Two Fragrant Bushes

 

Today was a very rainy day. I had to go on my lunchtime walk earlier than usual due to more hands-on training in the new system, and Seabird was okay with that because she said we'd avoid the rain that way. Then she said never mind, it's raining now, let's not walk. I didn't even think to ask Hardingfele, and maybe that's subconscious because I would have had to go out into the rain to get to her building, but this way I just went out and walked around my building under the overhang on the third floor. I didn't pray the rosary since the Rosary Ladies were doing so this evening, so I just listened to music on my phone as I walked. Too bad I didn't bring my wireless headphones to work. I did forget to mention that when Hardingfele and I walked at lunchtime last week, we saw a leucistic house sparrow among a flock of these invasive birds, but it was too far away to get a good photo with my phone.

For the last week, when I was working from home I would walk between the multiflora rose growing at the edge of the marsh and a neighbor's mock orange bush. They were both in bloom, and they both smelled so wonderful, but very different from each other. They were both so fragrant that you could smell them from some distance away. Yesterday they were still fragrant, but most of their blossoms were past their prime, and I suppose after all the rain we've had today, even the few good ones have been washed off. Sadly, the multiflora rose is invasive, just like the house sparrows. Here's a photo I took of it last year.

Sorry, I don't have a photo of the mock orange.

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Night Prayer Party 2025

 

Today I worked from home, and all my neighbors saw I was around and they had questions and comments, since I'm on the board. The most noteworthy thing was that toward the end of my workday, as I sat out on our porch, I saw a pair of orioles figuring out how to drink from the hummingbird feeder. It might be too much work for them to keep doing it, since they can't hover and have to hang on at a weird angle while flapping their wings furiously, but it did make me think I should finally put up that oriole feeder, if for no other reason than to keep them away from the hummingbird feeder. They were so beautiful, especially the male, and I would have loved to grab Travalon's camera and take a photo, but if I'd moved that surely would have scared them away.

The big excitement today was the party for a Night Prayer regular who is in town for a little bit from the state of Oregon. Travalon and I had to pick him and his wife up at a house not too far from ours and bring them to the party, and then other people came in, most from a prayer group that used to meet in the 70's but some other Night Prayer regulars like Rich, Jilly Moose, and the Dairyman's Daughter. Cecil Markovitch was there as well, but I don't think anyone else there has a name on this blog. It was also the birthday of one of the old prayer group guys, so we sang him Happy Birthday, and then I sang him Happy Birthday in Basque (Zorionak), and then another couple arrived so the host made us sing it in English again. We brought the street corn-flavored tortilla chips we've been addicted to lately, and Cecil brought crackers and cheese, and there were lots of desserts. I had way too much sugar. We all had to sit around in a circle and say something about who we were, and I made the mistake of saying I'd been a toddler when they started their prayer group - oops! But I quickly had them laughing about something. One guy is the local eccentric who plays music and paints with I'd say more enthusiasm than talent, but he's so entertaining that he's a Madison staple. One of the characters he paints is "Santa Ant," and I have to admit, that's pretty funny. He did a song about wearing pink pants at an open mic on the Union Terrace some time ago that had Travalon and me rolling on the ground laughing. 

The party was only supposed to go until 8:30, but it was still going strong at that hour. Some of the Night Prayer regulars left so they could log into Night Prayer from home. Anna Banana II hosted, since clearly she could not attend the party from North Dakota. A few of us did Night Prayer from the party, then we quickly headed out. It was a lot of fun, but I must have had my sugar quota for the whole week. Month, maybe.

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Jamming in E Dorian

 

Today I worked on campus because we had another training session. I think I've mostly mastered the art of creating expense reports in the new system, so today I wanted to work on paying honoraria. I did one with split funding for a domestic speaker, then I tried to do one for a foreign speaker, but even with two people way above me trying to help me, none of us could figure out why it didn't ask for different forms like the wire transfer form, the I-94, the passport, and the Homeland Security stamp. In the current system, you couldn't even submit a request for payment without these things, but the new system didn't ask for them at all, and indeed there was nowhere to put them. I'm not saying it wasn't user error, but the other two women helping me couldn't figure it out either. I also walked with Seabird at lunch, and she said she will be moving back into my building (yay!), but she will have an office without a window (boo!). Currently she is in a shared office overlooking the lake. I said she could come join me in my office overlooking the carillon anytime.

