We All Ballers

 

Friday night I pondered going to a play about Sophie Scholl, but it was cold and dark, so I stayed in and talked to Tiffy. Then yesterday Travalon and I drove to Milwaukee to meet her, and we had lunch at the empanadas place, since it had been so good last time. I got three completely different empanadas, and they were all delicious too. Tiffy said there should be a branch of this restaurant in Madison, and I said maybe that wouldn't be so good for me, because I'd eat there all the time. Maybe someday I will have tried all the flavors on the menu. Then we went to Black Cat Alley, which I have featured on this blog before, but a lot of the walls were blank, so I don't know if they were working on new murals or what. 

We went to a nearby coffee place to warm up, and we discovered that someone we know has self-published a book. Tiffy was shocked by this person's autobiography: "None of that is true! Can you just lie online like that?" Welcome to the Internet, Tiffy. She said this person's autobiography belongs in the fiction section, which made me laugh for like twenty minutes straight. Her biggest issue was with someone calling themselves a professional when that is not how they support themselves. I get it; I love sudoku and do it all the time, but I don't call myself a professional sudoku solver. She said this person made it sound like they were on Broadway, and I said of course this person was on Broadway, there's a road by that name and they probably drive on it all the time. We got way too much mileage out of this, making up songs about the person and making up autobiographies for ourselves. I had trouble making mine too far from reality because I have actually been paid to write, to draw, and to play music in public, though of course not at rates where I could support myself doing these things. Anyway, here's what we came up with:

Tiffy is an award-winning basketball player (she won a free throw contest in... middle school? high school? my memory is terrible, and she just told me this yesterday) who has played the viola at the largest venues in Milwaukee (as part of a youth orchestra) and has won awards at piano competitions (back in high school). She has worked her way up the corporate ladder in quality assurance and has traveled all over the world.

Travalon was an award-winning college basketball player (junior college, walk-on, and he won the Mental Toughness Award) who left to become a captain of industry (he was part owner of a family business), went into the hospitality business (he was a bellhop at a hotel), and is now a beloved teacher of disadvantaged children (that's true - he's Mr. Travalon and they love him!). He is also a world traveler and has been in every time zone (at least while on a plane).

Famous Hat played college basketball on a team that went to the tournament (an intramural team from my dorm floor, and we had to forfeit our playoff game because only two people could make it). She has had her poetry set to music and published (on the side of a bus), and she has also published award-winning recipes (I got a tote bag because the local newspaper printed my recipes for chocolate curry chicken and mango spinach cheesecake). She is a decorated diplomat (I have a medal because my team - Iran - won first place at Model UN in high school), an award-winning behavioral scientist (I won ten pounds of cheese at a middle school science fair for my project on learning in goldfish), and a (semi) professional musician (making tens of dollars). She has also traveled to many countries, and she speaks seven languages (one fluently - English). 

So what can you conclude from our life stories? We all ballers! And world travelers!

Travalon dropped Tiffy and me off at the Milwaukee campus for an early music concert: the Orlando Singers, four men who sing a cappella. Before the concert, we were hanging out and still laughing about that author's autobiography, and a guy came in talking on the phone about how all people in Wisconsin save up their money to buy useless little cabins on the shores of lakes nobody in their right minds would swim in, then they save more money to buy boats they don't use, and then they sit around in bars complaining about all the money this has cost them for upkeep. He also said he was going to be hearing a string quartet, so Tiffy thought his grasp of reality was as tenuous as the author's. The concert was all Renaissance music paired with Renaissance artwork on the same theme as whatever piece was being sung, and it struck me that this artwork was five centuries old, and that's only ten times as long as I have currently lived. What a weird thought. When Travalon came back, we went to the Three Lions Pub for dinner. So delicious!

Since we had overdone it with the food yesterday, this morning I couldn't make myself eat before Mass, and we were running late so we went to the closest one. It was a cold day, but sunny, so we drove to Lake Wisconsin and took the ferry over. We went to the Baraboo antiques mall, but neither of us could find anything we wanted in our price range. We took a long hike at Mirror Lake State Park (I will post photos tomorrow), then we went to the antiques shop in Sauk, and I found a rosary with a crucifix that opens, and there are little pieces of paper in there with writing on them. I did buy it, and I'll have to look at it more closely soon. One odd thing I did see at the Baraboo antiques mall was a necklace that had a cross on it, and where there would have been a corpus on a crucifix, it had a yin yang. That struck me as really weird, since Taoism is a different religion, so why mix religious symbols like that? I should have taken a photo of it. I didn't buy it because it was just too weird. Anyway, today was a really good day because finally, FINALLY, the Packers won!!!!!

Famous Hat