Ice Cream Social with Death Bloom

 

This morning was dark and gloomy, so when I got to work, I had a second cup of coffee. Maybe not the best idea, because then I was really wired during our staff meeting. We always start with a dad joke or two, and today the question was: Why do chicken coops have two doors? Answer: Because if they had four doors, they'd be a chicken sedan! Badoom-ching! I rarely contribute a dad joke myself, and I've only made up one that I can think of offhand: If lemons cost less than limes, are they sublime?

After the meeting I went up to the FART 5 office because one of our members had just come back from Japan, and we all wanted to hear about it. She LOVED Japan! I asked what surprised her most about it, and she said that there were signs in all the public restrooms saying not to squat on top of the toilets. Seabird (who is Chinese) said those signs were for the Chinese tourists, because they have so many squatting toilets in China. Everyone I know who has been to Japan loved it, so someday I may have to get over my fear and hatred of planes to make a trip there.

Right after lunch Seabird, two other colleagues, and I walked through the rain to the ice cream social. Because of the dismal weather, it was held inside the Botany hall, and we were the first ones in line, since Seabird had a meeting in an hour. I usually get orange custard chocolate chip, but today they had key lime pie flavor. Seabird always complains that they don't have blue moon, but today they did. However, she and the other two got some birthday flavor that was champagne with raspberries. After that we went to the greenhouses and saw the "death bloom" again. The flower spike is just as impressive, but the poor agave is starting to die from the bottom up. We looked around at other plants and then went back upstairs, and the others noted that not too many people seemed to have braved the rain, although Hardingfele and her coworker who goes to my church were there. (I had invited them, and my coworkers, but got little response.) So we got seconds; I picked up a serving of orange custard chocolate chip, but I was too full and was going to save it for tomorrow. Then when we walked out of the building, there was a long line to get in, so I felt guilty for taking seconds when some people hadn't had firsts. To assuage my guilt, I gave the ice cream to Travalon when we got home. He made a delicious dinner of whole wheat pasta with chicken, marinara sauce, and goat cheese that was just unbelievably good. So far I am loving this Mediterranean diet, and when I deviated from it today with the ice cream, I did feel off. The only thing is that my diet app, which has been screaming at me for ages about how I need to cut down on my fat consumption, is now suddenly telling me to eat more fat. You just can't please that thing.

Here is the video compilation of the trains we saw in Rochelle over the Memorial Day weekend:

It's very long, but there's lots of awesome graffiti.

Famous Hat

Bibbed Mallards and Wood Ducks and a Tiny Backpack

 

I forgot to mention that on Saturday, since it was Cecil's name day, we got him a bubble gun at Walgreen's. We thought about getting him a tiny backpack but decided it was too feminine. I got it for myself, which is probably just as well, because it was supposed to contain a tiny notebook, some stickers, a rainbow eraser, and a pink gel pen, but the pen and the eraser were both missing. I'm sure a little girl would have been devastated by that. I mean, even I'm a little bummed about the missing rainbow. Here's the tiny backpack with Niko for reference:

Speaking of Niko and forgetting things, I forgot to bring him on Friday when we listened to jazz, since I thought we were just getting spinach puffs and didn't realize there would be music involved. In case you are wondering what I need a tiny backpack for, it will actually be useful for holding my keys. I don't really need the small notebook or the stickers, however.

Today I worked from home. It was rainy, but Travalon and I went out in the morning and saw Tux Duck standing on our neighbor's dock.

And I forgot to post this Tux Duck Travalon saw at the Terrace on Thursday.

The technical term for a Tux Duck is a bibbed mallard. They are a hybrid between a wild mallard and a domestic duck, which is descended from a mallard. They should be fertile.

Travalon went back to the pond with all the wood ducks, and he saw them again today.

They are such beautiful ducks. 

Seabird sent me some stunning photos of Carvoeiro and Lagos in Portugal, some on Saturday while I was at the tamburitza concert and some on Sunday during my drum lesson.

Wow! I have never been to Portugal, but I'd love to go. Travalon, Tiffy, and now Seabird have all been.

I also forgot to post this patch of Virginia bluebells we saw on Governor's Island yesterday.

 And I got this little movie from DuoLingo on Saturday:

Speaking of which, I still need to make movies of train videos and panda videos from Travalon, so look for those sometime soon.

Famous Hat

Photos of Lisbon and Memories of College Parties

 

Today Travalon went to Patrick Marsh before work. He saw some pelicans there, but the photos aren't that clear. Feel free to refer back to previous photos of pelicans on this blog. Then he went to Columbus and Portage to do some rail fanning. He made a couple of videos that I will make into a movie at some point, and he took some photos of the cool graffiti on the train cars.

