Lola's and Jamming and a Family Heirloom

 

Monday Travalon and I took my aunt and uncle to the wood duck ponds, and we saw wood ducks, a blue heron, and a sandhill crane. They seemed most taken with the crane. Here are some photos.

Travalon had to go to work, so I took my aunt and uncle to the Norske Nook, since their hotel was up in DeForest. They loved it! We each got pie; my aunt got rhubarb crunch, while my uncle and I got the lingonberry sour cream pie. I like that one because it is so tart. They said they'd love to go to a grocery store, so I took them to the co-op where we always shop, and they loved that. We spent quite a bit of time there, then after we put their food away, we hung out on our dock, which is where Travalon joined us when he got home from work. We went to Lola's for dinner, since on Mondays it isn't so crazy, and my aunt and I got an infused drink. It was Motown Monday, so the music was fabulous, and I had a wonderful time. Pretty sure everyone else did too. My uncle, aunt, and I split an order of potstickers, a salad, and a vegetarian pizza, and our waitress didn't care, since each food item was entree-sized so we each ordered one thing but told her we'd be sharing. That way we got to try it all! Travalon had a burger that he said was really good, and then we had to have the budinos for dessert, and my aunt and uncle agreed that lavender and chocolate are a winning combination. 

Yesterday I took the morning off of work, and Travalon and I met my aunt and uncle at the Norske Nook, where we all got pie to go. Then Travalon brought me to campus, because FART 5 was having a "team-building" activity. There were five teams, including HR people, and several of our team names incorporated the F-word (not fart, the other one) into them, but the winning team name was "Don't Go Breakin' My ART." They won the whole game and got Amazon gift cards. (Seabird was on that team.) Our team (Financial Union of Classless Kids) came in second and had the winning photo. Our quest was to run all over campus taking photos of different things. Some of the best photos didn't have me in them, but I feel weird about posting them without asking the others. Here are some I am in. A "W" in an unexpected place - a bus stop!

Posing with a bronze sculpture - this is a Harley Davidson monument.

Posing with another FART - these are people in FART 3, and they didn't want to be in the photo, so they had their backs to the camera. 

This is what our team won for second place: writing pads and pens with dumpster fires on them.

I'm guessing the dumpster fire is the new system at work, though it could be the whole ART setup. We just got used to it, and they're changing things on us, like Seabird is going to FART 1. It remains to be seen whether this means she will leave her current office space. 

After the contest, some of the FART peeps sat on the Union Terrace drinking beer. I was going to just go right back to my aunt and uncle, but Seabird and I and another colleague decided to get ice cream, so we sat licking waffle cones while the others drank beer. Then I caught the Big Bendy B Bus back to my car, thinking it would be quicker than the shuttle, but this bus had every problem: there was a woman who needed the ramp because of her walker, but the ramp by the door she wanted to use didn't work, and she refused to use one of the other two doors on the bendy bus, both coming on and leaving; someone threw up on the bus; and there was a mechanical issue that made the driver stop the bus and go through it. Finally I got home and grabbed the violin and mandolin, and my uncle and I worked on "Swallowtail" until Travalon got off of work. The four of us went to North and South in DeForest for dinner, where we got creole food, then back at the hotel we had New Glarus Belgian Red beer, and I played the mandolin while my uncle played the flute and Travalon and my aunt sang classic rock songs. We did "Scarborough Fair" and "Ring of Fire" and some others I am blanking on - maybe Travalon can tell us in the comments. On my way home, I couldn't believe some guy took every turn I took, and then the temporary stoplight they installed on our street was green until I approached, and then it turned red. Sigh. Nobody was coming, so I waited a bit and then just went through it.

Here's the coolest thing my aunt and uncle brought from Ma Hat:

These are silver ice tongs, and in the bag is a letter written in 1939 to my grandma from some ancestor of mine (I think her grandma) saying the tongs had been in the family for over two hundred years. Wow, they must date from at least the 1730's! I want to make sure they stay in our family as long as I have any say in the matter. There was more stuff my aunt and uncle brought from Ma Hat, and I'll try to get photos and put them on the blog, maybe tomorrow.

Today I worked on campus and felt very disoriented, like I'd been gone for months. It didn't help that I had meetings all day (or so it felt), so it was hard to get into the rhythm of getting work done. A colleague has been doing my work, so we talked for almost an hour about that, and then we had our big department meeting (last one until fall) in the afternoon. At lunch I walked with Seabird and Hardingfele, and they discovered they'd had kids in the same class. "If only we'd known each other back then!" they said regretfully. We saw some magenta shooting stars.

