Extremely Partial Eclipse

 

I forgot to mention a story from yesterday: so just about a year ago I got yelled at by another woman for walking on their condo association's boardwalk. Technically she was correct, I was trespassing, but I hadn't thought it was a big deal since people from the various condo associations go on each other's property all the time - I mean, we're all neighbors, right? So I often see this woman walking either with a man or alone, and it didn't escape my attention that they took longer to come back from the gated community area than if they had just turned around at the gate. Generally I wouldn't have cared, but if she's going to be a stickler for the rules, then by gum, she had better follow them herself! Yesterday I was out walking at lunch and saw her walking toward the gated community, so since I was going that way myself, I thought I'd see if she went into it. (I go in there all the time, but I know the people back there and they are fine with me. They have complained that other people go back there.) Interestingly enough, she turned around WELL before she reached the gate, which I realize proves nothing, but it did seem suspicious since usually her walks back that direction take so long. Then I saw the association president from the gated community, so I was going to tell her about it, but she was on the phone while walking her poodle. The poodle was happy to see me, anyway.

Today I worked on campus, and it was so much fun having our staff meeting again, starting with the dad jokes. My favorite: Did you hear the joke about gaslighting? YES, YOU DID! Then Seabird and I went out to see the partial solar eclipse at 12:23. I had glasses from the 2024 eclipse, but the sky was cloudy so I didn't have high hopes. However, the clouds parted enough to see the sun, so we excitedly put on the glasses... and saw a circle. Wow, that was really a partial eclipse! Later I saw photos on social media, and there was the slightest little dip in the edge of the sun, so we probably just thought it was a wisp of cloud if we even noticed it. Hardingfele was on a bus at that time, and Travalon was wrangling kids at the pool - yes, he gets paid to swim. The total eclipse was visible in Greenland and Spain. There's supposed to be a magnificent one next August in Egypt, with six minutes of totality. It's tempting, but I'd have to fly, and you know how I feel about flying.

I had eaten lunch early, right around 11, so around 4 I was ravenous. No problem, I'd get something from the vending machines... but I'd forgotten my wallet! I scrounged for change in my bag but only found 70 cents, which would buy nothing in the vending machines. So I looked in the fridge and the freezer in the break room to see if there was any abandoned food. In the freezer there was a mysterious container that said "Famous" on it... and then I remembered it was chickpea salad from a party for the grad students, which I'd put away to eat later. Well, it was later. It had been sitting in the freezer for three months, but I heated it up and it tasted fine, and I'm still alive hours later.

Someone on social media posted a video of a train going through campus, and I was hoping it was the train I'd seen on Monday, so I could grab a screenshot of the "Truckster" graffiti. It was not that train, but it did have some good graffiti.

Travalon drove me to work and picked me up afterwards, and we saw a train in the rail yard and wondered if we could watch it pull out like the one on Monday. It wasn't making any moves, so we went to the Turkish restaurant and got Turkish ice cream (honey almond flavor), and then we sat on their deck and waited to see the train go by. We saw two planes coming in to land at the airport, but the train never moved, so we went swimming at the health club. There was a school-aged boy there who was extremely obese and in a wheelchair - boy, I hope he can recover from whatever is going on!

Famous Hat

Ice Cream Social with Death Bloom

 

This morning was dark and gloomy, so when I got to work, I had a second cup of coffee. Maybe not the best idea, because then I was really wired during our staff meeting. We always start with a dad joke or two, and today the question was: Why do chicken coops have two doors? Answer: Because if they had four doors, they'd be a chicken sedan! Badoom-ching! I rarely contribute a dad joke myself, and I've only made up one that I can think of offhand: If lemons cost less than limes, are they sublime?

After the meeting I went up to the FART 5 office because one of our members had just come back from Japan, and we all wanted to hear about it. She LOVED Japan! I asked what surprised her most about it, and she said that there were signs in all the public restrooms saying not to squat on top of the toilets. Seabird (who is Chinese) said those signs were for the Chinese tourists, because they have so many squatting toilets in China. Everyone I know who has been to Japan loved it, so someday I may have to get over my fear and hatred of planes to make a trip there.

Right after lunch Seabird, two other colleagues, and I walked through the rain to the ice cream social. Because of the dismal weather, it was held inside the Botany hall, and we were the first ones in line, since Seabird had a meeting in an hour. I usually get orange custard chocolate chip, but today they had key lime pie flavor. Seabird always complains that they don't have blue moon, but today they did. However, she and the other two got some birthday flavor that was champagne with raspberries. After that we went to the greenhouses and saw the "death bloom" again. The flower spike is just as impressive, but the poor agave is starting to die from the bottom up. We looked around at other plants and then went back upstairs, and the others noted that not too many people seemed to have braved the rain, although Hardingfele and her coworker who goes to my church were there. (I had invited them, and my coworkers, but got little response.) So we got seconds; I picked up a serving of orange custard chocolate chip, but I was too full and was going to save it for tomorrow. Then when we walked out of the building, there was a long line to get in, so I felt guilty for taking seconds when some people hadn't had firsts. To assuage my guilt, I gave the ice cream to Travalon when we got home. He made a delicious dinner of whole wheat pasta with chicken, marinara sauce, and goat cheese that was just unbelievably good. So far I am loving this Mediterranean diet, and when I deviated from it today with the ice cream, I did feel off. The only thing is that my diet app, which has been screaming at me for ages about how I need to cut down on my fat consumption, is now suddenly telling me to eat more fat. You just can't please that thing.

