These Lyrics Really Speak to Me

 

Yesterday was very cold, but I could work from home and was hoping I wouldn't have to leave the house. Travalon didn't have to work because there was no school due to the cold, so he was home with me, coloring in his Beatles coloring book as I worked. I kept checking to see if the Adoration Chapel had been closed due to the cold, but it hadn't, so I had to go. Travalon decided he would take me, and he had fun hanging out on State Street. I was surprised because there was a loud gathering in the church hall, and then they all went upstairs. It's lovely that events are happening at my church again, but they're never anything that I am privy to. 

Today I worked on campus, and not only was it cold, but it was snowing as well. I had to meet the pizza delivery driver to get the food for a meeting that I wasn't part of, but then my colleague didn't want to walk outside, so I took a short walk outside and then got back in time to have some leftover pizza. Fetalicious, my favorite! It has feta and spinach. 

Coming home was scary with the falling snow. The shuttle that usually takes half an hour took over forty minutes, and then my drive home was even slower. To my surprise, Travalon had beaten me home even though I caught the shuttle before my usual one. We headed to Mamastep's birthday party at the Nitty Gritty in Sun Prairie, and we sat by the couple we had sat by last year. I got along with the woman so well that she friended me on social media, but we haven't seen them since then. Mamastep said we should all wear crazy hats or crowns, so a lot of the women had tiaras, and one had a very impressive crown. I wore my silver hat that kind of looks like a crown. One woman had what looked like an ancient Egyptian headdress. The men had less interesting hats, if they wore them at all, but Travalon did wear the Croatian sausage baseball hat that Cecil Markovitch had given him. (Cecil and I have matching ones.) We talked about social media reels, like the guy who bakes old recipes and the woman who critiques fashion, and I showed them my latest obsession: Adam Rose doing a duet with a person playing a chord progression. The original video has the letters of the notes being played, and Adam Rose said, "These lyrics really spoke to me, so I had to do a duet." He has a really good voice, but it's the way he interprets the "lyrics" that kills me. Here it is:

Someone pointed out in the comments under the video that this is a stealth Rick Roll, because the chord progression (which is lovely) is from "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley. All I know is that I could watch this video one hundred times and never get sick of it. The lyrics really speak to me too!

I did forget to bring up Philomena Crunk while we were talking about videos. She's my other obsession lately.

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Eagles and Pelicans in Okee

 

Today Travalon and I couldn't get going again, so we went to the later, nearby Mass and saw the same couple we had talked to before, as well as the mother and brother of a long-dead famous comedian. The wife in this couple is also named Famous, and I thought she looked familiar, like the friend of a friend on MyFace. We talked for a bit, and I thought maybe she wanted to hang out sometime, but neither of us asked. When I got home, I wondered how to find her. What was their last name? I knew where her husband worked, and his first name, so I quickly found him with a Google search. Then I did a search on MyFace for someone named Famous with that last name living in my town... and a person popped up who was already one of my friends. No wonder she looked familiar! She must have sent me a friend request years ago because we have twenty-two friends in common. I vaguely remember accepting it even though I had no idea who she was. So I sent her a private message that we should hang out sometime, but I don't think she's seen it. Looking at her page, she doesn't post too often.

Travalon and I drove out to Okee to take a walk and check out the bird scene, and we saw lots of bald eagles sitting on the ice. We had seen some large white birds on the other side of the bridge while driving there, but we couldn't stop on the highway to check it out, so we walked along the bridge to see if we could find them. Suddenly we saw a pelican swimming much closer to us, so I assume the big white birds we'd seen from the highway were pelicans, not swans. Then we saw six more pelicans swimming in a group. This is the first pelican sighting of the year for us - I thought they hated snow and waited to come back later. This guy saw us looking at the birds, and he started telling us about which birds were around when, and that the shad (which I assume the eagles and pelicans both eat) grow in population for six years, and then there are too many and every seventh year there is a massive die-off. He said the pelicans have only been around for the last four years, which matches what we have seen.

When we came home, we went out to the dock and saw coots nearby and scaups further away. Then Travalon left to visit his mother, and I went for another walk. I saw my neighbor who is turning eighty on Tuesday, and the famous comedian's brother, and we were both like, "Hey! I saw you at Mass this morning!" He said, "I've been behaving perfectly since then," and I said, "I promise you that I am not keeping track." He was smoking a cigar as he walked along. I kept thinking maybe I heard a train horn in the distance, but it was so faint that I thought it was probably my imagination. When I got my move hours for the day and then my ten thousand steps for the day in quick succession, I headed inside... and as soon as I sat down to blog, I heard the train pass by. Sigh.