Oh yeah, I gave my aunt a rose on Mother's Day, and it kept getting bigger. I also gave her a sprig of hydrangea I found on the ground in the parking lot of the grocery store where we recycle the plastic, and that seemed to be getting bigger too. Here's Monday:

Here's yesterday:

Travalon went back to the wood duck ponds today.

They really are the most photogenic ducks around these parts.

Today I took the shuttle home, and it had almost as many issues as the B Bus. The driver blew by one stop, and it looked like someone was waiting. Then he took a really crazy route back to the parking lot, because he was trying to avoid a very long train, but we got stuck behind it anyway. It had some pretty cool graffiti on it, but I thought everyone else would think I was strange if I whipped out my phone and made a video. Then when I got home, another aunt had sent me a booklet my grandma had made of all the Christmas cards I had designed over the years as a kid. There was one I didn't recognize, and it wasn't very good, but then I saw my brother had done that one. It reminds me of when my parents brought me some artwork of mine, and one thing was a French assignment I didn't remember and didn't get a very good grade on, and then I realized it was my brother's French assignment. Why would they give me that? Oh well, it has the best photo of me ever taken in it.

Famous Hat

Horicon Marsh with Family and Twelfth Anniversary

 

Yesterday Travalon and I picked up my aunt and uncle visiting from Colorado, and the four of us went to Horicon Marsh. Here are some photos. First, an egret catching a fish.

A barn swallow fluffing up.

Several turtles.

Lots of trilliums, one with a visitor.

How about a muskrat?

A couple of shots of a pied-billed grebe.

We saw some ducks, like this gadwall.

And this red-headed duck.

Here are a couple of shots of the cormorant rookery.

And we did see pelicans, so that's two of the four Big White Birds.

Here, for contrast with the barn swallow, is the tree swallow.

We had lunch at the Mexican restaurant in Mayville. They have pretty flowers outside.

We saw a lot less train graffiti in Horicon this time.

Our lunch was so late that we barely ate dinner. I taught my uncle an Irish fiddling tune, then we jammed together, me on mandolin and him on flute, as Travalon and my aunt sang along. We did "Ripple" by the Grateful Dead (my request), "Can't You See" by the Marshall Tucker Band simply because it was the next song in the playlist, and "El Paso" at Travalon's request. I had a bite of a gummy, and then I was so happy. It was one my aunt had made herself. I'd had a commercial gummy earlier and felt no effects, so maybe it was the cumulative effect. We had some cheese curds (we'd stopped at Schultz's Cheese Haus earlier) and some peanut butter-filled pretzel bites, and back home Travalon and I each had a small cheese sandwich, but mostly we did music.

Today before Mass, Travalon gave me a couple of anniversary gifts:

They're Belleek - a dog curio box, and the cottage from The Quiet Man as an ornament. I added it to my little Belleek village. Travalon's present is still in the mail, because of course I only thought to order it a couple of days ago. 

I was so happy, because the opening hymn at Mass was the opening hymn we'd had at our wedding Mass. How appropriate for our twelfth anniversary! After Mass I bought a rose for my aunt for Mothers' Day, and in the parking lot of the grocery store where we drop off plastic for recycling, I found a spring of hydrangea.

Then we all went to Fitz's on the Lake, which was having an expensive brunch buffet, but we got there so late that they weren't replenishing everything, so we only got a few things. I did really enjoy the omelet station (the guy made me an omelet with broccoli, onions, and mushrooms) and the tres leches cake with a hint of almond. After lunch we took the Merrimac Ferry to the north side of Lake Wisconsin. Here are some photos.

We drove to Reedsburg to go to the Corner Pub, and we got there with five minutes before it was supposed to close... but it looked like it had been closed for hours. Nobody was even walking around inside. Their social media page said they'd be open and serving brunch, and there was no note on the door, so it's a mystery. We went to a dollar store and got big matching travel mugs, then we went to the nearby spring and filled up with fresh spring water. Then we went to Sauk and saw pelicans at the bridge, including one my aunt saw surfing on the waves from the dam.

These are some interesting formations across the river.

At some point my aunt had accidentally given me two edibles, so while they had not had any effect on me yesterday, today I felt quite stoned and was a bit concerned that my band mates would notice. I know at one point I laughed till I couldn't breathe over something Hardingfele said, and I was trying not to laugh when people would hit wrong notes or wrong chords. Sometimes that someone was me! Not my best practice ever. Meanwhile, Travalon took photos of the train called the Varsity that used to run from Milwaukee to Madison. Now it's a bar called the Local Motion.

I have posted about this bar before. Travalon also took some photos of train tracks, but those are maybe less interesting to look at. It's the beginning and the end (in Reedsburg) of the track that runs near our house, which I have posted many videos of trains on it. It starts in downtown Madison.

Famous Hat