This evening I went to another Moldy Jam jam at the music club, and once again I found myself in the mandolin section. Just like how at parties all the Capricorns seem to find each other and talk about how they are Capricorns, all the mandolins seem to end up in one spot. One woman demanded at one point to swap mandolins for a tune, so I figures why not, she wasn't some rando off the street. When we went to swap back, I somehow conked myself in the eye with her mandolin, so if I have a shiner tomorrow, that will be very interesting to explain. "This black eye? It's from a mandolin. No, not Amanda Lynn - the instrument! Yes, I'm aware that most people don't get beat up by inanimate objects, but I'm just that special." Then I swapped with the guy next to her, but he had trouble playing my little round-back mandolin. They play a lot of American folk tunes, but they do throw in some Irish ones, so toward the end of the evening a guy suggested "Road to Lindisfarne" followed by "Swallowtail." They were both in E Dorian, and I would have been satisfied with that, but everyone said, "One more tune!" so I timidly suggested "Drowsy Maggie," which is also E Dorian. I thought nobody would want to play yet another Irish E Dorian tune, but they happily played it. I was in heaven!

Things just got better when I left. A couple in the group offered me a ride to my car, but I said it's okay, it's just a couple of blocks away. I was walking on the sidewalk as it crossed the railroad tracks when I heard the crossing a few blocks away start to ding. I looked, and a train was coming, but it didn't blow its horn. There was a crossing right where I was, so I made a video. I love how the red crossing lights reflect off the train. Enjoy!

I don't know why I can play tunes I don't even know if they're in G major or E Dorian, but other keys really throw me for a loop. We played something in A major that took me forever to figure out. So many sharps! Who needs that many of them?

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"What Do You Call Your Little Guitar?"

 

Today after Mass we went to Fitz's in Okee, because they were advertising a "tiki buffet" for Father's Day. We sat outside, overlooking Lake Wisconsin and listening to live music, and Travalon ordered the buffet while I ordered a seafood boil, so that we could both try both things. I got a free salad bar with mine, and Fitz's has the best salad bar, so I was set for a while. Travalon went up and got his barbecued meat and mashed potatoes and coconut macadamia shrimp, and I took a few of the shrimp. At first I wasn't too concerned that the seafood boil wasn't showing up, but when people who had arrived after us got theirs, I became a bit annoyed. The waitress told us there was some snafu with the kitchen taking it off of the order, and she kept assuring us my order would appear soon, but we waited and waited with no sign of it. Finally they took it off our bill, which was fine with me because I was fairly full... and then someone came out with it. It was so delicious that I said they should put it back on our bill, because it was definitely worth paying for, but they said they couldn't. Travalon also got a coconut mule, which tasted very tropical, and he got a sundae bar as part of the buffet. It had everything - he even had Cap'n Crunch on his sundae! He was also supposed to get either soup or a salad bar, but he never bothered to get either. I feel bad that we got the expensive seafood for free, but they were definitely doing brisk business, and after all Travalon saved them money with not getting the salad bar.

After that we went for a walk nearby and saw these crane sculptures.

There were beautiful hills across the lake.

We took the ferry across the river, and as we waited for it, we watched old Cap'n Crunch ads. (He was created by the same person who did Rocky & Bullwinkle.) The ads were rather silly, especially the ones with the Crunch Berry Creature, but there was one for a smaller, snack-sized box of cereal that caught my attention because it was called a "munch box." As a kid I probably would have just thought that was a funny pun on "lunchbox," but adult me found it really dirty. I pictured myself saying to him, "Cap'n, eat my munch box!" Maybe things were simpler back in the 80's, but I can't imagine them calling something for kids a "munch box" now. Would Cap'n do the dishes afterwards? Okay, I'll stop talking about cunning linguists now.

Our next stop was the dam at Sauk, where there were plenty of pelicans.

We could see black birds hanging out with the pelicans, which usually wouldn't be so strange since cormorants are always hanging out around pelicans, but these didn't look like cormorants. Travalon took a photo of them, and they were turkey vultures!

I have never seen turkey vultures hang out on the ground around water before. They are usually either circling around in the sky or sitting in trees. Here's a pelican and a turkey vulture together.

Are they hunting cooperatively now? This is very new to me.

