Today Travalon and I had a very relaxed morning. I started the Portuguese course on DuoLingo and took a vigorous rosary walk in the neighborhood, and I did repot a plant. That was about as much as I accomplished this morning. Then we drove to Oakwood Village, a retirement community, to sing Balkan music in their chapel. We were very confused because we parked close to the chapel, but the doors to it were locked, so we had to go in the main entrance. Fortunately we ran into one of the people leading the singing, who led us to the chapel. We sang for an hour with about a dozen other people; it was scheduled to go for two hours, but we had to go pick up Mamastep to head to the Croatian wild game feast in Milwaukee.
Tiffy and my other college friend met us at the Foreign Legion, which was already very crowded. We couldn't find five seats together, despite having made a reservation for five - there were lots of spaces that were reserved, so we have no idea why we didn't get a reserved space. Tiffy and my other college friend found two seats together, and Travalon, Mamastep, and I found three together, so I only talked to the other two briefly now and then tonight. There were all sorts of wild game dishes, pheasant gumbo and elk goulash and venison medallions and rabbit in cream sauce and fried frog legs, which were my favorite. The gumbo was really good too. I had to eat somewhat lightly because of my diet medication, which will make my life miserable if I eat too much. There were also rolls, green salad, sauerkraut that was very different than German sauerkraut (more like boiled cabbage), and a wonderful thing like polenta. And then of course there were a ton of desserts.
The tamburitza group of high schoolers that the fundraiser was for played a few songs, including the US and Croatian national anthems, then there were the raffle drawings. Tiffy and my other college friend had not bought raffle tickets because they are smart, so they said goodbye and took off. Mamastep and Travalon had bought raffle tickets, because I had forgotten how interminable the raffle for items on the table was last year, and it was no better this year. Why do people buy raffle tickets and then ignore them? Or were they so drunk that they couldn't figure out if the number called was one of their tickets? (Likely.) The guy calling the numbers would call the same one over and over while the rest of us were like, "They're not here! Just draw another number!" We didn't win anything, and other people at our table had a ton more tickets and didn't win anything. They were joking that the people had forgotten to put their tickets in the basket for drawing until finally one woman did get to go up to the table, and she got a gift certificate for a hardware store. I saw people with way cooler things, like orchids and paintings, but I hadn't really looked at the table before the drawing so I had no strong opinions about what I would have chosen in the unlikely event that our number would have been drawn. Then there was a "high table" with prizes of greater value, but there were only five of those so it went a lot faster. Also, I think the people who had bought those higher-priced tickets cared more. We only had three for the "low table," one for the "high table," and one for the 50/50 raffle. The amount this year was around $500. Mamastep bought a number of 50/50 raffle tickets, but she didn't win either. So we headed home, through a light snow, talking about random things like embryonic development and jazz standards, and so we had a very Balkan day to make up for all the Celtic days that Travalon has to put up with, like Thursday night. I'm all for fair representation of our ethnic heritages - I love tamburitza music. Travalon made some videos, but it was so loud with people yakking that you can barely hear the music. They really got loud during the raffle - if someone won, a bunch of people at their table would make turkey calls. Why? Because alcohol.
No comments:
Post a Comment