Plan B Boat Ride

 

Today I worked on campus so I could go to the Alumni Association party with Seabird after lunch, and Travalon met us there. We were hoping to go on a boat ride, so we got there a few minutes early... and it was already full. So we started an art project: decorating a tote bag.

We also did a word seek so that we could win a prize, and I spun the wheel... and won another tote bag. I said, "I already have one," and they said, "This one is different, but if you want something else, go ahead," so I chose sunglasses. Then Seabird spun the wheel and won sunglasses, so we had matching sunglasses. Meanwhile, everyone else in the world had gotten in line to register for a boat ride, so we weren't going to get on the second boat either. However, we had noticed sidewalk chalk advertising the annual Limnology Open House with boats and ice cream, so we went over there and got on the very first boat ride. What a lucky break that was! Other people heard us talking about it, so they came over too. Here we are on the boat. I'm not at the most flattering angle in either photo, but oh well.

Travalon took some photos with his good camera.

We all went back to the Alumni Center and had some free ice cream, then Travalon took off, and Seabird and I saw this giant inflatable Bucky Badger.

Then - we are so bad - we went back to Limnology and had more free ice cream, since they had more choices than just chocolate and vanilla. (We had cookie dough.) Then I went back to work, and Travalon came back to pick me up at the end of the day. On our way home we passed the railyard, and we saw some really great train graffiti.

Then we went home, and Travalon made baked cod and kale with goat cheese. So far I am loving this Mediterranean diet, and I lost two pounds this past week (I weigh myself every Friday), but all that ice cream today might have slowed that down a bit. Still, you are allowed a little cheating on this diet. They even say you should enjoy yourself and be social, so sitting at a picnic table facing the lake while eating ice cream with Travalon and Seabird should count for that.

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Train Graffiti and Salsa on the Rooftop

 

Today I worked from home and Travalon didn't have to work, so we tried to figure out where to go for a lunchtime walk. The road to Governor's Island is all torn up, and Jackson's Landing is closed until further notice. I don't know if this is because of storm damage or because there are Karner blue butterflies there, which are endangered. I am totally speculating about that, but I have seen the butterflies there as well as in Necedah, and like Necedah there are lupines there, which is what their caterpillars eat. Anyway, since it was no longer a close, shady option for a walk, we went to Tuggle Road off of River Road and hiked on the trails there.

In the evening after we took care of our neighbor's cat, I said we should get going right away to get to the salsa concert on the Monona Terrace rooftop, but we weren't fast enough and we just missed a train heading north. Then when we drove by the railyard here in town, we saw so much cool graffiti. Travalon happened to have his good camera... but the battery was dead, so we ran around with our cell phones and took photos.

The traffic was terrible getting to the Monona Terrace because Concert on the Square had been postponed from yesterday due to rain, so everyone was heading downtown at once. (I hear their theme was the songs of Elton John and Billy Joel.) It was a beautiful night, as you can see from these photos.

The band played salsa, bachata, merengue, cumbia, and even a Mexican song, so sort of pan-Latin. The music always sends me to another place, with a very green mountain overlooking water. It looks sort of like Trempealeau, or like the view of the hill in Pheasant Branch with the creek in front of it. Does this place really exist? I'm beginning to wonder if it's somewhere in Puerto Rico, because when we were approaching it while hanging out in the Zen Room, listening to Enya, the misty mountains looked so mystical and sacred. Whatever this place is, I wonder if Heaven will look like that. How amazing if it did.

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Ukulele Strum with Songs about Animals

 

Today I worked on campus, and Seabird and I were able to walk between storms. I showed my younger and much tech-savvier coworker the photo of the train artwork featured on this blog yesterday, specifically the one with the figure between two tags, and she said she loves train graffiti too. We agreed that "modern art" you see in museums is often terrible because it's either produced by nepo babies or artists who are so famous that they don't have to try anymore, whereas train artists don't make money, and they constantly have to prove their cred to other artists, so their work is often amazing. She also laughed when we found the photo of Seabird and me on the Alumni Association boat, because it's specifically an ad for the party we are going to on Friday where we hope to ride the boat again, and my coworker said how meta it is for me to be in an ad for an event I'm going to. I also asked her if she could help me find the photo of Travalon and me canoeing on the Wayback Machine; we had no luck, but we did laugh really hard because at one point the website had a photo of two guys in a canoe from a side angle, and then later they had the same guys in a canoe, but from more of a head-one angle. I asked if she could help me with the bewildering folder of files of an unknown type that saved to my computer when I tried to save the image from the website, but she had no ideas about that either. I guess the photo is lost to posterity. 

Speaking of photos, I took this one of a tree peony seed pod that looks like a star when Seabird and I were walking in Allen Centennial Gardens.

We also saw this tree that looks like hops, and in fact it's called a hop hornbeam.

There is a guy who makes videos of every train that passes by and then posts them on social media, and I saw that he made a video of the train Travalon and I heard pass by around 5:20 yesterday evening, so I watched the video to see if there was any good graffiti. Answer: yes.

As you can see, I still need to learn something about screenshots, since these all have the "pause" button on them. Fortunately, it's higher than the graffiti in every photo.

I already had my steps for the day by the end of our lunchtime walk, so I was thinking of skipping my afternoon walk, but I needed more fresh air. I could hear a train coming, but the way campus is set up, there wasn't a good point to see it from for about a football field's length away, so I started running until I couldn't anymore... and then I heard the horn very close and started running again. And I saw the whole train! It was short and didn't have a lot of graffiti, just the 4AL that I thought was "YAL" until I saw the "Four" spelled out, and later I saw it was "4 A LAUGH." No "Puck" this time.

I left work early to catch the shuttle before my usual one in order to get to the ukulele strum on time. The sky was getting dark as I headed north, and I thought about going home instead of heading all the way into Waunakee, but I did beat the storm. It started shortly before the strum did, so right when I would have arrived had I taken the later shuttle. After the storm, a rainbow!

We played songs about animals today, like "Horse With No Name," "Three Little Birds," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" - you get the idea. Everything was clear once the strum ended, and when Travalon came home, we went to take care of our neighbor's cat. There were some beautiful pink clouds.

As astute readers might have noticed, I have mostly given up on clever blog post names and now call the blog post whatever it's actually about. This is mostly to make it easier for me to find past blog posts, because if I'm looking for the time I went sailing but the blog has some clever pun of a name that has nothing to do with sailing, it gets frustrating for me. Maybe I'll save the clever titles for days where I'm just working from home and nothing happens.

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