Priest Meet and Greet

 

First of all, I have some photos from yesterday. The day was so good that God put a bow on it! Travalon noticed these clouds seemed to be wearing a bow.

Here is the mysterious harlequin juggler, playing with children and his light-up clubs.

The end of the sunset and the glowing boat in the lower left.

This morning Travalon went to Oconomowoc to see his family, then he went to Mass in Hartland, attended a baseball game, went hiking, and swam in a lake. Meanwhile, I went to Mass at our usual church downtown, and afterwards Rich said instead of brunch at a restaurant, let's go to a church dinner at St. Dennis way over on the east side. However, when we got there, it was a parish festival that would have food trucks, not an organized meal in the basement, and the food trucks wouldn't be there for another hour. They were having Mass outside, and it was only half over. The guy who had wanted us to come stayed because he was helping with bingo, but Rich, another woman, and I went to a nearby restaurant, and it was one I'd been curious to try. My crab cake Benedict was really good. Check out the beautiful set they brought to Rich when he ordered his usual "hot chocolate, extra large, extra strong, maximum fat."

Rich, Kathbert, and I went for a long walk in the Arboretum, checking out the skunk cabbages that are very stressed by the drought. I told Kathbert about Operation Illumination, and she had some good suggestions. Rich was bitten by a bug, and he asked, "Is this a tick?" I said no, and he asked if I was sure because he had squished it, but I said, "Ticks don't have wings." The other two often rely on me for insect and plant identification, since back in the day Ma Hat enrolled me in summer classes on plant identification and bought me all sorts of guidebooks for plants and insects. I still remember almost all of this training - I remember one course was on edible plants in the forest, and at the end of the class we made a meal of all wild plants. I'm not saying I'm a hardcore survivalist, but I could probably eke out an existence for quite a while in the summer if I got lost in the woods.

Getting into Irish class was tricky. I had to do it from Rich's computer, and I had to log into my gmail account to get my access code for Zoom. Then I had to log into my Yahoo email to get the Zoom link, but it sent a verification to my work email, so then I had to log into that. It was ridiculous. Rich's camera made my eyes look this amazing aquamarine color; in real life they're a mossy greenish-gray. And every time I tried to say something in Irish, my brain wanted to say it in French instead. Which reminds me that Travalon is now doing some online Croatian course, so sometimes he and I are doing our language courses at the same time.

After Irish class, Rich and I went to St. James for a meet and greet with our new parish priests, only they were talking at the whole group, and once they shut up, people started playing loud music. There was way too much food there, ice cream and brownies and cookies and stuff I didn't even try. Anyway, I never got to meet any priests. Then we ran back to Rich's house, and he made me a light dinner before I headed off to band practice. They had asked me to bring my violin because Hardingfele got us a gig at a Ukranian picnic, but then she can't even attend it, so we were down to one fiddle. However, when I got there, Hardingfele was there with her fiddle too, so tonight we had three of us on violin. It took me a while to tune the violin because the strings kept slipping (they had been loosened for a long time), but playing the violin came right back to me. I guess it's like riding a bike. I did enjoy getting to play melody. Hopefully I can learn these Ukranian tunes well enough for this gig...

Famous Hat