Yesterday Travalon and I went to the Greek Orthodox church to pick up our "galactic burritos," and since I hadn't had breakfast due to having some bloodwork done, I immediately devoured one. We also had Greek coffee, and we bought some more treats, because it was like Greek Fest Part II there and they were selling all sorts of stuff. Then we hit the road and drove to Wauwatosa to go to the Celtic Cultural Center for their annual Christmas Market. Travalon bought some Irish treats, and I bought a pillow, a Christmas shirt, and some earrings. (Photos soon.) On the top floor there was a sound library, and they had some cool old phonographs there, and a player piano. Travalon took some photos.
A volunteer there played some of the old cylinders and records for us. Then we walked to a really good soup and sandwich shop called Loup for a late lunch, and after that we took a walk on a trail in the woods along the Menomonee River. Travalon took some photos.
On the way back to the car, we stopped at a chocolate shop we had passed and had a Dubai chocolate, which was filled with pistachio and crunchy noodles - it may sound weird, but it was delicious. Then we drove to the Milwaukee lakeshore and took a walk on the beach. I took some of these photos, and Travalon took some of them.
As we drove toward the church where the early music concert would be held, we passed Black Cat Alley, full of murals, so we stopped there briefly. Travalon took some photos.
I took this photo.
Travalon hung out on Brady Street while I went to a concert of two women singing and playing vielle and harp and hurdy-gurdy. It was music of Medieval Albion, which is apparently an area of England. It was appropriate music for the month of November, since a lot of it was eerie plaints of sinners who realized they were about to die and face judgment, and oh boy did they have regrets. Weirdly, there was little to do with romance, which I thought was just about all they sang about in the Middle Ages.
After the concert, we just hit the road and didn't have dinner until we got to Hi-Way Harry's in Johnson Creek. We had met Travalon's nephew for dinner there once, and it was really good. It's still really good, but the service was a little odd: they gave us like five booze menus but only one food one, so we had to share, then they brought me the wrong drink, they took a while to bring us our bread, and they never brought Travalon silverware until after the food had come out and he had to ask for it. I had an infused mimosa (which wasn't exactly what I had asked for), and then on the trip home I couldn't stop laughing while listening to "Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples" by Parliament, and I also played the "Pinball Counting" song from Sesame Street, which was actually performed by the Pointer Sisters. Who knew? We got home relatively early, but I was too buzzed to blog. We just sang along to songs from The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins and The Music Man.
I slept really hard last night and woke up after eight this morning. We went to the church on the east side again, and I felt so much love and joy there. Here's the thing: nobody there seems into gate-keeping, like they project the words of the Confiteor on giant screens, so nobody can scoff at you not knowing it by heart, and nobody would look down on me for not wearing a chapel veil or a skirt. During the distribution of Communion, I felt how much God loved all the people there, and afterwards Travalon said he felt the same way too. Then we bought a pumpkin pie for a fundraiser for the Knights of Columbus.
We went for a walk at Nine Springs E-Way this afternoon, where there are a ton of waterfowl preparing to migrate. We saw lots of Canada geese, some buffleheads, and some northern shovelers. Sandhill cranes kept flying by overhead. Travalon took some photos with his good camera, which I will post tomorrow because this post already has so many photos. At Irish class we played Jeopardy, and the categories were all old Irish myths. My team won quite handily - there were two of us versus three other players - which surprised me because I thought I didn't remember these myths, but they came back to me. (We have read them all in class.) Then I joined my Irish teacher at the Slow Irish Session instead of going to band practice, because as much as I'm enjoying the Christmas carols we are working on for our gig at the airport next month, Irish music is really what's keeping me sane. I can't explain it; I can only play it.
Famous Hat
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