd never heard of, and then I did peek at the music. Might as well keep my sight-reading skills going along with learning by ear, right?

Today I worked on campus because I was at home yesterday, but it was a cold, wet, dreary day and I would have loved to work in my nightgown, snuggled under my mushroom blanket and not had to leave the house. At lunchtime I walked with Hardingfelde in her building, and we stopped to see her coworker who goes to the same church as Travalon and me. We are all three violin players, but those two are both in community orchestras playing symphonic music, whereas I am good with just sticking to fiddle tunes, or Baroque music if anyone is interested. (Anyone?) They both yakked about the difficult music they were working on, and I just thought, "No, thanks!" It's a whole different world than the musical one I live in. I may hate playing in any position above third, but I'm sure Hardingfele would hate being in the fast Irish session without notes on the page, just someone starting a tune and everyone else joining in when they recognize it, or trying to fake it if they don't.

After work I took the 28 bus to Adoration, and it was so crowded that I don't know why they don't run a big bendy bus on that route. There was a free 80 campus bus that came right before it, and it was a big bendy bus, and yet it was still packed. Our bus was so full that the bus driver wouldn't let anyone get on after me, which made me glad that I didn't allow a pushy undergrad to get ahead of me in line. She can wait for the next bus, but I had a timeline. The bus driver seemed pretty jaded, but when a toddler girl said, "Thank you!" as her dad carried her off the bus, he did crack a smile. Travalon picked me up from Adoration, and as we were heading home, a train stopped us on Sherman. We drove on Troy Drive to see it go over the bridge, and I hopped out of the car and ran through the tunnel beside the road that goes under the train tracks. I should have made a video - the sound of the train reverberated in there! It was so worth it, even if the train did beat us to the crossing on Highway M. We just saw the last of it go through the crossing. Travalon loved that I was so excited about going through the tunnel while the train was above me. It was on my bucket list.

Tiffy was sending me photos from Greece, like this lovely church.

She said this sign made her think of the person with the fictional autobiography, because he said you can find him where the pirates are.

(No idea if Tiffy took this "Privacy & Comfort Sail Trip," and I can't believe that blog post is three years old! I thought it just happened last November!) 

The big news is that they put the steeple back on our old church. It was in the newspaper!

Rich was there, and he took photos.

And here's a random photo I took yesterday on our lunchtime walk, of the last colorful tree in our neighborhood.

And check out all those squirrel nests in the tree behind it! There are still trees with colorful leaves on campus too, but they are few and far between. Almost everything is bare now. Sigh... winter is coming.

Famous Hat

Gig at Bad Art

 

Yesterday I worked from home, and at lunch Travalon and I walked on Governor's Island. The water was very blue.

He had the day off of work, so he went to Watertown and took a walk on Tivoli Island.

I took a walk in our neighborhood on my afternoon break.

This is out of order, but in the morning Travalon was trying to get tickets to AC/DC, who are playing in town next summer, and while he was waiting to get into the site, this little man was walking as the green bar moved further to the right.

He said, "That little man is getting more exercise than I am today!" Then when he came home, we went on another walk after dark (I was wearing my high-vis vest), and then he went to see the Marshall Tucker band while I talked to Tiffy. I said I felt very uncharitable about not liking someone who annoyed me with little things, like saying, "Thus far" instead of "so far," but Tiffy totally understood. She said, "Do they say 'shan't' too?" Not that I've heard, but I wouldn't be surprised! And when I found out this person's politics, because they totally brought it up, then I didn't feel guilty at all about not liking them.

This morning I met my Union peep who looks like a leprechaun at the bank so we could close out our Union bank account, since we merged with another local, then Travalon and I took a walk on Governor's Island. On the way there we saw this pretty tree with a cute Little Free Library in front of it.

Here's a photo from Governor's Island itself.

Then we hung out at home for a bit. I was really doing well at DuoLingo today.

We checked out a trail not too far from our house in the afternoon.

Travalon's Premier League team the Wolves were on in the afternoon, not the morning like usual, and for the first half they held Chelsea to no score, but in the second half, as we drove to my gig at Bad Art in Oregon, Chelsea scored three goals. The poor Wolves - I don't see how they won't be relegated. But miracles can happen in sports, as we would discover later in the day...

The gig was to celebrate our fearless leader having an art show. Her thing is making chickens out of return address labels, and there were some cool ones (I particularly liked "Rainbow Rooster"), but did I think to take a photo of any of them? No. Travalon did take a couple of photos of Bad Art.

