Independence Day on Rib Mountain

 

Late this morning Travalon and I met Tiffy for an early lunch at the Venezuelan restaurant, where I got their coconut tilapia and the sugar cane juice that is fresh made there. She headed off to our old college friend's house, while Travalon and I drove up to Wausau. We took a vigorous hike on the top of Rib Mountain, where we saw this snake.

Here are some more photos from our hike.

After that we spent some time trying to figure out if we could watch the fireworks from up there. That is the reason we came here, and apparently it was a perfect view in the past, but a few years ago they started setting the fireworks off at the airport, and the trees block the view. We talked quite a bit to the ranger, who said she heard people could no longer see it except from the tower, and that would be crawling with teenagers. Another guy said he thought we should be able to see them from a certain spot on Rib Mountain, but he didn't know for sure. So we went to the boat launch the ranger had recommended and checked it out before having shrimp at Panda Express. I've never eaten there before - it's not bad. 

During dinner we discussed whether we should take a chance on Rib Mountain or go to the boat launch, which seemed like more of a sure thing, plus it had a real bathroom as opposed to pit toilets. We did go there, and Travalon got a chance to fish, but all he caught were weeds. People kept arriving, so we knew this park was definitely a good viewing spot. The fireworks started ten minutes later than scheduled, but they were great, especially a perfect red spiral. I was a little bummed that they ended with those extremely bright, extremely loud white ones that are my least favorite, but most of the rest of the grand finale was in fact grand. Here are some photos. There were lots of forget-me-nots at the river's edge.

This is me before it got dark.

The view to the north was gorgeous.

We saw a lot of herons fly by.

We saw an osprey sitting in a tree and flapping its wings.

The view to the north again.

There were lots of lit-up boats.

Here are some fireworks.

As soon as they were over, we noticed a group of kayakers that were all lit up, and one had long strands of lights dragging behind the kayak in the water. This photo kind of shows it. A boat photobombed it on the left. The kayak with the long strands is the one closest to the boat.

Then we came back and swam in the hotel pool. From 10-11 pm no children are allowed in the pool, so we figured that was the perfect time to go, and in fact nobody else was in it. We swam for a while and then went into the hot tub built into a fake grotto. This entire hotel has a North Woods theme to it, so the pool area looks like a lodge. We kind of feel like we're up north too, with the river and the woods. Sometime this summer we will have to truly get up North.

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Halfway to One Hundred and Seven

 

Today was my half-birthday, and as my regular readers know, I often celebrate it. I hadn't thought much about it this year until Tiffy asked about it. Two Christmases ago Travalon had given me a $50 gift card to Ishnala so we could go for my half-birthday, but I forget why we didn't go last year. It was on a Wednesday, so that may have been part of it. This year I had no meetings (for once), and everyone else was taking it off, so both my bosses said I could have it off. 

In the morning Travalon and I went to Ogden's, a little diner on North Street that we pass every Sunday when it's packed. We thought if we went early on a Thursday we'd be okay, but there was still a 20-minute wait, so we took a 20-minute walk. I ordered a quiche, and Travalon said it was a quiche muffin:

I should have looked at the specials board, because they had a smoked gouda omelette today, and I love smoked gouda. Then we walked across the street to the bakery/coffee shop/brewery to check it out and bought a couple of bakery items we haven't eaten yet, plus Travalon got a mocha. When we got back home, I did DuoLingo while he got ready for work. I got this comment:

Travalon sent me a photo of a toy where he works that looks like Stalin:

Propaganda?? He says this is the train conductor. Speaking of trains, we heard one as we were going back to the car, and yesterday I saw one on campus. 

