A Song about Songs about Trains

 

Today I worked from home, so I don't have much to say. Then we had a condo board meeting this evening, so I didn't have time to make recent videos into movies and post them on YouTube. Instead, I'll just recount some things I forgot to mention before:

Last week Travalon was in a meeting at work where one of the people in charge said they have to get to know the kids and understand their world, and he said, "It would be easier if I understood what 'six seven' was all about." Everyone laughed.

Yesterday Travalon was playing an arcade game called Tapper where he was a bartender and had to sling drinks down the bar to a customer and then catch the empty glasses coming back. The customer came closer, and Travalon thought he was picking up a beer to fling to him, but instead he picked up the customer and accidentally flung him down the bar! He lost the game but he was laughing so hard that he didn't even care.

Last night at the open mic the kids were cute, but they giggled more than they sang. When we first got there, a guy was singing a song he had written that just kind of went: "Pink moon, pink moon, it's a pink moon." Made me think of the time at the late, lamented rock jam when another guy (same guy?) sang a song that just went: "Good dog, good dog, he's a good dog." This might be a good time to write the lyrics to the song Travalon and I wrote last night:

    You can write songs about love and loss,
    You can write songs about Christ on the Cross,
    You can write songs with your big old brains,
    But I don't want to hear songs unless they're about trains.

    Trains, trains, songs about trains,
    I only want to hear those songs about trains,
    I don't want to hear no songs about planes,
    I'm only gonna sing those songs about about trains. 

   
    I wish I had a second verse,
    But if I did, it would only be worse.

    At least this song has got a refrain,

    I only want to hear those songs about trains.

    Trains, trains, songs about trains,

    I'll sing about them till you put me in chains,

    Trains, trains, songs about trains,

    I only want to hear those songs about trains.

    Trains, trains, songs about trains,

    I really didn't mean to cause you any pains.

    But nothing about me is going to change,

    I only want to hear those songs about trains.

    Trains, trains, I'll sing about trains,

    Whether the sun's out or whether it rains.

    Nothing about me you can rearrange,

    I'm only gonna sing those songs about trains.

    I don't want to sing about the universe,

    I don't want to sing about what is worse,

    I only want to sing about the thing that's best,

    And that's the sound of a train going west!

    Trains, trains, songs about trains,

    Full of coal and full of grains,

    Empty boxcars are all that remains,

    I only want to sing those songs about trains.

There is a tune, but I'm not sure if it's original or if I stole it from a song that already exists. If there's any demand for it, we could sing this masterpiece and post the video here.

Famous Hat    

Jilly Moose is Fifty

 

Today I worked on campus, and Hardingfele and I went for a walk at noon. As usual we complained about the new system, and then I asked her if she remembered a gig we had a couple of months before COVID hit, at a school gym. She didn't remember much about it, but I'd heard the caller thought it went terribly. I looked on this blog and there wasn't much about it, so I looked in my diary Mariah... and there wasn't much about it. We were scheduled to play for two hours and the kids lost interest after one hour, and that was all I said. Was there tension? I don't remember. Then Hardingfele said we did another gig with this caller, but it was one I couldn't go to, a Maypole celebration at the local German restaurant and our first gig during the pandemic. Since I wasn't there, I can't say anything at all about that one. Maybe I misunderstood about the caller being unhappy with us, because if she was, why would she have worked with us again? 

After work Travalon picked me up, and we went to the Nitty Gritty for Jilly Moose's actual birthday. (The festivities keep going on and on, because on Saturday a whole bunch of them are going to a Badger football game.) We met Anna Banana II (who is back in town), Hockey Girl, and OK Cap there, and Jilly Moose of course, in a light-up tiara that said "50." Rich came later, and we ordered a cake for the table but could only eat half of it. The waitress led us in singing "Happy Birthday," but I threw everyone off when I tried to sing harmony at the end. Oops!

Jilly Moose asked me to write a poem for her 50th birthday, so here goes:

Happy birthday, Jilly Moose!
Now you’re the big five-oh!
You’re officially Over the Hill
Where nobody wants to go.
Our youth is all behind us,
But at least we’re not yet old.
At least we have a decade or so
Before we reach that age of gold.
I’ve been in this club a few years now
And I’ll say it’s not too bad.
The years I’ve spent within this decade
Have been the best I’ve ever had.
Now we can see the other side
Of the Hill, and it’s a great view!
So enjoy life on the far side,
And I hope this decade is good for you.

