Robot Research Study

 

Today I worked on campus, and I was a research subject in a study using a robot to move stuff around. It seemed silly, since I could have moved the stuff around in a fraction of the time it took me to get the robot to do it, but I got $23 in cold, hard cash. Why $23? It was because I was paid $15/hour for doing this for an hour and a half. Then Hardingfele and I took a walk in the afternoon, and in the evening Travalon and I played pickleball. I think I like tennis better, but it's definitely fun, and I'm definitely terrible at it.

When I tried to post some more of Travalon's photos, I got an error message, but I was able to post these screenshots of the train going by in our neighborhood. 

Then I realized I was trying to load too many photos at once. Here are more photos from Thursday.

And here are photos from Travalon's trip on Saturday.

This may be the awesome graffiti I saw on a train as I was heading to Adoration some weeks ago. I remember it looking like this, and being on a brown car.

I still have to get the screenshots from his videos on Saturday, plus we're probably going to have more videos tomorrow. I'm taking the day off of work, and we're watching trains.

Famous Hat

Travalon's Train Day

 

I forgot to mention that Monday night after Moldy Jam, Travalon and I took a walk and I saw a meteor. The big shower was last week and I forgot to look, although I heard it was too cloudy to see much. Then yesterday on the way home I saw a faint rainbow.

Today I worked on campus and walked with Seabird over lunch. She was also very enamored of my teal Aer Lingus hat with the lime green shamrocks. It's such a beautiful hat - I'm so happy that those ladies were willing to give them to us. Maybe they saw I was wearing a hat already and figured I'd actually wear it. It did seem like a lot of people were just carrying the hats around, or had them stuffed into bags.

In the evening Travalon picked me up from work, and we drove to Cross Plains to hear the Daughter of Denni and her band play at a farmer's market. We chatted amicably with the Widow of Denni while listening to them and being puzzled that they had set up umbrellas so everyone on stage got shade except the Daughter of Denni, who hates temperatures above 60 F. Seems like they could have moved one over a bit... There was a food cart, so we got dinner, and someone was selling "buckeye" cookies that were chocolate with peanut butter on top. So delicious!

On Saturday while I was at Irish Fest, Travalon had a train adventure. He started at the Portage rail yard and saw one CSX train. Then he stopped in Columbus but did not see a train there. He went to Slinger and saw a Canadian National train, then he went to Duplainville and saw two AmTrak trains and two Canadian National trains. He stopped in Pewaukee but didn't see a train there, and no trains in Oconomowoc, but in Watertown he saw a train after dark. He topped his day off with a Key lime martini at the North Side Lounge back in Madison. Here are some photos of the graffiti he saw. Actually, this first batch is from Thursday night at the Portage rail yard and the one in town.

Sorry, Blogspot has abruptly decided that is enough photos for one post, so I'll have to do more tomorrow. There are also lots of great screenshots I can get from his videos, so stay tuned!

Famous Hat