Another Gen Z Wedding

 

Two things I forgot to mention about yesterday: during my morning break, Travalon and I went to the dock and saw the green heron fly to our neighbor's boat lift. It was posing so perfectly, and Travalon wondered if it would still be there if he ran home to grab his good camera. I said the odds were about 30%, but look - it was still there!

This photo just made me laugh.

The second thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that when we walked on Governor's Island, we saw the big party boat Midnight Splash. This is relevant because today we went for a walk on Governor's Island, and we could hear loud, thumping bass, so I said Midnight Splash must be out there. We didn't see it, but I thought maybe the music was coming closer, so we sat by the water for a bit. Finally we gave up and drove by where Midnight Splash is docked... and there it was, obviously not out for a cruise. I thought nobody ever used it, because it always seemed to be docked, but now that I've been walking on Governor's Island, I see it gets taken out on weekdays.

On the way home from the walk, I saw these wild sunflowers growing in a spot where I've never seen them before.

I also found this rock with an indentation in it that looks like a mushroom.

After our walk, we headed to a hunting lodge called Milford Hills for the wedding of the daughter of Travalon's high school buddy; it was a beautiful setting in the rolling hills with lots of forest around and an overlook with lots of bluejays around. We heard an unusual bird call, and while my bird call ID app acknowledged that it was a bird, it couldn't identify it.

The wedding itself was outside and took less than ten minutes because all it consisted of was the procession and then the vows. God was not mentioned at all. Like the daughter of his other high school buddy, this bride also had a Polaroid camera that we were supposed to use to take a photo of ourselves for a scrapbook.

I love how this photo looks like it's from the 80's. Another thing just like the other wedding: the bridal party came into the reception in pairs, like they walked down the aisle, and each pair did a silly thing, like pretending to pitch and hit a baseball with the bouquet or pretending to walk right into each other by accident. Is this a thing now? I don't remember that in weddings of my generation. While Travalon and I were dressed all tropical, since it's still warm out, everyone else wore autumn colors. The bridesmaids wore pumpkin-colored dresses, and the groomsmen wore pumpkin-colored ties. The mothers of the bride and the groom wore dresses in exactly the same shade of plum, and all the other guests wore muted, earthen tones. Was there something on the invitation that I didn't know about? It's still summer till tomorrow.

We were at Table 8, with the father, mother, and sister of the bride from earlier this summer. (She couldn't come because of another wedding.) The tables went up to the buffet in numerical order, and we were horrified to see people with plates piled high with more food than they could possibly eat and, sure enough, by the time it was our turn, some of the food was completely gone. I ended up eating mostly vegetarian ravioli, but to be fair, it was delicious. And there was even another table after us! Then Travalon and I watched as plates were cleared away, and people left tons of food on their plates. And yes, we were very much judging. Sometimes I just hate humanity. When you know there are a lot of people coming after you, how can you take way more food than you need?? What is wrong with people??

Dessert was a strange affair too: slices of apple that you could put toppings on like it was a sundae. Huh? We did split a serving, and it was okay, but I'd never serve such a thing myself. I did have a lot more fun once the dancing started, and we got glow sticks to wave around as we danced. For whatever reason it was only women dancing, and Travalon took the time to catch up with his buddies. The first few songs were Earth, Wind and Fire, so I was in heaven, waving my glow stick around under the colorful lights on the dance floor. I danced for almost an hour, but then the music was less my style, and we were getting tired, so we headed home just a little too late for Night Prayer. And was I ever grateful for those earplugs I got at the previous wedding! While I loved the DJ's choice in music, I didn't love his choice in volume.

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Not Even a Beer Pop at the Wedding

 

OK, so I am blogging twice in one day because we have enough time this evening, although it was a challenge to get on the WiFi here for me. Travalon had no problem, but my computer kept saying it was encountering an error, and even my hotspot wasn't working... until suddenly it was, so now you will be blessed with a second blog post in one day.