We hurried home so I could grab my mandolin and go to the Marquette Lakeside Festival at Yahara Park, to play with my Slow Irish Session peeps. I got there just in time, and there were only about six of us until a really good local fiddler joined us. People seemed to enjoy our traditional Irish tunes, and afterwards I asked about swag from the music club, if it was for sale, but the owner said, "No, take it," so I was sort of paid with a tote bag. Travalon and I explored the festival, which was similar to other festivals in town, but smaller, and much closer to water - Lake Monona was right there. Each end of the park had a stage with a very loud rock band on it (the music club had acts playing between sets, as one band tore down and the next one set up), and neither of us liked the music, so we left and went to a sub shop near where band practice would be. (Our new fiddler hosted it.) You couldn't sit in the sub shop, and they didn't have a bathroom, so Travalon bought my sub while I went across the street to the Regent Street Co-op. They had a decent bathroom, but oddly they didn't have regular water (the sub shop had been out of it too), so I settled for some strange infused water that Travalon liked better than I did, so I gave it to him. We also picked up some necessities for the week there, like coffee and pita bread and bananas.

We practiced in the new fiddler's living room, sandwiched between a baby grand piano and an upright piano. The fiddler has a little boy who had just turned three yesterday and received a toy trumpet, so he tooted along with us a little. He told his mom to ask me this question: "What do you call your little guitar?" I told him it was called a mandolin, and that I could play chords like a guitar but also melody like the violins. Best of both worlds! Tomorrow I plan to go to a Moldy Jam jam, and we'll see if I play melody or chords... or both. Moldy Jam did play at the music club tent at the festival, but when they put out the call, they said only people who had played with them for a long time. Whereas I was personally asked to come to the Slow Irish Session performance, which makes sense, because I'm one of the regulars. Maybe if the music club has a tent at the festival next year, I'll be asked to play with Moldy Jam too.

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Kick the Clowns Out/No Kings Protest

 

Today Travalon and I went downtown to join the Kick the Clowns Out protest on Library Mall. We got there just before noon and found a shady spot, but nothing seemed to be happening, so about a quarter to one we went to grab a quick slice of pizza nearby, and just then the Raging Grannies took the stage to sing some protest songs. When we came back and found some of my Union peeps, they told me we had missed a silly skit about Dear Leader and his Birthday Parade, so I was a little sad about that. However, it was hard to be sad there, in the shade of the trees in front of the Historical Society, with the festive atmosphere around us. Take a look at this.

Lots of people were dressed as clowns, suffragettes, or royalty. The signs were great too.

There were others that I couldn't get photos of, and now I don't remember them, but they were so clever. A lot of them involved tacos, and there were taco balloons, and also penguin balloons because Dear Leader put a tariff on all goods coming from a couple of islands inhabited by penguins. 

When we started to march up State Street for the start of the No Kings protest, Hardingfele and her husband found us. I ended up walking with them, while a couple of my Union peeps walked ahead with an AFSCME banner and Travalon lagged behind talking to another Union guy whom I didn't know. People kept starting different chants, like, "Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go!" and, "Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!" At one point we stopped and sang the National Anthem, and once again people were startled by my voice. I have sometimes left people speechless when I start singing, and not in a bad way. Apparently people don't expect a short, plump, middle-aged lady with a vaguely annoying speaking voice to have a decent singing voice. And I know they aren't speechless from my singing being bad, because once they recover their own voices, they are effusive in their praise. It's all those years of singing in choirs - I got trained how to project and sustain, and I can naturally stay in tune. But sometimes I get terrible stage fright, like when having to sing a solo in church. Belting out an old drinking tune with bellicose words in the middle of a huge, joyous crowd, I don't have the same issue.

Here are photos of Hardingfele and me. I made a giant paper bowtie up at the Kick the Clowns Out protest.

Hardingfele had a double-sided sign.

The second one is a pun on "trap, neuter, relocate," which is what they do with feral cats. The top one has to do with the assassination of a Minnesota politician and her husband, and the attempted assassination of a second Minnesota politician and his wife. The world really does feel crazy right now (both politicians were Democrats), and Mr. Hardingfele had been afraid something would happen to us, but we got done protesting and the four of us got bubble tea. (We lost track of my Union peeps up on the Square.) However, his fears were not without merit because in both San Francisco and Culpeper, Virginia, crazy MAGA types drove vehicles into the crowd and injured people. It doesn't help that MAGAts say all Democrats are possessed by Satan, including people I used to really respect, so you can see how that might give unstable people an excuse to kill liberals.