Here is the video compilation of the trains we saw in Rochelle over the Memorial Day weekend:

It's very long, but there's lots of awesome graffiti.

Famous Hat

A Really Great Fugue

 

Today I worked on campus and walked with Seabird, who loved that I now call the plaid tam my "circus tent hat." I didn't wear that today, since the temperature was starting at 30 F when I left home this morning and ending up at almost 70 F; I wore my argyle beret, and once again someone told me how much she loved my hat. I'm almost guaranteed to get a compliment whenever I wear it. When I went for my afternoon walk, there was a crowd on Observatory Hill watching Asian dancers while a guy played a string instrument. I was curious, but it looked like the crowd was an actual class, so I wasn't sure that a casual passerby would be welcome to join.

I forgot to mention that last night in one of the choro pieces, there was an E# several times. My brain couldn't process this, since there is no such thing as an E# so it should just be an F, and instead I kept playing an Eb. Well, oops. 

For about a week I've had a snippet of a piece stuck in my brain, and last night I thought, "That's a Bach fugue, I think in G minor." There are two well-known fugues by him in G minor, the "Little" and the "Great," and I was thinking of the Great one. It's actually based on a popular Dutch song of the day, so my earworm was an 18th century Dutch pop song. Today I kept listening to this fugue over and over and over, and it really helped my perspective. When I was in the "between space" after having been killed by a hunter, and I didn't want to be reincarnated as a human because I thought humans were evil, God told me He would give me a deep love of music to realize that humans are also capable of amazing beauty. And indeed this piece makes me realize that, while there are people in this world who would starve an entire island on purpose, a human did create something so moving that listening to it, you can't help but be drawn to the Divine. The most amazing thing is when something I do moves another person, like I have seen people be moved when I sing, and of course there was that guy who tracked me down after reading a poem I'd written. Maybe once we get through these dark days, and long after I'm gone, someone will read a poem of mine and think, "Humans aren't all bad. One created this work of art." 

Perhaps I'm lucky in that I'm surrounded by people who care more about beauty than money or power. The faculty in my department are interested in knowledge and literature and languages, and the musicians I hang out with are, of course, interested in music. It shouldn't surprise me that a human would poach a panther that hadn't hurt him when humans will kill other humans that have never done anything to them, but we can rejoice in the fact that most people would not kill others, and in fact so many of them are pursuing beauty and truth. If only they were the ones in charge!

On a lighter note, here is a quality joke:

I'm sure this was photoshopped, since the cars are the same in both photos, but who cares? It's hilarious!

Famous Hat

Shamrock Club St. Patrick's Day Party 2026

 

Today after Mass and recycling the plastic, Travalon and I had to hurry up to Waunakee for the Shamrock Club St. Patrick's Day party. We bought fifteen raffle tickets and then watched the Trinity Irish Dancers put on a show before dinner sitting across from the Irish Person of the Year. When Travalon asked him what the secret is to being named Irish Person of the Year, he replied, "Be born Jewish." He is Jewish, but his mother died when he was very young, and his stepmother was Irish so he learned a lot from her. He is very entertaining - he said in his capacity as Irish Person of the Year, he was declaring a Club song, which was that "I'm a man you don't meet every day" song you always hear at Irish singalongs. Despite all our raffle tickets, not one of our numbers was drawn, but someone gave Travalon a ticket because their number had been drawn multiple times, so he got some Irish tea and a tea towel that is green but not particularly Irish - it has owls on it. I wore the shamrock socks someone gave me at the last Shamrock Club party because his numbers kept getting chosen and ours never were. We are always unlucky that way. We didn't have any of our tickets drawn at the wild game feast either.

Then we had to rush to the cemetery because Richard Bonomo decided we would put flowers on Mr. Why's grave today without consulting me about whether it was a good day. It was a beautiful day weatherwise, so after Rich took the requisite photo of Kathbert, Pete the Sailor Man, me, and himself in front of the grave to send to Mr. Why's family back in Singapore, Travalon and I took a walk at Jackson's landing to try to see swans. It was too swampy to get to the place where we might have been able to see them, but he did take a photo of Mariner's from across the river. You can see the lighthouse that I hope they spare when they build the new restaurant.

We went back to Cherokee Marsh and saw a young eagle on a muskrat lodge.

There were lots of common mergansers.

I like this photo of a male mallard and female common merganser gazing at each other.

I heard a woodpecker and thought it was the pileated one, so I followed the sound and discovered a trail we had never seen before - we will have to come back and explore it. We went to the spot where we had seen swans last week, but all we saw were a ton of scaups.

This is another kind of duck, but I'm not sure what. It looks a bit like a ruddy duck, but not reddish enough.

Travalon also got some shots of goldeneyes, but they aren't clear enough to post. We went to Tenney Park too, but we didn't see anything there. Then we came home, and I prayed a rosary while fighting to stay awake. At one point I lost the fight and woke up thinking, "Who is that oil baron? Hey, don't get stuck on that magnate!" which is a pun, since "magnate" sounds like "magnet" and things get stuck on magnets. So that's what my brain does when it's supposed to be reflecting on the Third Glorious Mystery - it writes dad jokes. And not even good ones, if in fact it can be said that there are ANY good dad jokes...