Yesterday all we saw off the dock were the mallard with a purple head and his mate.

We also saw this lotus seed head right off the dock! How did we not notice that before? If we had seen it when the seeds were ripe, we wouldn't have had to go out in the boat to collect lotus seeds.

Today as we walked along the trail to Paradise Island in Okee, we saw this hollow that we had never noticed before.

Here are photos of the eagles, the pelicans, and some gulls.

Here is a young one that seemed to be related to the mature one above, since at one point they were right next to each other.

This photo just makes me laugh.

A second juvenile eagle flew in and joined the first one. They touched beaks and hung out.

So I think this is their mom.

Here is a photo, slightly out of order, of the first juvenile eagle with the adult one. I wasn't going to include it, since it's off-center, but it shows how different they look, and that they seem to be related.

And then we saw the pelicans on the other side of the bridge.

Here are the two young eagles again. I think they may be nest mates?

Here are photos from our dock. First, coots.

I like how the male scaups sometimes stick their necks waaaay up. It must be a mating dance move.

This looks like a line of male scaups chasing one female.

Tonight I'm finally going to band practice for the first time in ages. Hope I still remember how to tune the mandolin!

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Lost in Translation: "Santo Subito!"

 

Yesterday I was so tired after work that I didn't blog or do much of anything. Travalon and I watched Soul, a Pixar movie about a jazz musician whose soul gets stuck in a cat, and another soul goes into his body. It was pretty entertaining, and not entirely inaccurate about the in-between state. Then today I had to be on campus for interviews we are conducting for a dean. Why am I interviewing potential deans? Because I'm the Vice Chair in my shared governance body. The Chair was actually going to do it, but he couldn't, so I stepped in. It was a lovely day out, so I appreciated having to walk back and forth from the Union twice. 

Otherwise, nothing too noteworthy happened today, although at Adoration I saw someone had left a bunch of rosaries in the place where anyone can take them. I wasn't going to take one, but there was this really off-the-wall one with black and yellow beads and then very colorful starting beads, so I did bring that one home. When I got it home, I saw it was actually poop brown and yellow. Which reminds me, today I was looking at MyFace and someone had posted "Santo subito!" which I think literally means "saint suddenly!" in Italian but anyway, it is what people say when someone who dies was so holy that they feel like there is no need for a drawn-out canonization process, so basically "Saint right now!"... and MyFace "helpfully" translated it as: "Holy sh!t!" I don't know if all this incompetence on the part of artificial intelligence makes me less or more scared of it.

Travalon went down to the dock to enjoy the beautiful day, and he took some photos of waterfowl. This is the mallard with a purple head that we have seen other years.

Here you can see the "tuxedo duck" I saw on Sunday with a regular male mallard and two females.

This is a Canada goose, but I'm sure you knew that.

This is a male bufflehead.

I'm very puzzled by this black duck.

Is it just a female bufflehead in bad lighting? There is a duck called a black duck, but it looks like a dusky female mallard, so that is not what this is. Maybe I'll ask the Hive Mind at Wisconsin Birding if they have any idea. Sometimes people put really sketchy photos of birds on there, and they can still ID them. I'll let you know if I do it and they can tell me what it is.

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The Worst Thing You Ever Did, Except for That Other Thing

 

Everyone's a punster lately. Richard Bonomo said he was going to make my post reviewing my cold "go viral," and when I asked Tiffy if we should do the Corn Maze tomorrow, she said, "Let's play it by ear." I have one friend on social media who makes terrible puns, and sometimes the comments other people make are even funnier than the puns themselves. He said, "Ents suffer from resting pitch face," and someone commented, "I was going to make a graphic of this joke, but I realized the ents don't justify the memes." Another time he said, "I stopped at the stand that sells cherries and fireworks. Bought a bing, bought a boom," and someone said, "Unsubscribe." But my favorite reaction was when the guy I think is his best friend (they have lots of inside jokes) said, "That would have been the worst thing you ever did, except for that other thing you did." I love this line so much that I am going to have to use it in some random situation, although maybe it won't be as funny as it was on this post. This same person said to the terrible punster on the post about the ents, "Would you stop?" and the original poster said, "Don't you mean WOOD I stop?" and his friend said, "You win this round." This is the content I'm looking for on social media. I'm sick of all the political arguments, and I don't need to see photos of everyone's kids starting grade whatever. I just want to laugh for ten minutes straight.

