Night Prayer Birthday Party

 

Last night when I was coming home, there was a beautiful, almost-full moon, and also a bright star just ahead of me. I assumed it was a planet and asked Rich what planet it was, and he thought it might have actually been a conjunction of Venus and Mars. The moon is a strawberry super moon. Travalon got some photos of it on Tuesday night, and the spectacular sunset.

And here are some photos he took of the sunset last Friday.

These lilies blooming in front of our building are such a vibrant color.

My aunt and uncle out on Colorado saw a hot air balloon. I used to see them all summer long, flying overhead, but I haven't seen one around here in years. We did see one as we were driving from Dubuque to Galena, but it was too far away to get a good photo.

My neighbor and I walk out to this penny almost every day. It's really stuck in the road.

This evening we had a birthday party for one of the regulars from our Night Prayer group. I took a picture of the present I gave her.

Inside is a little canvas for painting a picture, since she loves to paint. I didn't tell her this, but I would love it if she painted a picture for me. Most of our regulars from Night Prayer were at this party, and her roommates, and some other people I didn't know. Her parents were there too. She turned twenty-eight today, and we were each supposed to say how long we'd known her and where from, and her father said, "I met her twenty-eight years ago today." Her parents are from Chicago, and they told Travalon and me that they are White Sox fans, but their sons all rebelled and became Cubs fans. I don't know if the birthday girl herself has much interest in sports. Everyone else seemed to give her flowers or plants, so maybe she loves botanical things - I only knew about her interest in art. Rich made his famous Black Magic cake, which was a big hit, and the host had berries he had picked that day for us to put over our cake and ice cream. His wife asked me how our gig had gone, so I told her about the guy who said I had inspired him to learn the mandolin, and the klezmer band that played on a pontoon boat. Isn't summer wonderful? Isn't the birthday girl lucky to have a birthday this time of year? Not that I'm jealous or anything, having mine in the dead of winter and right after Christmas. I'm going to have a big birthday right at the start of next year, but how can anyone plan a party for me if they don't even know if they'll be snowed in that day? That's okay, soon it will be my half-birthday, and then I'll celebrate by going to a trolley museum in Illinois. It's on a Saturday this year.

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Thanksgiving 2018

I hope my readers had a good Thanksgiving. On Wednesday Travalon and I went to the new barbecue restaurant in our neighborhood, and we were overjoyed to find it was some of the people from the defunct butcher shop in our neighborhood. Now the butcher shop is not defunct because business was bad, but because they were forced out of their space by another business. Half the time when a business closes that is the reason, not because they are doing badly. It always seems so unfair to me.

On Thanksgiving Day we visited Travalon’s mother, then we went to Richard Bonomo’s house for the usual feast, and as usual we supplied the bird. (I bought it from the poultry club on campus.) Lots of people were there, and we played the “Guess Who I Am” game, but for some reason several people came up with names that stumped the victims. From now on I am instituting a rule: if you think of a name and your victim cannot figure out who they are supposed to be (because they have never heard of that person), they don’t lose the game – you do! A funny note: I had bought a hat at the Celtic Christmas fair last week, and Luxuli wore one that looked just like it!

Friday was an odd day. Travalon and I had off of work, so we had a relaxing morning. He had a bag of change he had collected all year just for Small Business Saturday, so I looked through it to find cool quarters that I don’t have yet. (I already collected all the state quarters and am now working on the national parks.) Then I grabbed my coin collection to see what duplicates I had… and found that two of my favorite coins, the Eisenhower dollar and the bicentennial half-dollar, were missing. Why had I taken them out of their usual place? Where could I have put them? I was very upset, but Travalon suggested we look for the coins at a coin store. Then he discovered he had a flat tire, which normally wouldn’t be a problem, but my car had just gotten a recall notice that the passenger side airbag could explode in an accident. He was able to reinflate his tire, so we went to the credit union and found out that the change (with some additions from me) came out to $94 exactly. Crazy! We took the receipt to the counter, and I told the guy he could make my day if he had any crazy coins, so he said, “Like this?” and plopped an Eisenhower dollar onto the counter. Wow, that got replaced quickly! Then we went to a coin store, and the woman found a bicentennial half-dollar in the change in the cash register. Just like that, my coin collection was replenished! Travalon and I drove out to Sauk to watch eagles and hike on the riverside trail, then we came home and had leftover turkey for dinner.

Travalon had been looking forward to Small Business Saturday for months, and he had plenty of cash to spend, but when we headed out the door, his tire was flat again. He couldn’t get into the tire place until the next day, so I drove my car and he sat in the backseat. We met Rich for coffee, then we went up and down State Street, to gift stores and book stores and plant stores. I rode the holiday trolley while waiting for him to finish up, and he ran into Tiffy, who was going to the game. We thought about going but decided to keep shopping on Willy Street, and good thing we didn’t bother – the Badgers lost the Paul Bunyan axe to the Gophers for the first time in years. In the evening we went to Rich’s house for yet more leftover turkey, and to blat with Kathbert.