Hardingfele said I could put her photos on my blog, and she already posted them on social media, including a video that is just her saying, "If you have to pee, go into Starbucks!" and me saying, "I don't have any money to buy anything," while the camera points at my feet. Nothing too exciting there, although I was wearing hot pink socks with bright blue flowers on them and the important message that "I'm a delicate f--king flower." 

Our neighbor was going to take us sailing after the protest (he was there too, but we didn't see him), but there wasn't enough wind to go sailing. We thought about going out in our boat, but Travalon took a nap and I scoured the internet for stories about the protests all over the country... and indeed, the whole world. In Philadelphia, there were 80,000 people. In a town in Michigan with a population of 800 people, there were 400 protesters. Organizers estimated over seven million people protested today, and videos of Dear Leader's birthday parade show that it was not at all well attended. I was hoping it would get rained out, but they just started it a half hour earlier to avoid the rain. There was going to be a pro-life march at the Capitol today, which seemed like a weird time to do it, but they wisely rescheduled for late July. We did pass a couple of people on State Street who said that protesting Dear Leader is like protesting King Solomon, which seems like quite a stretch to me. King Solomon followed the biblical teachings, like caring for the widow, the orphan, and the alien. Does that sound anything like Dear Leader to you?

I do have some other exciting news today:

After dinner, which we ate on the porch, we went down to the dock and ran into some neighbors, so we chatted until well after Night Prayer was over. I did take a photo of the sunset.

I was telling Travalon that people have the wrong conceptions about dinosaurs and the ancient Greeks based on incomplete information. People always depicted dinosaurs as creatures with bare, scaly skin, but now we know they probably had feathers and were lovely and graceful like modern birds, and their young were cute... like modern birds. People always thought the ancient Greeks were very methodical because of their austere white buildings and statues, but then what happened? Modern Greeks are nothing like that. Now we know that their buildings and statues were painted with a riot of colors. So if an ancient Greek saw our State Capitol, they wouldn't be like, "Oh, you based that on our culture!" No, they'd be like, "That is SO boring! Where's all the color?"

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The Mallards Slaughter the Leprechauns

 

Today I worked from home and seem to have finally gotten everything in order before the new system kicks in, then when Travalon came home we went to the Mallards game. The gimmick with this one was that we could get "Frankenstein" jerseys with patches of all sorts of past jerseys, but we had to sit in the very cheap seats. We are spoiled by always sitting right behind home plate, so it was something to have to crane our necks to see the pitching, and it was very hard to tell what was a ball and what was a strike. We got to the game early and each received a free handheld fan. Here we are before the game.

I am wearing the new jersey, but you can't see it that well here. After the game Travalon took a photo of me with Maynard G. Mallard, and you can see it better, plus the "Frankenstein" cap I got to go with it.

And when we put the batteries in our fans and ran them, we were delighted to see that there were words in them!

I made a video of it.

The fans had a cord that you could put around your neck, so you could conveniently wear them. This was probably my favorite thing about the game tonight, which started off well and then went too well, if you know what I mean. In the first inning, the Mallards kept the Royal Oak Leprechauns from scoring, and then they had a home run with two guys on, so two runs in. Second inning - the same thing happened! And then a solo homer! So that's three home runs in two innings, and the Mallards were up 5-0. Then there were some scoreless innings, and another with two runs for the Mallards... and then in the bottom of the sixth, the Leprechauns completely fell apart and had terrible fielding, so the Mallards scored twelve runs. It was so bad that one Leprechaun player ran into an umpire and knocked him over, and for a few horrible moments he just lay on the ground, but then he got up and seemed fine. We stayed until the end of the seventh inning, but we were cold because neither of us had brought jackets (I had checked the weather and thought it would be warm enough without one; I brought one to the last game and never wore it), and we were feeling bad for the demoralized Leprechauns. Nobody scored after we left, so the final score was 19-0. I like to see the Mallards win, but not like that! I like a close, exciting game.

Meanwhile, Tiffy and another college friend of ours were at a Brewers game, so when I posted that photo of Travalon and me on social media, our college friend responded with her own photo of the two of them. Looks like the Brewers beat the Cardinals 3-2 so that would have been a much more satisfying game to watch.

