Where Does the Plastic Go?

 

The funny little mauve unicorn featured on this blog yesterday is now named Ursula. Also, Jilly Moose's Warmy moose is now named Cosmo. I know everyone was waiting for those updates.

Yesterday I found out my high school friend died back in May, when I saw that there was a fake Facebook profile pretending to be her asking to be my friend, and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen one of her posts in a while. She usually posted silly things about coffee or alcohol, and indeed her last post was something like, "I drink a fruit smoothie every morning for my health, but the bartender keeps calling it a piña colada." The next day she died. I'm not that surprised, since she was in heart failure caused by diabetes, but I feel like a fool not to have noticed sooner. In fact, I wished her a Happy Birthday in September when she'd already been dead nearly three months. The thing is that she was a single mother who worked at Walmart, and I'll bet she didn't even have health insurance until she had to go on disability and could get Medicaid, and by then the damage had been done. If she'd had health insurance like I do, they would have pestered her (like they pester me) to get her blood sugar down while it's still in the borderline range, and she would probably still be alive. Also, she loved hiking and birdwatching like I do, but she probably never got to visit the tropics, even though she worked just as hard. I think of the woman working alone at a Subway we stopped in just before boarding our cruise, and I wondered if she was a single mother too, frantically serving a huge crowd of customers because one of her coworkers didn't show up. She certainly works as hard as I do, but I'll bet she has never gotten to go on a cruise herself. Everyone deserves leisure time. I tipped that woman $20, which is probably more than she makes in an hour, and I say this not to toot my own horn but to humbly acknowledge my privilege. 

Today after Mass, Travalon and I learned how to collect the plastic people bring to our church to recycle it. We have to invest in a small scale, which we just learned today, but that won't break our budget. We have to take a photo of the plastic, weigh it, and then bring it to Pick N Save. And we have to do this every week that we are able. I didn't want to voluntell Travalon when they mentioned this chore at the Care for Creation meeting, but he was willing to do something to help the environment. 

At my Brazilian drum lesson, we practiced the song we are going to perform at Carnaval with the little instrument that looks like a ukulele, a bass (played by one of us students), and a singer. It really helped to hear the context for our rhythms, and the song is a total ear worm. Very, very catchy. (If anyone wants to see this performance, let me know, and I can get you more details.) They had all of us drums in rows, and I thought I'd be safely in the back, playing a big drum, but for some reason I was in the front. No idea if this is the final configuration, but there will be dancers in front of us so nobody will see me anyway. The dancers all wear these four-foot headdresses, so that should block me from the audience's view, and they also all have bare navels, so that should distract the audience. I think I'm safe if I get out of step with the rest of the group, which seemed to happen a lot today.

Practice ended early, so Travalon picked me up, and we went to Garver Mill to have a warm drink. (We ended up trading, since what I had ordered was too sweet for me, but he liked it.) Then I went to the Slow Irish Session, and a fiddler from my band, the former bass player from our band, Famie, and a couple of people from Brazilian drumming were among the people there. I feel like my brain is still in the Bahamas, because I struggled with the tunes last night, but today was hardly better. We played a couple that I had to give up and look at the music, which I consider defeat. By the end I was getting more into the groove, and my violin was a trooper - she didn't go out of tune at all, despite the cold. Did I mention that the Former Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player is bringing me another instrument on Wednesday? It's a strummed string instrument I've never heard of, so I'm very curious. It's called a Woodrow. I still need to learn to play the Chinese moon guitar and the sitar and get strings for the bowed psaltry, which is missing half of them. That should be my New Year's resolution: take care of the instruments (and plants, and rosaries) that I already have before acquiring more.

Guess what? My earplugs glow under blacklight!

I know this because my drumming buddy went to a Bears-friendly bar in town to watch the game after our drumming lesson, and she sent me this photo:

Also, it's that time again - time for some DuoLingo bragging!

