What I Asked For

 

Today was my last day at work for a week... or a year? Last week at our department admin meeting, my coworker changed my comment on the meeting agenda to say I was leaving for a year's vacation, just to see if our boss would notice (not my actual boss anymore), and he didn't, so I guess I'm good! Last Monday I sent an email to the whole department saying I'd be gone the next week so please get things to me right away, but it was eerily quiet. Too quiet. Then this morning I came in to find a whole bunch of requests. Fortunately my colleague in FART 5 can handle these requests, and we had a meeting today to talk about them, and then we went for a walk outside. It was very hot, so she cut the walk short. 

On my way home, I stopped at Walgreens to pick up a few things for my trip. The cashier asked if I would like a bag, and I said sure, but then she didn't give me one. Finally I asked for one, and she said, "I did ask if you wanted one," and I said, "Yes, you did, and I said yes." Her response? "Interesting." I chalk it up to a long day, and the woman before me in line not wanting one, but now I'm thinking she believes I was lying. When I told Tiffy this story, she told me about how once she was at a restaurant with her family, and her brother ordered a steak. She told the waitress, "I'll have the same thing," and she got salmon. I didn't think either of us mumbled...

Travalon went to Governor Nelson State Park before work and took some photos.

The colors are really starting to get good around here. I'll miss the peak, but maybe we'll see some fabulous colors on the long drive to Philadelphia.

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Last Boat Ride of the Season?

 

Today Travalon and I took what might be the last boat ride of the season. I took some photos.

Walking back along the dock, I saw this old lotus leaf with its own little pond.

Our neighbors were coming in at the same time, and they said it was going to rain. Soon after I got back in the house, I heard the steam whistle warning the boats to get off the water, and then it began to rain. Our timing was so good! 

It stopped raining by the time of my afternoon break, so I went out and ate some crabapples. Our new little sugar maples are changing color. This is the best of the three.

I went for a walk after work and could see there would be an incredible sunset, so I hurried back home to go check it out from the dock. This picture is from the start of our road.

Then I heard a train horn and rushed to where I could watch it, a spot where I couldn't see the sunset, so I missed it, and no train ever came. But yesterday Seabird and I watched one on campus going backwards, stopping, going forward, stopping, and backing up again. The cars must have hated it!

I thought there was an Oktoberfest party at the Edgewater tonight, but I checked the website to make sure it was still on with the weird weather... and it had been last Friday, when we were eating noodles with Seabird and her husband. We decided to go to Bierock, where I had a small infused drink and a small pumpkin beer with dinner, which in my case was a spinach puff, mushroom spaetzle, and a bit of a tikki masala bierock. Once we got home, I said we should write a story, but I was too lazy to write, so we recorded it on my phone's voice memo app. That's how we wrote our song about songs about trains, but this might not be the same kind of masterpiece. I'll listen tomorrow and see if I still like it.

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Crabapples and Waves

 

Today I worked from home, and I picked some beautiful crabapples in our neighborhood.

Travalon and I walked on Governor's Island, and the wind was so intense that the waves were enormous.

That was my photo of it. Here is Travalon's.

I was surprised to see what looks like a dandelion in bloom.

Otherwise it was a quiet day, but I did watch someone I know on Jeopardy! She came in second. That is now the third person I know who's been on the show.

Here are some more screenshots from social media of a train that went through our town.

There were even more, but I believe I have already posted the others. It's kind of fun how you see the same graffiti over and over - they become like old friends.

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Irish Tunes at the Elks Club and Coots on the Golf Course

 

This morning I dreamed Travalon had a map of the United States with the main college team of each state represented, so Wisconsin was red with a badger, Minnesota was maroon with a gopher, Florida was green with an alligator, etc. But I was puzzled because Alabama had my Belleek castle tower.

"What's that for? I don't understand," I was saying to Travalon (since everyone knows Alabama is the Crimson Tide), but just then I woke up and saw it was two minutes until my alarm would go off, so I just got up.

It rained all day. I chatted with a colleague, but she couldn't walk at lunch, and Hardingfele was at some kind of all-day event, so I did a rosary walk in the rain. I debated going to get ice cream but decided against it. I did see some cool chalk art by my building: the British flag, the US flag, the Texas flag, and a very cheerful dinosaur/dragon thing.

I have a couple of cute little plants in my office that were pieces that fell off of plants in the greenhouses on campus. This jade plant is from the Horticulture greenhouses.

