Saturday, May 31, 2025

Drone Show and Madison Irish Fest

 

Yesterday I worked from home, then Travalon and I went to a Mallards game that started out badly. The pitching was so bad that they were walking guys left and right, and the score was 4-1. Then partway through the game the Mallards caught up with the Battle Creek Battle Jacks (what's a Battle Jack? it appears to be a dog), and then they went to eleven innings. The Battle Jacks got one more run, and then the Mallards had two outs and two men on base, and a guy hit the ball deep into left field. It looked like it was going to be a home run and the Mallards would win by two runs, but it was just short and one of their outfielders caught it, so they lost by one run. Nobody was happy about the extra innings, because there was a drone show afterwards, and it got so late that a lot of people left, but it was so worth it for those of us who stayed. Here are some photos. First, Maynard on the zipline into the stadium:





This is old-school Maynard.






These are the green apple and the strawberry in the children's Healthy Snacks race. Not show: the orange.


This one also takes some explaining. Because you can return a foul ball for a hotdog (who would take that deal??? a game ball for a lousy hotdog??), they call foul balls "wieners."




This is a cocktail, specifically a brandy old-fashioned sweet:


These next two celebrate the Night Mares, the women's softball team:




This morning we slept in, then we got some stuff done around the house and even outside of it, like I finally planted the blue hosta we got at the co-op some time ago. I had found a spade while cleaning a few months ago, and today I opened it and found a tiny paper spade with embedded wildflower seeds in it and a note saying it was from a building dedication in 2011. No idea if those seeds will still germinate, but I planted the little paper spade too. We also moved some of my houseplants outside. I did see a hummingbird this morning, but I didn't get time to set up the feeder. Tomorrow (hopefully).

We ate a small, healthy lunch at home and then headed to a farm way on the south side of Fitchburg for the Madison Irish Fest. This is a three-day festival, but we were busy last night, and tomorrow we might not have time to go. Possibly, since tomorrow is at Garver Mill so much closer. We got there in time to hear the Madison Pipes and Drums, and we found a table to sit at in the shade. A woman asked if she could sit with us, and we said sure and got to talking to her, and I even talked her into joining the Shamrock Club. Some Shamrock Club people were sitting at a nearby table, and then my Irish teacher and the red-headed flute player joined us after they were done with the dancing lesson being held upstairs. I should have done that too, since I could have used the exercise, but it was so pleasant sitting outside and listening to traditional Irish bands. The food there wasn't so healthy, like you could choose between fried chicken, fried fish, or fried fish tacos, unless you wanted reuben egg rolls, which no thanks. We also got Dubai chocolate cheesecake, which means it was drizzled with pistachio cream and had those crispy things on top that are in the famous Dubai chocolate bar, and it came with a chocolate-covered strawberry and two chocolate-covered pretzels. So much for my diet that I was going to start today. We also bought some stuff; Travalon found Taytos, which are Irish potato chips, and we bought this beautiful ring for me:


And I bought myself a couple of very silly things:


We did go up into the barn to listen to a later band, and people danced to their music, but it was too Mannheim Steamroller style for my taste, so we went back out and listened to another traditional group. This is what the barn looks like inside:


The sun looked very strange as we were leaving. I tried to take a picture with my phone, and it had set by the time we had gotten home and Travalon could get his good camera.


It was a very beautiful color, but it just looked so strange. You could look right at it and it didn't hurt your eyes. Then I saw on social media that there might be northern lights tonight, so I went out and saw nothing except the crescent moon was a beautiful orange color, just like it had been last night. I asked Travalon to take some photos with his good camera.



Is this because of the smoke from the Canadian wildfires? The phone didn't give my any air quality alerts today, but as we were driving home from the Irish Fest, after a day of hanging around outside, I licked my lips and noticed they tasted like ash. Yuck! What about our lungs? Yikes!


