This morning Travalon and I met Tiffy for coffee downtown, then Travalon went to the Veteran's Museum and the Memorial Union while Tiffy and I had lunch at the Indian restaurant on State Street and then hung out at her sister's apartment. It started to snow really hard, so we weren't too eager to walk to the Union to join Travalon, who was watching Badger basketball. Instead, he came back our way, and then we drove over to Richard Bonomo's house.
A couple of weeks ago, Rich had wanted a bunch of us to watch The Court Jester because he said he was always quoting it. (I don't remember him quoting that movie, but he would say, "We have both kinds of music here, Country AND Western," which is from The Blues Brothers, and, "You no eat meat? YOU NO EAT MEAT?? Is okay - I make lamb," from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which I believe he has never actually seen.) I couldn't make the original showing, so Rich planned a second one for those of us who couldn't come. Unfortunately, due to the heavy snow, the Dairyman's Daughter couldn't make it in from her home out of town, but Kathbert and Cecil Markovitch joined the three of us at Rich's house for his famous lasagna and some leftover truffles before watching this incredibly silly movie. I had a cup of tea during the movie and then had to ask Rich to pause it twice so I could run upstairs and "visit the dragons." The second time I couldn't find my phone (because it was charging in the kitchen, duh!) so I said aloud, "I guess I won't get credit for this one!" and went upstairs. The others all knew I meant I wouldn't get credit for a staircase without my phone tracking it, but Cecil was completely bemused and wondered who was giving me credit for using the bathroom, Travalon?
That led to hilarity, and more ensued when Kathbert said Rich's vent stunk, he needed to clean his furnace filters, and Cecil said, "His filthy furnace filters," and we started adding any word that began with F (not THAT one) to whatever we said about the filters. We asked him when he last changed them, how many years ago? Was it a number greater than zero? Was it an imaginary number? Then Rich said something about making an "ad hoc" stew, meaning he just added whatever random thing he had around the house to it, and Cecil asked if he added hock to his ad hoc stew. (The Catholic church he and Rich now go to recently had a pork hock dinner.) Rich's list of what he put in his stew was pretty amusing: chicken, pork, beef, onions, green onions... I said, "So just add fifteen kinds of meat and thirteen kinds of onions." Tiffy wondered if there was something he had to have in his stew or it wasn't stew, and I said, "Like how gumbo always has to have okra?" and she said she always has to have beef consomme in her stew. She said you can get it in a can. That led to a conversation about how vegetables were terrible when we were kids, and why are they so much better now? Is it just that we are adults now? But we distinctly remember that Brussels sprouts and spinach and asparagus were awful back then because they were prepared differently. I said it was a revelation when I first had raw broccoli and cauliflower somewhere, and I ate a ton of it, surprised that they could taste so good. They're even better the way they're cooked nowadays, not boiled until almost mush.
Here is a photo that kills two proverbial birds with one proverbial stone. You can see my new Muppets hoodie that I was afraid Kathbert would detest, since she dislikes Niko and my Third Eye toque and all the evil eye protection stuff, but she said, "I have no problem with two eyes. I just don't like that weird one-eyed stuff you have." Also, you can see the little red hat on my new plaid tam. The hat pin is a thing people are doing to protest ICE, because it's a replica of hats people were knitting in Norway during World War II to protest the Nazis taking over their country. I hadn't heard of this before, but the pin is very cute, and it kind of works on the tam.
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