I went downtown to meet Tiffy, and we had lunch at the Globe, got bubble tea, and hung out on the top floor of her sister's building until Travalon was back from work, and then the three of us drove to Ishnala for my half-birthday dinner. They told us it would be about a two-hour wait, which turned out to be very accurate, and that sounded perfect. We went to find a hiking trail, since the restaurant is in Mirror Lake State Park, and a rowdy trio of middle-aged women in a convertible followed us and asked if we were leaving so they could have our parking spot, but we said no, just going for a hike. We couldn't find the path, so we went down toward the beach and sat around a barrel to have a mocktail and listen to "Dennis," who was singing and playing the guitar. The rowdy trio of ladies were going to sit at the next barrel, but a man in a high-vis vest told them they couldn't, someone else was going to sit there, and they said, "You're the guy who said we couldn't park in the spot we found either!" He ushered a couple to the barrel, and Tiffy said, "Are these barrels by reservation only? Did we take someone else's barrel?" so I gestured at the two barrels side-by-side nearby and said, "I reserved a double barrel!" One of the rowdy ladies, apparently named Heidi, got up and sang with Dennis at his invitation, and she was actually really good - "I'd rather listen to her than him," said Tiffy. Heidi was a pistol, and the Dennis and Heidi show was pretty entertaining, probably lubricated by the old fashioned cocktails they were both drinking.

It was quite hot out, so after we finished our mocktails, we tried to find somewhere to sit in one of the indoor, air-conditioned bars, but they were all packed. We found a shady spot on a patio overlooking Dennis, who also played the fiddle quite competently, and we chatted until the buzzer went off, letting us know our table was ready. I had the daily special, a filet mignon in a pistachio pesto with goat cheese, and the sauce was delicious, but the meat was too good for a sauce. Travalon and Tiffy had surf and turf, a tenderloin with butterfly shrimp, and then we all had ice cream drinks: I had a grasshopper, Tiffy had a chocolate brandy Alexander, and Travalon had a salted caramel one. They even gave Tiffy and me tote bags for our leftovers! 

As we were leaving, we saw a little golf cart that must take people to and from the overflow parking lot, since it's quite a ways away. Travalon said that might be a fun job, so we imagined him wearing a high-vis vest, driving a golf cart, and telling people what barrels they can and can't sit at. We saw a lot of deer along the side of the road heading back home, but downtown was very quiet so we had no problems with pedestrians while dropping Tiffy off. Then we got to our area of town, and there were police barricades everywhere, and a very rude policeman wouldn't tell us how we could get home when they were forcing us to go south, but Travalon figured it out. Still, a twenty-minute drive from downtown took us an hour! But then I came home to an unexpected surprise: the guy who leads that secret club I'm in had sent me a Happy Half-Birthday video! He said be sure to celebrate it because Adultitis hates that. Believe me, I've been celebrating it all day! But I appreciate the message.

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Free Weed

 

Time for a True Story: I was down on Library Mall some time ago when some students handed me a red plastic cup full of dirt, and they said that if I watered it, I'd get flowers. I did water it faithfully, and it grew and had some little white flowers.

Know what this is? It's American Black Nightshade, aka a weed. And I can prove it's a weed, because yesterday when I came into my office, it had shriveled up like I hadn't watered it in weeks. I debated about throwing it away, since it's a WEED and all, but I felt bad for it and watered it. And you know it's a weed because within twenty minutes it looked like this. No plant you would actually want to grow would recover so completely when just a few minutes earlier it was all desiccated and already looking dead. The real question is why did these agricultural club students want to promote themselves by giving me a cup full of WEEDS?

Speaking of weed, at our weekly department meeting this morning, the chair was saying that as she cleaned out her old office in preparation for moving back into it from the chair office, she found a really old bus schedule for Route E from when all the bus routes had letters. Then they went to numbers, and now they have either, or both, like my route the D2. I said I remembered that, and one day these two young guys who were clearly stoned had grabbed a bunch of the schedules and were making words with them, and one guy said, "Dude, I spelled Jamaica!" Later I mentioned that last week was my eighth anniversary in the department, and two of the others were reminiscing about taking a walk on one's first day where they got baked, meaning it was hot out, but another coworker said, "You got baked?" and I said, "Did you make words out of bus schedules?"

