Today I asked my sorta-boss if I could work from home because it's so cold out, and to my surprise he had no issue with that. Which makes for a relaxing day, but not much to blog about. What to do in that case? Why, write another story in the writing prompt journal I got with the gift card from Cecil Markovitch! This one was based on the prompt: "Write a story about the assistant of Marco Polo."
When Marco and I got to China, we had some incredible food, especially the noodles and ice cream.
"Marco," I said, "This stuff would be a big hit back home."
"Nah, Luigi," he replied. "Nobody will like this stuff."
Good thing I didn't listen to him. When we got back to Italy, I'd had enough of being a valet, and I opened my own restaurant, the first Chinese restaurant in Rome. But did we serve kung pao chicken and sizzling rice? No, we did not. What I liked was that ice cream and those noodles, but I didn't know what to call them. The Chinese names would be too exotic for the usual clientele. So I asked my brother-in-law, Giuseppe, what he thought I should call them.
"This cold stuff," he said, "call it 'gelato,' because gelato sell a lot of this! It's delicious!"
"Gelato. Got it. And what about the long, slurpy things?"
"Hm." He slurped up a noodle as he considered the question. "I'd call it 'pasta' because I wouldn't put it pasta to make a million lire selling this stuff!"
So Luigi's House of Pasta and Gelato was a great success, and I'm happy to say that both dishes caught on, so that now everyone thinks they're homegrown Italian cuisine.
Today was so, so cold out. We had a relaxed morning; I meant to do some more plant care and cleaning, but instead I wrote to Mariah and screwed around on social media. Eventually Travalon and I did venture out to Sauk to see eagles; we saw a few eagles flying around, but mostly what we saw were mergansers. These are mostly common mergansers, and the white ones with black heads and red bills are males, while the gray ones with reddish-brown heads and perky crests are females.
In the following picture, it looks like a male goldeneye is pursuing a female merganser.
I don't know what these little birds on the phone line are, but they are cute.
This looks like it could be a male red-breasted merganser, but it's hard to tell. It could be a female common merganser.
This guy is like, "I am outta here!"
And he's gone!
We stopped by Pheasant Branch to see if we could find the eagles' nest, but you must have to get out of the car to see it, and we were too cold. We did see three very cute deer up close, in someone's yard, and Travalon said if the deer were in his yard, he'd invite them in for some corn when it's so cold out.
Then we came home and I had an edible we had gotten in Galena, so a while ago but it didn't expire until this coming April. I remember taking a whole one and being way too stoned, and then I saw that it said to cut it in half. Why is this my problem? Why not just make two small ones instead of one big one? But I did their work for them for no pay, and... it seemed just as potent. Time slowed down, but music was amazing. I could hear each part of the music distinctly, and the lyrics seemed to stand out more. While in this state, I wrote another story in my story prompt journal, using the prompt, "The best thing that ever happened":
"The best thing that ever happened was that God became man and then died for our sins. That story has already been written by four other guys, maybe you've heard of them? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That's a lot of perspectives, but do you know whose is missing? A woman's! And I was right there to see it all - no, not Mary Magdalene - me, Johanna. At least one of them mentioned me being right there under the cross. Yeah, I saw it all, and could I tell you stories! Hmm, no advance and 20% of net sales? Let me think about it. I'm not in any hurry, people have already waited two thousand years to hear my side of things, they can wait a few more months. Just think, I can answer all your questions about Jesus, like how tall he was, what color his eyes were, whether he had a favorite song - you know, the things men never seem to remember. Is his best friend of thirty years married? He thinks so, and he's pretty sure her name is Pam, or is that the girlfriend he got after the divorce, or was that his friend John he was thinking of...? They have no idea."
OK, so pretty sexist at the end there, and really just a stream of conscience blather, not a story, although you get the idea she's pitching it to a literary agent. Then I got sucked into watching the football game. Travalon really wanted Indiana to win, but he also wanted Miami to make it a game, and they did - they were just about to win by one point when the ball was intercepted. Which reminds me, Wolverhampton got their first and (so far) only win on my birthday. If I were the huge fan instead of Travalon, I'd say that was a birthday present for me. But I'm still a bit stoned even all these hours later, so maybe I'll wrap up this post before it becomes as stream-of-concience as my "story."