And a colorful engine.

Next he went to Whalen's Grade and took photos of what I'm pretty sure are gadwalls, some more pelicans, and a pair of sandhill cranes, but the birds were so far away that the photos aren't very clear.

Meanwhile, I worked on campus and walked with Hardingfelde at lunch. We went to Allen Centennial Gardens again.

When I got back from lunch, Seabird started texting me from Lisbon. I am very flattered that she and Tiffy take time out of their wonderful vacations to send me photos. First she sent me something to translate:

It says: "(The) my bakery, always fresh and delicious." (They always use the definite article in Portuguese, even with a person's name, so I would say, "The Travalon was taking train photos.") Then she sent me photos of Lisbon. So gorgeous!

And, just in case this post doesn't have enough photos on it yet, here are some more Travalon took yesterday at the zoo and forgot to send me before I blogged last night.

In the afternoon I went to another research study, and on the way I saw a train pass by very close, but the horn was so loud that I had to plug my ears, so I didn't make a video. This study was on algorithms; I was supposed to choose between two pieces of artwork about a hundred times, and then it showed me ten pieces of artwork I hadn't seen and asked me to pick my five favorite. The algorithm guessed the exact order I picked them in. The grad student said I was an excellent research subject since I clearly had strong preferences, and then she gave me $20 in singles. These research studies are kind of fun, and I make a tiny bit of money, but most of all they make me feel like I'm extraordinary. The grad student said during the driving one last week that I was doing really well, and I did one last year where I seemed to shock the grad student with how good I was at navigating. I have some weird talents, that's for sure. I've always said I would have been a great hunter-gatherer because I spot birds quickly and always remember where I saw plants.

After work my Union peeps were meeting down at the Terrace. It was a glorious evening, and there were quite a few of us drinking beer and having interesting conversations. Just about the time they all left, Travalon arrived. so we sat enjoying the lovely weather as we ate a pizza. When we left, we passed a frat house that was having a party, and they had a professional-level setup of lights and sound equipment. Did they rent it, or did they actually invest thousands of dollars in equipment you'd expect at a nightclub? It was Senior Night, so State Street was crawling with undergrads, some in costumes. It made me think of some of the crazy parties I went to in college, like the one where I was hula hooping on a roof, and the one where one girl was writing down everything people said with a colorful marker while another guy kept hollering that the song playing was a foxtrot, although it was not big band music but 90's grunge, and the one where everyone brought beer from around the world (I brought Chinese beer), and the crazy house party where a guy pulled me into the closet to hide from the cops busting it, and then those of us who didn't get arrested eventually came out of hiding, ordered a shamrock-shaped pizza, and watched a foreign movie. And the one in the wildly painted basement, and the one where some of us were standing out on a balcony, and a Brazilian girl mused, "What is it to be lucky in suicide - to succeed, or to fail?" and we all thought that was such a deep question. My housemates and I hosted a few ourselves, like a Halloween one where we were the Lion, the Witch, and (poor Tiffy!) the Wardrobe, and a really lovely Christmas one. I am definitely much happier now than I was in college, but some of those parties were really fun. The one I didn't like was a "kegger" where you had to pay $5 for a red plastic cup, and then nothing came out of the keg but foam, and the house was so packed you could barely move. That's what it seemed like some of the bars on State Street would be like tonight, and I've never understood how that could be fun.

Famous Hat

Bad Air Day

 

Today there was an air quality alert because of the forest fires up in Canada, and just walking from my car to the shuttle I could feel the air wasn't right. I dug an old mask out of my backpack (still there from the pandemic) and wore that on my walk from the shuttle stop to my building, and that seemed to help. Seabird didn't want to walk at lunch with the bad air, so I asked Hardingfele if she wanted to walk in her building. "It's nice out," she said. "I want to walk outside." So here's the thing - Hardingfele works for the medical school, so she can hook you up with all kinds of stuff (my longtime readers may remember how she got Rich and me disposable hazmat suits for a movie we were making), and I knew she would have access to N95 masks. Of course she had some in her office, but she didn't want to wear one herself. I wore it during our walk, because the air quality was really bad per my phone and I saw no reason to breathe in a bunch of ash. 