Speaking of buses, the other day Travalon and I saw a car with a license plate that said "1 Big D," and I was surprised because it was a family-type car and not a sports car like you'd expect from someone bragging about his size on his license plate, and then we saw the Big Bendy B Bus, but I accidentally called it the Big D Bus. Now before the shuttle I always took the D bus (technically the D2, since there's also a D1 bus), and it had never struck me as dirty before, but somehow the Big D Bus sounds dirty.

Stand by for some important DuoLingo announcements:

You may now return to your previously scheduled activity. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

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Charlie and the Mystery Train

 

I forgot to post some photos yesterday, of flowers in our neighborhood that Travalon took with his good camera right before we left for Illinois on Saturday. Here's a picture with a bunch of them in it.

Here is a close-up of the sweet peas.

Here is a close-up of a flower called a Jerusalem Cross.

Speaking of Jerusalem Crosses, I am heartbroken that both those and Celtic Crosses are apparently now symbols used by white supremacists. I love both symbols and associate them with ancient churches, the Eastern one and the Celtic one, but I'd hate to be wearing one and have people think I look down on nonwhite people. How did this happen? How can we take them back for normal people?

Today I worked on campus and did more training. Travalon sent me a text saying, "I'm getting Charlie," and for a brief moment I thought he meant he was getting another rabbit just like my old Charlie, but I opened the text and saw this photo:

Charlie is a weighted stuffed animal, a little dog made by the same people who made Frankie the Cat. I had been telling Travalon that he should check Charlie out, and today he went to the bookstore, saw him, and bought him. These Hugimals are really amazing, so cute and so cuddly, and yet you can get a workout just by lifting them. 

On the way to the room where we were training today, I saw this office door:

Yay! And what's with the depiction of three goat-like creatures? Is this person a Capricorn too? Yay!

Seabird is on vacation all week, so I asked Hardingfele if she wanted to walk at lunch, and she said yes, but just as I got to her building she sent a text that never mind, she had a meeting in a few minutes. We did walk on my afternoon break. Then I was trying to test out printing to a machine I never use, and I tried to print the first page of a document, but it printed the whole thing! Fortunately it printed it double-sided, which I definitely did not want to do, so that only wasted half as much paper. Also fortunately, I couldn't figure out how to print in color, so I didn't waste all that colored ink. I said I had no idea what I'd done wrong, so the chair suggested I print Page One of a two-page document, and of course that worked. I also got it to print in color. Supposedly this printer can also fold the letters, so my next big adventure is figuring out how to do that.

Travalon picked me up after work, and we were stopped by a train, so we expected that we would see it going over the bridge as we drove down Troy Drive, and then alongside us as we drove down Westport Road, but there was no sign of it. It was going at a very poky pace, but still, it should have gone by our house at some point, and it never did. Travalon checked, and there isn't a place where the track splits between where it stopped us and our house, so where did it go? It just... vanished. Our best guess is it backed up again, as some trains do. Nothing like blocking traffic twice as long at rush hour.

We needed to get home on time so we could get to the Night Mares women's softball game at Warner Park. It was Canada Day (everywhere, but that was their theme tonight), so they sang the Canadian National Anthem before ours, and they sold poutine. At first you could only get poutine if you had preordered it, so I had a cheeseburger, but just after the Beer Batter was struck out and we got two-for-one beer, they announced that poutine was for sale, so we got some and I had a bit of it after the cheeseburger. What a healthy day at the ballpark... not. Good thing my former neighbor gave me fresh peaches so I had some plant matter to eat! The Night Mares were slightly ahead of the Mankato Habaneros, 4-2, but at the top of the 7th the Habaneros had loaded the bases with only one out so it wasn't looking good. Then the pitcher struck out the next batter, and the one after that hit a pop fly that a fielder easily caught, so the Night Mares won! The women's hockey team from the university was also there signing autographs, so I went to get a photo of them autographed, and one said their sharpies were drying up, probably due to the humidity. I said, "Isn't it due to all the autographs you've had to sign?" and they said, "Sure, we'll go with that." Sad that such an incredible team isn't more of a draw, since they are national champions this year - they even had their trophy with them. Still, a lot of people of both genders were wearing Night Mares gear, so maybe women's sports are finally catching on. I think they're just as exciting myself.