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It's a Small, Beach Boys-Obsessed World

 

Last week my garden plot had a bunch of happy bean plants, one pepper plant, some radishes, three big squash plants, four kale plants, four chard plants, four ground cherries, and a ton of volunteer tomato plants, besides the two strawberry plants and one chive plant that always come up. Monday when I went to weed, all the beans had been eaten down to nubs! The pepper plant was gone, and something had pulled up one of the strawberry plants, which was dead. One of the chard plants had been pulled up as well, but it was still alive, so I replanted it, and today it looked really good. I should have spaghetti squash soon - I see several fruits, but none are ripe yet. Oddly, the ground cherries have tons of fruit, but I never seem to find any ripe ones. Is something or someone taking them as soon as they ripen?

Sadly, last week I found Lady Cardinal dead in front of our front door. I'm guessing she hit the glass and broke her neck. I moved her off to the bushes, and now there's nothing left of her but her delicate little bones. So sad! Even sadder, Lord Cardinal keeps singing loudly, like he's looking for her. I don't know if he saw her dead on the ground, or if he wonders where she is. I hope he finds a new mate next spring, poor guy! Last year they had a fledgling, but I don't know if they have babies this year, or if they're grown already, or if Lord Cardinal can raise them as a single dad. There are plenty of other cardinals in our neighborhood, but this pair lived right in front of our building, and we saw the two of them hopping around on the lawn all the time, so I feel like I knew them personally.

Today I asked Travalon what triggered the Beach Boys kick he's been on for the last couple of weeks, and he thought about it, and then he remembered that he was thinking of a speech teacher he had in high school. The teacher loved classic rock, and once he had them recite song lyrics, so Travalon recited "I Get Around," and everyone laughed because the words are so repetitive and silly. He said he wished he had kept in touch with that teacher, since the two of them talked about classic rock together all the time, so I said maybe he's on social media, and sure enough, he found him. They started chatting, and the teacher had just watched the same movie about the Beach Boys last week that Travalon had! And now Sirius Radio has a temporary station dedicated to the Beach Boys, just in time for Travalon's kick! Those are all weird coincidences, and then I had one too, because when I looked up this teacher on social media, he and I had a mutual friend - my old boss from the private sector. What a small world it is, with everything coming up Beach Boys all of a sudden!

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The Wonders of Outside

 

Feeling a little better today. My evil neighbor is still planning to replace the plants we kept at Rich's house all winter, but she did say we could plant those plants in the ground, and the neighbor I walk with says she can take them to Florida in the autumn, since they can grow outside there. The vines have lots of new growth on them, so we are sure they will recover and bloom. Of course, the evil neighbor asked the woman at the nursery, who said mandevillas never bloom as well the second year, but why wouldn't she say that? She wants to sell us new ones.

After work today I went to my garden plot with the neighbor I walk with, and when we went into the tool shed, we found a whole bunch of seeds they were giving away. I planted radishes, carrots, broccoli, kohlrabi, and banana peppers, and I still have seeds for pumpkins, spaghetti squash, and pattypan squash to plant - maybe tomorrow after work. My neighbor weeded around the baby plants I had planted last week, which are still small but otherwise doing well. One ground cherry looks like some of its leaves got attacked by bugs, and a Swiss chard plant looks like it got munched by a rabbit, but they look like they are recovering nicely. My neighbor collected the dandelion leaves, and when I got home, I ate them. Between the salad of greens and all that outdoor labor, I felt pretty healthy and happy.

Then Travalon came home, and we went on a short boat ride out into the marsh. It was the golden hour, just before sunset, and everything was so beautiful in the waning light. We didn't have much time, since I was praying with the Rosary Ladies in an hour, but it was such a beautiful evening that we had to get out there. Especially Travalon, who had to stay inside with the kids who refused to go outside today. Those kids! They just want to sit inside and play on their phones. I want to get this semiprofessional birdwatcher to give a talk to them and get them all interested in birds. He posts his very enthusiastic videos on social media, and I love them. Maybe the kids would too. He's younger than we are, and the same race as a lot of the kids, so they might relate better to him than to old white bird nerds like Travalon and me. I may be wrong, but I just feel like if some of these kids could feel the wonder of discovering birds, they would be so much happier and more grounded. If you are a preteen girl worried that your social media posts are not getting enough likes, what better cure than to forget yourself completely while watching an Eastern kingbird swoop around or lose yourself in trying to find the woodcock you can hear calling? Maybe we could get them involved in gardening too. Digging in the dirt is so good for a person's soul.

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Who Am I to Fudge?

