Slavic Day in Milwaukee

 

Yesterday Travalon and I went to Cecil Markovitch's house, where we were soon joined by the Single B-Boy, then we all piled into Cecil's car to drive to Milwaukee. We met Tiffy at Franklin High School, where we watched the local tamburitza orchestra, plus one from Cleveland, perform. The little kids were super cute but not that impressive, although I did adore one boy named Darko who plucked a smaller-sized bass like he just didn't care. Pluck, pluck, who gives a... The teens, however, were quite impressive, especially a group of girls who sang a cappella, and the dancing was really good. There was a reception afterwards in a totally different place, but we had reservations at a Serbian restaurant, where we weren't allowed to say anything about our Croatian cultural experience. This is part of my agreement with Travalon, that if we spend too much time doing Celtic stuff, we will also do Croatian stuff, and honestly I don't mind. I love all sorts of ethnic celebrations. Dinner was delicious; I wanted to try the lobster pie, but they were out, so I went with my old standby of burek. (Bonus: I always get at least three meals out of it.) I also tried a walnut martini, but everyone laughed at me because I nursed it for the entire two-plus hours we were at dinner, and then we all got dessert except the B-Boy, who just had ouzo. I had the sour cherry strudel, Tiffy and Travalon had the palachinka with the chocolate hazelnut filling, and Cecil had baklava. I should note that for their main courses, Travalon and the B-Boy had chicken paprikash, and Tiffy and Cecil had moussaka, though she had the vegetarian one and he had the Serbian one. We also had lots of bread with cheese spread and ajvar, which is like Serbian salsa - so good! Everything was so good. The only sad note was that on such a beautiful day, we spent most of it inside or in the car, and I was really short on steps so I cheated by moving my arms the whole drive back from Cecil's place. That got me almost all the rest of the steps I needed, and my one workout of the day - my FitBit thought I was using an elliptical trainer.

Today we had a ton of plastic to recyle after Mass again, then there was a bit of excitement right after Mass when a tween girl puked all over the floor right in front of the plastic bins. We managed to dodge the puke on the floor while preparing the plastic for recycling, then after a quick lunch we went to Governor's Island. The carpet of early spring flowers is mostly gone now, at least the white Dutchman's breeches and trout lilies, but the purple and yellow violets are still blooming. We saw a couple of goldeneyes there, but I don't know why they look so brown. I think of goldeneyes as black and white, but Merlin confirmed these were goldeneyes.

It was so beautiful out that I was sad to go inside for my drum lesson, but the feeling vanished as soon as I stepped into the Quadra and heard the soft samba band playing. Since they changed the ukulele strums from Wednesday to Thursday, now I have to miss their monthly concerts at Working Draft brewery, so it was fun to get to hear them. We worked really hard at our drum lesson, and I always hate it during the lesson itself, but then the endorphins must kick in, so afterwards I think of it fondly. Also, the people are really cool there. I decided it's no more money and time than if I were doing an exercise class, plus it's music and parties so totally worth it.

Meanwhile, Travalon went fishing at Yahara Park and saw some coots.

After he picked me up, we went to the part of Cherokee Marsh with the little island, but all we saw were a couple of geese. However, along Wheeler Road there is a pond where we saw several wood ducks.

And a line of turtles on a log.

Then Travalon left for a guys' night dinner with Cecil, the B-Boy, Trinidad Cap, Prairie Man, and Richard Bonomo. (When Travalon said, "That's a lot of Cecil Markovitch, I might need a break after this," Cecil replied, "Imagine how I feel - I never get away from Cecil Markovitch!") Meanwhile, I went to band practice. Our leader thought we should resurrect some of the songs we used to do and haven't done in a while, and honestly I don't know why we stopped doing them. Sometimes the version our leader had was totally different than the one Hardingfele and the other fiddler were looking at, and sometimes the chords made no sense. We went around taking turns choosing tunes, and after a long evening of playing things we are rusty on, we ended with the gentle waltz "Tumbalalaika." So that was lovely. I do like playing chords on that one, because I love hitting the one D major chord among all the D minors, but if I play tremolo on the melody, I sound like a balalaika. So that's what I did.

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Plan B: Jazz

 

Today I worked from home, and when Travalon and I went down to the dock, we saw a couple of ring-necked ducks, or maybe scaups. First the male is doing his neck stretching thing.