I didn't do a morning walk because of meetings this morning. During my afternoon walk I wore the N95 mask again and felt a bit resentful that, as I walked under the blooming black locust trees, I couldn't smell their sweet scent. Then I suddenly noticed a really big black locust with blossoms hanging down really low, and I pulled my mask down low enough to smell them. The tree sort of made a shelter around me, and I spent a few moments just basking in that glorious scent. Here's a photo.

Too bad I can't post the smell on here too. The one crazy thing that happened today was that a letter came addressed to nobody, but the address was a coworker's office, so I brought it to her. She opened it, and it was empty. It had come from a grad student, and she guessed the student had meant to mail back their office key but forgot to put it in the envelope... and then she noticed a big hole on the edge of the envelope, certainly large enough for a key to have fallen out of. So there's one key we will never get back! I also had a package in my mailbox, and it was actually a gift from the faculty member who had a huge trip to Finland with tons of people and just lots of complications, like that invoice that had to be created in one day. He brought me back a seat pad.

It's genuine lamb's wool. They were in the Sapmi region, or as some people call it, Lapland (maybe that's not PC? I never hear it called that anymore), up above the Arctic Circle. I don't know how I can get invited on one of these trips... I did joke that they should bring me along, since I have the credit card and could just pay for everything once we're there. Though honestly, the idea of those flights does not excite me.

And why not? A couple more random DuoLingo screenshots.

Speaking of DuoLingo, I should wrap this post up and go play with the Green Owl.

Famous Hat

Night Prayer During the Storm

 

Today I was hoping to take the day off of work to hang out with Jilly Moose and Anna Banana II, but there was so much travel planning in limbo: people going from here to Europe who didn't have flights, people coming from Europe to here who didn't have flights, and nobody had hotel rooms. I spent a lot of the day on the phone with travel agents, who kept making weird mistakes like looking for hotel rooms on the wrong days or booking them in the wrong city, but now everyone has flights and hotels. This was an emergency because they're flying at the end of the month - nothing like waiting until the last minute to make complicated travel plans! And then of course another faculty member submitted an emergency grant request. I thought they were all off doing research for the summer.

I did get to make a cool video of a train right after work, which I may post at some point. Then I went to Adoration, and when I was almost home, the tornado warning went off on my phone. I wasn't sure what to do at that point, stop or keep going, since I was only a mile away, so I kept going. Then I could hear the tornado sirens outside, and I could see the trees whipping around in the wind. As soon as I parked, Travalon came over and said we should go to our neighbor's house, since she has a basement. The three of us holed up in a walk-in closet in her basement until the tornado warning was over, then we watched the impressive lightning until Rich decided to do Night Prayer. (I was supposed to lead tonight.) My neighbor has external chargers, so I hooked my phone up to one to do Night Prayer with Rich and a person who lives downtown but mysteriously had power, since it had gone out for the rest of us. (It's still out - I'm using my phone's hotspot to blog.) Once the lightning had died down a bit, Travalon and I went home and had cold cereal for a very late dinner. Now I better wrap this up so I don't use up my phone's battery.

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We All Ballers

 

Friday night I pondered going to a play about Sophie Scholl, but it was cold and dark, so I stayed in and talked to Tiffy. Then yesterday Travalon and I drove to Milwaukee to meet her, and we had lunch at the empanadas place, since it had been so good last time. I got three completely different empanadas, and they were all delicious too. Tiffy said there should be a branch of this restaurant in Madison, and I said maybe that wouldn't be so good for me, because I'd eat there all the time. Maybe someday I will have tried all the flavors on the menu. Then we went to Black Cat Alley, which I have featured on this blog before, but a lot of the walls were blank, so I don't know if they were working on new murals or what. 

We went to a nearby coffee place to warm up, and we discovered that someone we know has self-published a book. Tiffy was shocked by this person's autobiography: "None of that is true! Can you just lie online like that?" Welcome to the Internet, Tiffy. She said this person's autobiography belongs in the fiction section, which made me laugh for like twenty minutes straight. Her biggest issue was with someone calling themselves a professional when that is not how they support themselves. I get it; I love sudoku and do it all the time, but I don't call myself a professional sudoku solver. She said this person made it sound like they were on Broadway, and I said of course this person was on Broadway, there's a road by that name and they probably drive on it all the time. We got way too much mileage out of this, making up songs about the person and making up autobiographies for ourselves. I had trouble making mine too far from reality because I have actually been paid to write, to draw, and to play music in public, though of course not at rates where I could support myself doing these things. Anyway, here's what we came up with:

Tiffy is an award-winning basketball player (she won a free throw contest in... middle school? high school? my memory is terrible, and she just told me this yesterday) who has played the viola at the largest venues in Milwaukee (as part of a youth orchestra) and has won awards at piano competitions (back in high school). She has worked her way up the corporate ladder in quality assurance and has traveled all over the world.