After I blogged this morning, we hit the road and had lunch at a Jimmy John's in Waupun. We drove until getting to Sheboygan Falls, where we took a walk at Riverside Park. We still had a little time before Travalon's high school buddy's daughter's wedding, so we went to find the actual falls. Here they are!

The wedding was at a Lutheran church, and it wasn't part of a service, like the Lutheran weddings I remember going to before, or all the Catholic weddings I've attended. I hadn't counted on it being so short, so I said to Travalon that there was a 4 pm Mass three minutes away, and he thought that sounded like a great idea. However, there was a visiting priest from Myanmar who spent the homily time droning on about the political situation there, and while I'm very sympathetic, we are not currently in such a fabulous political situation ourselves. (Do we even still have a democracy? I guess we'll find out the next time we're supposed to have elections.) Also, Saturday evening Masses are usually short, but because of the guest priest, this one was running long, and when we left, the two bathrooms were both full. I thought, no problem, I'll go downstairs... and they had locked the downstairs!! What?? What a very strange church.

It was all good, because when we got to the reception at a converted loft in Sheboygan, it was still cocktail hour. We saw another high school buddy of Travalon's and his family, who had sat right in front of us at the wedding, and they told us we should take a Polaroid photo of ourselves to put in a scrapbook for the bride and groom. I took a photo of them, then they took a photo of us, and I took a photo of the photo.

This isn't a great photo, but Polaroids never are - the fun is watching the photo develop. As you can see, we dressed all Hawaiian. Nobody else did, but you know what? Who cares? We found our table, and it was right by the DJ, who was blasting music and then adjusted his speaker so it was blasting right at us. Since all of us at our table were of a certain vintage (and I was by far the newest vintage), it seemed odd to put us right by the loud music that the kids love. At least we were near the windows and right in front of the bridal party table, as if we were VIPs. I was plugging my ears, so a guy at our table said he could go to his car and get me some earplugs. I assumed he meant he had a bag of cheap earplugs, but he came back with a really fancy pair and washed them off for me. They were AMAZING: I could hear people talking, but the music seemed really faint. I ended up talking to the woman next to me a lot (her husband was an old friend of the bride's father, Travalon's buddy), and she said she liked every kind of music except country. I said me too, except old country like Johnny Cash and stuff like that, and she concurred. She said, "I don't know why," so I said, "I do - because I like my music minor key and syncopated, and country music is almost always major key with a straight beat," and she thought about that and said it makes sense, that's probably why she feels the same way. 

Travalon and I both had the baked cod for dinner, which had an amazing sauce on it but twice as much potato and half as much vegetal matter as I would have liked. One woman at our table was a vegan, and she had ordered the vegetarian lasagna, but it had cheese on it, so she couldn't eat any dinner. She and her husband (another old friend of the bride's father) had another party to go to anyway, so they didn't stay long. I hope there was something there for her to eat... We bid them adieu, and then ten minutes later I remembered her husband was the one who had lent me the earplugs, and I have no idea who he is. Guess they're my earplugs now. I assume he forgot, but honestly he may not want them back after I've used them, and he did mention that he never used them because he had an even better (!) pair he always used.

The woman next to me and I were confounded by the first dance song, the groom and his mother dance song, and the bride and her father dance song, which were all slow, sappy country songs we neither knew nor liked. However, partway through that last one, the DJ suddenly switched to "Low Rider" by War, and while it's not my very favorite song by War (that would be "Cisco Kid"), any War is excellent funk music, so the whole crowd cheered. The DJ announced the floor was now open for dancing, so Travalon (who has caught my cold and had been suffering since during Mass), suddenly felt energized enough to dance. The DJ played some Whitney Houston, then one of my favorite songs of all time, "September" by Earth, Wind and Fire (why no Oxford comma??), and a couple of ABBA songs, and we were amazed to see all these young kids who loved and sang along with these old songs from our youth. One young guy was an amazing dancer - he moved like he had no bones! But after the obligatory "All the married couples get on the dance floor! Now sit down if you've been married less than X years" dance, to "Falling in Love with You" by Elvis (which was weirdly the processional at the wedding), the music changed back to country - peppier country, that you could dance to, but still not my jam at all. Travalon was feeling worse, so we decided to call it a night. And one odd touch was that there was no cake, just Culver's frozen custard, several flavors that were unlabeled so I took reliable old chocolate. Travalon had some swirly thing with graham cracker crumbs in it.