Famous Hat

Badger Basketball with Blackwell

 

Yesterday I worked on campus, and Seabird and I took a short walk on our morning break, but she had no interest in walking at lunch, so I walked by myself. I kept hearing a train coming, and then the crossing arms would come down, but then they would go back up again, and the train never passed - just like on Monday night! What's going on with that?? Our boss always has a riddle to start our department meetings, and yesterday's was: "What language does a bridge speak?" I couldn't think of anything except "Pont-ificate," which makes no sense, but two of my coworkers figured it out: "Span-ish!" 

Right after work I caught the 202 shuttle down to the Labor Temple, and the Former Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player was on it too, so we sat together and talked about a genetic service just for Holocaust survivors, among other things. She said something very sad, that people are looking for a lost uncle who may have survived, but they never find anyone like that, just a lot of distant cousins because all Jewish people are related. Often their entire immediate family was completely wiped out. Then I was supposed to be doing paperwork with the president and vice president of our former local to aid with the merger with the other local, but a guy from the South Central Federation of Labor ("Scuffle") came in and started talking to us, and I could not stay awake. When Travalon arrived, we gave a ride to the vice president, who lives right off Monroe Street, and then we checked out all the inflatable Santas on that street. In one block, practically every house has one in the front yard, or on the roof.

Travalon and I went to the Badger basketball game and watched them handily defeat Northwestern. A guy named Blackwell is the new Tonje, the great player from last year - he got 1000 lifetime points during this game (it was fun to watch his points add up until he got there), and he got a double-double. Travalon says he came to visit the kids where he works, and they were very excited, but when they found out he is 6'7", they just kept saying, "Six Seven!" The game seemed very loud, and I had forgotten to grab earplugs (we keep a stash in Travalon's glove compartment), but Travalon got a free pair at the Welcome Desk, so I wore them throughout the game. Why is everything so loud these days? Am I a cranky old person for complaining about this?

DuoLingo gave me my annual summary:

It feels good to be a legend at something, even if it's just yelling at a language app: "No! That's exactly what I said! Why is it wrong?!?"

Today was very, very cold. My jeans had been falling down during my walk yesterday, so today I wore slightly tighter jeans... and then they were falling down too. This makes sense, if I really have lost almost twenty pounds, but what a pain. I didn't want to walk outside anyway, so Hardingfele and I walked around in her building. When I got back to my office, my phone was missing - had it fallen out of my pocket one of the times I had to hitch my pants back up? But wouldn't I have heard it?? I checked my (short) path outside and then went back to Hardingfele's office to say we'd have to retrace our path around her building... but she had found my phone just sitting on her desk. Had I taken it out of my pocket and set it down? I don't remember doing that at all. The bad news is that I did this before our walk in our building, so I didn't get credit for those steps on my phone. Hardingfele was mystified: "Why do you care? Don't you have a FitBit?" Yes, but I like to compare them to see how many intentional steps I got versus steps around the house getting ready for work, "steps" when I wave my arms during a boring online meeting where nobody can see or hear me, etc. But the good news is that my phone is not lost. Phew!

Hardingele has a plant that looked vaguely familiar, so I asked what it was, and she said, "A peace lily, of course." I said, "That's no peace lily," so we asked both my plant app and my phone what it was, and they both said a type of ginger. (Not the same type.) I thought, oh yeah, that's where I've seen that kind of plant before - at Olbrich Garden! Hardingfele was shocked that it wasn't a peace lily. It's a rescue plant, so it's not like she could ask anyone what it was, since she found it abandoned in her building. Here's a not very good picture of it.

I mostly walked around on my floor at work, and back where hardly anyone sees it there's a chalkboard, so I drew this picture on it:

The Martian is saying, "It's colder than my home planet!" I remember years ago, it was around this time of year, and on a talk about Ice Cube down at the South Pole we actually got to talk to the people down there, and it was colder here than down there. (It was their "summer" at the time, but still.) Then that summer, a fellow where I worked came back from visiting family in India, and he said, "Wow, it's hotter here than in India!" I thought, "That's a hell of a tourist slogan!"

Come to Wisconsin - hotter than India, colder than the South Pole!

Famous Hat

Double-Booked on the Terrace

 

Today did not start out fortuitously. I was still sick and ended up having to change my clothes, but I couldn't stay home because today was the big welcome luncheon for the new grad students, and I had to bring the sparkling water I'd bought yesterday. Then Travalon couldn't find his sunglasses, but somehow he got me to work on time. I was wearing my favorite turquoise top that I always seem to spill food on, and sure enough, during lunch sauce dripped from my sandwich onto my top. I got it mostly cleaned up with soap and water, but the stains were still faintly visible. Luckily when I use stain remover before doing the laundry, they have always come out... so far. Because of the luncheon, I couldn't walk with Seabird at lunch, but she stopped by to get the key to her new office in my building (where she used to work), and we checked it out. It's a big shared office, and I found this smiley face in it.

Then we took a short walk outside. I spent most of the day working on a spreadsheet for a faculty member and was sick of looking at my computer screen by the time five o'clock rolled around. That's when things got really interesting.

