Pandas and Sharks and Bears, Oh My!

 

Today the water was shut off in my building, but I didn't care since I always work from home on Tuesdays anyway, and then I went to Adoration with my new polar bear-tracking bracelet with the lava beads which arrived in the mail today. How timely, since it matched my lava rosary, which I used at Adoration. This is a female polar bear on the western side of Hudson Bay in Canada, probably in the Churchill area; we're also tracking a young red panda in Nepal and a female hammerhead shark off the coast of Florida. The original shark was Riptide, but then she vanished, which they said could happen when the tracker is over a year old, and they gave us a new one to track named Athena who has been going up and down the east coast of Florida. Then today Riptide suddenly appeared on the east coast of Florida herself, so apparently we are now tracking two sharks.

Travalon had a short day at work, so he went to visit a high school buddy. He saw a train stopped on the bridge above the road.

Then on my way home from Adoration, I saw some graffiti in the rail yard here in town, so I stopped to take photos.

I told Travalon about it, so after dinner he went to the rail yard and took some photos.

There were several videos on social media of trains in our town, including one I saw on my way to Adoration, but I probably won't make screenshots because it seems like I've already featured all the graffiti on this blog. It was fun to see it again, though, like seeing an old friend. "Oh, there's 4AL Car! And 4 A LAUGH Car! And I remember that Puck!" Hopefully if I keep seeing the same graffiti over and over, that means I will see the really cool graffiti I saw last Tuesday but didn't get a chance to photograph. They must be keeping all these cars local.

Famous Hat

Mando-Uke and Marimbula at the Jam

 

Here's a photo I forgot to post, of a Christmas ornament we got at Siesta Beach back in December.

Today I worked from home and had to wear a mask during my walks, since the air quality was still bad due to the Canadian wildfires. However, I felt a lot better and decided to go to Moldy Jam tonight. Travalon went to see Graham Nash, so he was able to drop me off and pick me up. Right after he dropped me off, the feisty mandolin player said, "I have to show you something!" and she handed me a white ukulele, so I tried to play a C chord and it sounded awful. She laughed and said, "I tuned it like a mandolin. It's my travel mandolin for taking on the airplane." That was not the only interesting instrument there tonight; a really good fiddler brought a thing like a giant thumb piano and used it to play bass. Wish I'd gotten a photo of that! He probably would have let me take a photo. Halfway through the session, the feisty mandolin player said I should use the uke-mando, so I did, and I loved it! It was a joy to play, although I discovered that I couldn't do tremolo since it only had single strings. Here is a photo.

I wish I'd taken a photo of the other instrument, which he called a "marimbula." It looked like a giant, wooden kalimba. I did find an image online that looks a lot like the one this guy had.

It was about three feet tall, and I loved the bass sound. Apparently these are only $270, which seems like a really good price for such a thing. So it was a really fun jam session tonight with all these crazy instruments.

When we got home, it had cooled off a lot, and I went for a walk because the air quality was so much better. I thought the moon looked so beautiful reflected on the lake. This photo doesn't quite do it justice.

I have to get to the most important part of this post - the DuoLingo bragging!

That's right, I was 10,000% correct! And check this out:

Know why I'm acing Portuguese with 97% accuracy? Because it's 3% different than Spanish.

Famous Hat

Proxy Puck and the Lamest Luau

 

Today Travalon and I wore tropical clothes to Mass because right after we got done recycling the plastic, we were going to a luau at the East Side Club. However, when we got there, only a handful of other people were sitting around inside, and a few more were out in the hazardous air. The food was pretty good: pulled pork sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and coleslaw. The place was sort of decorated - I feel like this janky parrot kind of sums it up.

Bright and cheerful, but sort of deformed. We have been to lots of excellent luaus at the East Side Club before, but this one had no music, no pig cake, and very few people. In a few hours the steel drum band was going to play, but we saw no reason to sit around and wait for that, so we went up to a spot in Windsor where you can see trains. Actually, on the way to the East Side Club we stopped at the spot off Fair Oaks and saw some graffiti, so let me post that first.

Travalon took those with his good camera. Then we went to Windsor, and he said it was the same cars he saw there last week. I think the one with the pink graffiti is something he took a photo of in Portage a few weeks ago. The first two I took with my phone, and the others he took with his good camera.

Then we spotted some more train cars just a few blocks away. Here are photos I took:

And here are the photos Travalon took:

Next, we went to my future parking lot, from which you can see the Madison rail yard, and we found lots of great graffiti. Here are my photos of it:

And here are Travalon's photos of the same graffiti, and some other ones he could take photos of with the zoom on his camera.

When I said I could title this blog post "The Lamest Luau," Travalon said I should call it "Proxy Puck and the Lamest Luau" after the graffiti we saw. Then we went back to the East Side Club, and there were a lot more people there in Hawaiian outfits, so maybe more people came to the luau in the second hour. One woman had a truly amazing outfit where she had put a hula skirt and bra over a white sundress and then had leis in her hair and around her ankles, but I thought it would be rude to take a photo of her. Here are what Travalon and I wore - I love his Hawaiian shirt from St. Thomas! See if you can spot the great blue heron behind us and to the right.

We sat in the shade, listening to the steel drum band (which includes both my Brazilian drumming teachers), and it was so wonderful that we felt a little sad that we had to leave after about an hour. But Travalon was going to see AC/DC at Camp Randall tonight, so he had to find a place to park. I suppose I could have gotten my car and come back to the East Side Club, but sitting alone with my N95 mask on (since the air quality was bad again today) didn't seem that appealing. I could have gone to the Slow Irish Session, but oddly that didn't appeal to me either. Since the usual place where we have band practice is right near Camp Randall, Hardingfele offered to host, but she has like four cats and I'm very allergic, so we would have had to practice outside in the bad air. Also, I've had a sore throat all day and am still not sure if I'm fighting a virus, and Hardingfele is very paranoid about viruses. I texted her to let her know I wasn't coming, then I regretted it, thinking about how pleasant it might have been to play the mandolin in her backyard. However, it probably wouldn't have been that good for my antique mandolin to be out in this smoky air, and if I wasn't there, then they could practice inside. I put my mask back on, since I'd felt better outside listening to the steel drum band, and I took a rosary walk and then sat on the dock. It's a mystery about what's making me feel worse - the stale air inside our pent-up condo, or the smoke outside? Or is it truly a virus? That would explain my lack of interest in making music, when usually I live for it. I've just felt blah lately and have only averaged about 6500 steps a day for the last few days, but at least today I got about 9200. Maybe I should have gone for my usual 10,000, but maybe I shouldn't push it. I'm working my way back up to normal.

Famous Hat