Poor Travalon is really ailing now - he seems to be even sicker than I was on Thursday - but he did help me come up with a title for this blog post. Because he was loaded up with cold medication, he didn't indulge in any of the free beer, soda, or wine available at the bar. (Neither did I, but that was more for the sake of calories.) He remembered a story I told when, years ago, Tiffy and I were visiting our old college friend at her parents' house in Sheboygan, and her father, who spoke Sheboyganese, asked us, "You girls want a beer pop?" It took Tiffy and me a few moments to decipher that he was asking if we wanted a beer or a soda, not a beer-flavored soda. In Sheboygan for some reason they eschew conjunctions - at Mass I once heard a priest say, "The body blood of Christ." No idea why. And they have such a heavy accent that I struggle to understand them, like once at a previous job someone called to have me mail him something, and he said he lived on "Tent Street." I asked him to spell it, to be sure, and he said, "Tent! It's spelled Tent!" so I tried to verify: "T-E-N-T?" and he got very angry and hollered, "No! Tent! Eight! Nynt! Tent!" True story.

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Eleven Wonderful Years

 

Today Anna Banana II couldn't get together until noon, which made Travalon very happy because then he could watch the Wolverhampton game. Unfortunately they lost 2-0 to Brighton. When Anna Banana II arrived, we drove to Horicon Marsh, stopping at Schultz's Cheese Haus for the best peanut butter cups ever and free cheese samples. Yum! 

At the boardwalk we didn't see much except an abandoned nest that I assumed was a goose's, but some other people said they thought it was a swan's. There were three eggs. (Travalon took photos - I will post all the Horicon photos soon.) That couple said they had been to Horicon three times and seen a gallinule two of those times, yet I have been many times and have never seen a gallinule. Just to add to the frustration, we kept hearing one that sounded very close, but we would peer into the reeds and see nothing. I said I was glad Anna Banana II could witness this, so I would know it wasn't just my imagination that they were taunting me. Then we continued on the driving tour and saw egrets, a pair of swans fairly close to the road, and a lot of pelicans in the distance. Also, lots of little goslings. 

Our next stop was the Subway in Mayville, where we had a very late lunch, and then I brought out dessert: cookies provided by a faculty member as part of the German scholarships presentation. She always gives me a little packet of them to thank me for my help.

Anna Banana II wanted the ladybug, and Travalon took the "thank you" cookie, so I took the beautiful flower, which had a solid ball of sugar in the middle. Between that and the peanut butter cup, I had plenty of sugar today! 

We stopped briefly at the part where the white-headed goose used to hang out, but we had to watch the time to get to Mass by five. Anna Banana II has to go to Milwaukee tomorrow morning for a Mother's Day brunch with most of her family, so she was saying she'd have to go to a very early Mass, but we said, "There's a church right by the marsh that has Mass at five." It's Sacred Heart in Horicon (the town). Mass was fine, but there was a weird incident where the priest talked to a guy who had received communion but hadn't consumed the host, and the rest of us waited in the communion line, confused. The guy did consume the host, and the priest wanted to talk to him after Mass, but I saw him slip out right before it was over. That may be the oddest thing I've seen during a Mass since the time some people came into my old church and opened a black umbrella right in the middle of Mass. Of course, we didn't see it because they were in the back of church - only our priest saw it, and he talked about it at the end of the Mass, after the people had left. Just a reminder that there are some... interesting people out there.