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Fire Hydrant High Fashion

 

Today I worked from home, since I'd had to go to campus on Tuesday, and I wore the N95 mask while walking outside because the air quality was bad again. I did enjoy seeing the flowers by the side of the road: the pink wild roses, the yellow cinquefoils, the purple and white (invasive) dame rockets, the white choke weeds, and the chartreuse sun spurge. When Travalon came home, he drove me to the Labor Temple, and on the way we passed this fire hydrant wearing a traffic cone.

Travalon took this photo with my cell phone. Doesn't it look like a garden gnome or something? 

At the Labor Temple, my Union peeps and I are doing a course on organizing, over pizza, of course. Spinach and feta - yum! When Travalon came back to pick me up, he had a slice of pizza too, but we agreed that a single slice of pizza wasn't enough for dinner, so we went to the nearby Mideastern restaurant, Silk Road. It was very crowded when we got there, but by the time we finished, we were the only customers in the place. I was not as hungry as I thought and ended up bringing most of my Turkish dumplings home. Also, Travalon had brought me a decaf pandan latte from Leopold's that I drank on the way there, and earlier in the day I had half a chocolate croissant, or pan au chocolat. This was because our neighbor across the hall left the chocolate croissant and a scone outside our door, maybe to thank me for all my prayers for her. She had Stage 4 cancer and now the doctors say it's gone and they can't explain it, but I have been praying nonstop for her, a couple of chaplets a day and of course at Night Prayer I get the whole gang to pray for her. She's not the only one, either - the Daughter of Denni no longer has any sign of cancer, nor does another person I know from church. Prayer: it works, y'all!

On the way home, we passed this house on Troy Drive:

The last A appears to have burned out, but you get the idea. Then when I got home, I was relieved to find out the pro-life march scheduled for Saturday has been rescheduled. What a relief! It could have gotten awkward up at the Capitol when they ran into all of us protesting against Dear Leader. Now there are thunderstorms predicted in DC Saturday evening, so his little birthday military parade might be canceled. Isn't that a damn shame. Apparently God doesn't like this grotesque display of ego any more than the rest of us do. As a local Lutheran church has on their sign outside, "Our only King is Christ." Amen!

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A Couple of Hats on the Heads of Musicians

 

Today was a quiet day from the perspective of who was around, because it was just me and my young coworker. It wasn't quiet at all in a literal sense, because yesterday there was some kind of leak and so they set up big industrial fans in our break room. Because when I'm in there I'm either preparing food or washing dishes, it was very hard to cover my ears, and I worry that these fans may have done some permanent damage. At my Brazilian drumming lesson, we were talking about hearing loss before things started, and one guy said you always have hearing loss in the ear that faces the car window, so your left ear if you drive more, but mine should be more even because a lot of time I'm a passenger. When you have the window open, it's a lot more noise than you realize, and apparently it results in hearing damage. I never thought of wearing earplugs in the car; I always wear them for drum lessons, but yesterday I didn't know the fans would be in the break room, and today I didn't know they would still be there, or I could have brought ear plugs from home.

At lunch I walked with Hardingfele, and the one thing she doesn't have in her office is ear plugs. I was complaining about a guy who was going to bring me the tax form from a musician who performed on campus, how he was asking me to do all these crazy things like call the musician and get his home address and then mail him a stamped, self-addressed envelope and the printed-out form for him to fill in, and I said usually when we say we'll cosponsor another department's event, someone just asks us for our funding string. Anyway, I told the guy he could leave the tax form with my coworker if I happened not to be around, and we thought maybe he'd come during lunch, but he didn't. I had another training in the test environment for our new system, and I made a lot of mistakes but did learn from them... and the guy didn't come while I was doing that either. Finally I took my afternoon walk, and when I got back, there was a guy in a cowboy hat, looking all Bob Wills, and he said he had just dropped off the tax form with my coworker. We chatted a bit, and we're both musicians ourselves, and he said he knows Hardingfele a little bit. Then I wondered if she resented me bad-mouthing him during our lunchtime walk, but when I asked her if she knew him, she said no, not at all. The best part is that I was wearing my big white sun hat, so when we met each other in the hallway, we both had big hats on. That seems appropriate.