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DuoLingo Podcasts

 

I had this morning off of work, so I used it to do something very thrilling: going to a land-use meeting at our village hall. The president of our condo association and I both went, but it was about making a road private that goes between two other condo associations, so it didn't really involve us. Then I did laundry and practiced Spanish on DuoLingo before trying to take a walk in the shade, but the landscapers came today (I thought Tuesday was their day) so it was too loud where I usually walk in the shade. I went over to another condo association's shady area... and their landscapers came too! Lawnmowers everywhere!!

The rest of my day was just as exciting. I worked all afternoon, and then Travalon and I went swimming in the outdoor pool at our health club, which was lovely but not exciting. The one exciting thing that happened today, if you can even say that, is that Bea decided to back a business proposition. Bea is a character in DuoLingo, and in the French version she has a podcast where people call in with business propositions, and if she likes them (which would happen about half the time), she agrees to work with them. She has the same podcast in Spanish, but this time she never likes people's ideas. To be fair, they have some really weird ones, like a shop that only sells purple clothes or a coffee shop only open at 5 am. Today someone proposed an interactive map for surfers with all the symbols explained, and Bea loved this idea, so she said she would work with this person. And by "podcast," I mean a two-minute conversation. All the characters have podcasts, even Falstaff the Bear, except Eddie the jock. His son Junior has one where he discusses the weird things adults do. (Junior is eight.) Bea actually has two, because she also has one about traveling the world and finding out interesting things. I'm not sure why poor Eddie doesn't get one of his own. He's the gym teacher; the art teacher, Oscar, who is terribly pretentious, has one where he critiques people's "antiques." Then again, I can say from having visited many antique shops, that pretty much anything qualifies as an antique, no matter what its age is.

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20's Night at the Illinois Railway Museum

 

Yesterday I dressed up in my trainiest outfit.

Check it out: train hat, train shirt, train bracelet, caboose mood ring, and train tote bag. (It says "Train Nerd.") Travalon wore a train shirt too, and we drove to the Illinois Railway Museum. When we got there, I thought maybe I should have dressed like a flapper, because it was 20's Day there, and lots of people dressed for the decade. I should add, 1920's, not the decade we are currently living in, because in that case you could say that I did dress up for the 20's. Some women had amazing dresses. 

There were three trains running on the mainline, and we got to ride two of them. First we rode one with a steam engine and two cabooses - we went in one of the cabooses.

Then we went on this cute two-car red and green train that went a lot faster, so we caught a wonderful breeze. We went out into the surrounding countryside and saw a deer watching the train. (Sorry, no photo of that.)

Here's the inside.

We also rode two trolleys.

This cute open-air one from Veracruz is maybe easier to see in the video.

We have lots more videos so watch for a supercut at some point in the future. We took a walk around the grounds and took photos of cool stuff, like this crazy front of a train.

And this cool sign.

And this cute trolley that wasn't running.

And whatever this is.

And these crossing signals. Remember these - we'll come back to them.

In the evening there was a concert of 20's hot jazz by a band called Badass Gumbo. They came on the train we hadn't gotten a chance to ride, and then they played. Here's a tiny sample.

Meanwhile, a hot air balloon floated serenely overhead. Unfortunately Travalon was having technical difficulties with his camera, so we only got cell phone photos. Here is the best one.