Is the female impressed? I can't tell.

I took some photos of flowers on my lunchtime walk.

Meanwhile, Travalon was at Stricker Pond, getting attacked by this goose:

In the evening I was planning to go to a German play on campus, despite the fact that I studied Romance languages. They promised subtitles, and it was a comedy, AND a faculty member was playing the ukulele. However, I couldn't find a single parking spot anywhere after fighting traffic and dodging road construction, so I parked at my church, figuring it would be a long walk and I'd be late, but what else could I do? I ran in to powder my nose, and when I came out, a person I know who can be very strict parked next to me and was texting someone, so I panicked and just went home. Travalon and I went down to the dock to watch the sunset; we missed the sunset, but we saw some neighbors and this crane:

Then the two of us went to Bierock to get spinach puffs. We were shocked to see the place was jam packed, because this excellent jazz band was playing called the Trilobites. 

I think by the time I took this video, the crowd had thinned out. We did manage to find a table and have our spinach puffs, and I had some lavender lemonade that wasn't very lavender-forward and a five-ounce serving of 420 infused drink. That just made the music even better. Was this more fun than the German play? Hard to say, but it was certainly a great evening out. I was dressed up for the German play, so it was good to have somewhere to go.

Oh yeah, I generally go for a walk at three, but today I was futzing around until suddenly hearing a train horn, so I ran out in time to see the train. Then as we were coming home, I thought I saw a train headlight as we crossed the bridge, so Travalon said we could drive to the crossing, but I could hear the train alongside us going clickety-clack. It was hard to see in the dark, but then we could see its little red taillight. We drove to School Road to see it cross the bridge over Troy Drive, but it was gone by then. Too bad, I could have made a video of what it's like to go through the tunnel under the train tracks while a train is passing by overhead.

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Photos of Lisbon and Memories of College Parties

 

Today Travalon went to Patrick Marsh before work. He saw some pelicans there, but the photos aren't that clear. Feel free to refer back to previous photos of pelicans on this blog. Then he went to Columbus and Portage to do some rail fanning. He made a couple of videos that I will make into a movie at some point, and he took some photos of the cool graffiti on the train cars.

And a colorful engine.

Next he went to Whalen's Grade and took photos of what I'm pretty sure are gadwalls, some more pelicans, and a pair of sandhill cranes, but the birds were so far away that the photos aren't very clear.

Meanwhile, I worked on campus and walked with Hardingfelde at lunch. We went to Allen Centennial Gardens again.

When I got back from lunch, Seabird started texting me from Lisbon. I am very flattered that she and Tiffy take time out of their wonderful vacations to send me photos. First she sent me something to translate:

It says: "(The) my bakery, always fresh and delicious." (They always use the definite article in Portuguese, even with a person's name, so I would say, "The Travalon was taking train photos.") Then she sent me photos of Lisbon. So gorgeous!

And, just in case this post doesn't have enough photos on it yet, here are some more Travalon took yesterday at the zoo and forgot to send me before I blogged last night.

In the afternoon I went to another research study, and on the way I saw a train pass by very close, but the horn was so loud that I had to plug my ears, so I didn't make a video. This study was on algorithms; I was supposed to choose between two pieces of artwork about a hundred times, and then it showed me ten pieces of artwork I hadn't seen and asked me to pick my five favorite. The algorithm guessed the exact order I picked them in. The grad student said I was an excellent research subject since I clearly had strong preferences, and then she gave me $20 in singles. These research studies are kind of fun, and I make a tiny bit of money, but most of all they make me feel like I'm extraordinary. The grad student said during the driving one last week that I was doing really well, and I did one last year where I seemed to shock the grad student with how good I was at navigating. I have some weird talents, that's for sure. I've always said I would have been a great hunter-gatherer because I spot birds quickly and always remember where I saw plants.