Today at Night Prayer someone voluntold me that I'd be singing, which happens a lot because I guess they all think I have the best voice in the group. Then someone else wanted me to sing the Pentecost sequence, and it's in my Magnificat magazine, so I took a stab at it. Not sure how well I did with the tune, but they all seemed impressed. It did feel like redemption after that disappointing sequence on Sunday to the tune of "Ode to Joy." So I just looked it up, and it's in the Dorian mode (no surprise there), and I listened to it to see how close I got. Not too bad for a tune I hear once a year!

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Random Nouns Ice Cream

 

Yesterday was not a very noteworthy day, so I didn't blog. However, today was quite eventful. I had to work on campus because we had mandatory training in the test environment of the new system, for which I was very glad. I sat by Seabird and another colleague who works in my building, and we tried to figure out what to do. I just kept hitting buttons until something worked, which is fine in the test environment but probably not a winning strategy when the new system goes live. I even created an expense report (for myself by accident, because I am a dork) in which I flew to Omaha on Aer Lingus to attend the annual conference of the Society of Dutch Shoe Aficionados. (Does this society actually exist?? Autofill filled it in! No - there is no sign of it on Google.) Then I sent one of the women leading things to Noah's Ark in the Dells, although she said she wished I would have sent her to Europe. Maybe next time. I'm not sure if I'm the first person to figure out how to do it correctly, but she projected my expense report so that we could all see what the faculty will see when we create these for them, and her receipt was a photo I stole off the internet of an aurora in an arc like a rainbow. 

After lunch my coworker, the colleague from our building, and I met Seabird on Bascom Hill for the annual Ice Cream Social. Seabird's favorite flavor is Blue Moon, and to her delight it was one of the options this year. The rest of us had orange custard chocolate chip, as usual. There was a new flavor: strawberry pretzel salad ice cream. That just seems like a random bunch of nouns stuck together, but Seabird and our other colleague were curious about it, so after we had stood around chatting for a while, they wanted to go get some more. They tried to get me to go too, but I figured with my loud Bahamas tie-dyed shirt and large white sunhat the people serving the ice cream would remember me and say, "No more for you!" More importantly, I was way too stuffed to eat any more ice cream - Seabird said, "Don't you even want a bite of mine?" and I said no thanks. Also, the way my coworker explained what he thought the flavor would be like (those weird Jello-based salads with random things stuck in them), it didn't sound very appealing at all. He and I headed back to our offices, since I had yet another meeting. Our other colleague was supposed to attend it too, but I don't know if she made it, and Seabird wasn't invited. Lucky her.

After the meeting I took a walk and sniffed the Japanese lilac trees, and also this bush, which is apparently a Chinese privet. It smelled really good.

How about a couple more random DuoLingo screenshots?

I never know what that crazy green owl is going to say to me next!

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Dentists Gone Wild

 

Yesterday Travalon and I had a relaxed morning, then he headed off to help a friend move before going to visit his brother in Pewaukee and hanging around the area, and I took a rosary walk in our neighborhood before heading out to meet Tiffy downtown. It was kind of crazy on State Street because they were having an old car show, so we walked to the far side of the Square and had brunch at the Marigold Cafe, sitting outside in the shade. We decided to leave downtown completely, so we went to the North Side Lounge just as they were opening up and had lavender French sodas while sitting outside, although I spilled half of mine. (Didn't need the calories anyway.) Tiffy said she had just seen the dentist, who had done those once every five years x-rays, and they said her jaw was deformed on the left side. She was concerned, thinking it had to do with aging, but they looked at her x-rays from five years ago and it was the same, and it was the same ten years ago, so when they suggested procedures to fix this, she said no thanks, I just have a weird jaw. It might have been from a very old injury; her sister said she got hit in the head by a swing when she was little. I said it feels like dentists are just making stuff up now, because my new dentist said my gums are too top-heavy and I need a $700 surgery that wouldn't be covered by insurance so they don't recede so fast, and I was like no, thanks, I'm good. 

We wanted to take a walk at Cherokee Marsh, but the road to the part I always go to had a police blockade because of some golf tournament, so we went to the part by the School Road boat launch and walked on trails there. We found a bench overlooking the whole marsh and sat there awhile talking, then we went to the Kwik Trip near my house and bought some cold beverages to drink on our dock. We went to Sultan for dinner, and while we were eating, we saw a hot pink Tesla cybertruck drive by. Now I have seen a number of these abominations, but only in boring silver-gray, never hot pink. I didn't get a photo. I did, however, get a photo of the sign outside of the restaurant.

