Fireworks Cruise and the Grateful Dead

I hope my readers all had a happy Fourth of July. Travalon and I started the festivities on Friday, when we joined Cecil Markovitch, Twins Fan, my OTHER choir director, Richard Bonomo, OK Cap, the Single B-Boy, and the Dairyman’s Daughter for a fish fry at the Dorf Haus. I bought my OTHER choir director a drink for his birthday, which had been this past Monday. It was also my half-birthday, so after dinner I indulged in a naughty dessert of chocolate cheesecake, but fittingly I only ate half of it. It was so much fun, especially since Cecil and Twins Fan are so entertaining together.

Saturday Travalon and I joined Jilly Moose and OK Cap for coffee, sitting outside to enjoy the lovely weather. (Plus we had Rodney with us.) Then we went to the farmers’ market, and Travalon tried to sneak Rodney in, but he got busted. No dogs allowed! We bought kale, broccoli, garlic scapes, and scallions, then we went home and I made omelets with veggies, leftover chicken, and the eggs my coworker sold me. (I did successfully blow the insides out of the crinkly egg, preserving the odd shell.) We went to the Fourth of July picnic in Columbus, but they didn’t allow dogs there either, so we didn’t spend much time there, since Rodney was with us. We took him for a walk by the stream in Lodi. In the evening we took a Betty Lou cruise on Lake Mendota, and the boat stopped right under the fireworks in Maple Bluff. That was amazing to see. We toured the whole lake and saw fireworks going off all around us; when we saw the ones in Shorewood, a drunk guy said, “Sherwood? Sherwood Forest? Call me Christopher Robin!” We conversed with two other couples, and one couple goes to our church, so I tried to recruit the man as a new tenor for our choir. However, we didn’t see him Sunday morning…

Yesterday after Mass and brunch as usual, Travalon and I drove to Devil’s Lake and met Anna Banana II there. She is visiting town for two weeks, and the first thing she wanted to do was take a hike. Rich and the Single B-Boy also showed up, and we all took the low trail from the south side of the lake to the north side. On the way back, Rich and the B-Boy hiked up in the bluffs, but we had Rodney with us so we stayed on the low trail. Then Travalon and I went to a simulcast of the last Grateful Dead concert ever, or so they say. Of course Jerry Garcia’s been dead for twenty years now (can you believe it?) but the other guys are still going strong, and they had a fantastic guitarist from Phish join them on their long jams. We were really enjoying the show, but it went on till midnight, and we had to get up this morning, so we didn’t get to see the last hour and a half. All the people in the theater were singing along to the songs – they got especially excited about “Truckin.’” I used to love the Dead back in college but sort of forgot about them until Travalon put on Working Man’s Dead in the car one day, and I was surprised at what good music it really is. I thought we just liked it back in the day to be cool hippies.

Famous Hat