After work my Union peeps were meeting down at the Terrace. It was a glorious evening, and there were quite a few of us drinking beer and having interesting conversations. Just about the time they all left, Travalon arrived. so we sat enjoying the lovely weather as we ate a pizza. When we left, we passed a frat house that was having a party, and they had a professional-level setup of lights and sound equipment. Did they rent it, or did they actually invest thousands of dollars in equipment you'd expect at a nightclub? It was Senior Night, so State Street was crawling with undergrads, some in costumes. It made me think of some of the crazy parties I went to in college, like the one where I was hula hooping on a roof, and the one where one girl was writing down everything people said with a colorful marker while another guy kept hollering that the song playing was a foxtrot, although it was not big band music but 90's grunge, and the one where everyone brought beer from around the world (I brought Chinese beer), and the crazy house party where a guy pulled me into the closet to hide from the cops busting it, and then those of us who didn't get arrested eventually came out of hiding, ordered a shamrock-shaped pizza, and watched a foreign movie. And the one in the wildly painted basement, and the one where some of us were standing out on a balcony, and a Brazilian girl mused, "What is it to be lucky in suicide - to succeed, or to fail?" and we all thought that was such a deep question. My housemates and I hosted a few ourselves, like a Halloween one where we were the Lion, the Witch, and (poor Tiffy!) the Wardrobe, and a really lovely Christmas one. I am definitely much happier now than I was in college, but some of those parties were really fun. The one I didn't like was a "kegger" where you had to pay $5 for a red plastic cup, and then nothing came out of the keg but foam, and the house was so packed you could barely move. That's what it seemed like some of the bars on State Street would be like tonight, and I've never understood how that could be fun.

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Panda Farewell Party

 

Today Travalon did something really fun - he went to a farewell party at the zoo for one of the red pandas. They had brought in a new male after the previous one died, but he and the female are not interested in making baby pandas together, so they're going to send him to another zoo and bring in a different male panda. I get it, pandas - I wouldn't want to be forced to breed with some rando either. Travalon saw a couple of our Shamrock Club buddies there, and he made some videos of the pandas eating their special cake that were so cute that my coworkers were entranced. It got too late for me to make a movie of them tonight, but hopefully tomorrow. Here are some photos. 

The farewell card. Travalon signed it for both of us.

A hornbill who lives nearby.

As usual, the aardvark slept through all the excitement.

Travalon saw this event on Facebook, but Kathbert also alerted him to it. I, of course, could not attend because I was working on campus today. During my first meeting, I was annoyed by the sound of everyone's voice. My second meeting was canceled - yay! Just before my third meeting, I remembered that one person who attends is on leave, so I ran upstairs to 1111, the big FART 5 office, to ask her replacement to join us, but she was on a Teams call, and oddly nobody else was around. There were some sesame blondies, so I helped myself to one before going downstairs and sending her a message. She did get done with her previous call and joined our meeting, which only took 15 minutes, so then I could walk at lunch with Hardingfele before HER meeting. We walked in the Allen Centennial Gardens and saw fritillaries.

Hardingfele said, "I thought fritillaries were butterflies," and I said, "They are. But these are fritillary flowers. They're both named after a Latin word for a checkerboard." Or so I read. Then we saw one of those little white cabbage butterflies, and Hardingfele said, "Look - a fritillary!" but fritillary butterflies are big and orange with a checkerboard pattern on their wings. We did enjoy all the blooming verbenas. Everything is so early this year, which is surprising because it was cold for so long. I guess all the tornados woke the flowers up? 

One semi-miraculous thing did happen today: as I was on my way to work, I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be watering my neighbor's plants, but for some reason I hadn't done it in... well, I couldn't remember. Since before Easter? It was hard to concentrate at work, but I called Travalon before he left for the panda farewell party, and he went to our neighbor's place and said the plants were still alive. He took photos and sent them to me, and I could see they were a bit stressed but nowhere near dead. Phew!!! After work I watered them well and picked off all the dead leaves. Why did I suddenly forget to water them at the same time as my own plants? My subconscious must have been trying to tell me, because lately I've been thinking about how Ma Hat once gave me a peperomia cutting that I set behind another plant so I couldn't see it, and by the time I remembered, it was withered up and dead. Or when someone I don't even know that well dumped a tiny aquarium on me that had belonged to a friend of hers who died, someone I never met, and I totally forgot she had done it for over a week, and by the time I remembered, the fish were all dead. They were just little tetras - I'll bet goldfish would have survived. They're resourceful. Both of those events happened decades ago, and I thought I was more responsible now, but even last week when I watered my plants in the plant room, and then the plants in the kitchen, and then the plants in the loft, I thought, "Is that everything? Yes!" Wrong!

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