The committee I was on to write a report on ageism at the university planned to get together to celebrate finishing the report, and somehow I was the one in charge of organizing it. I sent out a Doodle poll to see when people would be available to meet up at the Terrace, and today at six was the clear winner. Then I saw an email from someone saying she couldn't meet the rest of my Union peeps at 5:30 tonight on the Terrace, and I thought, "I never got that email!"... but it was in my Spam folder. So just after work I walked down to the Terrace and found Travalon, and then a couple of my Union peeps saw us and joined us. Pretty soon there were three tables' worth of Union people sitting around drinking beer and eating French fries, but I had to confess that I would have to cut out for another gathering. Then one of the committee members arrived early for the other gathering, so she joined the Union gathering for a little bit but then spotted "Dave," a guy she knew, so she went to join him. When a second person from the committee arrived, she, Travalon, and I went over to join the first committee member and Dave, who was not on the committee. Eventually the leader of the committee joined us too, but we never saw anyone else, even though quite a few people said they could make it tonight. Were they wandering the Terrace, looking for us and maybe meeting each other and having their own gathering? Or did they all just flake? Who knows? The leader said we should try it again sometime, but I'm thinking a more organic time for us to meet up might be when the final report is presented at the Staff Assembly. A lot of us have never seen each other in real life, so that was what I was most looking forward to. Also seeing a member who left partway through for another job, but that person never responded to emails. When it was just the first committee member, Dave, Travalon, and I, we had a very interesting conversation about travel and music and all sorts of things. It was Open Mic Night at the Terrace, and one guy signed up for a slot just to propose to his girlfriend, which got the biggest applause of the night. Another guy told knock-knock jokes. I had never heard this one before:

            Knock Knock!

            Who's there?

            Spell!

            Spell who?

            Double-u, aitch, oh.

(Or, as the Irish would say, haitch.) It's so dumb that it's just fabulous. I must tell it to my coworker tomorrow who is the king of dad jokes.

On the way home, we stopped at the Chocolate Shoppe so Travalon could get his limited edition Scotcharoo ice cream. They even had a poster about it on the door. I was going to get some too, but then I saw key lime flavor, which is also only around in the summer. Such a hard choice, but darn, that key lime ice cream was so tasty! Then we came home, and while doing DuoLingo, I ran my hands through my hair and messed it all up. I had my reading glasses on, and Travalon said, "You look so good right now!" So here's what Travalon thinks is sexy:

I think I look like a worn-out professor who has just finished grading a bunch of term papers. "I just cannot read one more essay about how hubris is the downfall of the archetypal hero! Does nobody have any fresh ideas anymore? Were these all written by AI? And why did this student write their paper in Comic Sans Serif? That is not a way to get anyone to take you seriously!" I am, of course, only imagining what a professor thinks about, since I'm a grad school dropout myself.

Famous Hat

Hometown Visit: Swimming Snafus

 

(Thanks to Travalon for help with this blog post title.)

Yesterday I worked from home and was somewhat productive, then right after work Travalon and I hit the road. We made a stop at a Mexican restaurant in Mauston that somehow took two hours, but my seafood enchiladas were so good. However, during the long wait I'd eaten so many chips and salsa that I could only eat half my real dinner, and it sat in the car for two more hours before we got to my hometown. Travalon found this surprising flag in the men's bathroom of the (important!) Mexican restaurant.

What?? Why is this in a MEXICAN restaurant? It says "I love Puerto Rico." Huh??

The moment we got to our hotel room, I stuck my seafood in the fridge, then we swam in the wonderful pool that was shockingly full of children at that late hour, and then I went right to bed without blogging.

Today I had my leftovers for breakfast, and they haven't killed me yet. Travalon found a nonprofit coffeehouse called St. James online, so we went there for coffee and got free treats because it was their 13th birthday. Better yet, they are associated with the Catholic church across the street, so the very friendly people gathered there were happy to tell us Mass times. Since the church is six minutes from our hotel, this is what we will be doing tomorrow morning.

Ma and Pa Hat are moving to another apartment, but I'm confused about a lot of things. I thought it was assisted living, but no, it's just another apartment. Ma Hat had sent a photo of a bunch of books the people helping her refused to pack, so we thought we'd spend the day packing them, but when we got to their place, she said the movers had already packed them. She said they came and did it yesterday, and she thought about calling us and telling us not to come, which means I could have been in the Atwood Fest parade with the Brazilian drumming group. Then Ma Hat remembered she had stuff in a basement storage unit, so Travalon and I emptied that and brought the contents upstairs. We are both getting older ourselves and have sore knees, so this was a less welcome job than packing books that don't involve stairs. We took a break to take a walk along the Zumbro River, and Travalon took some photos.

We saw people tubing on the river, which looked really fun, but we have no idea where you rent tubes in town. I told Travalon how, as a kid, I used to follow the creek in our backyard to the Zumbro River, and along the side someone had a compost heap, but I had no idea what a compost heap was, so I thought they had killed someone and buried them in their yard, and that's what the bad smell was. Guess I was kind of Gothic as a kid.

After that we went with Ma and Pa Hat to a Mideastern restaurant that had good reviews online, but a sign on the door said it was closed, so we had a very late lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant, and Ma and Pa Hat treated us. Here is the colorful board they had advertising their various menu items.

When we got back, I sat on this chair that used to belong to my great-grandmother.

It turns out both Travalon and I were staring at this box while waiting for further instructions from Ma Hat:

She said we could pack glasses and mugs that were still in the kitchen, so we wrapped them until running out of newspaper. There is a pool at Ma and Pa Hat's current apartment complex, and by then it was in the shade, so Travalon and I decided to run back to the hotel and get our swim stuff, since we hadn't thought to bring it with us. When we got back, Ma Hat said oops, she forgot to tell us that you have to pay extra to use the pool, and she and Pa Hat hadn't paid this year, so we couldn't get in. That seemed so strange to us - whoever heard of an apartment complex with a pool charging extra for access? - but we just shrugged and went to a nearby park with a beach on a pond. Only, when we got there, a guy kept reminding us that the place was getting locked up in half an hour, so if we didn't leave promptly, we'd be locked in. We swam a few minutes at the beach, then we went back to our wonderful hotel pool, which had less kids than last night despite the much earlier hour. When the kids all invaded the pool, we moved to the hot tub and watched the sunset from there. I have watched many sunsets in my life, but I believe this is the first one I've seen from a hot tub.