Yesterday I had to take Travalon to the tire repair place, then we did some Small Business Sunday shopping. We had pizza for dinner because we were so sick of turkey, and then we watched that horrible Packer game. What has happened to our Pack?? And did they really have to lose to Minnesota the same weekend as the Badgers did? I can just feel the entire Gopher State gloating in our direction. Travalon and I have given up on both football teams this season. At least both basketball teams are doing well so far…

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Winner's Coin

Here is the coin I won from Public Radio. Remember when I said it would be cool if it had a flapper on it? Doesn't Lady Liberty look a little bit like a flapper? No? Well, that's okay, 1922 might be too early for flappers anyway. Still, it is a very cool coin.

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Famous Hat Sings (and Sings and Sings and Sings...)

Saturday I had the best day! I went to the bank for $2 bills and also managed to get two Eisenhower dollars! Then I had a coupon for a free coffee at a local cafe, and then I drove to the orchard where my band played last month, because I still had almost $10 worth of credit. I got about $13 worth of produce, and the cashier said, "Let's just call it even." Awesome! Then I went home to see if my good luck extended to my washing machine magically working again, but no. When Rich asked me why I had attempted to use it when I knew it was broken, I said, "It had a whole week to think about its behavior so I was hoping that it had thought better of the whole thing." Having a Y chromosome, Rich just doesn't understand that machines think, so he pointed out that a washing machine is incapable of being repentant. Anyway, I brought my soggy laundry over to his house and finished it there. Then I played ePlush on his computer Aquinas and actually completed the word game! I had no idea you could even win it! It was a beautiful day so he, Kathbert, and I went for a walk in the woods. Some sort of magic dust got on the Bonomobile so that while it still appeared slate blue at most angles, in bright sunlight and through the windshield the hood appeared red. Rich took some photos, which I hope to post on here at some point. (I tried to get him to make a movie of it, but I'm not sure he ever did.) Then we went to a "pre"-Thanksgiving dinner with the typical fixings and Rich's world-renowned chocolate mousse for dessert.

Yesterday I tortured Rich by having him help me make another music video, which is featured on my previous post. He got so into making my hat dance that he said it hurt his shoulder! He even got the little mandolin to shake when I played a tremolo on the real mandolin. I had a problem during the first take; as I was watching the hat bounce around on the screen with its little mandolin, I started to laugh.

"It looks so ridiculous!" I gasped.

"Of course!" said Rich matter-of-factly. "Isn't it SUPPOSED to be ridiculous?"

Yes, but I hadn't realized just how successful it was.

While I personally have no interest in being famous, my hat is already famous, so it has no qualms about being in lots of music videos. Can you believe "Stupid Texan" has already been viewed by 80 people? That's like an average of ten a day! And I have many more songs for my hat to sing. I almost have A-Joz and Hardingfele convinced to do three-part harmony like the Andrews Sisters on a VERY brief song about Montauk Point, plus there is the "All-Purpose Tropical Song," a blues song about Georgia, a torch song about the Etruscans, and a disco song about Boethius. I can totally flood YouTube with videos of my hat singing! Judging by the response to "Stupid Texan," tens of people have been dying to watch a hat wearing sunglasses sing and play the mandolin.

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Render Unto Caesar

Not a real Lenten reflection today, just a continuation of my discussion of coins. When we were children, my brother saw money as something to spend on candy and toys. I, on the other hand, was always fascinated by it for its own aesthetical qualities. I collected dollar bills by their serial numbers and coins that struck my fancy. Below are some "coins" that pose an intresting question: if in the Gospel Jesus said to render coins unto Caesar because they bore his likeness, who would get these coins?


Proteus is pretty straightforward. The next one - the space shuttle? Then a coin collecting club, shamrocks, musical instruments, and angels. Perhaps this is heavenly currency? More likely the silly coin they send along with appeals for money from a Catholic charity...

Below are some actual coins (and some other fake ones) that have no value beyond their face value but I found interesting because of defects and damage they have acquired along the way.

From top left: quarter with smooshed rim, quarter that looks thousands of years old (dated 1940), old and new buffalo nickels, rainbow nickel, rainbow dime, glittery dime, glittery penny, blackened dime and some blackened pennies, folded dime, penny that says "39," penny with so much damage that "Liberty" now looks like "Liberyy," penny smooshed by train, fake Delaware quarter, thing that looks like a quarter with no printing on it, dime that is green on back, token from who knows where (probably a game arcade). Below are the backs of the same coins:

And here is yet another cute cake done by my coworker, the one for her older daughter's birthday this past weekend, as well as some heart cookies she made. (She also decorated the pots.) If being a doctor doesn't pan out, she could definitely get a job in cake decorating!

Side View

Front View

Heart Cookies

And finally, a patch to fight global climate change! Hardingfele put it on her blog and asked me to put it on mine. Since I believe very strongly in fighting global climate change, I was happy to do so. If you have a blog of your own, please feel free to do so as well.

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