This poem is square, with sixteen lines, so our bass player would approve. It drives her crazy when we play a tune that isn't square, with sixteen lines. Hey! Maybe you could contra dance to this poem!

Famous Hat

Limerick for Our New Work System

 

This morning my throat felt a bit scratchy and I was coughing a lot, but I went to work on campus because we were going to have our biweekly meeting on the Union Terrace. Only... it rained all day. I did go to a co-working meeting with some other FART 5 members, but the thing I was going to work on got sidelined because a whole bunch of summer positions didn't transfer over correctly from the old to the new system, so I had to update them quickly before the payroll calc tomorrow. I was so confused that my new boss came down and helped me. Then I tried to create a new customer in the system so I could pay a group in Germany, but the system said I could only have one primary address. I was confused, since I had only entered one address. Thinking it had accidentally duplicated somewhere, I deleted it... and then the system told me it required an address. What?!? 

By the time we were supposed to have our meeting, my former boss decided we would go to Union South, which is closer... but their big bar area was closed. So we went across the street to a bar called the Library, which was around even when I was in college. Our current chair as of the start of this month couldn't make it, but our former chair came, and when my former boss poured me a glass of Spotted Cow, she said she'd like to see me cut loose. I said, "Nobody wants to see that, since my basic mode is Poet." She wanted me to make up a poem, so I came up with a limerick about the new system:

        There once was a system that sucked,
        Into which some odd things had been tucked.
        We didn't understand it
        And asked who had planned it,
        Because now we're all royally... screwed.

This was a big hit with my coworkers, and my former boss said wasn't there a song where you expected the end of each line to be a bad word and it wasn't? So I started singing, "Miss Suzy had a steamboat," etc., and another coworker said she remembered that from the depths of her childhood, so we started talking about the folklore of children's songs. Eventually Travalon joined us, and he enjoyed some beer and chatting with my guy coworker. 

After we got home, I abruptly lost my voice. I was supposed to lead Night Prayer tonight, but even with no voice that would have been difficult, since I was blowing my nose constantly. Did I catch a Minnesota virus? Anna Banana II thinks it could be caused by the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. There was an air quality warning today, which I hadn't been aware of, and Seabird and I did take a brief walk at lunch, but it was pretty rainy so we cut it short. Anna Banana II kindly prayed the whole rosary aloud tonight, because I could not contribute, and I had to use the chat function in Zoom to communicate. Toward the end of the rosary, a very big great horned owl flew into a tree outside our window and stared at me. Travalon saw it too. It was huge!

Here's hoping tomorrow I feel well enough to go to a funeral. Nothing tragic, she was in her 90's, but she was a pillar of our old parish.

Famous Hat

Mondayest of Mondays

 

Today was such a Monday. The guy came from the copier place to help me print envelopes, but it took over an hour because when they updated Windows it messed with the drivers for the printer, so he had to do a bunch of stuff I didn't understand. We printed all the envelopes as he told me a very entertaining story about trying to get home from Jamaica, then we printed the donor letters while we were at it. I gave them to the chair to sign, but we both agreed the font and the spacing were unappealing, and she didn't like the wording, so she's going to talk to my quasi-boss about it, since he wrote them. I used to write them, and I'll note that nobody complained about them when I did it.

I have heard from more than one source that if one entry in payroll is wrong with this new system, nobody will get paid, not just here but in the whole system, so Green Bay and Whitewater and Eau Claire, etc. People are losing sleep over this. I made the mistake of mentioning it to Hardingfele on our lunchtime walk, so now she's freaked out too. Also, when they brought over the funds into the new system, some of the coding wasn't right, so I have to use one with the code for research for payroll, but now it can only be used with the coding for instruction. I notified the grants guy, who told me I had to fix it, so I asked other people, who said the grants guy has to fix it. We're going around in circles, and it's not even a fund in my department, so I don't even think I can ask anyone to correct it. What a cluster munch this has all become.

I guess it's good to have things like this to remind a person that they aren't all that and a bag of chips, since the guy who was emailing me about my poetry said I had an astounding talent and am a genius, so it would be easy to get a big head except that the new system shrank my head right back to normal proportions. When Travalon picked me up from work with an iced pandan latte, it felt like someone putting a gold medal around my neck after a marathon. Oh, but I do have some exciting news!