 

Tonight Tiffy couldn't talk like we usually do, so when my neighbor asked if Travalon and I would go to a fish fry with her, I said yes. She is a very recent widow (and her husband died on her birthday last month), so she could use a little company. It was a beautiful evening, so after the fish fry, Travalon and I went out on the dock. There were a couple of birds there really swooping around - I think they were Eastern kingbirds but am awaiting confirmation from the Hive Mind. Travalon didn't see the birds at first, so he handed me his camera to take a picture of one, and it actually turned out okay.

Then the bird came closer, and he got a better photo.

Here it is from the side.

This is a sailboat with a colorful sail that we have never seen in the neighborhood before. We couldn't tell from our angle if it was a catamaran, since they are usually the ones that have such colorful sails.

Here is our buddy again. I was thinking he was either a kingbird or a tyrant flycatcher, but it turns out I would be right either way, since a kingbird is a species of tyrant flycatcher.

Just then, a great blue heron flew right over us!

And these red-winged blackbirds kept landing really close to us and letting us know how annoyed they were that we were on "their" dock. I told Travalon that we may think to ourselves that we pay the condo fees and they don't, but if they could talk they would just say they fought for this piece of territory and we didn't. So there. I love how there's an American flag in the background, like this bird is patriotic or something. It almost seems like a satire photo - instead of a bald eagle in front of the flag, it's the peskiest bird species ever!

I was reading a post on social media by a guy who said gun lovers border on idolatry, and another guy took umbrage with his judgment and said (among other things), "Don't be an unappointed fudge." Maybe this was just spellcheck, because this guy also wrote Moloch as "Molong," although my spellcheck does recognize Moloch and not Molong, and judge and fudge are both legitimate words, so why would it change one to the other? Anyway, don't fudge me for laughing at this guy!

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More Stuff Under Blacklight

 

I am starting to get really fed up with these memes that anti-vaxxers are posting on social media. It's fascinating that they have the freedom to refuse the vaccine, but they don't think we have the freedom to be mad at them for it. Freedom for me and not thee much, anti-vaxxers? Particularly disingenuous are the chastisements of all the people who think anti-vaxxers deserve what they get - how rich to hear that people shouldn't wish others dead from the same people who had no problem with the pandemic when it was mostly killing minorities and people in more densely populated cities. Can we just admit once and for all that both sides suck and wish the other side would die off? And yes, I do in fact hold the right-wingers to a higher standard on this, since they are the ones always blathering about being such good Christians, and as Christians we are called to forgive our enemies, so they have less excuse for wishing their enemies dead than the leftist atheists they hate. Another meme they post: "Why is the government giving out free vaccines but not free chemotherapy?" Tell me you're illogical without saying you're illogical: these are the same people opposed to socialized medicine, which would in fact give people chemotherapy without charging them. And then they wonder why the rest of us are angry at them!

My neighbor joined the secret society I'm in, since she saw how much I enjoy it, and she was at a summit where they got Wonder Marty ornaments to paint. I apologize for not taking a picture of Wooden Wonder Marty pre-paint job, but she said I should give him a tie-dyed stomach, so I did.

And since these were my blacklight paints, he glows under blacklight!

Today I worked from home, and it was autumnal out, so I wore my Galena hoodie. It also glows under blacklight. Apologies for the lousy photo - I may try it again with the light at a better angle.

And yet another rosary that I got at the Willy Street Fair partially glows under blacklight.

And guess what else kind of glows under blacklight? Jer-Bear!

It seems fitting that something named after Jerry Garcia would glow under blacklight. Travalon bought some psychedelic art prints at the Willy Street Fair, and I should at least take photos of them in sunlight, but maybe they glow under blacklight too. That's a post for another time.

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Third Time's Not the Charm for Blood Donation

 

This evening I went to give blood, and once again they rejected me. This time it was for the same old reason I always used to get - my iron levels are too low. I had been feeling all healthy and invincible and bulletproof when they were over 13, but that was from taking supplements on top of my multivitamin, which already has 100% of my supposed daily need for iron. Then again, my neighbor says her son, who is a guy in his 20's, has to take iron because he's so active - he's a long-distance runner. So maybe I'm just burning more iron than the average person, because I walk over five miles every day. So I asked the doctor, and she said I could take the supplements on top of the multivitamin. But will they ever accept my blood, or will they think of some new reason to reject it? That's the question...

This evening Travalon and I went down to the dock to watch the sunset. At first it wasn't the most impressive one, but then after the sun went down, it illuminated a cloud that looked like a burning feather. I took this first photo with Travalon's camera. (He took the rest.)