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Thursday, May 29, 2025

Train Up Close

 

Yesterday I didn't blog because there was very little to say: I worked from home because of my cold and once again was unable to meet up with Mr. Icon. I did forget to mention that last Wednesday, as Hardingfele and I walked at lunch, we heard a train. Now if I hear a train while walking with Seabird, she doesn't get excited about it, but Hardingfele got just as excited as I did, so we hurried to where we could see the train pass by. This is somewhat relevant to today, because I did feel well enough to go into work and found a check waiting for me. This was the emergency invoice I had a few hours to create, and they sure paid it promptly. The check deposit for the university is way on the far side of campus, so I went to catch the campus bus, but I must have just missed it because the bus stops now have a screen informing you when the next bus will arrive, and it said not for thirteen more minutes. As far as I know, the buses come every fifteen minutes during the summer (every five during the school year), so I just walked. There is a walking/biking path that goes on a bridge over a major thoroughfare, and there are train tracks next to it on the bridge, so I have always thought it would be cool to be on the bridge when a train came by. I dropped off the check and was heading to the nearest campus bus stop when I heard a train horn, and I said to myself, "You'd be a fool to pass up this opportunity!" I went back up to the path on the bridge, and an engine with no cars soon came from the other direction. I didn't make a video, but wow, was it close to me! By then I had nearly all my steps for the day, so I continued on the path to another campus bus stop, which said the next bus would be there in five minutes. It's a loop, so I was hoping the bus driver didn't notice that I rode almost the whole loop, but really, would he even care?

Between that errand that took over an hour and a webinar about the new system in the afternoon, there wasn't a lot of time to get "real" work done. The good news is that things are much quieter now, so I've almost caught up. The webinar was scheduled for two hours, and I slept through most of the first hour, and then the second hour started with a question and answer session, but when they ran out of questions, they ended things about forty minutes early. Excellent, because I could use that time. I'm plant sitting for yet another faculty member this summer, so I had to check on her plants, and the big aloe plant in the TA office, and of course my own plants. One of her plants had fallen over, but it looks okay. Hopefully we all make it through the summer alive and well!

I have a very important announcement to make:

That's cuarenta for all you non-Spanish speakers out there. I am really enjoying Spanish. I might even like it better than French! Romance languages rock.


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Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Xavier Xing Writes in Business Blather

 

Today was not a terribly exciting day because I've caught Travalon's cold. I did work from home, and someone put a meeting on my calendar that didn't seem relevant to me, since it's about hiring people in the new system, and I was promised that I would never have to do any human resources stuff again. The only really entertaining thing is that I was going to meet Mr. Icon after adoration tonight, but I didn't go to adoration or meet Mr. Icon, who is in town for a few days. When I told Travalon, he said just as well, Mr. Icon wouldn't want a short meeting (he is notorious for wanting to converse past two in the morning), but Spellcheck kept changing Mr. Icon's name. Travalon got frustrated and made up a new name for him: Xavier Xing. Unsure if this was a famous person I should know, I googled "Xavier Xing" and found this fantastic piece of pure bull doodie on a "professional" social media website:

"A seasoned, results-producing management professional with extensive experience leading profit-generating operations through innovative merchandising, pricing and eventing, and focus on continuous product turnover. I am an effective leader skilled in developing highly productive, sales-driven teams by implementing customer-focused training and sales programs. I possess exceptional ability to establish rapport with clients, gain trust, and build strong repeat and referral business. I have a proven track record of effective short-and long-term tactical planning and improving operational processes to reduce shrink and achieve optimal profitability."

Wow. Tell me you are no fun at parties without telling me you are no fun at parties. Also, after reading this, I am no more enlightened as to Xavier Xing's skills than before I read it, except maybe at writing things in Business Blather. Is he a personnel manager or a salesperson or a project manager? Or has he just bounced around the private sector and done a bunch of jobs, so he squished it all together in this description? Let me try to translate this:

"I've been working for years at companies that sell things. I got lots of people to sign up for our corporate credit card. I also sold a lot of widgets. I found a place selling paper clips for less, which saved us tens of dollars every year in office supplies." There - I fixed it for you.