I think that's supposed to be a shark's tooth necklace, but it looks like pearls, like he's Ruth Surfin' Ginsburg or something. Also, maybe it's just me, but it makes me think of Fred Flinstone for some reason. Is he a surfer or a caveman? The world may never know. Will it ever care?

Famous Hat

The Day of Unexpected Twists

 

Today was the Day of the Unexpected. It started when we arrived at Mass, and the woman who leads the Care for Creation team reminded me that we had a meeting I had forgotten all about. Whoops! Then our drumming lesson was short today because the teacher had to play at Fete de Marquette. Travalon had gone to the East Side Club to see a band playing classic rock, so I felt bad telling him he had to leave early to pick me up. We went back there so he could watch more of the band, who were pretty good - I don't love most of that kind of music, but I did know all the songs. I suppose most of my classmates from drumming class went to watch our teacher's band perform. Then Travalon went to Fete de Marquette himself to watch Marcia Ball with Cecil Markovitch and the Single B-Boy. Ever since we went on that Serbo-Croatian day with them, Travalon has been on a Croatian kick, listening to tamburitza music in the car (which I really enjoy) and even dancing around the house to it. He said I should mention on here how he was doing some Croatian steps he's seen in videos, and I was loving it.

Our bandmate who always hosts band practice is out of town right now, so the leader said she could host it at her house. Hardingfele said, "That won't work. Famous is deathly allergic to cats," because she has two cats. (Hardingfele has four.) I said, "I'll take some drugs and stick it out as long as I can," but Hardingfele kept insisting this wouldn't work, so I assumed she just didn't want to come. Oddly, the bass player, who was the one that suggested we have practice at our leader's house, never made an appearance. I took both the violin and the mandolin, got a bit lost and arrived late, but was still the first one there. I pulled out the violin, and the leader and I were playing along when Hardingfele arrived, so then we could play pieces for two violins. Not long after that, the leader's partner arrived with her eleven-year-old grandson who also plays the violin, so we had THREE fiddles. He only started playing the violin last year, but he's not too bad. He seemed to be keeping up. Then he asked to see the mandolin, so I put away the violin and took out the mandolin. I let him try it, but he had no idea what to do with it, so we all played "Metsakukkia" and the leader's partner recorded us and put it on social media. Considering that the kid was sightreading, I don't think we sound half bad. 

I needed exercise and to pray the rosary, so late at night I went out in my high vis gear.

There was a rumor that there could be northern lights visible tonight, but I saw nothing. That's okay, the ones I saw last October were so spectacular that they will sustain me for quite a while.

I did get an interesting email yesterday, about that piece "The Mystical Rose" that was set to the poem (or actually part of a poem) that I wrote. Some Lutheran (it's always Lutherans) wanted to perform it, and he wanted to know more about the poem, or me, or something. Like, he seemed confused that it had one last name on it, but now I have two last names. Maybe he has never heard of the institution of marriage? He asked what name I wanted on it, and I don't really care, but I did mention my pen name that in an ideal world I would use for all my writing. Just to confuse matters more. I'll be curious to see which name he uses, if he tells me.

Famous Hat

Ode to a Gallinule

 

Today I worked from home and had meetings all day. Four of them!! The first one is a check-in and usually lasts three minutes because nobody has any questions, but today they had all the questions, so it went well beyond its half-hour scheduled time. Another one ran over too. Also, I was very sore after our long walk in the marsh yesterday, but I have still managed to walk over three miles today, just very slowly.

This evening Travalon and I went to the new Turkish restaurant not too far from our house again, then we went to the music club we belong to. Usually I go there for Irish sessions or jam sessions, but today they had a concert of acoustic music. Travalon really liked it because they played his kind of music, and I enjoyed it too. The vibe there is so laid back, although the parking situation was bad so we missed the first song, and lots of people came in after us. The place was packed! We sat on a couch in the back, so it felt like being in a living room, especially since there were chocolate chip cookies and iced tea. A good way to celebrate the longest day of the year. As Colbert noted, last year the longest day was on June 21, but this year it's been every day since the inauguration. It was still light out when we got home, so Travalon fished off our dock while I joined Night Prayer. Tomorrow is supposed to be very hot for our outdoor gig, so hopefully we don't have an exploding violin disaster like what happened nine years ago at a different outdoor gig.