After that we went to the roof of her sister's building and sat outside talking. It was a gorgeous night, and I took some photos to prove it.

Travalon sent me some photos of the wildlife he saw from his brother's house.

He also made a video of a very fast train in Pewaukee, but it will take some editing that I don't know how to do yet before I can post it. 

Today at Mass it was Pentecost, and I wondered if they would play a rock version of the sequence or just skip it, but it was worse than that - they broke my heart by doing the sequence to the tune of "Ode to Joy," not one I like at all. I just gritted my teeth and reminded myself that the words were still just as moving. After that we met Tiffy for brunch at the Honduran bakery in Monona, and then we went to Olbrich and walked around the conservatory. Why is only one banana in this bunch ripe??

Here are some other flowers.

We had to leave so I could get to my Brazilian drumming lesson, so Tiffy went for a stroll in the outside gardens by herself. I started my lesson on the small drum I had loved so much last week, but today they made us keep switching so that we played three different kinds of drums. Then Travalon and I went for a walk on Governor's Island, and when we got home I took a rosary nap on our porch. (That's when I mean to pray a rosary but mostly just sleep.) Tonight at band practice we were working on our Ukrainian music, and the guitarist said I shouldn't play the backbeat because it was confusing her, but everyone else said, "No! Play the backbeat!" I am not an expert in every kind of music, but this klezmer-type music seems to come instinctively to me. I think I've listened to enough of it to know what the accordion does, what the tuba does, what the clarinet does, etc., and I'm not supposed to be doing the same thing as the guitar anyway - she lays down the basic beat, and I ornament it. I was exhausted after all that drumming, but we kept playing later and later, just one more song, no now we have to do this song... I thought it would never end. All this for an unpaid gig, and we had a lead on a paid gig, but the guitarist never checked her email to see if they got back to her. So who knows what's up with that?

I have an important announcement:

This is actually from yesterday, not today. Wow, almost a decade of obeying that annoying green owl! Am I a sucker, or what?

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First Boat Ride of 2025 and New Turkish Restaurant

 

Today I worked from home, but I took a short break in the morning so we could get our boat in the water with the help of our neighbor, and we took a brief boat ride to give the motor a chance to warm up. It was a lovely morning to be out on the lake, but I had a meeting at ten and another one at eleven, so I couldn't spend much time on the water. Travalon was amazed at how much time I had to spend in meetings, and I said, "Yeah, this is how it's been lately." It's hard to find time to do my actual work...

In the evening we were going to go to the Edgewater to hear bluegrass, but the music started at six and Travalon didn't get home until half an hour later. They have a fish fry there, but I wanted to eat something healthier... and then we passed a new Turkish restaurant as we drove toward downtown, so we stopped to try it. We had to wait quite a while to get anyone's attention, but the food was really good. Then we continued on to the Edgewater... and got there just after the music had finished, as people were leaving. However, it was a gorgeous night, and lots of people were still milling around, so we sat at a table overlooking the lake and had something to drink. We sat talking about being college-aged and how you remember that time of life with a fond, golden, misty nostalgia, but really at the time you weren't all that happy. Honestly, the older I get, the happier I am, except for my joints getting creakier. As we walked back to the car, we loved how the moon looked spooky behind the Gothic edifice of Bethel Lutheran.

This church is just a block away from our old church, and the big rival of the Lutheran church where I used to sing. The only time I remember being inside of it was for Miss Heartsong's wedding. We also saw a lot of cops as we walked back to the car, and we heard a very loud band playing somewhere. I thought it was from the Union Terrace and just echoing off the buildings so it was hard to tell where the sound was coming from, but Travalon thought it must be closer than that. Maybe it was a party at a frat house? I spent a summer on Frat Row, and it was as wild as you'd imagine. We toked up quite a bit that summer, and it was the one time I dropped acid. It sounds really fun in retrospect, but I don't think you could pay me enough to be nineteen again. Sure, you have your whole life ahead of you, but boy, are you stupid, at least if you're me. I love being in my fifties, when you have no more f--ks to give if people are giving you guff, and everyone respects that! You just can't pull that off when you're nineteen.