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Monday, May 26, 2025

Lots of Big White Birds

 

This morning Travalon and I had our leftover pasta for breakfast, along with some eggs and those hotel waffles I try to avoid. However, this morning they just smelled too good, and we couldn't resist. Thus fortified, we headed off to the Necedah Wildlife Refuge, where we have always had good luck seeing whooping cranes.

On the way to the Nature Center at Necedah is a patch of marsh where a pair of whooping cranes used to nest, but there was no sign of a whooping crane (or anything else) there today. We continued on to the Nature Center and took a walk on the path that goes on two different boardwalks, where we saw a number of swans. I think, judging by the sound they make, that they are tundra swans.




We also saw lots of blooming lupines.


And blooming wild indigo.


Here is a patch of lupines. The color is between blue and lavender and so pleasing to the eye.


What are these weird stripes? Contrails?


This is a goose family.


And here is what the boardwalk looks like as it zigzags through the marsh.


When we got back to the nature center, we sat watching the bird feeder, hoping to see a pileated woodpecker. We never saw one, but we did see a red-headed woodpecker.


And some bluejays.


Beneath the feeder were a bunch of red-winged blackbirds and brown-headed cowbirds.


Here are a red-winged blackbird and two grackles on the feeder.


The red-headed woodpecker landed in a nearby tree.


Then we took a very sketchy gravel road, hoping to get to a causeway. At one point there was a sketchy bridge over a creek, and Travalon got out to inspect it, but he deemed it safe to drive over, and it held up just fine. Finally we got to our crossroad, and it was paved! Better yet, it leads to another paved road, so in the future we can go into this part of the preserve without taking the scary gravel roads. We did find the causeway and drive over it, and we saw a lone whooping crane.




I am guessing this is one of the single females that left Horicon in hopes of finding a mate. We parked and walked on some of the Lupine Loop path, although parts of it looked tick-laden. (I did find three ticks on myself this weekend. Yikes!) We came to a really remote part of the marsh, full of water lilies.


There was a tiny island. It really felt like a place nobody had ever seen before, though of course this was some sort of service road so obviously park personnel have seen it before.


There was a swan on the far side of the water.


Another view of the island.


I said that while I like being around people and can't imagine living somewhere so remote, I love visiting places where there are no other people around, and Travalon agreed. Then we drove back, and the whooping crane was gone, although we had heard her calling so we assumed she hadn't gone far. We drove on the paved road and went all the way around to the main entrance again to get to the observation tower. From up there we could see a whooping crane. The same one? Another one?


Travalon took a lot of photos of swans from the observation tower, but most didn't really turn out. This one did appeal to me.


There was even a whooping crane on the far side of the marsh, but that photo is really blurry. Then we went back to the nature center, and Travalon laughed when he saw this trash panda on one of the bird feeders. It bolted when it saw him, then it hid and watched him.


Merlin says this is a female rose-breasted grosbeak.


The mammals were really trying to take  over the bird feeders!


Merlin says this brown bird is a female brown-headed cowbird.



And here are a couple of photos of the bluejay.



I can't tell what this bird is, but I love that it has an insect in its mouth.


Here it is enjoying this other kind of bird feeder.


You can see some swans from the visitor center.


We had "lunch" at around six at a Chinese buffet in Mauston, so it was just dinner since we had such a substantial breakfast. As we drove home, I saw a rainbow around the sun, but the edge is a bit cut off since I was taking this from a moving car.


Still, a very cool effect. We stopped in Sauk, and Travalon saw one lone pelican at the dam.


Where did all the others go? Then we went to the VFW Park to keep alive our tradition of visiting a memorial on Memorial Day.




I had said to Travalon that today we only saw two of the Big White Birds, lots of swans and at least two whooping cranes, but then I remembered that yesterday we saw an egret and tons of pelicans (plus the one at Sauk), so it really was a Four Big White Birds Weekend. Those are my favorite kind.


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