As promised, here are some flowers we saw at the marsh yesterday. This one is anemone sylvestris.

This one is sulfur cinquefoil.

And this one is spreading bladder pod, which sounds more like a disease than a flower.

This purple one was called hairy vetch, which makes me wonder about the pink-and-white one I always just call "vetch" - is it actually smooth vetch or something? Sorry, no photos of that one, but I have posted it on this blog previously. Just search for vetch.

Hmm, I think my phone's plant identification skills suck. I googled spreading bladder pod, and it looks nothing like my flower, so I tried my app specifically for plant identification, and it said it was bird's foot trefoil. That sounds right, and it looks right when I google it. I thought about getting rid of the plant app, since I have to pay for it (not much, like $30/year), but I'm keeping it for now. I don't trust my phone.

I did write a poem about our experience yesterday: 

Candy corn beak,

Giant yellow feet,

You thought you could hide,

But you must admit defeat.

I felt like a fool,

But now I see you, gallinule!

Famous Hat

Irish Music at Alt Brew and AI Poetry

 

Today I worked from home, and I went down to the dock at every break, but the ducks were not around. The weather was very pleasant, but the system we use to pay invoices was driving me crazy because I had submitted one yesterday, but today there was no sign of it. I submitted it again, figuring if it was stuck in the system, at least the fact that it was the same invoice number would trigger it to stop payment on the second one. However, I submitted it and stayed on the page, and I saw it wasn't in submitted status. I found a history log, and it said the attachment was too large. You'd think I would have gotten an error message, but no - it just goes off into the void. So I compressed the PDF of the event poster and tried again, and this time it seemed to work. It's always an adventure using these systems...

In the evening Travalon and I went to Alt Brew to see The Currach, a local band that plays Irish music, led by Daithi the Fiddler. None of my buddies came today - not my Irish teacher, not the woman with the Irish name and the curly red hair, and not my Shamrock Club buddy - although they had all been there last month, along with a bunch of other Shamrock Club people, when we couldn't go because we went to a jazz concert. I did see some people who go to the Lutheran church where I used to sing. The college Irish dancers came again, and they wanted people to get up and learn a jig, so Daithi pointed at me, since I have done other, less physical dances with them. And guess what? Irish jigs are as hard as they look! I can't really leap in the air or lift my knee up that high anymore. I wore my new argyle beret and the Waterford crystal harp pin, which got a tiny bit chipped. I felt so bad, but now it has character. Really, you can barely see it. And after all, do I want to put it away and keep it pristine forever, or do I want to wear it? If it gets too chipped up, that's just an excuse to go back to Ireland and visit the Waterford crystal factory.

Looking at my beret sitting in front of me made me wonder what the funny little wormlike thing on the top is called, and it does have a name: the cabillou. When I was living in the Basque country the summer I was twenty, the men wore black berets on regular days and red berets on festival days. When we went to Pamplona to see the Running of the Bulls, some of the younger guys had red berets on with cabillous that were so tall and thick that they looked positively phallic. (Couldn't find any photos of this by doing a Google search.) I love crazy words like that, like the guajeo is the piano line in salsa music. I told Travalon I should write a story where the main characters are named Cabillou and Guajeo.

I'm continuing to play around with Chat GPT. I asked it to write a haiku about argyle:

Diamond patterns dance,

Woolen warmth in crispest air—

Argyle holds the chill.

I came into Night Prayer late this evening, and Rich said I should show everyone how Chat GPT works, so Anna Banana II suggested we ask it to write a haiku about Daylight Saving Time:

Clocks leap while we sleep,
morning sun hides once again—
time plays tricks on us.

I showed them how you can give it a prompt, like, "Draw a cockatoo drinking a margarita while sitting on a pagoda," and it will give you this:

So Jilly Moose asked if it could draw Mr. Swanky. I asked it to draw a swanky moose, and I guessed it would be wearing a tux and tails, but I didn't predict that it would have glasses.

What's up with that? Rich says it's to make the moose seem more intellectual and therefore more sophisticated. To me, this moose looks like a waiter, like he should be serving you drinks at a nightclub with an Up North theme. Or maybe he's a groom at an all-deer wedding, waiting for his lovely caribou bride to come down the aisle. Why don't we have Chat GPT write a limerick about him?

