Coffee-Colored Kalanchoe and the Virgo Dog

 

Today after Mass and brunch at Cafe Hollander, Travalon and I went to Klein's so I could use my birthday coupon for $5 off a plant. I looked at a bunch of plants and finally settled on a succulent that was an interesting cafe au lait color. My phone will tell me what a plant is if I take a picture of it, so I did, and the phone said it was a "copper spoon plant," which is a type of kalanchoe. Until just a few years ago, I thought that word was pronounced "kah-LAN-choh," but a bus buddy kept pronouncing it "KALL-an-koey," so I looked it up, and she was right. Here's my coffee-colored kalanchoe. 

This is another kalanchoe I have. This type is called "mother of thousands" because it grows little baby plants on the edges of the leaves. This photo was from a couple of months ago; unfortunately, it doesn't look as happy now. I had been underwatering it, so I was doing better and it looked very happy, as you can see, but I think the last time I overwatered it. Hopefully it recovers.

Later Travalon and I went to East Towne Mall to walk, and I showed him the orange opal and the blue-green stone (which he liked better), but what he bought me for Valentine's Day were the earrings and necklace that go with the ring I bought yesterday. 

Then we went to the Nitty Gritty for Mamastep's birthday party. I recognized some of the people there from previous years. Today was Lunar New Year and the start of the Year of the Rabbit, so Mamastep and I were talking about our Chinese zodiac signs, and I said I'm a Pig in the East and a Goat in the West, so I'm just a barnyard animal. That inspired her to have everyone go around the table and say their name and their Eastern and Western zodiac signs. The guy across from me was a Virgo Dog, which sounds like a great name for a band or something, but the weird thing is that I was sure I'd never met him before, yet we know a bunch of people in common. It all started when Mamastep was saying she knew most of the people from Steampunk, but she and I knew each other from a Mideastern band, and I said how both Mideastern bands I was in were weird, so from now on my rule was not to join any Mideastern band that didn't have actual Mideastern people in it. I should have known it was a dangerous thing to say, because then Mr. Virgo Dog asked me what bands, and he knew people in the weirder band. We also both used to be in the Society for Creative Anachronism, so we know people in common there. We must have at least eight mutual friends on social media. Hopefully he doesn't tell the two I know from the weirder Mideastern band that I thought they were weird, since I'm still friends with them on social media, although honestly the person I had the most issues with was the owner of the house where we practiced, who had two badly behaved rat terriers that jumped all over me and my family heirloom violin, and it seemed like he never cut their toenails. How hard would it have been to have put them into another room for the couple of hours we were practicing? I think what bugged me most was the soap opera aspect of these Mideastern bands, where married people were getting together with bandmates that weren't their spouses, and ex spouses who shared a kid named after a color were having fights that bled over into both bands. I guess that's the nature of musicians...? Although if such things were happening in the church choirs I sang in, I certainly never heard about it.

Some people got fancy with their Eastern signs and said they were a Wooden Rabbit or a Metal Pig or whatever, so I told Mr. Virgo Dog that he should say he was an Atomic Dog. Might as well bring George Clinton into the story whenever you can!

Famous Hat