There is a 24-hour Mexican restaurant just down the street from our hotel, so we went there for a light dinner after showering. Looks like I'll be having half a bean burrito for breakfast after eating too much street corn. The young girl taking our order sometimes seemed confused, so then I would speak in Spanish and she would understand, like with the burrito she kept saying, "Bean or beef?" and I'd say, "Bean," but she didn't get it, so I said, "Frijoles." And Travalon wanted a half order of rice, but she kept saying, "One order of rice?" so I said, "La mitad." Anyway, we got what we had ordered. Travalon looked online to see if there was any information about having to pay extra for the pool at Ma and Pa Hat's complex, and he found a wondrous review of the place that said, among other things, "There are murders here! A grandpa had his eyeballs yanked right out of his head! And the laundry facilities are out-of-date!" That made me laugh so hard - talk about anticlimactic! Not that torture is funny, but following it with such a feeble complaint just made me lose it. Another great line: "People are always trying to burn the place down, either by burning their food or actually trying to burn it down." This person also said there are actual new-Nazis living there, which I believe, judging by some of the tattoos I saw on people there.

As we drove back to the hotel, I suddenly thought of that lame kids' joke: "Guess what? Chicken butt! Guess why? Chicken thigh!" So then I made up even stupider ones: "Guess how? Chicken cow! Guess when? Chicken hen! Guess who? Chicken coup!" So that's the terrible joke I came up with: "What do you call it when the chickens rebel against the farmer? A chicken coup!" Is that even funny? Not really. But I think it's hilarious how not funny it is.

I hear the Atwood Fest parade went fine without me, but they got rained on. So that's what I missed.

Famous Hat

Possible Stand-Up Routine?

 

The weather was beautiful again today, and I walked with Hardingfele. (My colleague is back in the country, after her flight was canceled and she had to take an arduous three-stop flight back, but she worked from home today.) It's fun to have someone to commiserate (or, to use a technical term, bitch) with about politics, bandmates, and the stupid new systems they are always coming up with at work. She is a grant administrator, so she has to use the new system for that, while I was told that with the three grants I was doing a year I'd never learn the new system so pre-award was taken off my plate. (Can't say I'm sorry about that.) Also, we have no federal grants while she deals with plenty of them. I am frustrated that the "training" for the new financial system we will go to in July consists of videos and absolutely no hands-on training in a test environment. My current boss and I have already identified ways this new system is set up for failure, and who knows how many more will come to light once I can actually use it?

After work I had to miss a free lesson in Irish dancing at the Monona Terrace for our Union meeting, because we were going to have elections at this meeting... only we were one person short of quorum. D'oh! So it wouldn't have mattered if I had skipped the meeting - what difference does it make if you're one or two people short of quorum?

At least I was well-caffeinated today: I had my usual cup of coffee in the morning before heading to work, then late morning our chair made a strong cup of coffee for me, and then a grad student bought me a latte midafternoon. I was also well pizza'd because I had leftover pizza for lunch... and then I went to grab my falafel and hummus sandwich for dinner before the Union meeting, but there was leftover pizza in the fridge from the grad student recruitment lunch, so I had that instead. That's okay, the sandwich will be perfect for lunch tomorrow - no meat on Fridays in Lent!

The craziest thing is that this morning I felt extra witty chatting with my shuttle buddy, and then I thought, "If you only take my side of the conversation, it could almost be a standup comedy routine." So I tried it out on Travalon, and he laughed. Here it is, more or less (I'm not quoting myself exactly - my memory is no longer good enough for that):

I've been getting these emails lately saying, "Take this quiz to find out when you will die." Who wants to know that? Who would actually take that quiz? I just deleted it the first time, but they keep sending it! If they send it to me one more time, I can tell them exactly when they're going to die! It makes me long for the good, old days when annoying mail meant credit card offers that actually came in the snail mail. Did you used to get those? Most of them were boring, "Sign up now and get 3.5% introductory interest," but I remember I got one for baseball fans, where you could use your points for baseball-related stuff, and then I got one for extreme sports, where you could use your points to buy extreme sport equipment. Extreme sports? Have they seen me?? I'm terrified of heights! What if your parachute didn't open? You'd have all that time to think about it before hitting the ground! If they sent me that email quiz to find out when I was going to die, I'd be like, "Yeah, in 5.3 seconds!" I did think about hang-gliding once, but I talked to a hang-gliding instructor, and he said, "You never die the first time. There's what we call the Coffin Stage when you think you know what you're doing, and you forget a step. That's when it happens." Oh, and the weirdest credit card offer I got was for the Astro-Card, where you could get your sign of the zodiac on your credit card, and your monthly statement would come with a horoscope. So what mailing list was I on that they thought I was interested in baseball, extreme sports, and astrology? Does this person exist? I'd love to meet them. Maybe they sent them to me because of that time I went hang-gliding into Wrigley Stadium, hollering, "I'm a Capricorn!" Thank you so much, I'm here all week.