On the way back we swung by Patrick Marsh, where we saw a lone pelican and a blue heron, then I asked Anna Banana II what she wanted to do during her trip to Madison, and she said go to Immaculate Heart in Monona because it's a Jubilee church and also has a shrine to the Green Scapular. We stopped by, but it was locked. Inside we could see a bunch of rosaries that looked like they were for sale. We saw a religious sister walking down the street, so we asked if she could open the church, but she said no. She did tell us what the Mass times are tomorrow. Of course, we don't need to go tomorrow, but maybe if we're in the area, I can find out what's going on with all those rosaries. There was one called a "lava rosary," and I can know no peace without finding out what that's all about. Since we were in Monona, we went to the Jamaican restaurant that catered our wedding, which was eleven years ago today. That seemed like a very fitting thing to do for our anniversary. I had oxtail stew, which is a very popular Jamaican dish I had never tried before. It was delicious. Here's to our next eleven years, and many years after!

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Nine Wonderful Years

 

Yesterday was our ninth wedding anniversary. I didn't blog because after work Travalon and I met at the Arboretum, which is where he proposed, although we didn't go to that spot. We stayed in the Longenecker Garden with all the blooming crabapples, magnolias, and lilacs. Here are some photos. You can see that I'm wearing my wedding color of coral. One cool thing about the date of our wedding is that the saint of the day is Damien de Veuster, and his birthday is the same as mine! That isn't why I picked the day, but what an interesting coincidence. If we'd gone to Hawaii for our honeymoon, that really would have been a crazy coincidence!!

I asked Travalon what he wanted to do after that, and he said let's try Ollie's, the new restaurant where Liliana's used to be. It's the same owner, but it's a different concept, more casual. We ate outside and had the Dad Joke Pizza, because it's super cheesy. It was so good! We told the waitress that it was our anniversary, and she brought us a free chocolate mousse with berries, also really good. Then we went home to watch our wedding video, but the DVD player in the TV no longer works, and neither of our new computers has a DVD slot, so Travalon ran to the store and got one for $35 so we were able to watch the video. Here is a photo my uncle took as we were going down the aisle just after the wedding.

One of the faculty at work, for whom I have been arranging a LOT of travel, brought me back this lovely tile from Portugal.

Also yesterday, I went for a walk at Allen Centennial Gardens. This maple tree seems to be half dead, but the half that is alive is a very impressive red.

This flower is called a Lady Tulip, according to my phone.

And I just thought these tulips outside of the Horticulture building were so pretty.

Also, someone drew a sea dragon on the sidewalk.

Bonus photos: Travalon must have taken these from the dock. First, geese parading down our neighbor's dock.

A male blue-winged teal.

The male and his mate.

A pair of coots.

Today I had a meeting after work, so I asked Travalon to wait at Union South until I was done. By the time the meeting got over (and I was re-elected Secretary for at least the third year in a row), all the food places in Union South were closed, so we started to drive home and thought about where we could stop on the way. I suggested the Colombian restaurant I'd been to with Cali and Jilly Moose, so we went there, and they were still very much open - in fact, a band was playing when we first got there. They were awfully loud, but they finished up just after that, and then the restaurant played cumbia music in the background, at a much more tolerable level. We got empanadas, and Travalon got the half chicken with beans and plantains, while I got the quarter chicken with beans and plantains. I could have gotten an eighth of a chicken - I brought half mine home for lunch tomorrow, as well as Travalon's beans, since he didn't really like them that well. This was the best chicken ever - it tasted like it had just been slow roasted over an open fire. So delicious! And the plantains and beans were super delicious too. Travalon gives this restaurant two enthusiastic thumbs up.

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Lady Harriet Whimsy's Wedding

 

Today Lady Harriet Whimsy, who was featured on this blog playing the violin in a Famous Hat video, got married. I have known her since she was a delightful child, and now she is a beautiful young woman. The wedding is the entire reason Travalon and I have been traveling south all this time, although escaping from the cold was also a compelling reason. 