There once was a moose dressed in style,
With a tux and a confident smile.
He sipped vintage wine,
Said, “This life is fine—
Being dapper is always in style!”

Famous Hat 

A Poem for ABC

 

It was a quiet but productive day of working from home for me. I thought maybe Travalon was going to come home with a new script for Get Kraken with Jerry, but he's said nothing about it, so it's my turn to be creative. This is a poem I wrote for ABC regarding their recent settlement of a lawsuit:

Don't ever commit a crime;
Obey your conscience every time;
In every circumstance, it's sound to
Advance the peace you want around you.

If it doesn't make sense, just read the first word of each line.

I don't have any photos, but Ma Hat did send some Advent photos: her wreath, the felt Advent calendar she made herself (and we had back when I was a kid), and some photos of the Pope's Mass in Corsica, where they were wearing pink vestments for Gaudete Sunday.

As you can see, these are from EWTN, the station that is the summation of everything that's wrong in American Catholicism today. I never watch it, but Ma Hat apparently does. However, since she's not Catholic, maybe it's not corrupting her...? It's just part of the wider complex of very rich people who get all us little people to argue over nonissues like "wokeism" while they are making sure all the money flows to the top. Then people wonder why life is so hard, and nobody is having children (because they can't afford them due to the money flowing upwards, duh) and everyone is overweight (because corporations put addictive substances in our food to sell more, duh) and there are school shootings all the time (because corporations want to sell unlimited amounts of firearms with no restrictions, duh). There was one here today in Madtown... at a Christian school. I would not call this shocking; I would call it inevitable. The people who claim the loudest to be Christian are the ones most in thrall to the horrible system set up by the oligarchs, and so they are the first to fall victim to it. Don't obey in advance.

Famous Hat

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.

Famous Hat

Ed Edited It

 

Today I worked on campus, and it wasn't too noteworthy of a day until I took my afternoon walk. I usually go at three, but due to our department meeting (which was plagued by connectivity issues that have been plaguing the whole university), I didn't go until well after 3:30. I walked my usual path, along the sidewalk beside the observatory, and ahead of me I saw a very large bird, but it was too short to be a crane. It took me a moment to realize that I was looking at a turkey. It looked at me, and we both sort of froze, waiting to see what the other one would do. Then it walked into the bushes, and I turned around and went the other way. When I said to the Night Prayer crew that I was surprised to see a turkey on campus now, when all the undergrads are back, they said, "They're not shy." I do remember one day walking down the street and seeing a guy mowing his lawn, and a turkey was following behind him like it was his pet. I'm sure it was just looking for the bugs thrown up by the lawnmower, and the guy may not have even known he had a turkey following him. Which reminds me - on Sunday Travalon and I stopped at a petting zoo where there were chickens that looked just like miniature cassowaries, and I thought he took photos, but he never sent them to me. I'll have to ask him about that.

Today I channeled Burma Shave for Tiffy's message about beandzdzdz. I sent each line at least an hour apart, because nothing is better than anticipation:

"Sometimes other people

Can seem like real fiends,

But we all have the same desires:

Peace, love, and coffee beandzdzdz!"

She requested a haiku, but I'm not sure how to do that, because how many syllables are in "beandzdzdz?" One? Three? I'd love to use the sentence "Ed edited it" in a haiku, but it has six syllables, and I hate to add or detract from so perfect a sentence.

Famous Hat

Ode to Niko

 

This morning as we drove to work, Travalon and I were listening to Charlemagne Tha God talk about the Donkey of the Day, and today it was Google for putting up a picture of Luther Vandross as some rapper, which shows they can't tell black people apart. That got me wanting to listen to Luther Vandross, so I put on "Till My Baby Comes Home," and then Spotify played more soul music. As we got to my building, it was playing "More Love" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, a song he wrote for his wife because she had suffered so many miscarriages, and the line "I'll be beside you every step of the way" really got to me because I hadn't heard the song in years and hadn't sung that line since being with someone I want to be beside every step of the way. I thought I'd be the only person on my floor, so I got off the elevator singing "More Love"... and some guy came out of the copy room and asked me if I knew how to change the copy ratio. (Answer: no, but I'm a clever monkey and quickly figured it out.) He didn't say anything about my singing, but maybe he didn't care either way, as long as I could solve his issue.