Famous Hat

And the Answer Is...

 

I know everyone was waiting with bated breath to find out whether I went to the International Festival or the Bach Around the Clock marathon today. Well, wonder no more - I am about to reveal the answer.

This morning Travalon was watching Crystal Palace with Jerry and Roy Jr., then he drove me to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church to attend... Bach Around the Clock. He thought about going to the men's Badger Basketball game, but the tickets were really expensive, and he figured it would be a boring game because they were playing Penn State, who are not good this year. Instead, he watched part of the game at the Laurel Tavern, and then he went to Leopold's.

I got to Bach Around the Clock just as the recorder ensemble was finishing up, which includes an old choir mate of mine. The next group included the lead singer from Yid Vicious and a guy I know from early music circles, and they did a really fun mashup of Bach's Invention in D Minor and a Macedonian folk song. My choir mate joined me, and the next group we saw was a community choir, so we talked about joining it. She's already in the St. Andrew's choir and the recorder group. I remember when I used to be in two choirs and three bands - where did I find the energy?? This choir practices on Monday nights, which is the same night as the Russian Folk Orchestra, which I keep saying I'm going to join but haven't yet. After that there was a bell choir playing Bach, and a cellist playing Bach, but the pianist that was next on the list apparently couldn't make it, because the MC led us in a rousing rendition of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," verses 1 and 3, with the implicit understanding that we are facing the evil forces in the hymn in Dear Leader, his overlord in the Kremlin, and the oligarchs destroying our democracy. 

And then... my favorite part, a tribute to PDQ Bach. First some singers sang some of his pieces, which sound quite beautiful if you don't listen to the words, like that the hocket causes the singers to sing: "Hot!" "Dog!" "Hot!" "Dog!" Or if you disregard the fact that the bass just wandered off during one piece and started scatting like he was singing jazz, not a madrigal, which I assume is in the directions. After all, these are the "discoveries" of Peter Schickele, who was allegedly the Very Full Professor of Musical Pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. (A real town of 247 people - I looked it up.) Then the husband of the Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player played two Musical Contraptions, one of them based on the simple melody that as kids we sang to the words, "On the Planet Mars/Where the Ladies Smoke Cigars," and the last part was a concerto for viola four hands. I made a brief video.

The concerto had four movements, and in the last one, the two violists get in a fight, run offstage, and make a lot of noise. Eventually one came back triumphantly holding an instrument in several pieces (which was actually a violin), and then the other one shuffled back onto the stage with an ice pack held to his forehead. Then they both exited the stage again, and the pianist kept playing the same figure over and over, waiting for them to come back, until he got disgusted and left too. I was laughing so hard! My favorite character who commissioned a piece by PDQ Bach is Count Pointercount. That reminds me of the terrible jokes in Bullwinkle, which we were watching last night, like regarding Boris and Natasha, "the two heels with no souls." I laughed so hard at that, I didn't even catch the rest of what they said.

This reminds me that late last night I told Travalon that Niko really matches the cover of this month's Magnificat, and he said, "He should have been on the cover of Time. He could have been Person of the Year instead of Dear Leader," and I said, "Person? Nah. Maybe Keychain of the Year."

Anyway, back to the Bach marathon. My former choir mate went downstairs for snacks, but I stayed to watch an organist before joining her. Another former choir mate was a volunteer downstairs, so the three of us chatted before I had to go outside to meet Travalon. As I waited, the sandwich board announcing the marathon ("Free Bach Event Today! BachClock.com") fell over not once but twice. It may have even fallen over again after that, but I wasn't there to do anything about it, because Travalon arrived and told me the Badgers had actually lost to the subpar team. (As Boris Badinov said, "I didn't go to Penn State - I went to State Pen!") (Another line that made me lose it: "Are you incinerating that I'm stupid?") He had brought me a pandan latte from Leopold's, and I happily drank it as we drove to Tiedemann's Pond, where we took a vigorous walk around the circumference. No birds there yet.

We had to get back so that I could go to a meeting of the condo board members from the three area boards, to ask questions of the developer who is buying Mariner's. He says he would like to have a restaurant on the ground floor that honors the memory of Mariner's, so that makes me happy. He is thinking only two floors of apartments above that, and one of the other board's members was not happy that it would be apartments instead of condos, but it was implied that these would be pricy enough apartments to keep the riffraff out. Also, the marina is going to stay the same. The developer really wanted to talk to us after the fiasco with the developer who purchased the Nau-Ti-Gal and then pissed off the neighborhood so much with his grandiose plans that we got the town to turn down his plans, and he has yet to come back with acceptable ones, so the building is just sitting there empty, surrounded by fencing. 

After the meeting, Travalon and I went down to the dock, where we saw geese and some small ducks hanging out on the ice or swimming in the open water in the channel. We saw a muskrat, and he started to climb onto the ice, but then Travalon moved closer to take a photo, so he dove back into the water. It is definitely getting to be spring! 

Tonight we are going to see Gaelic Storm, so I'll try to blog about that tomorrow. It will probably be a late night, so that's why I'm blogging now. Luckily the Mass we always go to is at a late time, because tomorrow Fake Time starts. I vaguely remember someone telling me months ago that, "You might not like Dear Leader, but he banned Daylight Saving Time." I said, "Really? Then I do have to give him credit for doing something good." But apparently he did not ban it. My fear is that, instead, in November he will say that we are never going back to Real Time again. He is totally evil enough to do that.