I figured we wouldn't get a long walk in for my workout today, but our hotel has a pool, so I decided to swim laps for my workout. The pool was VERY warm, even more than the warm-water pool at our health club, and I could only manage nineteen minutes (was aiming for twenty) before giving up. But hey, my FitBit did give me credit for nineteen minutes of swimming, twenty-one laps, so that tells you how slowly I was going. Even the air in the pool area was warm (ironically, now that we are so far south that it's always hot, we finally encountered our first indoor pool on the trip), so it was hard to cool off. Out of curiosity I dipped a foot into the hot tub, figuring it must be boiling hot... and to my surprise it was a refreshing temperature, like you'd expect a pool to be, so I got in to cool off. It's like they switched around the temperature controls for the pool and hot tub. Travalon was loving having a giant hot tub to float in.

We showered and got ready and then drove to Ave Maria, Florida, a city built around a Catholic university founded by the guy who started Domino's Pizza. It's kind of fake-looking, being such a new city - it looks like one big resort with a Catholic church smack in the middle of it. Lady Harriet had asked me to sing with the choir, which was mostly made up of local university and high school students, but I sat next to a woman who graduated college a decade before I was born. There were microphones, which threw me, and the choir director asked me to go to the back row, so I figured she thought I sucked and should be away from the microphones, but I'm too short to see over those tall college girls, so I came back to the front and my older buddy. Anyway, I guess the choir director didn't hate my voice, because afterwards she said I was welcome to join them any time I was in town. One of the college students took this surprisingly good photo of me in the choir loft.

Rich, Travalon, and I took lots of photos for Kathbert, who didn't come to the wedding but requested photos. There's a really good one of the bride and groom surrounded by bubbles as they exited the church (we blew bubbles instead of throwing rice), but I forgot to ask her permission to post it. Here are some photos Travalon took of the inside of the church.

And the outside of the church.

It was a beautiful ceremony. The choir sang "If Ye Love Me" by Tallis, "Taste and See" by Ralph Vaughn Williams, and the Arcadelt "Ave Maria," and I got to sing in my natural range of soprano. I haven't sung in a choir in three years, but it has been much longer than that since I sang soprano instead of alto. 

The reception was at a swanky resort called the Dell Webb Oasis.

I had a pretty sensible dinner, and fruits and vegetables for hors d'oeuvres, but both the bride and her father thanked me profusely for our wedding gift of baking sheets and cooling racks, which were not just on the registry but a "most wanted" item, because they used them to bake what seemed like six thousand kinds of cookies, and I had to sample quite a few of them. Plus there was cake. Here is a photo of Travalon and me at the reception.

See? We don't always look like we're just going out to the barn to feed the horses, only most of the time. I wore the tanzanite and opal ring I got on a cruise years ago, opal earrings, and the same necklace I'd worn for our wedding. Being at this wedding did bring back wonderful memories of ours. 

Eventually the dancing started, and they played a Glenn Miller song ("In the Mood"), so I asked Lady Harriet's brother (who seemed to be in charge of the playlist) if there was any Benny Goodman. He checked and said no, but then he said he slipped "Sing Sing Sing" in there, so Travalon and I danced to all eight and a half minutes of it, joined by my goddaughter's mother and some of her younger children. (It was so good to catch up with her!) The children really enjoyed the golf and dodgeball simulator in another room, so she and I watched them and chatted awhile. People kept telling me how much they loved my dress - even a woman outside the church stopped me to tell me that! I do love it. Mama Step gave it to me because it didn't fit her anymore. I have to be careful or it won't fit me either!

On the way back to our hotel, Travalon and I stopped in the casino in Immokalee, where he had gone while I was at choir rehearsal before the wedding, and we got some Indian fry bread. Then he went to the bar across the street and found they had conch fritters, so he brought some back for me. Ah well, Lent is coming soon, and then I will fast.

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Eight Wonderful Years!