Yesterday I worked from home, then in the evening I met Cecil Markovitch (the Instigator), the Single B-Boy, R Van the Terrible, and Richard Bonomo for a fish fry at Kavanaugh's. I wasn't going to have a drink, but then they had ice cream drinks, so I caved and had a grasshopper. When we left, the weather was terrible, with sleety snow, but I made it home and talked to Tiffy until Travalon came home from the Van Halen tribute band concert he was at. I had brought most of my dinner home, so he had some of it.
Today the snow continued, and we didn't venture out until after three. I made a video for you of Travalon's train videos the first day of our road trip:
Then I went up into the loft to take care of Jolly Bob, which had a lot of dead leaves after our trip. The Norfolk Island pine looks really bad and may not make it, but it was struggling before the trip. It was so happy at Rich's house, but it wasn't happy where I had it in the loft, so I moved it in front of a south-facing window, and it only seems unhappier. I am at a loss. Maybe it's too hot in the loft, and it loved the barely-heated back room where Rich had it. I was going to take care of the plants in the main plant room (I already did some of that right after we got back), but for some reason I was exhausted after pulling dead leaves off of Jolly Bob, even though my FitBit said it was only seven minutes of moderate exercise. But the FitBit never seems to agree with my lived experience, whether it's saying I had twenty minutes of intense exercise when I was barely doing anything or only light exercise after a walk so vigorous that I can barely catch my breath. It makes zero sense.
Travalon and I went to the pharmacy to get my special face cream, and we got some chocolate and, weirdly, earrings. They are "woke" earrings made of recycled materials or something by indigenous communities. I just really liked them.
Then we went to Barnes and Noble because Cecil had given me a gift certificate for my birthday, and Travalon loves that place and needs no excuse to go. I got a creative writing journal with prompts for short stories, a book about unsolved mysteries, and this little cutie:
No name yet. I haven't even decided what gender it is. (Funny - last night we had a big discussion about gender vs. sex.) All that was more than the gift certificate, but Travalon generously donated his $5 loyalty reward to the cause, so I hardly had to pay anything.
Our last stop was to Klein's Greenhouse, because I had a coupon for $5 off this month on a houseplant for my birthday. I knew just what I wanted, too - a black ZZ plant, because the one at work really didn't like being watered with leftover coffee (weird, because the green ZZ plant LOVED it), and it is barely alive. It hasn't died completely yet, but it hasn't had any new growth in forever, and it lost all its leaves, so it just has some stumps sticking up. Everything I've read says it can recover, but will it? I promise never to water the new black ZZ plant with old, cold coffee. It was also a lot cheaper, even before the coupon, than the original black ZZ plant was. Maybe I got ripped off with that one.
We went back home, and I wrote a story in the creative writing journal. Here is my story, using the prompt "A taxi driver who is hailed by his doppelgänger:"
Easy McGee was out driving his cab last Thursday night when he was hailed by someone who looked suspiciously familiar. He wasn't very interesting-looking, and Easy tried to place where he'd seen him before. "Where you goin'?" Easy asked him. "The Four Foot Hotel," said the stranger. "Wait... don't I know you from somewhere?" "Name's Easy McGee," said Easy. "Hm," said the stranger as he slid into the cab. "That doesn't ring a bell. I'm Wiley O'Reilly." Easy inspected Wiley in the rearview mirror, then he let his eyes slide to his own face and realized with a shock where he'd seen the man before. "We could be twins!" he said. "Interesting," said Wiley. "Where do you hail from?" "Alberta, Georgia." "I'm from Georgia, Alberta. How old are you?" "Forty-six," said Easy, who wasn't ashamed of being middle-aged, though he considered the question impertinent. "Me too," said Wiley, and then he turned into five raccoons wearing party hats... and Easy McGee woke up in his own bed.
Me again. I emailed the story to Cecil and said, "Sorry you wasted your money like that." Which reminds me that when we were texting about the Django Djam, he said he was going to have a grasshopper even if it shortened his life, so Travalon said, "Life is short. Why not make it shorter?" and Cecil said, "That is some good Croatian logic!" And in case you are wondering, there is no Alberta, Georgia, nor is there a Georgia in Alberta. That's why it's called "fiction."
