Jilly Moose's Landmark Birthday Party

 

Sorry for the long silence. Thursday I worked on campus and then had a Union meeting. Travalon picked me up, and then we went to St. Charles Station for their corn meal. The first course was elote, or street corn, then the next was corn chowder, then the biggest pork chop I'd ever seen with corn and mashed potatoes and greens, and then a corn cake for dessert with horchata whipped cream. Travalon just got the street corn and his favorite shrimp and grits, but he helped me eat all the other courses, and we brought most of the pork chop and some of the dessert home.

Friday I worked from home, then Travalon and I went to Breese Stevens Field to see Weird Al Yankovic. It was just as entertaining as you'd imagine, with lots of costume changes and a polka medley of recent hits and even some songs I'd forgotten about, like "Word Crimes." I loved the start with a power point song using business buzzwords, and the encore was a song about Star Wars set to "American Pie," followed by another song about Star Wars (Yoda, specifically) set to "Lola." So much fun!

Yesterday Travalon and I walked on Governor's Island, then we ran to the co-op, and that reminded us that the North Side Festival was going on, so we checked it out. We got gift bags with coffee and hot chocolate (yay!) and big jars of sauerkraut (huh?), and other random stuff like lip balm and, very helpfully, a can of sparkling water. We couldn't find the stand with the amazing lamb kebabs, but we found another one with beef and shrimp kebabs, and we already had a beverage. We bought a little stuffed guinea pig for us and a tie-dyed T-shirt for me. Then we drove to a farm outside of Verona for the Brazilian party, because I'd gotten an email saying the bluegrass band some of them play in would be playing at three. That turned out to be not completely true (or true at all), but they did start playing before 4:30. Not too many people were there at first, and Travalon wondered how they all knew that the email wasn't totally accurate.

We had to head back to Madison for my work picnic, where we sat by ourselves and only my former boss and one faculty member and her husband and very fluffy dog really interacted with us. None of the other support staff ever come, and I feel very awkward there, but my (former) boss begged me to come. For some reason our chair thinks we should name the new fridge arriving for the break room on our floor on Wednesday, since they named the fridge on the Slavic floor after him, so I suggested Nat King Cool, and Travalon suggested Rita Coolfridge. It's really supposed to be a contest for the grad students, but this has inspired us to name our own relatively new fridge Calvin Coolfridge. 

After we felt like we'd put in a sufficient amount of time (around an hour) at the work picnic, Travalon and I headed back to the Brazilian party, where we hung out with the woman from my class mentioned previously on this blog who looks like she could survive three years in the wilderness, and her equally rugged husband. I wasn't far off, because they are wild animal rehabilitators, and she has had a fascinating life sailing on a research yacht north of the Arctic Circle, among other things. I was still full from the work picnic, and Travalon had to wait several hours to eat again because of an antibiotic, so we just watched the Brazilian dancers in a barn and listened to the steel drum band. The other student and I tried to swing on a tire swing when the children at the party tired of it, but we couldn't get it to spin like they did, so my buddy tried something that caused us both to fall off, but in a funny way, not like a dangerous way. We gave up, and besides it was close to the time that the Brazilian drums were going to lead us down to the beautiful, enormous bonfire.

We enjoyed it for a little bit, but it was VERY hot near the bonfire, so Travalon and I went back up the hill to the barn and finally tried some of the food everyone had brought. Then the Brazilian drums came back up the hill and performed right in front of us. My buddy and her husband had to leave because today they were collecting wild rice in Rhinelander, but Travalon and I stayed to hear a few songs by the bar samba band we often listen to... and really, the entire reason we were there, because it was when I asked the guy playing the little instrument that looks like a ukulele about it, he told me about taking the drumming lessons, which seem to come with lots of parties. It was late, so we didn't stay for their whole set, and the party was scheduled to go on to at least midnight, but we're old and decided 10:30 was a reasonable time to leave.

This morning we had to rush from Mass on the far east side of town to the house where Jilly Moose's landmark birthday party was being held in the shady yard. Lots of people were there, including her parents, some Night Prayer regulars, Rich, Kathbert, Cecil Markovitch, R-Van the Terrible, and the Dairyman's Daughter came late because she'd been out of town most of the weekend. The only scheduled event was telling a memory about Jilly Moose, so I said we'd invented a dance called the Extraterrestrial: "Toe! Knee! Togo! Togo! Togo!" Then everyone asked for a demonstration. Rich, Kathbert, and I played a rousing game of horse shoes, and I think I won, but not one of us got the horse shoe around the post. That was after lunch, and our game was interrupted when we sang "Happy Birthday" to the birthday girl and then all had cake. There was leftover ice cream, so I made "affogatos" for Travalon and me by putting ice cream in cups and pouring the canned cold brew coffee over it. Jilly Moose got some fun cards and presents, but we had already given her the present of a Betty Lou Cruise. Alas, they are no more... at least for now. I keep hoping Captain Rob will buy the boats and start them up again.

In the evening, on the way to band practice, we saw this sunset:

Our fearless leader couldn't be there, but the rest of us were there. The bass player hadn't brought her bass, only her fiddle, and she had even sent me an email saying bring my fiddle, but she sent it to my work email so of course I didn't see it. (I don't check that on weekends!) I brought the mandolin, so I played chords, and our bass player played piano some of the time. It was so much fun! The fiddler who hosted us has a three-year-old boy who is adorable, and he happily tooted his "piano horn" alongside us. His mom says he looks forward to our visits all week. Nothing like having a fan club!

I have some exciting DuoLingo news:

And also:

Tomorrow I will hit a really big landmark, so stay tuned for that.

Famous Hat