If you look carefully, there's a helicopter in this photo, at the right edge of the upper "evil eye" cloud.

These clouds really looked like flames in the sky.

Here is a sailboat coming in for the night.

Sailboats already in for the night.

And remember this little bird?

I put a plea on MyFace to the Hive Mind to help me identify it, and someone suggested it was a fledgling yellow-headed blackbird. Someone else suggested I join a MyFace group dedicated to birdwatching, so I did, and they confirmed that this is what it is. Ever since we discovered Patrick Marsh and learned it has the largest flock of yellow-headed blackbirds east of the Mississippi, I have wanted to see one in the worst way. And now technically I can say that I have, although it's not as striking as a jet-black adult with a bright yellow head. Still, it is quite pretty. Travalon actually spotted this bird first; usually I am the one who sees the birds first, and then I point them out to him so he can photograph them. Maybe the adults were not too far away from their fledgling, but alas, we never saw them.

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Living Down to Expectations

 

On social media I see one of my far-right leaning acquaintances is talking up a priest who argues that women can't be priests because we aren't straightforward and don't say what we really mean. I think there are legitimate arguments for keeping an all-male priesthood, but this one is a total Catch-22. As a woman who is naturally on the more straightforward side, I have been told time and time again that I have to modulate my responses, because I'm too blunt, which makes me "mean" and "nasty." Now there are times I can actually be mean and nasty, but not in a work environment. What I'm referring to are emails where I ask someone to do something and don't couch it in a bunch of florid language about how wonderful they are first. So over time I have gotten less direct and more roundabout in my approach, especially with male colleagues, since they seem to be the ones who complain more... and then I'm told my gender is terrible because we aren't straightforward after being told for years that someone of my gender shouldn't be straightforward because that's terrible. You can't win for losing when you're a woman. And I'll bet no man who was deep in thought was ever told to "Smile!" or told he has a face referred to with a sexist slur. (That's right, there's no male equivalent of "Resting B-tch Face" because a man who is deep in thought is allowed to look pensive.) I can't speak from personal experience, but I wouldn't be surprised if nonwhite people also have this problem - you can't be direct when speaking to a white male, because they're considered above you in rank for some reason, and then you're told that your kind is always so obfuscating and never say exactly what you mean. How about everyone is just allowed to say what they mean without a bunch of preamble? Or if you are going to request this preamble, men, then don't throw it back in our faces. Really, you're like some fifth-grade bully who pushes a smaller kid into the mud and then mocks them for being covered with mud. Grow the F up.

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Post without Pictures

 

No photos today - we went down to the dock this morning, but it's cold and windy, and the birds were all hiding. Anyway, today I'm going to post about two things that I've been pondering.

The first thing is a post I saw on social media by a Catholic guy who bragged, "When people say I'm opposed to sex, I remind them that I have seven kids!" It really rubbed me the wrong way, but it took me a while to figure out just what it was that angered me. Finally it hit me: sexual desire is a deep, primal need, like hunger. I do follow the Church's teaching that it must only occur in a marriage, but I have the deepest sympathy for those who are unable to do so, like people with homosexual inclinations or people who are not lucky enough to have found a spouse. We should acknowledge the brave struggle of such individuals. Instead, this jerkwad who happens to be lucky enough to have sex whenever he wants (and I can't help wondering how his wife feels about this) comes across like he's talking to someone who's starving: "Of course I don't hate food! I eat a seven-course meal every night! I just don't think YOU deserve food!" Is this a Christian response?? If it is, Heaven help us! No wonder so many people are fleeing from organized religion!!

The second thing was inspired by Richard Bonomo saying he's going to attend a Catholic conference on nonhuman intelligence, and by that they mean extraterrestrials and artificial intelligence. Nothing about animal intelligence. That got me thinking about extraterrestrial life, which I honestly believe exists and also honestly believe is 98% more likely to resemble slime mold than humans, and I had this thought: do we even deserve to see other life forms? Look how horrible we are to all the amazing, incredible, beautiful life forms we have on this planet!! Now I'm not saying there aren't people who appreciate nonhuman life, because I for one do, and so does Travalon, and plenty of other people I know do too. But sometimes people who are really into trying to meet space aliens couldn't care less about the life right in front of them, and certainly some of the people in power make decisions that are very bad for nonhuman life. (To be fair, many of their decisions are also very bad for human life, if those people have very little power.) And sadly, some of my coreligionists are the WORST when it comes to caring for nonhuman life - they say it doesn't matter, because animals don't have souls. Which isn't even official Church teaching, by the way.