I wasn't sure if the Irish session at Lakeside Coffee House was canceled due to snow, and the red-headed flute player was out of town anyway, but Famie went and said there were a ton of people there. I got there a bit late, and my fiddle was only a little out of tune, plus she didn't seem mad like the mandolin - she seemed happy to see me, like, "Ah, there you are again, old friend!" But Famie and I were flummoxed by the sheer number of tunes we didn't know. Once in a while they would play one we knew, but it was too fast for her to play along. Travalon had dropped me off, so when he came back at what I thought was the ending time for the session, I went over to join him, and just then they decided to play the Ballydesmond Polkas, so of course I had to stay for that. According to Famie, the session was still going strong almost an hour after I thought it was ending, but I was done anyway. She said they played a lot more tunes we knew last month, while I was on my trip with Travalon. That's okay, I'll take palm trees over jigs and reels any day.
Today I worked on campus, and it was a crazy day as far as meetings, people needing stuff, etc., but not too much exciting happened. A couple of times I held the elevator for a student who was only going up one floor, and one of them laid a SBD (Silent But Deadly) fart on the rest of us in the elevator before escaping one floor later, while we had to go up many floors. Thanks, dude.
It's been cooler the last few days, and I hope my houseplants are still okay outside. I have the black calla lily, Lazarus the Dracaena, the ponytail palm, and the purple tradescantia still out there. I went into the bedroom to see if we can close the window with that mourning dove nest in the way, but the sturdy, perfect nest that supported two babies to adulthood is gone; just a few sticks remained, and they didn't get in the way of closing the window. The problem seems to have solved itself.
We had another quiet evening at home, so Travalon and I finished writing in the State Park Adventure Journal we got at Rib Mountain this past weekend. We have not been to many of the state trails, but we have been to most of the state parks. Travalon says he has been to all of them, but some (like Lizard Mound) he was at as a kid and barely remembers. There were some he had been to without me, and there were others that I knew better than he did, so the memories are a hodgepodge of our time together and our single days. We still have lots of empty pages in the Adventure Journal, and for every state park or trail there are four suggestions of things to do, most of which we haven't done, so we will keep the Adventure Journal in the car and try to see some of these places and do some of these things. Of course, some of them are not anything we'd do willingly. Winter camping? No thanks! Watching the sun rise from an overlook? If the weather is warm enough to be out at sunrise, then the sun is rising too early for me to be there watching it. That's just science. But I was intrigued by the accessible tandem kayak you can rent at Lake Kegonsa State Park - maybe we'll have to try that. I do remember years ago a bunch of us were piled into a huge canoe, so many of us (five?) that it almost sank, and we could barely paddle around Lake Kegonsa while another friend sailboarded around and around us. That was the Big Banana, a giant yellow canoe with brown spots on it, just like a banana, where it had been repaired. It died in a windstorm when it was blown into a tree, many years ago. Once Rich and Kathbert tried to paddle in it using little toy paddles, bright orange plastic ones, which didn't work so well. Or so I hear - I wasn't in the Big Banana to see how badly it went, I only heard about it after the fact, but it would have been a sight to see: a big yellow canoe and tiny orange paddles! Kind of like when Oregon played against Syracuse in a Final Four game, because Oregon has chartreuse uniforms and Syracuse has bright orange ones, so that was the most aesthetically pleasing college basketball game I ever saw. But I digress.
Today I slept in quite late, then Travalon and I went to Dixie's Coffee for our bougie North Woods coffee fix. We took a walk on the Heart of Vilas County Bike Trail, but on the bridge that crosses Manitowish River, a whole bunch of bikers stopped so it was kind of crazy and we turned around. I saw a fuzzy yellow caterpillar (probably an American Dagger Moth) that I guarded while it crossed the path, and one of the puzzled bikers who passed by us was wearing a Madison Forward FC jersey.
Our next stop was the Trout Lake Nature Trail, which we had done last year too. There are lots of cute mushrooms along the trail and gorgeous views of Trout Lake from the top of the bluff. We stopped at the Win-Man Trails, thinking some were hiking trails, but even the ones marked that way had people mountain biking on them. We just split a kiddie quesadilla for a small, late lunch and headed to Presque Isle, which was about a quarter of an hour further north up the road. We were curious, because the name is French for "Almost Island," so we wondered if it was on an island, but it didn't really seem to be. We stopped at a couple of parks there and saw a pair of swans - photos soon. There wasn't much else there.