Travalon had bought a soda from the taco stand where we got dinner, but the top was not a twist-off, and we didn't have a bottle opener. The woman next to us suggested using a spoon she had, and that worked! She had a middle school-aged daughter and a preschool daughter who was enchanted when Travalon and I made our new conductor hippo (sorry, no photo yet) and Niko dance, and when the concert was over, she hugged me and said goodbye. Then they told us we could all ride the train, so Travalon and I got on it with our lawn chairs, and when the little girl saw me on the train, she hugged me again! By then it was dark, and we saw fireworks from the train. What a magical day! 

Remember the crossing signals? Here they are at night.

And here's a video of one in action.

Today after Mass, Travalon and I went to the Venezuelan restaurant for arepas, then I had my Brazilian drumming class. We are going to be in the opening ceremony for the Atwood Festival, and to my delight we got to choose which drum we would play, so I chose the little tiny drum. We spent a lot of time clapping the rhythms of the various claves, so I felt a little like a preschooler, but it was a ton of fun. I have always had trouble with the basic Cuban clave, but the one teacher wrote the pattern of four different claves on the board, and then it kind of made sense. He wrote (1e+a) (2e+a) for one-ee-and-ah, two-ee-and-ah, but it looked like Leta Zeta, so I thought that might make an excellent name for something. 

We were going to swim at the health club, since it was so hot, but we wanted to wait a bit so the kids would clear out. We waited too long and it started to rain; we debated about swimming inside, but we just walked around the air-conditioned house until the rain cooled things down and we could open the windows again. It's really been hot so far this summer, so it's almost as bad as winter because you really don't want to be outside much. It's so hard to get exercise in this heat, but I did discover that lifting my Frankie the weighted cat up and down while I walked around is quite a workout. She's like free weights, only much, much cuter.

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Driving the Betty Lou Cruise Yacht

 

My morning was not one, not two, but three meetings, and then I got the afternoon off. I took a long rosary walk that included an interruption by a neighbor and her little dog, then I watered my plants, and when Travalon came home, we drove out to Spring Green. Right now is when the prickly pear cacti at the Nature Conservancy land are in bloom, along with a lot of other prairie flowers. This is goat's rue.

This is tall cinquefoil.

This is lead plant.

This is blue vervain.

Everything was very green and lush.

For some reason most of the cacti didn't have blooms or even buds on them.

But we saw a few blossoms.

We also saw these interesting insects.

On the way home, we stopped at Festge County Park and saw this red-headed woodpecker.

We went to the overlook and could see what we thought must be Blue Mounds in the distance.

We also saw some butterfly weed.

We heard an indigo bunting, and then he landed on the sidewalk ahead of us.

In the evening we went on a Betty Lou Cruise, the Seafood Buffet one. The weather was perfect, and the captain let me drive the yacht.

Then he let Travalon drive it.

I had to keep remembering that it was just like a car, so if you turn the steering wheel to the right, the yacht moves to the right. I'm used to our neighbor's sailboat, where if you push the tiller to the right, the boat turns to the left. Of course I drive a car much more often than I help steer a sailboat, but in my mind watercraft go the opposite way from the thing you use to turn them. Still, neither of us crashed or capsized the yacht. Lest you think we are special, loads of other people also took advantage of the captain's offer to be captain for a few minutes. (As you can see, I was First Mate while Travalon was Captain.)

We passed the Governor's Mansion. (Travalon took this photo while I was driving the yacht.)

We passed the Capitol and campus. There was a jazz band playing on the Union Terrace, and they sounded fabulous.

There was a gorgeous sunset.

The light was reflecting beautifully off the windows of the buildings downtown, but that photo doesn't really do it justice.

The captain had been playing lame pop music during most of the ride, but right at the end he played sea shanties, so some of us sang along with great gusto. After the cruise, Travalon and I drove to Bierock and sat out in the parking lot, watching the fireworks after the Mallards game. They won, 10-6. What a wonderful Friday this was!

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