We were supposed to play for an hour, but our leader spent the first twelve or so minutes talking about her art, some of it interesting like how her whole family were artists and they were featured in Life magazine, and some of it maybe not so interesting. Then we were supposed to finish at five, but she wanted to keep playing because she had talked so much, and she thought we should play for a full hour. My regular readers will be stunned to learn that I had to recycle some water fiercely, so I said, "I'm done!" and ran to the back room where my mandolin case was. As I was putting the mandolin away, some older guy said, "Before you put that away, can I see it?" I said, "Let me go pee, and then we can talk." As promised, I showed him Mandy, but he grabbed her away and I kind of thought he wasn't going to give her back. I am pretty generous about letting fellow musicians try her out, but I didn't know this guy. He was saying he had checked out another round-back mandolin, but it was only fit for hanging on the wall for decoration, and it was surprising to see one as old as mine in playable condition. Then he asked me a million questions about what kind of pick I used. Meanwhile, Travalon was waiting for me to get ready to leave. This was supposed to be an unpaid gig, but we did get one drink at the bar, so I let Travalon have it. He got a delicious pumpkin concoction, and when I had a couple sips just before the gig, our leader's partner wondered if it was a good idea to drink before playing, as if many of the most famous musicians weren't three sheets to the wind most of the time they were onstage. Our leader gave Hardingfele $2.50 from the tips when they had played there the previous weekend, so Hardingfele gave it to me, since I wasn't getting paid (they were paid $25 each last weekend), but then we each made $8 in tips, plus the venue did decide to give us each $10, so I actually made $20.50 at an "unpaid" gig. Not bad. My big disappointment is that I put my FitBit on my right wrist to get my steps for the hour, and by the second song I'd gotten them, but my playing didn't register as a workout. I was curious to see what FitBit would have thought I was doing.

Travalon and I went to a newish Mexican restaurant not far from home that we'd been meaning to check out, and I got a huitlacoche quesadilla and a thing I thought would be a sweet corn cake, but it was a strange yet aesthetically pleasing crust with salsa and cheese on it.

(I should have thought to take this picture before taking the first bite.) I know what you are wondering: "So Sombrero Famoso, which salsa is the hot one, the green or the red? La verde o la roja?" and I would say, "Yes. Si." Notice how it's the colors of the Mexican flag. Then I had to use the bathroom, and when I passed the bar, there were these sad balloons spelling out: "Viva Mexic."

I asked the bartender, "Donde está el O?" and she said, "El explotó." I feel like there's a story there, but my Spanish isn't good enough to find out que pasó. Meanwhile, Travalon was looking at his phone, as he is wont to do when I go to the restroom, and he was stunned to see that the Badgers were beating the Washington Huskies. What?? They can barely score, never mind win!! We came home and watched the final minutes of the game, and they won!!! Everyone was so excited that they rushed the field!

I was excited for a completely different reason too - my new license plates finally arrived!

I did get my first choice of personalized license plate! Travalon says he will get the Crane Foundation one next May, when he needs to get new stickers, so maybe he can get a clever personalized one at that time. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments. I'm thinking TRVLON. Or TRAVLN.

Famous Hat

Missing My Mandolin Earring

 

This morning Travalon dropped me off at a research study, and then he went for a walk on Picnic Point. He took some photos with his phone.

I made the study person laugh a lot, but I also lost one of my mandolin earrings. Travalon took me to work, and I was double-checking a shadow budget and realized a lot of salaries hadn't been accounted for. Yikes! I took a walk by myself, since Seabird was working from home and Hardingfele was busy, and I took some photos. Some of them aren't as great as they looked in real life, but these two are okay.

Travalon also took a photo where he works.

There was a Brazilian music concert tonight, but when Travalon got home from work, we went back to the research place and looked for my earring. However, we weren't as lucky as a couple of weeks ago, and there was no sign of it. So sad! The thing is that this time I have no idea what action I'd taken that might have knocked the earring out of my ear, unlike last time when I realized what must have happened and was able to look right where it had happened. I said maybe I should get a pair of violin earrings, and then I could wear one violin one and one mandolin one. And this isn't even my only pair of mandolin earrings, so it's not like I can't wear mandolin earrings if I so desire. I just can't wear this particular pair.

Update: I clicked on the link above for mandolin earrings and found the exact pair that I just lost one, and also matching violin earrings. So guess what's coming to my house in a few days?

Famous Hat