Charlie Brown Christmas and Travalon's Birthday Party

 

Today I didn't even change out of church clothes - I wore them downtown as Travalon and I tried to make up for missing Small Business Saturday. Our first stop was to Fontana the outdoors shop so I could replace my gloves that were older than most undergrads. I was hoping to find another pair of Spyder gloves, but they don't carry them, so I bought another brand that also seemed good. Next we went to the crystal shop, where everything was on sale. Travalon bought tea, and I bought two crystals, a selenite triangle and some amber.

The amber was supposed to glow under blacklight. Here it is glowing.

And here it is under the blacklight that has a different wavelength.

And here are two other crystals that glowed under the special wavelength.

They still glow under regular blacklight, but not as well.

Travalon tried a couple of T-shirt shops, but they didn't have his size. We stopped by the Info booth to talk to my old neighbor who always volunteers there, and she gave us gift bags with coupons and other stuff. She said they don't do the Holiday Trolley down State Street anymore because Badger Bus sold the trolleys. Bummer! 

Our main reason for going downtown was to join Cecil Markovitch and the Single B-Boy for a concert of Charlie Brown Christmas music, played by a jazz trio called Mr. Chair and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, with the Madison Youth Choir singing. It was so wonderful! The stage was gorgeous.

You can barely see it in this photo, but under the bright green tree stage left was a lit-up doghouse with a stuffed Snoopy in it. Maybe if you zoom in. 

The steeple is on our old church now, but the scaffolding will stay there until February (per Rich) as they do work inside the steeple. Look how shiny and new it looks!

We had a little time before we were meeting others at Baked Wings for Travalon's 60th birthday party, so we went to Little Luxuries, and Travalon and I got Stella:

Isn't she cute? Then we met Rich, Prairie Man, and eventually Kathbert at Baked Wings. Cecil always gives gag gifts, so we were all waiting in anticipation to see his gift to Travalon, but it was actually a very nice one: a Manna Cafe cookbook. The Manna Cafe is long closed, since the owners moved out East to be closer to grandkids, but Travalon loved their chicken paprikash, so hopefully that recipe is in there. Kathbert had asked me what T-shirt she should get for Travalon out of several rock group choices, and I said AC/DC since he's going to see them next summer. And he loved it! Prairie Man showed us photos of his recent trip to Patagonia (penguins!) with a side trip to Iguazu Falls, and Travalon had his own photos of Iguazu Falls from when he traveled there before any of us knew him. Wow! I've been to Niagara Falls, which was impressive enough, but this looks way more impressive. We joked about crashing Kathbert's house to have grasshoppers, or maybe going to Leopold's for ice cream drinks, but Cecil still had to go to Mass, so eventually the party had to end.

I felt bad about not having taken photos of how beautiful our Shamrock Club ceili was, with the East Side Club all decorated with balloons, so I stole some photos off the Shamrock Club social network website.

I still have a bunch of these balloons in my house; they have long since ceased to float, but they are still plump, not shriveling up as fast as our poor panda balloon animal did. I wonder why?

Famous Hat