Seabird just joined DuoLingo, so now we are friends on there. She is studying Portuguese because she's going to Lisbon in April. It was a crazy day for people texting me: Seabird's news, my drumming buddy's news about the earplugs, and my Shamrock Club buddy texting to ask if Mamastep still wanted a ticket to the sold-out Burns dinner next Saturday. I said yes she does, is someone not able to go? and it was my buddy. Sort of ironic, since I was hoping they could meet, both being Aquarii with eclectic interests, and they would have been the only two people I knew there, other than Travalon. At least as far as I know. Though I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the couple from the Shamrock Club that we keep running into all over the place are there too, so that would be fun. Here's hoping!

Famous Hat

A Very Short Story on a Very Snowy Day

 

Yesterday I worked from home, then in the evening I met Cecil Markovitch (the Instigator), the Single B-Boy, R Van the Terrible, and Richard Bonomo for a fish fry at Kavanaugh's. I wasn't going to have a drink, but then they had ice cream drinks, so I caved and had a grasshopper. When we left, the weather was terrible, with sleety snow, but I made it home and talked to Tiffy until Travalon came home from the Van Halen tribute band concert he was at. I had brought most of my dinner home, so he had some of it.

Today the snow continued, and we didn't venture out until after three. I made a video for you of Travalon's train videos the first day of our road trip:

Then I went up into the loft to take care of Jolly Bob, which had a lot of dead leaves after our trip. The Norfolk Island pine looks really bad and may not make it, but it was struggling before the trip. It was so happy at Rich's house, but it wasn't happy where I had it in the loft, so I moved it in front of a south-facing window, and it only seems unhappier. I am at a loss. Maybe it's too hot in the loft, and it loved the barely-heated back room where Rich had it. I was going to take care of the plants in the main plant room (I already did some of that right after we got back), but for some reason I was exhausted after pulling dead leaves off of Jolly Bob, even though my FitBit said it was only seven minutes of moderate exercise. But the FitBit never seems to agree with my lived experience, whether it's saying I had twenty minutes of intense exercise when I was barely doing anything or only light exercise after a walk so vigorous that I can barely catch my breath. It makes zero sense.

Travalon and I went to the pharmacy to get my special face cream, and we got some chocolate and, weirdly, earrings. They are "woke" earrings made of recycled materials or something by indigenous communities. I just really liked them.

Then we went to Barnes and Noble because Cecil had given me a gift certificate for my birthday, and Travalon loves that place and needs no excuse to go. I got a creative writing journal with prompts for short stories, a book about unsolved mysteries, and this little cutie:

No name yet. I haven't even decided what gender it is. (Funny - last night we had a big discussion about gender vs. sex.) All that was more than the gift certificate, but Travalon generously donated his $5 loyalty reward to the cause, so I hardly had to pay anything.

Our last stop was to Klein's Greenhouse, because I had a coupon for $5 off this month on a houseplant for my birthday. I knew just what I wanted, too - a black ZZ plant, because the one at work really didn't like being watered with leftover coffee (weird, because the green ZZ plant LOVED it), and it is barely alive. It hasn't died completely yet, but it hasn't had any new growth in forever, and it lost all its leaves, so it just has some stumps sticking up. Everything I've read says it can recover, but will it? I promise never to water the new black ZZ plant with old, cold coffee. It was also a lot cheaper, even before the coupon, than the original black ZZ plant was. Maybe I got ripped off with that one.

We went back home, and I wrote a story in the creative writing journal. Here is my story, using the prompt "A taxi driver who is hailed by his doppelgänger:"

Easy McGee was out driving his cab last Thursday night when he was hailed by someone who looked suspiciously familiar. He wasn't very interesting-looking, and Easy tried to place where he'd seen him before.
"Where you goin'?" Easy asked him.
"The Four Foot Hotel," said the stranger. "Wait... don't I know you from somewhere?"
"Name's Easy McGee," said Easy.
"Hm," said the stranger as he slid into the cab. "That doesn't ring a bell. I'm Wiley O'Reilly."
Easy inspected Wiley in the rearview mirror, then he let his eyes slide to his own face and realized with a shock where he'd seen the man before.
"We could be twins!" he said.
"Interesting," said Wiley. "Where do you hail from?"
"Alberta, Georgia."
"I'm from Georgia, Alberta. How old are you?"
"Forty-six," said Easy, who wasn't ashamed of being middle-aged, though he considered the question impertinent.
"Me too," said Wiley, and then he turned into five raccoons wearing party hats... and Easy McGee woke up in his own bed.