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Happy Halloween 2024

Every day for the last fortnight my FitBit has given me a score of Readiness on a scale of 0-100, and usually I'm in the 60's, but I'd been as high as the 70's and as low as the 20's. This is all based on my sleep quality the night before and my resting heart rate. To my surprise, yesterday I had a perfect score, so I was expecting to feel twenty years younger, but in fact I just felt good... for my age. Today - another perfect score! Let's see if I can make it three in a row tomorrow... Yesterday evening as I waited for the shuttle, I glanced at my FitBit to see the time, and it said it was 5:11 and I'd gone 5.11 miles. I have no idea how to do a screenshot of it, so I pulled out my phone to take a photo... and then it was 5:12, so the moment was ruined.

Today was very strange. There were cops just hanging out all along the shuttle's route to campus, but that was probably because a presidential candidate had come to town and was heading for the airport soon. Then on the chalkboard speech bubbles on my floor, someone had written a joke in German, which my coworker and I figured out said, "What does a clown do in the office? Faxes!" Ha ha? I said maybe it's a terrible pun in German, so I asked a grad student (whose first language is English), and he said, "That's just the German sense of humor - the anti-joke. Like, 'How do you make a clown cry? You shoot him.'" I said, "But that's funny! Of course, I have a very dark sense of humor..." and he said, "They would say, 'What does a vampire do in the office? Make copies!'" I was not convinced, so I asked another grad student who is a native speaker, and she said it's a pun because "faxen" can mean sending a fax or clowning around. Now I can't decide which interpretation is worse, because they're both so bad.

Meanwhile, Travalon was going through the stuff that has been in the storage shed for the last decade, and he found some paintings I had done many years ago. Here is "Cat with a Saxophone," featuring Dr. Thelonius Mingus:

I did that one when I was nineteen. Here is one I did when I was twenty, based on a poem that I had pretentiously titled "Untitled" and had written in high school:

Aimless I wander through fields of silk,

The honey-touched zephyrs are flowing with milk

As midnight-black mountains shed petal-soft tears,

The sweet scent of ivory rings in my ears.

Golden the evening and silver the night

As I gaze at the world with song-colored sight;

Velvet and gauze are her jewel-strewn skies,

Their unknown eternities burn in my eyes.

Up a steep valley a waterfall climbs

To a temple all lit with the laughter of chimes,

Where fountains of flowers dance through the days,

And waves of bright Aprils blossom to Mays.

I stand here this moment in wonder and bliss,

My memory lingers with thoughts of your kiss,

And of God and His angels I ask only this:

That I spend forever with you.

I told Travalon that he must be the dragon in that painting, because I wrote the poem for a short-lived high school romance, but at the time I painted the painting, I had no idea who the man would be, so I just painted a dragon. He seemed pleased with that. 

Okay, so not much about this post has to do with Halloween. I guess you can imagine Travalon in a dragon costume or something. My outfit in the painting is, in fact, based on a Halloween costume of a sexy devil that I had back in the day. So there you go - a Halloween connection.

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I'm the Goat! (and Possibly the Secretary AND the Treasurer)

 

Today I was very busy helping grad students do expense reports. One told me I'm the "goat," by which I assume he meant the G.O.A.T., or Greatest of All Time, but I said, "I guess you're right, since I'm a Capricorn." He laughed, so I doubled down: "In the Eastern zodiac, I'm a pig, so either way I'm just a barnyard animal." Then he really lost it. I do sometimes wonder if I could have been a standup comedian. A phlebotomist once told me I was her funniest blood draw all day. That was the time I was wearing a really tropical getup, and when she commented on it, I said, "My people were island people." She gave me a quizzical look, since I clearly can't be out in the sun for more than five minutes, so I said, "England and Ireland are islands," and she lost it. I don't know if my material is that great, so maybe it's my delivery.

After work I had a union meeting. I was thinking not enough people would show up for a quorum so we couldn't have elections, and then it would have been a waste of time but at least I'd get home early. But noooo (to quote John Belushi), at the last minute one more person showed up so we had exactly ten, and then we had elections. I've been the secretary for the union for a while now, but the woman who has been treasurer for twenty years is understandably sick of it, so they nominated me for treasurer. It's not like I don't have experience, having been the treasurer of our condo association for a couple of years now, but this woman always said what a time suck being treasurer is. Worse, nobody wanted to be secretary, which means we don't have one, and people were pointing out that secretary/treasurer is a common position. I most definitely do not want to be both! All the other positions got filled, even trustee, which is actually a sweet deal because you only have to do an audit once a year, but nobody ever suggested that position to me back in the day. I started as a member-at-large, which means you have to attend all the meetings but otherwise have no official duties, and our current members-at-large were perfectly happy with that job and wanted to stay there and not get promoted to secretary. I can't really blame them...

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Travalon's First Full Day as an Orphan

 

Here is the photo I had promised of the Balearia commemorative cup from the ferry:

It just looks blue in this photo, but in real life it's greenish-blue. I'll try photographing it in different light at some point.

Today Travalon and I took the day off work, and we went to Sauk. We saw some eagles flying around at the VFW Park.

And we saw one in a tree on the island.

All we saw at the dam were lots and lots of gulls. Then we went to the bakery in Sauk and had coffee and treats (mine was not chocolate, since it's Lent), and after that we drove to Lake Wisconsin. It was a very cold day, but very sunny, so good to be in a car. We stopped by the spot to see the two little islands, and Owl's Head Bluff in the background.

