Venus and Night Trains and Me

 

If you like train graffiti, then this is the post for you! Here are photos I took on Saturday at the Rochelle Railroad Park. First a train was going slowly, then it backed up out of sight.

A very fast train then passed by, without interesting graffiti but just lots of truck containers. I took a photo of this one because I've always seen their trucks around, so I tried to buy stock in the company, but they don't seem to be publicly traded. C.R. England is the company.

And I liked the bunting on this gazebo. Just as I was going to take the photo, this guy stepped into the gazebo. That's okay, you can't see his face, so I don't feel the need to ask his permission to post this. Also, he walked really fast to get ahead of us, and he could see I was going to take a photo.

Just as we were going to leave the park, the first train (the one that had backed up) passed again, this time going at speed, and it had lots of colorful graffiti.

Travalon took these photos with his good camera.

For some reason, seeing all this graffiti just makes me so happy. I still have lots of blacklight paint (if it hasn't dried up yet), so my plan is to buy some more canvases at the art store and create my own graffiti paintings that will then glow under blacklight. Can I make them as pretty as the experts do? That remains to be seen. I think my tag will be Vabukka, but I might come up with something better.

Speaking of names, I found out today that the "Castle Clare" Belleek tower I have is actually Doonegore Castle - there is no "Castle Clare." It's a private residence, but Nenagh Castle has been fixed up to be a tourist attraction, so I'd love to visit that, and we already went to Blarney Castle. I said to Travalon that I should name Niko's girlfriend Nenagh, and he thought that was perfect. Turns out it's pronounced like the common name Nina in English (Nee-nah, not Nay-nagh as I'd supposed, although it is like that in Irish), and it has alliteration with Niko, so they go really well together. I think we have a winner! This wasn't a blog contest - I don't have a prize - but this time I thought of it, not Kathbert.

I worked from home today, and the only interesting thing that happened is that the little side tuft coming out of the ponytail palm my Archirritant gave me when she moved to Florida years ago had come off, so I'm going to see if I can grow it into another ponytail palm. I'm not sure why it came off. In the evening I brought Mandy to Moldy Jam, since I had played the violin all evening yesterday. That was great because I sat next to the really cool mandolin player, and she showed me some chords. We were all talking about how the star player for Team USA got a red card in the game against Bosnia (in the World Cup, which is soccer, for those of you not into sportsball), but then Dear Leader talked to the head of FIFA, and the suspension was mysteriously retracted for the game tonight against Belgium. That disgusted us all so much that we were happy the USA lost 4-1. But that is the power of Dear Leader, that he gets you to cheer against your own team because everything he touches gets polluted. Then I drove home, and I realized how much I love being out at night, with Venus shining above me and the possibility of seeing a night train on my ride home from the music club. Alas, I did not see a train tonight, but it's not like I haven't seen trains recently. I haven't heard one in our neighborhood in days, but then we haven't been around much recently. Surprisingly, I took a test about whether I'm an early bird or a night owl, and it said I was right in the middle, the person for whom the 9-5 job was invented... so why do I love night and hate getting up in the morning? Night is so beautiful.

Famous Hat