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Niko and Disco Dino Dancing to V05

 

Today I worked from home, and I would have gotten a lot done if I didn't have two meetings. I'm really starting to get meeting fatigue. People keep putting meetings on my calendar, and some of them don't seem at all related to what I do, but the worst was when a person I'd never heard of tried to put two meetings on my calendar about hiring student hourlies. What?? One was right during another meeting already on my calendar, and the other was during the first half of next week's Ice Cream Social. "But Famous," you might say, "why not just go to the second half of the Ice Cream Social?" My sweet summer child, OF COURSE there was already a meeting on my calendar during the second half of the Ice Cream Social, and I refuse to miss it completely for something that seems to have nothing to do with my job.

In the evening Travalon and I went to see V05, a local disco band, play at the East Side Club. Was it ever packed there! We got some Mideastern food from Bunky's, who were catering the event, and we had a dancing party with Niko and Disco Dino.

There was a gorgeous sunset over Lake Monona.

I like how it looked reflecting off some nearby building windows.

This gives you an idea of how many people were there.

The show was three hours, and we missed the first hour, so maybe that's when they did "September" by Earth, Wind & Fire. (My favorite band, but I cringe at how they don't use the Oxford comma.) Usually they do it as their encore, but this time they did "Disco Inferno." They did do an EWF song earlier, maybe "Boogie Wonderland" or maybe "Getaway" - my memory is terrible these days. Anyway, it was a fantastic show.

Here are a couple more random DuoLingo sayings.

Speaking of DuoLingo, it's time for me to wrap this up and do a Spanish lesson. There is a DuoLingo shop, with things like a Duo Hawaiian shirt and a Duo bucket hat, and the randomest thing they have is an enamel pin of Duo with three eyes. A green owl is weird, but a three-eyed green owl? That's more bizarre than a Mideastern market! (Maybe that pun doesn't work, but it's one I thought of as a kid and always wanted to use. Do "bizarre" and "bazaar" even sound the same? And what better time to use this crazy attempt at a pun than when discussing a green owl with a Third Eye of Enlightenment that presumably allows him to speak every language - except Basque, where the word "bizarre" comes from - fluently?)

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Bad Air Day

 

Today there was an air quality alert because of the forest fires up in Canada, and just walking from my car to the shuttle I could feel the air wasn't right. I dug an old mask out of my backpack (still there from the pandemic) and wore that on my walk from the shuttle stop to my building, and that seemed to help. Seabird didn't want to walk at lunch with the bad air, so I asked Hardingfele if she wanted to walk in her building. "It's nice out," she said. "I want to walk outside." So here's the thing - Hardingfele works for the medical school, so she can hook you up with all kinds of stuff (my longtime readers may remember how she got Rich and me disposable hazmat suits for a movie we were making), and I knew she would have access to N95 masks. Of course she had some in her office, but she didn't want to wear one herself. I wore it during our walk, because the air quality was really bad per my phone and I saw no reason to breathe in a bunch of ash. 

I didn't do a morning walk because of meetings this morning. During my afternoon walk I wore the N95 mask again and felt a bit resentful that, as I walked under the blooming black locust trees, I couldn't smell their sweet scent. Then I suddenly noticed a really big black locust with blossoms hanging down really low, and I pulled my mask down low enough to smell them. The tree sort of made a shelter around me, and I spent a few moments just basking in that glorious scent. Here's a photo.

Too bad I can't post the smell on here too. The one crazy thing that happened today was that a letter came addressed to nobody, but the address was a coworker's office, so I brought it to her. She opened it, and it was empty. It had come from a grad student, and she guessed the student had meant to mail back their office key but forgot to put it in the envelope... and then she noticed a big hole on the edge of the envelope, certainly large enough for a key to have fallen out of. So there's one key we will never get back! I also had a package in my mailbox, and it was actually a gift from the faculty member who had a huge trip to Finland with tons of people and just lots of complications, like that invoice that had to be created in one day. He brought me back a seat pad.

It's genuine lamb's wool. They were in the Sapmi region, or as some people call it, Lapland (maybe that's not PC? I never hear it called that anymore), up above the Arctic Circle. I don't know how I can get invited on one of these trips... I did joke that they should bring me along, since I have the credit card and could just pay for everything once we're there. Though honestly, the idea of those flights does not excite me.

And why not? A couple more random DuoLingo screenshots.

Speaking of DuoLingo, I should wrap this post up and go play with the Green Owl.

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