It was very quiet today, but I did get to talk to my colleague. We were going to talk tomorrow afternoon, but she has to be on campus, and she doesn't have her own office. I LOVE my office with a window - overlooking the Carillon, no less! It was not a very exciting day to blog about, so it must be time for another terrible poem:

Take a peek, oh

At my Niko.

My little plushy heart,

We're never far apart.

He's soft and indigo,

He goes where I go.

Sometimes he's jewelry

And I look like a fool, see,

Or he hides in my purse

And inspires this verse.

With his one eye,

He watches balls go by,

And when he's in the crowd

The team will end up proud.

Is he a good luck charm, a

Bit of happy karma?

Does he help me see

With more clarity?

That's why I speak, oh,

About my Niko!

And it's never a bad time for some DuoLingo bragging!

Famous Hat

Ode to Sleep

 

Today I read an article that says scientists have finally nailed down the exact amount of sleep people need: seven hours. I could have told them that, because that is how long I sleep by nature. My FitBit was set to yell at me if I didn't get eight hours, but I only sleep for eight hours when sleep-deprived, so I set it for seven hours and now it's usually happy with me. It's been a while since I waxed poetic, so here's an ode to sleep:

My needs aren't too deep,

Just seven hours of sleep,

Because eight is too much for me,

And six leaves me like a zombie.

I could do it every night,

If I didn't have to fight

With Boethius and his slog

Posting photos on my blog.

Why must he be so slow?

Where does all the time go?

How is it after eleven?

Now how will I sleep for seven?

Suddenly I hear "beep beep,"

And I got only six hours of sleep,

But if I can patiently wait,

Then on Saturday I can sleep late.

So now I'll wrap up this rhyme

And get into bed on time

So that tomorrow doesn't come too soon

And leave me sleepy by noon.

Famous Hat

Back to the Crane Foundation

 

Today was another day at the actual office, but I almost didn't get there in time because I had forgotten to set my alarm and woke up a quarter of an hour late. Fortunately Travalon was able to drive me to work, so I did get there just in time. Then I found that people are sending things to my work email address about activities happening over the weekend, so I don't find out about them until Monday morning. Other people are sending things to an email address I rarely use and often forget I have - I'm not even sure how they got that email address! Seriously, I have had my personal email address for over two decades so you would think that would be the one everyone would use.

Yesterday I was complaining about feeling stuffy, but I said it had to be allergies and not a cold because my eyes were itchy and watery. I sang a couple of lame verses to "That's Amore":

"When some dust hits your eye and it just makes you cry, that's allergic!

When you sneeze without end and alarm all your friends, that's allergic!"

Then Travalon sang:

"When you see a whole pie and you just can't deny, you're a Fat Bear!"

Then we drove out to the International Crane Foundation, since we can go for free whenever we want, as members. Also, we were going to meet Jilly Moose and OK Cap out there. We took the Merrimac Ferry across Lake Wisconsin, and Travalon got some pictures of fall colors from the ferry.

Then we got to the Crane Foundation. The blue cranes were busy preening.

I tried to get them to look up by singing Gallus to them, and this one did look up.

Just then a volunteer came by, so I was a little embarrassed. I hope he didn't think I was harassing the cranes! We moved on to the black crowned cranes.

We never saw the gray crowned crane, because her mate had just died so she was hiding in her house. We did see the demoiselle cranes.

And the wattled cranes, who were busy digging in the dirt.

The female Eurasian crane posed for us.

In the distance we could see Crane City with autumn foliage behind it. This is where they breed the cranes, and usually on Members Day you can get tours of Crane City, but they didn't have them this year. Also, Members Day was when I was hanging out in the corn maze.

The red-crowned crane is always so graceful.

This is a brolga, a crane from Australia.

This photo of the black-necked crane made me laugh. It looks like a big, angry chicken.

Here is a crane fountain right outside where the black-necked cranes and brolgas are. It's right by the prayer wheels.

This is the white-naped crane posing just for Travalon.

The whooping cranes are so beautiful.

I love the reflection in this photo.

Travalon's favorite, the Siberian cranes.

I bought some crane socks in the gift shop, but we never got to meet up with Jilly Moose and OK Cap because they arrived just as we had to leave so I could get to my Irish class on time. 

