Mysterious Puff of Wind

 

The Dairyman's Daughter is in Trinidad, and am I jealous? Maybe. She's been posting beautiful photos of the tropical foliage and the beach on social media, and she was talking about the interesting things she's gotten to eat. She got knocked down by the waves at the beach, and her swimsuit was full of sand. That sounds like a perfect day to me! To our surprise, she logged into Night Prayer tonight with her two genial hosts, so that was really cool.

Today I had a meeting for yet another committee I am on - this one specific to the college, not the whole university. There are some new people on the committee who seem pretty cool, and it was so good to see the returning ones again. I guess this is what the term "collegial" means, that warm feeling you get from seeing people where it isn't strong enough to be love or even real friendship, but you always enjoy seeing them and talking to them.

Then after work I went with a couple of my Union peeps to the Labor Temple to... well, we weren't quite sure. We thought we were filing things, but it turned out we needed to print off the meeting minutes first and then file them, and in my opinion this could have been an email: "Please print the meeting minutes." I guess nobody had access to them to print them off while we were there? There was a computer in the office, but I didn't notice if there was a printer. 

I came home and was reading more about Tibetan spirituality, but everything seemed normal. The roofers were packing up for the day, and they seem to be mostly done with our roof. It looks beautiful, but I don't really know enough about roofs to say if they did a good job. I was sitting on our porch, and then Travalon came home, and while he was in the other room, a puff of wind came into the porch and blew around the banner we have on the wall of a sailboat with its spinnaker up. Suddenly everything felt surreal, like I was in an altered state of consciousness, or like the world was fake. We had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, and I noticed that I enjoyed it, even if I didn't feel like I was really there. Whatever it was, the feeling soon passed, and I feel normal now. Did I get lightheaded from something? But it seems like it had to do with that puff of wind, because generally we don't get breezes into our porch, since it faces east. Maybe I will never know what that was all about. I'll let my readers know if I ever figure it out.

Famous Hat

Ode to January

Sorry that I didn’t blog yesterday, it’s just that I had nothing to say. Remember the days when I was wildly creative on this blog? Yeah, me neither, but I do feel like my older posts were a little more interesting than my most recent ones, which are all either a recounting of my weekends or what I’m doing for exercise. Speaking of exercise, I was surprised to find out that on an average day at work, I walk two miles in my short jaunts around the building. That doesn’t even include the mile walk I try to take at lunch most days, though not when it is so cold outside. Today was a little warmer, but I must have forgotten my cuddly rosary in the jacket of another coat, because it wasn’t in my backpack, so I didn’t take a rosary walk outside. I just closed the door of my office and sat on the comfy couch my former boss rescued, and that’s how I prayed the rosary. See, isn’t this an exciting blog post? Maybe it’s time for another poem:

I’ve got nothing to say,

It was an average day

And the weather is cold,

Which is getting quite old.

It can sure seem

Like a January dream

That goes on and on

Until your sanity is gone.

I used to think

January didn’t stink

Because, you know, hey,

It contains my birthday.

But then I got older,

And it seems even colder,

So why bother to be true

To a month that makes me blue?

I’d like January fine

If I were drinking wine

On the shores of the sea

Underneath a palm tree!

Famous Hat

Palm Tree Fan's Caribbean Cruise

Here are some photos from Palm Tree Fan's recent Caribbean cruise.  Since I will not be going to the tropics this winter, I will have to enjoy her trip vicariously... and now you can too!  These pictures are from St. Thomas, St. Maarten, and Nassau.

And what photo depiction of a tropical vacation would be complete without at least one close-up of a palm tree?

And of course we must have at least one tropical sunset.  How about two?

 

Thanks, Palm Tree Fan, for sharing all these great pictures!  It's almost like we're there... well, kind of.  OK, not really, but they still are a lot of fun to look at!

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The Tropical Ancestral Bunny

I have always found it a bit puzzling that rabbits, which are supposedly temperate climate creatures, love tropical fruit so much. Their favorite flavors seem to be banana, papaya, and pineapple. I was saying to Toque McToque that this is very strange, since bunnies and bananas did not evolve together… unless rabbits are truly tropical creatures that somehow found themselves in cold, snowy climes and this is why they are now so bitter. You know, like humans. So my goal is to visit Hawaii to search for the elusive ancestor of today’s lagomorphs. Surely there are still two or three hopping around on the islands, right? I have read many strange theories, but so far as I know, this one is original to me, so I am hoping to get a government grant to fund this science research.


Another bonus: if I lived in Hawaii, I would have easy access to tropical fruit in order to create the line of rabbit treats that will make me a millionaire. Today’s treats come in flavors like carrot and apple, which are OK with my rabbits, but they really prefer the tropical flavors. Judging by what Cashmere loves to eat, I would also have a lot of success making rabbit treats in flavors like Phone Book, Electrical Wire, and Yoga Mat. I’m sure there is a vast, untapped market out there for Yoga Mat Yums, and I am just the one to tap it. And you, my half-dozen (give or take one-fifth of a reader) readers, can say you knew me when!

Famous Hat

Proper to Its Function

Years ago I kept having dreams about a beautiful building in Istanbul that had domes and minarets, but when I went inside, it was just an office building with a lobby containing a dreary fake plant, a bored receptionist, and an elevator. When I told my dad about the dreams, he said it was the Hagia Sophia, but that it isn't an office building. Not long after that I actually got to visit Istanbul, and the moment I stepped inside the magnificent Hagia Sophia, I could feel an enormous lack. It was not an office building, but it was no longer a place of worship. Now an office building does not feel sacred, but it does not have that same emptiness, almost a hunger, about it. It was built to be an office building and is proper to its function. The Hagia Sophia, however, was built for a sacred purpose, so that now that it is just a museum, it no longer has its proper function, and the loss is palpable.

