The Dreaded Doink

 

Travalon and I had yet another relaxing morning - that's three in a row, for those of you keeping track at home. It's going to be really tough getting up early and going to work on Monday, so tomorrow I'll have a practice run of getting up a little less early to go to Mass. This one will be less high stakes because if I fail, I just go to a later Mass. If I fail on Monday, I may not get a paycheck anymore. 

Eventually we got going and headed downtown for Travalon's favorite day of the year: Small Business Saturday! I always consider it part of his birthday festivities. Speaking of birthdays, I have already given him his present:

A Hamm's Bear hoodie! And here he is with his two stuffed Hamm's bears.

This is the time of year on Famous Hat when I post lots of photos of Christmas lights. Last night Travalon missed the turn onto Johnson Street on our way home from the concert, so we went up Langdon Street and got to see the lights at the Edgewater Hotel.

Another thing I forgot to mention about yesterday is that during the cave tour, at one point they turned off all the lights so we were in total darkness. A kid (not the Spawn of Satan) snuggled up against me, and I don't know if he thought I was his mom in the dark, or if I was just a comforting presence. He didn't seem horrified when the lights came back up that he was snuggled up to some strange adult. 

Travalon and I went up State Street toward the campus, then we took the Holiday Trolley back toward the Capitol and went around it. Here are some of the treasures I got:

The blue apatite is actually from yesterday at the Cave of the Mounds. The little mushroom, pyramid, tetrahedron, and triskelion are from Mimosa, the necklace and earrings (I see one of them got flipped upside-down) are from Art Gecko, and the two soaps are from the Soap Opera. Then here are some more treasures:

These are from Little Luxuries, except for the chocolate lime bar, which is from Madison Modern Market. I just laughed so hard when I saw the cooking mitt that Travalon said we should get it.

Then we drove to Oconomowoc to go to the German Christmas Market, which was extremely packed. We had some apple strudel and a giant Bavarian pretzel, then of course the stand that interested me the most sold Irish stuff. Travalon bought me this ring for an early birthday present:

I liked the way this person decorated their windows. This looks like condos - there are so many condos going up in Oconomowoc that people are calling it O-condo-mowoc. 

Right when we got to Oconomowoc, we parked by the railroad tracks, and just then the fastest freight train I've ever seen blew by. When we got back to the car, the same thing happened! Only it was going the other direction, and suddenly it slowed down and stopped on the tracks. Luckily we didn't have to go that way.

Here's something exciting: Tiffy's niece had a pattern for a hat that she created published in a knitting magazine called Pom Pom! Here the model (not the niece) is modeling the hat.

The niece's name was on the front cover and everything. That is more impressive than my poem (allegedly) being published on the side of a bus, since neither I nor anyone else I know ever saw it on a bus. If I was better at knitting, I'd try to make this hat, but with brighter colors. It's very cute.

On the way home, Travalon and I listened to the Badgers play the Gophers on the radio. The Badgers were ahead, but then the Gophers tied it up and got up by a touchdown. There was little time left, and the Gophers intercepted the ball and were about to kick a field goal. I said that the Badgers had no chance unless the guy missed the field goal and then the Badgers got a touchdown to throw things into overtime, but it could happen. The Gopher kicker did miss! The announcer said, "There it is - the dreaded doink," because the ball made that sound as it bounced off the right upright, and I said, "There's my blog post title." Then the Badger's kind of useless quarterback got injured, so with less than two minutes left the backup QB came out and got them down to the five-yard line... and then three times in a row they jumped offsides, so it was third and thirty, and the QB got the ball into the end zone but nobody caught it. So now the Gophers have the Paul Bunyan axe. Maybe they kept it; I have a vague memory that they beat us last year too. This is just not the year for Wisconsin football, but the Badgers do have a good enough record to limp into some minor bowl. Maybe the Toilet Bowl?

I got an exciting thing in the mail the other day: my Advent calendar! When I was a kid, I always wanted one of those Advent calendars where you would open a window for each day and get a chocolate, but Pa Hat said, "No, that's not the spirit of Advent!" We had a big, felt Advent calendar that you could put the numbers for each date on. I have since had the chocolate Advent calendars (I work at the German Department, so some professor tends to give them out), and they're not that exciting (not the best chocolate), but I got an email with almost the perfect Advent calendar for sale from National Geographic: each day you open a window and get a small crystal! The only better one (but it would be prohibitively large) would be if each day you got a different Latin percussion instrument. So tonight is the beginning of Advent, and so I looked at the calendar (since I'm too lazy to put up the wreath - tomorrow is soon enough), and it starts on December 1. That's not actually the start of Advent, but I guess that's what you get when you buy Advent calendars from non-religious folks. Lesson learned.

Famous Hat