Meetings Monday

 

Happy birthday to Pope Bob from Chicago, I mean Leo!

Today was a crazy meeting day. I met with my sort-of boss, a colleague, my actual boss, and a faculty member (each individually, not altogether), and then I had a shared governance meeting at work. I wasn't going to do that again, now that I'm salaried, but my district got reconfigured and then we no longer had a representative, so I stepped forward. What a pain! The meeting ends at five, and then it was running late so I had to leave to catch the 5:20 shuttle or I'd be stuck on campus until 20 to 6. Around 5:15 there was suddenly a steady stream of undergrads heading south. And the strangest thing is that as I've gotten older, in general the undergrads seemed younger and younger until a few years ago they looked twelve to me, but this cohort looks about thirty-five with a three-pack-a-day cigarette habit. They are so haggard! What happened to them??

When the shuttle dropped us off at the parking lot, a train was just pulling out to the south, and it had lots of beautiful graffiti on it. The other riders got in their cars and sped off, but I stood watching it, and then I noticed the shuttle driver seemed to be watching it too. Maybe he is also an art aficionado. As I was riding in the shuttle, I shuddered at the sight of some concrete monstrosity on campus, and it suddenly occurred to me why I love train graffiti so much: it's someone out there painting not for money or fame, but to add some beauty to our ugly modern world. I respect that, even if they are technically breaking the law.

My next stop was a political action group's open house, right on my way home. A neighbor was there, trying to talk me into canvassing or phone banking, and there were some really delectable treats. Then Travalon arrived at Zippy Lube, which is right next door, so I joined him for dinner there. While today was a cold, rainy day after all the hot, sunny ones we have had, I was far more cheerful than yesterday, and the jazz they were playing certainly did nothing to bring down my happy mood. It really started on my shuttle ride, just before the ugly concrete. Was I just happy to be heading home?

As promised, here are more screenshots from our train day a few weeks ago. This is a train we saw from the park in Waukesha. It had a lot of colorful graffiti, but it was going so fast that everything is kind of blurry.

Is that you, Santa Claus?

Here it came into sharp focus for just a moment:

There are still three more trains, although I did post photos from two of them, the ones we saw from Von Loppy's. It may take some work, but I'll try to see if there are graffiti that I missed when I was taking photos. I am willing to put in the work for you, my loyal readers.

Famous Hat

Mallards Game and Pagode Practice

 

Yesterday I had a really strange day. I was working from home when suddenly the internet stopped working, so I texted Travalon, and he confirmed that there was an outage. I couldn't just go to my own office to work, so I messaged my boss, who said I could go to the coworking space I had worked in the day before. I thought about it, but the day was so nice and I was feeling so sniffly that I just took half a day of personal time. This was probably due to the road construction I complained about on my last post. At first they said the internet would come back at 1:30, but then it was 5:30, and then it was 10:30. When Travalon came home from work, we went to the Culver Springs Natural Area. Here are some photos.

We hadn't been to a Mallards game yet this year, and the happy hour on the Terrace was canceled due to the police killing here in town, so while everyone else was at the vigil for the victim, we watched baseball. I had an infused drink, forgetting that they slow down time and baseball is already so slow that time seems suspended, so it was a very meditative game for me, although the Mallards did keep hitting three-run homers. In the end they won something like 14-2. Here are photos.

This guy was batting 1000 because he had one at-bat and hit a three-run homer. 

They have this stuff over the bleachers now, I guess to block out sun? And at night they light it up.

Here is a video of that.

Oops, this is out of order, but before that we went to a place in De Forest where train cars are parked, and we saw some graffiti.

And then, still before the game, we went to my future parking lot and saw more graffiti.

And here are a couple of Wisconsin and Southern engines.

And here are some screenshots I got off a couple of videos of local trains posted on social media. I recognize a lot of this graffiti, but now I'm wondering... is 4AL "for a laugh" or "for all locations"? Both are represented on the same train!

Today I was supposed to work on campus and give blood, but I felt sniffly again and canceled the blood donation, since they won't let you give when you're under the weather, and that was the only reason I was going to go to campus. Oh, and also to make sure my plants were okay, and to check for a book someone was waiting for. In the evening I went to the pagode jam again, and this time there were nine of us, which seemed like a better number than the large group last time. I am the weak link, but I still had fun, especially playing the drums with the deep bass notes. I brought the mandolin but never cracked her out. A lot of the group are in the real Handphibians, and they were supposed to play tomorrow at the Atwood Fest, but the whole festival has been canceled because of the shooting. Bummer, I was hoping to check it out tomorrow. I don't understand the facts around the shooting enough yet to have an opinion; it's always bad when cops execute people of color when you feel like they could totally de-escalate if it were a white person, but I've also heard the person was armed and had wounded one of the cops. But then I've also heard the guy was on the ground and they shot him point-blank in the back of the head, so that doesn't sound like self-defense on the part of the cops but rather vengeance. All I know is the system has got to change because entirely too many people of color end up dead at the hands of cops. I read something recently that said liberals believe the law should treat everyone equally, so they try to appeal to fairness with conservatives, but it's a lost cause because conservatives believe the law should protect high-status groups and bind low-status ones, never bind high-status groups or protect low-status ones. Which I guess if you want to be that horrible, that's your right, but then quit saying how Christian you are. Jesus totally taught that everyone is equal in the eyes of God, so they should be equal in the eyes of the law too.

While I was at pagode, Travalon went out on the dock and took sunset photos. Here's my favorite.

When I came home, the moon was big and bright, so I brought my telescope out to look at it. I would get it in view, but then when I tried to focus, I'd lose it again. Travalon came out and took a photo.

Honestly, this is probably as good as it would have been looking through the telescope. 

Famous Hat