Of course you knew that this post was going somewhere with palm trees and hammocks, so here it is: the proper function of humans is to be tropical and crepuscular. That's right, we are SUPPOSED to be taking midday naps under palm trees. This is why people are so crazy around here, because we are forced to live in a diurnal, temperate existence. We did not evolve to be awake all day in a cold, snowy climate. It's not proper to our function.

Famous Hat

Famous Hat Joint: Tropical Song

Here is a bonus post for the New Year. This is my all-purpose tropical song which can be done in any tropical style. (I posted the lyrics here.) However, I would need some more musicians to do all those tropical styles, so the third verse is my roundup call for musicians to join my all-purpose tropical band. The second verse establishes my tropical cred, and the line in the first verse about "salsa bassoon" has to do with the fact that I apparently don't know the difference between bassoons and bass saxophones in salsa music. As you can see, this hat has clearly had one too many daiquiris and/or espressos!

One note: The words to the third verse have been changed to:

If you play steel drums, then I need you (tropical song!)

Especially if you play timbales too (tropical song!)

I need ukulele and slack-key guitar (tropical song!)

And a great horn section, wherever you are (tropical song!)

Famous Hat

Pictures of Paradise

Here are more photos from Palm Tree Fan's Caribbean cruise this past winter. While I have gone on a Caribbean cruise myself, my photos are for the most part not worth posting. (Unless, of course, you enjoy looking at the sail of a catamaran. I'm not saying that the all-you-can-drink beer and margaritas influenced this subject choice...) Or how about a lovely picture of Tiffy taking a picture of the sunset? Yes, it's true - I am not a good photographer!

Figure 1: Wish I Were Here

In keeping with the tropical theme today, I created a station on the internet radio site that plays Hawaiian music. At some point I tried to add Tahitian music, and the internet radio site has a real paucity of anything Polynesian (other than Hawaiian), but for some reason it started playing reggae after that. I like reggae well enough (but NOT reggaeton!), so I let it go, although it is supposed to be a Polynesian music station. Maybe they figure tropical is tropical...?

Figure 2: Or Here

As long as the "purity" of my station had been so violated, I decided to go ahead and add some calypso music. I couldn't find anything under either "calypso" or "steel drums," but oddly now my station has started playing Ted Nugent! What has that got to do with the tropics at all?

Figure 3: I Would Certainly Settle for Being Here

Speaking of purity and violation, and relating to the astrology theme of yesterday, once Ubi Caritas was trying to annoy me by saying how after we got married we would live in the suburbs and drive an SUV. (This is why I am still single.) I said, "You know, there may be vehicles called the Aries and the Taurus, but they'd NEVER name a car after your sign!" So then we debated about the best advertising slogan for the, say, Ford Virgo:

Ubi Caritas: "Feels like a new drive every time!"
Famous Hat: "Pure driving pleasure!"

And now you can see why neither of us went into marketing.

Famous Hat

The All-Purpose Tropical Song

Continuing the "I'm So Blonde" theme, when I first got into salsa music, I was amazed to hear how often they used the bassoon. When I told the OTHER choir director about this, he was skeptical so I fetched a CD and played "La Mitad" by Willie Rosario, a song prominently featuring the croaking of a low reed instrument. The choir director listened intently to it and said, "That's a bass saxophone!" Like I would know the difference?? After that he would always joke about the salsa bassoon, like when we were doing a Bach cantata at the Lutheran church and he was assembling an orchestra, I said, "What, no bassoon?" since there seemed to be every other instrument known to mankind, and he said, "It's not salsa, you know." The moral of the story: sometimes it's a good idea to hold off on that plan to sell everything, quit your job, and become a professional salsa bassoon player.

Interestingly, A-Joz and I have very similar "career-for-a-day" fantasies: we both would love to be nightclub singers and/or jazz musicians. If anyone would like to indulge us in this fantasy, we'd be happy to do it on a Tuesday night to minimize damage to your business and/or musical reputation. How about it, nightclub owners and jazz bands?

The episode with the "salsa bassoon" inspired me to write an all-purpose tropical song for my imaginary band. This band would, of course, either have to be ENORMOUS or have members with extraordinary talent and lots of instruments lying around, because in order to play any type of tropical music called for, I would need the following: a slack-key guitar player and ukulele player for Hawaiian music, all sorts of percussion and brass for salsa (not to mention a keyboard player!), steel drums for calypso, etc. You get the picture: this band would have about twenty-three members. On the plus side, we could play the Tropical Song in any tropical style, including Dance Hall. (But not reggaeton, please!)

And, of course, I had to include a stanza about my tropical cred and why I am the best person to write a tropical song, considering that I have spent my entire life in temperate zones. So here, without further ado, is the All-Purpose Tropical Song:

Tropical song, tropical song,
I want to sing it all night long,
Tropical song!

I love that scorching tropical heat (tropical song!)
I love that sensuous tropical beat (tropical song!)
I want to dance under a tropical moon (tropical song!)
I want to hear you play salsa bassoon (tropical song!)

Tropical chorus here

The blood of the islands flows through me (tropical song!)
England and Ireland surrounded by sea (tropical song!)
It was cold when I was born (tropical song!)
But my sign is tropical - Capricorn! (tropical song!)

Tropical chorus here

Twenty-three members in my band (tropical song!)
Tropicalest group in all the land (tropical song!)
So many members when we play (tropical song!)
We each get fifty cents in pay (tropical song!)

Tropical bridge here, followed by tropical chorus and tropical finale

Note: Nightclub owners, A-Joz and I will be available to perform this song most Tuesdays in May.

Famous Hat