 

I forgot to mention something that happened at work on Monday: I saw something in my mailbox, so I went into the mailroom and saw it was more cookies like the one featured on this blog last week:

It looked like there was a similar package in my coworker's mailbox, so I told him the faculty member had given us all cookies, and he should go get his. Of course, his package was full of magnets, and it wasn't even for him but for another coworker - someone put it in his mailbox by accident. Boy, did I feel bad for giving him false hope!

DuoLingo keeps giving me these stickers. Here is the May challenge one:

Yesterday Travalon and I took the day off of work, and we went to Horicon Marsh. We started at the spot where we often see the white-headed goose, but a person working there said nobody has seen him for weeks. Did he go to another part of the marsh? Has he come to the end of his life? He wasn't a young goose, since he has been around for years. We did see this pelican that was chased by a goose.

Under the eaves of the building, there were nests with baby swallows in them.

Here is an adult swallow.

Travalon tried to take a photo of a goldfinch, but then this goldfinch chased it away and posed for him.

This catbird had a beautiful song, and the way it's peeking around the branch just made me laugh.

We saw more pelicans when we went down the path by the marsh. I love their bright orange feet.

These swallows are called martins.

Here is a tree swallow, which is the kind nesting under the eaves. They were flying over the water at Horicon Marsh. At our dock we have barn swallows, which have cinnamon breasts instead of white ones.

Then we went to the part of Horicon Marsh on Dike Road, where we saw blue-winged teals.

We also saw terns hovering over the water and then diving into it.

More tree swallows. They are such a pretty metallic blue.

There were sandpipers there too.

And another shot of a tern hovering.

This egret is surrounded by other birds, maybe black-necked sandpipers.

And we saw more pelicans further along the road.

We tried to go to the path where we saw lots of egrets before, but it's closed "due to migration." So we went to Theresa Marsh and saw lots of sandpipers.

We saw the little turtles sitting on the rocks that we always see there, but we also saw these two very large turtles who are, shall we say, sharing an intimate embrace.

I had hoped to see baby coots, and the woman who said the white-headed goose is now missing also told me that the best place to see coots was along Highway 49. We did see coots, but no babies. We saw a swan, so we saw three of the four big white birds. (No whooping cranes.)

Then we went to the boardwalk and saw blue-winged teals.

Here is the female blue-winged teal, dabbling along.

And of course more tree swallows.

This teal is posing so you can see the patch on his wing that is the color named after him. ("Teal" comes from an Old English word for a small duck.) 

These ducks were larger than the teals. They look very much like female mallards, but the darker one on the left leads me to believe this is a pair of black ducks. Update: apparently these are a male and female gadwall duck.

The male teal is preening again, and you can see a little of the blue patch on his wing.

We also saw a muskrat swimming rapidly away from us.

In this photo, you can see that the male teal's head is actually iridescent like a male mallard's.

We came back and changed into fancier clothes, then I went to my adoration hour while Travalon hung out on State Street. I had thought we would go to dinner on State Street, but he suggested that we go to Liliana's, since they are closing. Actually, the story is more complicated than that: they are splitting into two new restaurants. Liliana was the name of the owner's daughter, but the kid is nonbinary now and goes by Ollie, so part of the restaurant will be renamed Ollie's and will be a casual, family restaurant. The other half will be called St. Charles and will be even fancier than Liliana's. The Tuesday Night special last night was a three-course dinner on the theme of "shrimp," but they sold out right before we got there. We still had shrimp; Travalon had shrimp and grits, and I had shrimp and crawfish étouffée. So delicious! Then we came home and tried to watch the video of our wedding, as we always do, but the DVR is not working that well, so some parts of it played well, and other parts (of course our vows and the duet sung by Kathbert and Miss Heartsong, my two favorite parts) got hung up and were all choppy and weird. That was a slight disappointment, but it doesn't really matter - the point is that we've had eight wonderful years together.

Tonight the Bucks were down 14 points at the start of the fourth quarter, and they came back to beat the Celtics! Between that and the stunning Kentucky Derby win, I'm beginning to feel like anything is possible!

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