Really, what's keeping me in the Catholic Church right now is Jesus, because it sure as Hell ain't other Catholics, as you can deduce from my two complaints enumerated here.

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Light Bright-Inspired Post: Plant Personalities

 

Happy Feast of the Annunciation! I realize that on St. Joseph's feast day, I didn't mention him at all in my blog post, and this is the Year of St. Joseph. I have been praying the Litany of St. Joseph every morning since the year was declared, and I even did the Seven Sundays devotion successfully - I say this not to brag, but to show that anyone can do it. If someone like me who is so easily distracted and can lose track of doing a novena can manage to do something for seven Sundays in a row, then really anyone can. 

This morning Travalon asked me if the Annunciation is a day of obligation, and I said no, we don't have to go to Mass today. Then he wanted to know if it was a feast day, meaning he could do all those things he gave up for Lent, like order Funko Pop figurines online. I said sure, why not, and then in that spirit I spent quite a bit of time on social media. For some reason I thought of a friend I haven't seen in years, someone I've known since elementary school, so I sent another high school friend a message on social media to ask if he knew what she was up to. He said she lives on the West Coast now and is bitter at the world. What a shame, but then again when I asked what he was up to these days, he said he's in a polyamorous relationship with two women. We were all kind of oddballs in high school, but I'm almost normal now, at least compared to the two of them. 

I also texted Light Bright, because she used to help inspire me with blog post subjects, and she suggested blogging about the personality of my plants: which one would be my BFF, which one would be my archenemy, and which one would steal my boyfriend. The first one is easy - the ZZ plant would be my bestie, because it's so easygoing. The plant that would be my archenemy might be the dumb cane I got when a coworker at the Press was shutting down his side business, and it was his office plant. It's huge, it's supposed to be indestructible, but right now it's covered with little fuzzy white bugs and is deathly ill. Or maybe it would be one of the pothos plants that have spread everywhere, and it's hard to walk in my plant room without tripping over them. There you go - they're trying to kill me! Now which plant would steal my boyfriend? I don't remember Travalon having a whole lot of interest in any of my plants, but come to think of it he does really like this tall, red-tinted cactus type thing. He always comments on it. I suppose as far as plants go, it's sexy - red and tall and slim and just a bit dangerous, with spines. So once again Light Bright comes through with a blog post idea!

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Snickle

 

Last night there was no Basque class, so I could have done Night Prayer or gone to bed, but instead I was naughty and scrolling on social media. Travalon and I both gave up social media for Lent, at least for the most part, although we can check notifications, and I have posted a few harmless things. (We're avoiding political posts.) I would have gotten away with it too, because Travalon was busy watching the Screaming Green Meanies or Oral Roberts or someone playing basketball during the March Madness tournament, and I was quietly stealth scrolling on our porch. I was looking at posts by someone I follow because I love his political and religious posts, but also his terrible puns and other funny stuff. He had one where he said, "And some people deny the existence of original sin," and it was a picture of something green with something brown inside of it. It took me a moment to realize it was a pickle with a candy bar stuffed inside of it, and the caption said: "Snickle. Follow me for more recipes." Then I just lost it, and of course Travalon heard me laughing hysterically out on the porch. Busted!! 

I wasn't sure anyone else would think Snickle was as funny as I did, but I did share it to my wall. To my immense gratification, Hardingfele immediately commented: "No." And I've gotten lots of other comments too, and lots of laughing emojis, so at least some other people must find Snickle a little amusing, if not as excruciatingly hilarious as I found it. I couldn't stop laughing for twenty minutes! I will note that the guy who posted it has also posted a picture of Peeps on pizza, which he also disapproves of, but I just find that disgusting, not funny. What is with all this food abuse??

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Mardi Gras: Pandemic Edition

 

A year ago Travalon and I went to North of the Bayou for Mardi Gras, but this year we're under pandemic rules, so he got takeout from there (a crawfish po' boy for himself and jambalaya for me), and we just listened to Louis Armstrong at home. It would have been cool to see the Big Easy right now, because of course they can't have their parade with the famous floats, so they're having "Yardi Gras" and decorating their houses as if they were floats. I've seen some photos - so cool! It's also Handy Woman's birthday, and she said of course it would be on Mardi Gras when we're all social distancing, so she just worked the polls for her birthday. She said not too many people showed up to vote, since it's a primary for a statewide race rather than a presidential election. This was the year for people having birthdays fall on celebratory days, since just last Friday it was both Lunar New Year and Richard Bonomo's birthday, and again no party. It would have been a fantastic party theme...