This little plant is from the Botany greenhouses.

Here is what my plant app says it is:

After work I went to the Elks Club, where I was soon joined by Celtic Lass. There weren't too many people there this time, and no other Shamrock Club members until Travalon joined us an hour later. There were plenty of musicians at the Irish Session, and I learned today that the fiddle tune that keeps getting stuck in my head is called "Gravel Walks," although I think someone did tell me that before. The flute player came over and chatted with us for a bit too. After Celtic Lass left, I glanced at the golf tournament on TV, which was being played in Hawaii, and was delighted by the adorable chicken-sized birds strolling around the golf course. An internet search leads me to believe that they are Hawaiian coots. I'm not sure how they are different than the coots we have around here, except that they look a bit larger, and they were all milling around in the grass while our coots are almost always in the water. Seeing them made me really want to go back to Hawaii. Is it any coincidence that "coot" almost sounds like "cute"?

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Boat Ride with Lotus Harvest and Choro Session with Humiliation

 

I forgot to mention two things yesterday. One was that I didn't bring something with me to eat before the condo association meeting, so at my afternoon break I went and bought a sandwich. They didn't have the kind I love, so it took a bit for me to decide, but then I was in the right place to see a train go by on campus, with lots of beautiful graffiti. I didn't take any photos or videos, sorry. I was kind of far away from it.

The second thing was right at the end of the day when I asked my coworker who isn't even thirty if she was done in the mailroom, since I was going to lock up early to go to the meeting. Her student hourly asked me how the Halfway to St. Patrick's Day party was, and I said, "Lots of fun! Thanks!" so she said, "It was lit, huh?" I said we're all too old for that, and she nodded knowingly and said, "It was lit!" My coworker asked if that was the party I'd told her about that morning, so I said, "No, that was the Willy Street Fair yesterday. It's not Irish, just crazy." Then I told them about going to see Herb Alpert, and they were both like, "Who??" so the student looked him up and she said he was kind of a thirst trap... and then she saw his age. "He's 91?" she yelped. "That's pre-World War II!" I said yes, he was even before my time, but it was amazing how energetic he still is at his age, so we speculated that the music kept him young. The part that really killed me was when the student said she was glad my weekend was "fire" or "lit" or "ballin'" or some slang like that, and I was amazed that a college student (and not a poor one like I was who couldn't afford to do anything, but one with a boyfriend and enough money to travel abroad) thought that my life was so exciting. I mean, it is to me, but it's always interesting to learn that it is to people who are less than half my age.

This morning Travalon and I walked earlier than usual because I had a bunch of meetings mid-morning, and it was sunny outside, but when we actually got outside, it was raining! And yet no rainbow! My second meeting lasted about three minutes because none of us had any issues to discuss, so Travalon and I took a long lunch to go out on the boat. We saw a cormorant, terns, gulls, and a family of pied-billed grebes, and we also saw this buoy that seemed to imply we should be speeding:

"Slow? No!" But you can see from these others that the word "wake" was below the water line on that buoy.

We also harvested a lotus seed head and ate the seeds, which taste a little like macadamia nuts when you get them at the right time. (The "right time" seems to be the autumnal equinox.) I did throw one back, just to give the plant a chance to reproduce. It only seems fair. When I told Seabird about it, since she was the one who had told me about how you can harvest the lotus seeds, she asked me to grab some seed heads for her, but we didn't get a chance to go back out in the boat. However, I forgot one seed in my pocket, so at least I can bring her one tomorrow. Here you can see a line of lotuses in front of a hill.

Tonight there were only four of us at choro: the guy who runs it, the cavaquinho player, the student who always goes to the Slow Irish sessions, and me. The student and I were embarrassed because while we are pretty good sight readers, we are not really improving because we don't practice between sessions, which are only once a month. The cavaquinho player was surprised that we don't - he said he does. My problem is that I do so many things that I never focus on any one thing enough to get good at it. 

I could see on the way to choro that the train was going to be heading north through our neighborhood, and sure enough, the guy who always makes a video of it had posted one when I got home. Here are some screenshots of graffiti.

This is some random graffiti. It's not like the train I saw on campus yesterday, that had lots of "Puck" and "Amor" on it. I do not recognize a single one of these tags. Also, the first engine was the yellow one the railroad has just acquired, but the second one was the standard red one like most of theirs are.

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