Rescue Plants and Bucks Game

I hope my readers had a good weekend. Travalon and I had a quiet Friday evening, just going out for fish at the nearby country club and then getting to bed early. We were still recovering from our trip, and we had to get up early for my band’s annual gig at the MacKenzie Center pancake breakfast the next morning. While Travalon explored the little zoo at the nature center, I played with my bandmates and felt very “on.” While I was playing a Finnish song called “Metsakukkia” (forest flower) that sounds Russian, so I play with tremolo as though my mandolin were a balalaika, I could see a woman and her two young granddaughters looking at pictures of mandolins on a cell phone. “Aha,” I thought, “they are wondering what Mandy is!” Sure enough, when the song was over, they came up and asked me about her. It is so much fun to play an instrument that attracts so much attention. Kathbert says she feels the same way when she plays the great bass recorder – people are so curious about it, because they have never seen anything like it. Poor OK Cap showed up moments after we had quit playing, so then she, Travalon, and I went to the Thirsty Moose for some lunch, and she and I bought tie-dyed shirts. It was a gorgeous day, so Travalon and I went for a walk at Holy Wisdom Monastery, and then when we got home, Hardingfele texted to let me know there were some plants that needed rehoming in her neighborhood. It was a six-foot parlor palm, a six-foot dumb cane, and a fern. I borrowed Travalon’s car and drove over, and on the way I found myself behind a Hummer that had a Punisher sticker on the back window and a license plate that said: “Satan.” I wasn’t too concerned about Satan until he kept making the same turns I did… and then he stopped right in the middle of the road as if he were freaked out by my following him, so I drove around him. Maybe he saw the post on Craig’s List and wanted some free plants. Anyway, the dumb cane got adopted by someone else, which is fine because I already have one, and I drove home with the palm tree next to my head as I listened to reggae. It was like a small reprise of our tropical trip! Travalon is so good-natured: he helped me carry the huge palm upstairs, and he didn’t have much to say about the mess that the tree made despite our attempts to not dump any dirt in the car. In the evening he wanted to watch the Final Four games, so I went to Rich’s house to tell him and Kathbert all about our trip.

Yesterday after Mass we had a leisurely brunch at the Lakeside Café with Rich and another bass from our choir, then Travalon and I drove to Milwaukee. Our first stop was the Early Music Now office, where I did buy that lute guitar that didn’t sell at the silent auction, as well as a contraption to water up to ten plants while on vacation. All the money goes to Early Music Now, and I got a way better price than they wanted for the opening bid at the silent auction. Then we had some pizza before going to a Bucks game. Travalon found 14^th row seats for a very good price, maybe because this game was considered unimportant: the Atlanta Hawks are not a particularly good team, and the Bucks have already clinched a playoff berth. In fact, the Bucks did play a lot of bench warmers, so then the game was getting unnervingly close, but Giannis went in at the end and got a three-pointer that had everyone hollering: “MVP! MVP!” It was almost a religious experience. He also won an award for being the top European basketball player of 2018, since he is from Greece (and originally Nigeria). He is just the greatest! I just love watching him play. He looks like he is having so much fun when he dunks a ball and then dangles from the rim of the basket, or when he steals the ball from the other team and is all the way down the court before they even realize it. Travalon was very happy because there was a giant bobble-head of his childhood hero, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, so I took a picture of him with it. He said I could post it on this blog, so look for that at some point in the future. And yes, the Bucks won - the first time they have won 60 in a season since 1981!

Famous Hat