Me again. I emailed the story to Cecil and said, "Sorry you wasted your money like that." Which reminds me that when we were texting about the Django Djam, he said he was going to have a grasshopper even if it shortened his life, so Travalon said, "Life is short. Why not make it shorter?" and Cecil said, "That is some good Croatian logic!" And in case you are wondering, there is no Alberta, Georgia, nor is there a Georgia in Alberta. That's why it's called "fiction."

I wasn't sure if the Irish session at Lakeside Coffee House was canceled due to snow, and the red-headed flute player was out of town anyway, but Famie went and said there were a ton of people there. I got there a bit late, and my fiddle was only a little out of tune, plus she didn't seem mad like the mandolin - she seemed happy to see me, like, "Ah, there you are again, old friend!" But Famie and I were flummoxed by the sheer number of tunes we didn't know. Once in a while they would play one we knew, but it was too fast for her to play along. Travalon had dropped me off, so when he came back at what I thought was the ending time for the session, I went over to join him, and just then they decided to play the Ballydesmond Polkas, so of course I had to stay for that. According to Famie, the session was still going strong almost an hour after I thought it was ending, but I was done anyway. She said they played a lot more tunes we knew last month, while I was on my trip with Travalon. That's okay, I'll take palm trees over jigs and reels any day.

Famous Hat

Photos from Travalon's Good Camera: Half Moon Cay

 

Today I worked on campus again, and at lunchtime I walked with Hardingfele in her building. There were some faculty and grad students around, so life is coming back to the place. I went up to another floor and saw this cool Christmas card someone had hand-drawn, but there was nothing written inside:

I forgot to post this, which I actually got a couple of days ago, but it's never too late for some DuoLingo bragging:

Yesterday Travalon had to work at the front desk, but he had company:

Today some athletes from the university visited his work to play with the kids, and he got Blackwell's autograph for me. Then he went to see a Beach Boys tribute band while I came home and crashed. Still not feeling the best after the dose of diet medication...

As promised, here are photos from Travalon's good camera from our day on Half Moon Cay. First, though, are a couple more photos of a masked booby and some sunset photos from our day at sea.

Here are photos from Half Moon Cay. First, there was another cruise ship already there.

And lots of smaller boats going back and forth to bring people from the two ships.

There was a "town square" area with souvenir shops and this guy playing music:

Here are some photos from our eco-lagoon tour. This is fan coral.

What kind of fruit is on this shrub?

Mangroves have such cool roots.

We saw lots of these fish.

And lots of cacti! In the Bahamas?

We saw birds we know from back home: a great blue heron and a snowy egret.

This is the little chapel on the island.

You can see the coral reefs just under the shallow water.

Here is what the coral looked like through the glass-bottomed boat:

A heron and an egret together.

Ever wonder what Travalon would look like holding a sea cucumber? Wonder no more!

He looks like he's about to take a bite out of it. And here are the coral all collected together.

I don't know why they have this fake shark in the water of the lagoon.

More mangroves with their cool roots.

A conch shell lying on the bottom of the lagoon.

Here are photos from the beach on Half Moon Cay.

Back on the ship, we went to the Ocean View Bar and watched the coastline of Eleuthera. 

No sunset photos from the Third Day of Christmas, because we were at Mass, and someone closed the drapes in the room on the windows facing the ocean. They left the drapes on the interior windows open, so people could gawk at us as they walked by. I would have preferred that the people in charge do the opposite and let us gaze at the sunset but not have others gazing at us. I don't consider Mass a spectator sport.

Famous Hat