We had been listening to the Packer game in the car, so we knew that they beat the Washington Football Team, but in the evening we watched the first half of the game. This evening we watched the second half. A radio announcer said the Packers are the least penalized team in the league, which gives me pause, because does it mean that they play politely, or that the referees favor them? I wouldn't have guessed that they were the least penalized, since they get plenty of penalties when I watch them. Some are richly deserved, like when one player tore an opposing guy's helmet right off his head, and other ones I don't get, and often the announcers don't either. Sometimes I swear they are just making new ones up, because they'll come up with something I've never heard of before. How do they know what's a penalty? Do they have a special referee school? I'd rather be a color commentator - Travalon already has to listen to me do that through the whole game, so why not get paid for it?

Famous Hat 

Jilly Moose's Birthday and Willy Street Fair

 

Yesterday was Jilly Moose's birthday, so in the morning Travalon and I met her for coffee at Crema Cafe, then the three of us drove to Holy Hill. Tiffy had said she might meet us, but she decided not to, which was a good thing because it was bananas there - they were having a craft fair, so we had to park very far away and, worse, downhill. We thought about checking out the craft fair, but you had to pay to get in, so we just went up to the shrine. Here are some photos Travalon took.

This is a little model of the first church on Holy Hill.

This is a model of the current church.

This cross is the first religious relic on Holy Hill. It was made out of wood by some German immigrants, and it has words in German carved on it.

It was a beautiful day, so we could easily see the skyscrapers of downtown Milwaukee from the upper lever of the shrine. Then we went to the gift shop, and of course I bought rosaries. 

From left to right: a little kid's rosary that I thought was adorable, a lavender rosary I thought was so pretty, a bright pink rosary that cost almost nothing and that I hoped would glow under blacklight (nope), and a Chotki, which is an Eastern Rite chaplet on which you pray the "Jesus Prayer" one hundred times. I'm not sure why I was inspired to buy one at Holy Hill when I didn't buy one at the actual Eastern Rite monastery we went to some years ago, but this one did come with instructions. I had no idea it was kind of like yoga, but it's sort of a breathing exercise, because you're supposed to breathe in during "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God," and then you're supposed to breathe out on "Have mercy on me, a sinner." It's really hard to do this one hundred times! I did it last night. 

Here is a close-up of the little kid's rosary so you can see the smiling hearts that are the Our Father beads. So cute!

On the way home from Holy Hill, we took a walk in Oconomowoc between two of the lakes, and we also checked out that weird thing in Ixonia that looks like a fierce robot. In the evening Jilly Moose had a bonfire at her house, and a lot of Night Prayer people showed up. The ones who couldn't joined us remotely for Night Prayer. That was a lot of fun.

Today right after Mass, Travalon and I went home and changed into tie-dye to go to the Willy Street Fair. The parade was supposed to start at eleven, and we got there at quarter after and there was no sign of it, so we assumed we had missed it. However, we immediately found the West African food cart that has baobab shakes, so we got real food there too, for lunch. Just after we finished, there was a commotion, and it was the parade! Here is a video of the start of it.

We also shopped, and I was shocked to find rosaries at the Willy Street Fair. Honestly, I think this vendor might have been the same as the shop at the mall that sells alpaca wool products. The rosary on the right has square beads!

Here are some more videos of the parade. Travalon took more, and I will try to assemble his into a short movie and post it soon.

After the festival, we took a hike on Governor's Island, and then after my Irish class, we took a short boat ride. I took some photos of the moonrise and Travalon in the boat, but this photo of the remnants of the sunset was the only one that really turned out. 

We found one perfectly ripe seed head in the lotus patch in the river, so I picked it, and we each ate a seed. The little baby plant was perfectly formed in my seed, so that made me sad briefly, but the stuff inside the seed was so tasty, and anyway we already have enough lotus plants all over. We did pass one lone lotus, and Travalon said it was a lonesome lotus. I said that sounded like a song, so I made one up:

            Lonesome lotus, all by itself.

            Lonesome lotus, out on the shelf.

            Lonesome lotus, can't pollinate,

            Lonesome lotus, but it wants to mate.

            Lonesome lotus will never have seeds,

            Lonesome lotus, but it has needs.

I feel like there was an equally bad song I came up with yesterday or earlier today, but my readers are spared because now I can't remember it at all.

Famous Hat