Two Couples at Dinner

 

This morning there were donuts after Mass, which we weren't expecting (they are usually on the third Sunday of the month), so we fled because that meant brunch would be really late. We went to Indian Lake to see if the bird party was there I had seen earlier this fall; we did see a lot of geese on the lake, but just a pair of sandhill cranes in a field, not in the lake, and there was no sign of the egret. We took a walk along the lake anyway, then we went to Mazomanie and walked along Lake Marion. There were a lot of geese there, and a train passed by so I started to take a video of it, but it was very long and not that interesting, so I stopped filming... just before it blew its horn. Argh! We also took a walk along Black Earth Creek. We were listening to the Packers in the car, and they were losing... to the Lions! At home!! They really, really stink this year. Here are a couple of pictures of the train. I just watched the video, and it's cooler than I thought, so now I wish I'd kept filming the whole train.

Travalon took some photos with his good camera, so I'll try to post some of those tomorrow.

Our next stop was Pheasant Branch, to see if the crane party was still going on. It was, but it had moved across the road to a corn field. Travalon got some photos of that too. As we were driving home, we heard the Packers lose. Oh, they are so bad this year!

We had to head home so I could go to Irish class, then as soon as that ended, we headed to a Thai restaurant on the southwest end of town (so about as far away from our house as you could get) to meet my colleague and her husband for dinner. I had never met her husband, and neither of them had ever met Travalon, but we all had a really good time, like we were old friends. Their native language is Shanghainese, which I don't know anything about, but Wikipedia says it is mutually unintelligible with Mandarin. Isn't that interesting? A huge city like that, and they speak their own language. So how do they talk to people in Beijing? Is Mandarin like a lingua franca that they all have to learn in school? I have so many questions, but Travalon gets bored of linguistics talk, so we talked about other things, like fishing and March Madness brackets. The two of them can talk about anything. It was so much fun - I'd love to do it again sometime.

Famous Hat