Paying the Vineyard Workers

 

Today I worked from home, then in the evening I went to another training session at the Labor Temple. Our local's office is on the far side of the building from the women's bathroom but really close to the men's bathroom, so that's some bad luck for those of us of the feminine persuasion. Today we talked about the LA teachers' strike, and I have it on good authority that this was the last training session. Travalon was planning to try everything on the menu at Butter Bird if this continued all summer.

Tonight at Night Prayer I had a question for everyone: the Gospel reading today was Jesus's disciples asking why he always talked in parables, and that got me to thinking about the story of the vineyard owner who hires people throughout the day to work in his vineyard, and at the end of the day he pays them all the same wage. My question was why did he pay the workers who had worked the longest last, so that they knew they got the same amount as the workers who had only been there an hour? To me, God comes across like a real jerk for doing this, because He easily could have paid the people who worked the longest first so they didn't feel slighted, but I must be missing the point. So I asked: what is the point? It was fascinating to me how some people totally missed what I was asking and said everyone gets the same amount of grace no matter how long they've been a believer, but other people totally got what I was asking and said, "You're missing the question. She's asking why the people who worked the longest got paid last." Right - I TOTALLY get the point of all the workers getting the same amount of money, and I said so, but I don't understand why the hardest workers got paid last and had to watch everyone else get paid the same amount. Some other people threw out some suggestions, but it is a mysterious parable. It also seems like a psychology experiment, because it was really interesting to see who understood my question and who kept answering a question I had not asked. It was not the people I would have guessed, which maybe says something about my ability to understand people. The person who was loudest about answering the question I had not asked is a stubborn person who never thinks they are wrong, so that tracks, but my biggest defender surprised me. I may have totally underestimated this person.

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The View from Blue Mound

 

I am on a committee at work that, among other things, chooses the awards among the nominees in our college. Usually I get a link to a folder containing all the nominees in the various categories, but last week I was being bombarded with links to each individual nomination... and then when I clicked on them, they didn't work. I was annoyed and started having a pity party of one, thinking, "Nobody ever nominates ME for this award!" but what I should have realized was that of course the reason things were so bizarre this year is because I WAS nominated, but they didn't want me to see my nomination, and then they realized they didn't want me ranking anyone else in my category either. This morning we had the meeting to decide the winners, and I had to recuse myself when they talked about my category. I don't expect to win, since the committee rarely awards people who are on the committee, probably figuring it looks really bad, but it was an honor just to be nominated.

I also had a Staff Congress meeting this afternoon. Years ago when I was first elected, I didn't know anyone there and was a bit jealous of the people who knew each other and sat together. Now I get there and everyone's like, "Famous! Sit here! I'll hold your cookie while you get settled." They had cookies and warm apple cider for us today. I probably shouldn't have had that snickerdoodle, but I just found out my numbers are good, I don't have diabetes, and the doctor said keep doing whatever I'm doing. Which I figure means one snickerdoodle now and then can't hurt.

In the evening I went to an ecumenical Thanksgiving service at a nondenominational church. The parking lot was enormous, and I walked half a mile to get to the church. Inside, it was bigger than some concert halls I've been to, and I had to sit up in the balcony because the main floor was already full. So now that I've given you an idea about the size of this church, guess how many stalls were in the women's bathroom? Two! Apparently Protestants don't have to pee. To be fair, there were two more toilets in the basement, but if you're sitting in the balcony, would you really want to run down that many flights of stairs? People cheered after each church's musical performance, so it felt more like a talent show than a religious service, and I felt the sermon was a bit on the "convert so Jesus will give you everything you want" side. It annoyed me a bit, and later I found out the Orthodox walked out because they were so offended by it. Perhaps I'm Orthodox?

I forgot to mention that Saturday Travalon and I went to the co-op for some groceries, and a guy there recognized his Wolverhampton hat! He was so stoked!! (Today a kid thought it meant he was a wolf catcher.) The guy was an Everton fan - he likes the Toffees! Then I ran into someone I knew years ago when I used to play with the early music group. Who knew we'd have so much social interaction at the grocery store?

As promised, here are some of the photos Travalon took from the Tower at Blue Mound State Park. We didn't go up the West Tower because a) we were tired after our hike, and b) if we could barely see the State Capitol 23 miles away, then how would we see Dubuque, which is about 65 miles from there?

Here's a photo from the lower level of the tower.

These are rock formations along the Indian Marker Tree Trail.

And here are views of the Driftless Area from Blue Mound.

I did find this view of the Madison State Capitol Building from Blue Mound, just to prove you can see it from up there. Maybe on Friday we will try tackling the West Tower. Travalon thought we might be able to see the House on the Rock from up there. I just like looking at the hills you can see towards Madison, because those must be the same hills we were on while hiking the Ice Age Trail, when we could see Blue Mound. Sometime I want to go to a tall building in Milwaukee to see if Holy Hill is visible from there, since downtown Milwaukee is visible from Holy Hill. If we do that, we'll take photos for sure.