For Lent this year I am only doing what's necessary. (We'll see how long I can go before breaking this resolution...) I am only eating what is necessary and saying what is necessary and buying what is necessary. I'll check social media once a day in case it's someone's birthday or someone is trying to get a hold of me, but I won't scroll. Travalon said he is going to do the same thing with social media, and he's also going to give up buying collectibles during Lent. I will keep blogging, because to me that's necessary. It's a part of what I do, like breathing or washing my hair. Maybe I'll blog about Lenten reflections, like I did way back in 2009. 

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Discount Pundit

 

Years ago Tiffy and I were sitting around outside (it must have been a warmer time of year) at some late hour, and I said something about moving to DC. She said what would I do there, and I said be a pundit, which for some reason she found hilarious. She said it was just the sound of the word, but really, why wouldn't someone as opinionated as I am want to be paid for my scintillating opinions? Instead, I just opine on this blog, where I am technically paid every once in a while, for hosting ads nobody reads. Which is not totally true, since I have been known to look at them myself when I see a really interesting one. Since I make about two cents an hour, more or less, for writing this blog, I am truly a discount pundit.

Another thing I do really well besides opine is get into arguments with strangers on social media, although I am not particularly unusual in that regard. Last night I was getting into it with a guy who called me "dear" in that patronizing, condescending way that certain men talk to women, and I called him a sexist pig and said, "And you wonder why the rest of us despise you condescending, patronizing white men!" Someone else said I was being sexist and racist against white men, but I pointed out that I wasn't saying that about all white men, just the condescending, patronizing ones. I have no problem with most white men - I married one. Anyway, another guy gallantly came to my defense, and the jerk started insulting him, so I called the jerk "Tiresome Ted," since his name is Ted. He responded, "Of course I am, that's what happens when you work all day," so my insult clearly went over his head. I figured it was a waste of time to point out that I was TRYING to insult him and say he was tedious rather than weary, so I just let it go. Some people are just not worth your time, and for Lent I should give up wasting any time on them.

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Whipped Macha Failures

I am on a committee where people take turns taking the minutes from our meetings, but for some reason I ended up doing them several times. (Of all the odd things to have a talent for... I am so known for my meticulous note-taking that I end up taking minutes for every committee I am on, and my department's meetings as well. Why couldn't I be good at something useful, like basketball or making money?) Anyway, the head of the committee joked that he owed me coffee or tea, which did I like better, and I said I was an equal-opportunity caffeine fiend. I thought he had been kidding, but one meeting he did bring me both a bag of coffee and a box of macha powder! I just brewed the coffee for our usual morning cup o' joe, but I have been experimenting with the macha powder.

There is an Instagram fad right now of showing off your whipped coffee, which has only three ingredients: instant coffee, sugar, and cream. I am not actually on Instagram, but I have seen pictures of this delectable whipped coffee, and the instructions said you could use macha powder instead for a cup of green fluffy goodness instead of light brown. Since we only have real coffee around the house, I tried it with the macha powder, but my results have been less than photogenic. The first time I whipped the cream for hours, and it got thick but not fluffy, but Travalon said it tasted really good. The next couple of times the cream just stayed liquid, and again Travalon said it tasted good, but it was definitely not worth photographing and posting. Today I thought I knew what had gone wrong, but this was the day Travalon did not say, "At least it tastes good," because I beat the cream for hours, but it remained liquid... at least on the top. Unbeknownst to me, there was butter on the bottom. So we had chunks of butter in our macha lattes! I am now out of macha powder, so this experiment will have to go on hold until we can acquire either more macha powder or some instant coffee. Who knew making whipped cream could be so difficult? Feel free to tell me where I went wrong in the comments.

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Forgot to Mention...

Since I haven’t blogged in so many days, today you get a bonus post. I didn’t want to just add it to the original post, since that was already so long. Here are some things I forgot to mention during our adventures the past few days:

When I got to the sailing club, I asked the lady behind the desk if we could use a spinnaker during our ride. She said the boat we would be on doesn’t take a spinnaker, and anyway it was too windy. (It has always been my dream to sail on a boat with its spinnaker up.) I said I was wondering do we tip, and she said, “No, the boat is very stable.” I said, “No, do we tip the captain after the ride?” and she said no. I still feel weird not tipping him… Especially since he was wounded! While we were still tied to the dock, the boom hit him in the nose, and he got a cut on the bridge of his nose that bled profusely. He just put a bandage on it and continued on like nothing had happened, but if that doesn’t merit a tip, what does?