We didn't see anything but gulls by Fitz's, so we went to Whalen Grade and saw Canada geese, gulls, scaups, and shovelers. First the scaups and a goldeneye, who were very far away from us.

This is a pair of common mergansers. The female has the brown head. They were also very far away.

Much closer, we saw some northern shovelers. (I don't know if there are southern shovelers.)

Then we went back to Fitz's for lunch: their famous haddock cake sandwiches, and I also had their famous salad bar. We drove back to Madison and tried to take a walk around Tiedemann's Pond, but the cold wind was unbearable, so we walked at West Towne Mall and didn't buy anything. I did look at a squishy axolotl pillow and an eye necklace, but do I need either thing? It seems like a good Lenten penance to not buy everything you want. 

Perhaps it had warmed up a bit by the time we got home, because I did go for a walk outside in the neighborhood. I went to watch the sunset, but it was not a particularly beautiful one today, so I didn't bother taking a photo. I like when they are pink and orange, and this one was just a tinge of yellow. 

I forgot to note that when we saw my mother-in-law on Saturday, she seemed agitated and was asking who was driving. I told her Travalon was driving, and she said, "Where are we going?" (she was hard to understand), and Travalon said, "Tahiti." I figured we couldn't drive there, so I said, "Holy Hill," since she loved it there. She laughed and said, "Hilly Hole," which is an inside joke because Travalon's Aunty Katie from Hungary called it Hilly Hole once, and another time she said she loved to go out in the evening and sit in her zucchini, meaning her jacuzzi. Travalon's mom loved to tell those two stories. I love that as she was dying, she could still joke and sing. Not sure what she was singing, maybe the first word was "Alleluia" and not "All," but I'm sure she had no idea it's Lent now. Not like that concert Tiffy and I went to on Saturday, where they did an encore after all those 16th century Italian songs of a German liturgical song of the same vintage (by Martin Luther), which I sang years ago with the Lutheran choir, and which ends each verse with two Alleluias. Now they really should have known better.

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Breaking Rules I Don't Know Exist

 

I certainly didn't expect Rodgers to endure a season-ending injury last night. As someone said online, the Jets paid him $75 million to run around with a flag before the game. As someone else said, Jets = Just Endure The Suffering. But hey, they won without him. Now he has plenty of time to take more ayahuasca, do another darkness retreat, and talk about what he learned with Joe Rogan. Or, as someone else said online, if he's just going to keep copying Favre, he can recover enough to go play for the Vikings next season.

Today I was feeling very salty, especially towards an accountant who had told me some time ago that I could put some charges on a particular grant and then told me today to transfer them off, but also toward the people who are not giving final approval to expense reports after I approve them in anything like a timely manner. Then as I was driving to adoration, on a one-way road, an ambulance came up behind me. I was in the left lane because I was going to turn left soon, so I pulled over into a parking spot on the left side of the road. There was no other traffic around me, and the ambulance had both the left and right lanes clear to go through, but he honked at me really aggressively and kept honking at me as he passed by me. Was he mad that I didn't pull over to the right? But I would have had to cut in front of him to do that. I was puzzled by what rule I'd broken, and when I asked people at Night Prayer, they had never heard that you must pull over to the right. They concluded the guy was just in a bad mood. I hate driving as it is, and episodes like this don't make me like it any better.

Tiffy is having a very crazy week at work, so she asked me to randomly text her "beandzdzdz." Yesterday I texted: "Breathe. Relax. Eat beandzdzdz." Today I texted: "I traded my mom's cow for some magic beandzdzdz. Am I the A$$hole?" We'll see what I come up with tomorrow.

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Happy Ex-Prodigies

 

I had a quiet day working from home, then in the evening I went to a fish fry with two neighbors. We sat outside, and one neighbor asked what we had wanted to be when we were little. She had wanted to be a marine biologist, and I had wanted to be a lepidopterist. Our other neighbor claimed she couldn't remember, and she couldn't remember her favorite Halloween costume either. My one neighbor and I were puzzled by that; she is a little older than we are, so is that what happens when you reach four score years of age? You can't remember anything from your childhood? 

This got me thinking about a conversation I had with someone (Kathbert?) about being child prodigies, and this person said I must have been a bit of one. I said come on, I'm nothing but a low-level public servant, and the other person said child prodigies rarely go on to set the world on fire. I remember reading about someone who had one of the highest IQs ever recorded, and he floundered for a while, but now he's apparently very happy being a nightclub bouncer, and living with his wife on a hobby farm, raising all sorts of animals. I thought, yeah, me too - not a worldly success, but very happy. So tonight it hit me: if you were a child who read very early and used big words, adults were always dumping more on you. "Here, read this book you have no interest in just to prove how smart you are!" "Here, solve this puzzle to prove how smart you are!" "Here, take this class way above your grade level to prove how smart you are!" You start to feel like a trained monkey in the circus. Then one day you realize you don't have to do everything people tell you to, and so maybe you're not wildly successful, but you're so happy - you're a wild monkey, swinging on a vine and eating a banana you picked yourself. Maybe you don't know where your next banana is coming from, unlike in the circus, but half the fun is finding it.

This made me laugh way too hard:

Perhaps this is because I spend too much time reading those "Am I the A**hole?" stories, but whoever thought to apply it to The Lord of the Rings is, in my opinion, a genius. Perhaps they were a child prodigy themselves.

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