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Peanut Butter Eyes

 

I apologize for several days of silence. Thursday I didn't have a chance to blog because I was at the Gold Mass that Richard Bonomo arranged. Masses are different colors for different professions, and the Gold Mass is specifically for scientists, but I asked to attend if I helped with the dinner afterwards. The Mass was a simple daily Mass with lovely hymns (as far as I'm concerned, "Let All Mortal Flesh" can always be the Communion hymn), then I went downstairs and helped Rich set the tables and serve dinner. There was a guy I didn't recognize also helping, so I said, "Hi, I'm Famous," and he said hi, he was the guest speaker. Really? At the University, guest speakers get treated like royalty, and here this guy was helping serve dinner?? After a simple dinner of pork, potatoes, and vegetables, Rich forced us all to get up and tell our name and science bona fides, which was embarrassing for those of us who weren't hardcore STEM people. Then the speaker gave an excellent talk on why theology needs science, then we had Rich's famous chocolate mousse, and then I was there until after ten helping to clean up. I wasn't the only one, either, so imagine if Rich had had to do it himself! He didn't ask any of us to help; we just knew he needed it done.

Friday I didn't blog because I was talking to Tiffy in what felt like the first time in forever.

Yesterday Travalon, Jilly Moose, and I drove to Literatus, the coffee shop in Watertown, and OK Cap met us there, then we all went to Tiffy's brother's house on Lake Nagawicka in Delafield. Tiffy was there dog sitting (and cat sitting), and we played with the friendly cat Tiki and the very friendly chocolate lab Reggie (or Register, as her brother calls him), but we never saw Ginger the unfriendly cat. Jilly Moose had purchased a Mad Libs book at Literatus, so we did a few. This is a story with certain verbs, nouns, and adjectives blank, so one person asks for us to fill them in without knowing what the story is, and hilarity ensues. We used to love Mad Libs as kids, and it was fun as adults because our vocabularies are larger. We sat out on the porch overlooking the lake creating these stories while Travalon went to visit his mom, then we walked to a nearby Mexican restaurant for lunch, and on the way we saw a white squirrel and a yellow warbler, and also those blue squills some people have in their lawns, so that this time of year their lawns look like fairy grass with all the little blue flowers in them. Tiffy had to give Reggie his peanut butter-filled toy to distract him so that we could leave, and I noted that he has peanut butter-colored eyes, so I said that would be a good blog post title. When we came back to the house, Travalon returned, and we wrote a naughty Mad Libs story with all adult words. To our delight, the basic skeleton of that story was about "Rockets," and it really worked!! If there is any demand, I might put the story on this blog at some point. I noticed a sign that said "Benice," and I thought it was a joke on Tiffy's sister-in-law's name, since her real name is Denise. When I mentioned this to Tiffy, she said, "It says Be Nice." It was just squished together. This is right up with the time that I pointed out to Tiffy that they had just painted M075 on the driveway to my condo's parking lot, and what could it mean? Was it a secret message to the moth-spraying planes? and she said, "You mean where it says SLOW?" Only if you read it upside-down...

Tiffy's nephew (who is now graduated from college) had done a drawing when he was a kid in school of two crabs in a death match tearing off each other's limbs, and it was labeled "Regeneration." I thought it was the most fantastic thing I'd ever seen, and I said it would be a great birthday party theme, but Tiffy said we should do it for Rich's birthday, not mine. Then I said for my birthday I could take my smiley face pillow Emily out for a drink, because Tiffy's niece had just turned 24, and she took the stuffed Cherry Minnie Mouse Tiffy had given her for her third birthday out for her first drink, since Cherry Minnie was now 21. Tiffy pointed out that this ship had sailed for Emily, since she's well past 21, so then I thought next year I could have Emily's big 50th birthday bash. I wasn't sure if Emily had been a baby shower gift or a first birthday present, but I texted Ma Hat who verified that she had been the latter, so now I have eight months to plan Emily's 50th birthday bash. 

It was raining most of the day, so we didn't walk to the nearby Italian restaurant for dinner. Instead, we all packed into Travalon's car and we drove the half a mile to the restaurant. We had passed their sign earlier, and the soup of the day was shrimp bisque, while the cocktail of the day was a Peeps martini. Jilly Moose really wanted the Peeps martini, and it is as glorious as you imagined:

Jilly Moose took this photo, and I like how the brim glows on her photo.

Dinner was a lot of fun too, especially when we were talking about watching classic cartoons, and Travalon said how he had been having issues with them turning green, but he inserted his fire stick into a different hole, and then it worked. After our dirty Mad Libs story, we couldn't help but laugh about that! Then we went back to the house, and the sweetest thing was that Reggie stood right in front of the door when we tried to leave. He didn't want to say goodbye! Well, we are a lot of fun.

Here is a cross I bought at a shop right by Literatus.

And this is a boat full of "slow no wake" buoys we saw on our walk to the Mexican restaurant.