Travalon was an award-winning college basketball player (junior college, walk-on, and he won the Mental Toughness Award) who left to become a captain of industry (he was part owner of a family business), went into the hospitality business (he was a bellhop at a hotel), and is now a beloved teacher of disadvantaged children (that's true - he's Mr. Travalon and they love him!). He is also a world traveler and has been in every time zone (at least while on a plane).

Famous Hat played college basketball on a team that went to the tournament (an intramural team from my dorm floor, and we had to forfeit our playoff game because only two people could make it). She has had her poetry set to music and published (on the side of a bus), and she has also published award-winning recipes (I got a tote bag because the local newspaper printed my recipes for chocolate curry chicken and mango spinach cheesecake). She is a decorated diplomat (I have a medal because my team - Iran - won first place at Model UN in high school), an award-winning behavioral scientist (I won ten pounds of cheese at a middle school science fair for my project on learning in goldfish), and a (semi) professional musician (making tens of dollars). She has also traveled to many countries, and she speaks seven languages (one fluently - English). 

So what can you conclude from our life stories? We all ballers! And world travelers!

Travalon dropped Tiffy and me off at the Milwaukee campus for an early music concert: the Orlando Singers, four men who sing a cappella. Before the concert, we were hanging out and still laughing about that author's autobiography, and a guy came in talking on the phone about how all people in Wisconsin save up their money to buy useless little cabins on the shores of lakes nobody in their right minds would swim in, then they save more money to buy boats they don't use, and then they sit around in bars complaining about all the money this has cost them for upkeep. He also said he was going to be hearing a string quartet, so Tiffy thought his grasp of reality was as tenuous as the author's. The concert was all Renaissance music paired with Renaissance artwork on the same theme as whatever piece was being sung, and it struck me that this artwork was five centuries old, and that's only ten times as long as I have currently lived. What a weird thought. When Travalon came back, we went to the Three Lions Pub for dinner. So delicious!

Since we had overdone it with the food yesterday, this morning I couldn't make myself eat before Mass, and we were running late so we went to the closest one. It was a cold day, but sunny, so we drove to Lake Wisconsin and took the ferry over. We went to the Baraboo antiques mall, but neither of us could find anything we wanted in our price range. We took a long hike at Mirror Lake State Park (I will post photos tomorrow), then we went to the antiques shop in Sauk, and I found a rosary with a crucifix that opens, and there are little pieces of paper in there with writing on them. I did buy it, and I'll have to look at it more closely soon. One odd thing I did see at the Baraboo antiques mall was a necklace that had a cross on it, and where there would have been a corpus on a crucifix, it had a yin yang. That struck me as really weird, since Taoism is a different religion, so why mix religious symbols like that? I should have taken a photo of it. I didn't buy it because it was just too weird. Anyway, today was a really good day because finally, FINALLY, the Packers won!!!!!

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Yet More Photos of Havana, Nassau, and Homosassa Springs

Here are some more pictures from our trip. First is a beautiful courtyard in Havana, where we encountered the little lizard featured previously on this blog.

Here is a royal palm, which is the national tree of Cuba:

This was, I believe, a famous poet. This building was right near the one that featured Che Guevara.

Here are some beautiful monuments from the Christopher Columbus Cemetery:

And really, who can get enough of those Cuban classic cars?

Moving on to Nassau, here is a shot of the waterfront at night:

The N on our ship's name had burned out, so we were on the "ORWEGIAN SKY."

There were lots of beautiful lights in Nassau. This is the bar where we had a Kalik beer with the natives.

This is a shot of the Atlantis resort.

And a shot of some beautifully colored buildings on our harbor tour.

Travalon in Nassau! This is near the Queen's Stairs.

This was a church we saw on the bus tour of Nassau. I think it's Presbyterian.

Now onto Homosassa Springs, and a shot of the manatees eating lettuce.

This is a really good shot of the tail of one of the manatees. Maybe I already posted this...?

And some beautiful birds at Homosassa Springs.

 egret

 white pelican

 spoonbills

 flamingos

And a gray fox! I don't really see those here in Madison, but we have plenty of red foxes.

This was a really intriguing building we could see in Birmingham from the Vulcan statue.

And here is a shot of the whole downtown all lit up, with the colorful building on the left.

Here is my cell phone's version of the same scene.

And finally, a shot of Ferne Clyff State Park in Illinois.

Famous Hat