The really funny thing was when I posted something on social media about swimming at Devil’s Lake, and Travalon accidentally put a picture of a metallic thumb’s up as a comment. He was trying to delete it but accidentally liked it, so his big robot thumb’s up had a little thumb’s up because he had liked his own like. I laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe for a moment, and he said, “It must be time for me to take a break from social media!” He never was able to delete the metallic thumb’s up, but at least he was able to remove the little thumb’s up, so it doesn’t look like he goes around liking his own likes.

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Tiwtter, Sexism, and Heresy

If you want to be totally scandalized, just follow the Twitter feed of someone you respect, and you will instantly lose all respect for them. I very recently made the mistake of following someone on Twitter when I saw this person (whom I had looked up to for decades as a moral person) was following me. I saw this person was liking and responding to a lot of anti-Pope Francis stuff, and that they follow a person whose motto on Twitter is something along the lines of: “I am more Catholic than the Pope, but then so is [Prosperity Doctrine Preacher].” That particular person had retweeted a poll that asked if women should be allowed to vote, asking that only men vote in the poll. Over 75% of the men thought women should lose the right to vote, and judging by the comments, most of them think only white men should be able to vote. Don’t they think about how unfair that is? I am not advocating that only women should be able to vote, although there could be an argument made that we should have more than a century of that to make up for the time when we couldn’t vote. So why do these men want to take away my right? Now I realize that the original person I had highly admired until last night is not responsible for this Twitter thread, and they may not have voted in the poll or may have voted that women should retain suffrage, but just the fact that they would follow someone so anti-Papist gives me pause. If you no longer consider the Pope Catholic, it seems to me that you have made yourself a Protestant by definition. Now I am starting to wonder about myself – if all the “Catholics” I know hate Pope Francis (and it seems for the very reasons I love him, his focus on the poor and the environment), am I the one who has ceased to be Catholic? I no longer consider myself the same religion as so many of the people I go to church with, but what exactly am I as someone who is obedient to the Pope? Wouldn’t that make me Roman Catholic? So what does it make them?

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Social Media Musings

We all have friends on social media whom we haven’t seen in ages, and now and then Travalon hears that one of them died. This morning was the first time it happened to me, and if you think about it, that is pretty amazing, because I have been on “MyFace” for over a decade. This is someone I hadn’t seen in years, but he was about my age, and he leaves behind a wife and six kids. Whatever happened, it was unexpected – his wife posted yesterday that he was in critical condition, then she said our prayers were working and he was improving, but the next post was that he had died.

Speaking of MyFace, I just found out from another user that we all have profiles for the sake of advertisers, and that you can actually see your own profile. This is so they know what kinds of ads to target at you. One thing they list is your political persuasion, and I thought I was a moderate, but apparently I am a liberal. At least I am not “very liberal,” which is another choice. More intriguing is the fact that I am an African-American. Here I always thought I was white, though I had suspected I was Hispanic from the Spanish ads they are always showing me, but thank goodness for MyFace to tell me what my true ethnicity is. We looked at Jilly Moose’s and OK Cap’s profiles, and they are both political moderates, which puzzles me because OK Cap is a lot more liberal than Jilly Moose. Also, neither of them had an ethnicity listed, so they must be the default. Which is white…? Since that is what they are.

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Online Party (I Am a Winner!!)

Yesterday I was invited to an online party, so I chatted for an hour with a bunch of people I don’t know. The topic of the party was avoiding “adultitis,” so people posted questions like, “What is the silliest thing you have done lately?” and “What do you sing to make yourself happy?” I posted a picture of my little snowman and got some interesting suggestions for naming him, like Summer and Saki (get it? “Sock-y”?), and several people suggested Pilly because he looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy. How about Frost-toe the Snowman? Tiffy and Kathbert both thought of Sockitume, and Ma Hat suggested Toby, which is cute and has that added pun dimension for a sock snowman of Toe-by. So then I thought maybe Tobit, or possibly Benji, because he is full of rice and Uncle Ben’s is a famous brand of rice. Kathbert suggested a Lutheran hymn writer named Hans Sachs (pronounced Socks), but she also suggested combining Toby and Benji into Benito, which is kind of cute. Anyway, the snowman still does not have a name, but during the online party I entered a contest, which was to comment on the organizer’s question: “What are you optimistic about?” Other people said 2017 or their new job, things like that, but I just said, “Everything!” and I guess the organizer liked my attitude, because I won a T-shirt!! It has a picture of a cartoon bee on it and says: “Bee optimistic.” I am optimistic that it will arrive in the mail soon, and then I will take a selfie while wearing it and post it on this blog. Yay! What a fun online party!

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