Today was cold and windy, and we didn't have a lot of time after brunch, so Travalon and I went to Patrick Marsh. He took lots of photos of the mergansers and grebes that we saw, so I'll post those tomorrow. At Irish class we had to talk about what we will do tomorrow, so I said write in my diary (I try to do that every Monday evening), and the others were fascinated that I've kept a diary since I was 18. Nothing too exciting at band practice; I picked up Hardingfele after the bus dropped her off, and Bongo the chocolate lab was just leaving as we arrived. Stay tuned tomorrow for photos from Patrick Marsh.

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Stolen Strawberry and Moving Photo

I hope my readers had a good weekend. Mine started Friday evening with a gig at the retirement community where one of our fiddlers lives, and we had a large crowd to listen to us in the courtyard. At one point a weird bug that looked just like a cicada but was only the size of a leafhopper landed on my mandolin, and I couldn’t blow it off. It wasn’t in my way, so I just ignored it, and eventually it flew away. (My longtime readers may remember that we also had a problem with a frog hopping across the stage at this venue some years ago.) Our band was a big hit, and as always I got a lot of questions about the mandolin afterwards. Then Travalon and I went to the Kingdom for a late, light dinner.

Saturday Travalon and I met Rich and Tiffy for coffee, then we all walked around the Farmers’ Market and had lunch at the Globe. Rich had to mow his lawn, but the rest of us got bubble tea and then sat out on the deck on the seventh floor of Tiffy’s sister’s apartment building, because the thirteenth floor deck was being used for a wedding. Tiffy was busy with family in the evening, so late in the afternoon Travalon and I went to my garden plot, where a radish was ripe but the strawberry that should have been ripe was missing. Someone stole my strawberry! Just then I heard the horn blow that warns boats they have an hour until sunset, but it is always bad news when you hear it that early in the day. I ran back to the car as it sounded two more times, and we rushed home and prepared for the storm… but it never hit. We sat listening to 1920’s jazz until venturing out to the Union to hear Latin jazz. They had moved the band inside as a precaution, but no bad weather ever hit.

Yesterday after Mass, Travalon, Tiffy, and I went to Crema Café for brunch, then we went to CocoVaa for chocolate. I went back to the garden plot, and two strawberries and five radishes were ripe, so I ate the strawberries and brought the radishes to Rich’s house. Travalon went to a concert with his nephew, so I hung out with Rich and Kathbert, and we blatted. My uncle sent a photo of himself, my aunt, and my parents, and Kathbert got Pa Hat to nod in the photo, so that intrigued us. Supposedly my phone can also take photos like this, but we never figured out how. We had a deep conversation about how the universe is a system, and I think I have finally figured out my place in it. But that would be a whole blog post on its own. If I can get my swirling ideas into coherent sentences, I will blog about that soon.

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De Trinitate

One advantage of living in a college town is that there are plenty of overeducated people around, and some of them are willing to teach theology classes at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety. One such person is Mr. Nawlins, the man who gave me a five-page list of all the places I needed to see in the Crescent City back in August of 2005. (True story: when Katrina hit and I got my money back for the train fare and the hotel, I donated it to the relief effort, and then T suggested we go to Vegas, so I ended up sort of paying for two vacations. When I told Mr. Nawlins about our alternate plans, he said, "You couldn't go to Sodom so you're going to Gomorrah.") Mr. Nawlins is currently teaching a class on Augustine's De Trinitate, but I missed the first few classes and have been too intimidated to attend it since then.

However, last night I did meet up with the class at an Italian restaurant for Mr. Nawlins' birthday. (Have you ever noticed that, whenever you least want to go to parties and eat cake, suddenly everyone has a birthday? The first year I seriously gave up chocolate for Lent, suddenly everyone I knew was a Pisces and all offended if I wouldn't eat their birthday cake. I don't remember ever knowing so many fellow Capricorns before, but of course now that I am in "training" I had TWO parties for myself, then the Leprechaun and his wife, and now Mr. Nawlins! And now they're going to have a luncheon for all us January birthdays at work!!)

Speaking of training, at dinner everyone was talking about how things in the world tend to divide up naturally in threes, so I offhandedly mentioned the triathlon and - oops! Now I HAVE to do it because one other lady is really serious about doing it with me, and Anna Banana 2 might be interested as well! (She and I had long ago planned to attempt a baby triathlon, but we both kept getting injured or something, so it never happened.) We discussed how maybe this time of year a biathlon (skiing and shooting) would be a better option, and someone mentioned putting them together to do a pentathlon, and someone else said didn't that already exist? So we came up with our own pentathlon:

1. Swinging on a vine over a deep chasm.
2. Jumping into the river in the chasm and swimming out to sea.
3. Scaling a cliff rising out of the sea.
4. Jumping over the crater of an active volcano.

And wouldn't you know that I've already forgotten #5! Unless #4 was #5 and there was another one in there somewhere... If you have any suggestions for an appropriate #5, feel free to let me know. Nothing could be crazier than what the one-fourth Basque guy who was there last night told us about, an extreme marathon in Death Valley, which entails running 100 miles. RUNNING 100 miles?!?!? I've never even biked that far in one day! I've only barely made it 75 miles in six hours. That extreme marathon would take me three weeks to do!

Guess I'd better start training now!

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