When we came back, we wanted to use one of the watercraft at our resort, so we took out the peddle boat that was tied to the dock. This was a challenge from start to finish because it was hard to get it untied, and then we had a lot of trouble steering it and mostly went in circles. We finally kind of had it figured out but were tired out by fighting with it, so we took it back to the dock... and then we couldn't figure out how to tie it back up again, so we pulled it out onto the shore.
After that we went to the supper club we went to last year and sat at a table in the bar, where a guy was singing and playing the guitar. Greg the Polish Bartender was there just like last year. I had the walleye and gave half to Travalon, and he had the steak and gave some of it to me, and then we had the Black Squirrel ice cream drinks, which are like Pink Squirrels but made with Chambord so they taste like raspberry and chocolate. So good! We wanted to go down to the beach to look at the stars again, but there was a group there who had started a bonfire and were listening to music, so we went to the other side - no chaise lounges, but the stars were even brighter. Eventually we went back in and started filling out the "Adventure Journal" we got at Rib Mountain of all the state parks in Wisconsin. That brought back a lot of fun memories. We have been to a lot of them, so we didn't finish tonight. This is a long-term project.
Yesterday I worked on campus because we had a co-working session for FART 5, and I love those. I walked with Hardingfele at lunch and tried to ask if any of my novel is salvageable, since she is the only other person who has ever read it, and she couldn't remember anything but the protagonist's name. Fair enough, it's been many years. Then I took the bus to adoration, and Travalon came to meet me so we could go to the baked wings place on State Street that he waited so patiently for. Seriously, it took that place years to open - you'd see the sign "Baked Wings," but it was empty. Always giving false hope, but now it gives real hope, or at least baked wings.
Today Travalon drove me to work again, and I had a meeting with the head of one section about what funds they have for the coming year. There was no time to walk with Seabird between that meeting and our department staff meeting at one, and Wednesday is the only day we are both on campus nowadays. However, soon she will be moving to my building, so it would be easy to see her even if we only had fifteen minutes to walk, like today.
The fun thing I did today was go to a research study on community-building using music improv. We aren't supposed to discuss the session, which I get, since it's part of the guy's thesis research, but I will say that we were supposed to improvise on a four-note repeating phrase, and I thought it sounded like flamenco. I said, "It's E Phrygian with a raised third, like they use in flamenco," and another person said, "You are really overthinking this." Maybe I do, and maybe that's because for years I did music by instinct, and then I found out there were words for all these things I noticed, so now I'm all excited to use my words. The problem is that a lot of other people don't understand them.
Afterwards Travalon and I met at the Union Terrace, as we used to do on Wednesdays in the summer. On Wednesdays the sailboats are out racing with their spinnakers up, and it's so relaxing to watch the colorful triangles gliding across the water. Wednesdays are also Open Mic Night on the Terrace, and tonight they started with the Raging Grannies, a protest choir of old ladies in crazy hats. Since I'm getting up there in age, and I love to sing, protest, and wear crazy hats, I may have to consider joining them. Art Paul Schlosser also sang some of his silly songs with the kazoo solos, and a girl with a pretty good voice sang who I swear sang last week, even the same songs. We ordered a pizza for dinner, and it was taking so long for our buzzer to go off that I went in to ask about it. First the guy told me they made the wrong pizza and they were going to remake it. I asked, "What kind of pizza did they make?" and he said, "They put every topping on it but one." While Travalon wouldn't have eaten that, it sounded good to me, so I figured he could just pick the veggies off, and I asked if we could have it anyway. The guy left and came back with a pizza, and this time he said it was the right pizza but they had burned it a little, so they were going to remake it. I was too hungry to bother with that, and only a little bit was burned, so I took it. When we took the burned part off, it wasn't even a whole slice worth, and we both had enough for dinner tonight plus some leftovers. It was much cooler at the Terrace than last week, but we had come prepared with jackets, so we had a fine time. I kept seeing people who looked familiar, even a woman from my improv just a couple of hours earlier. I guess everyone ends up at the Terrace sooner or later.
Today I worked from home, and at lunch I drove to Governor's Island and walked there. It seems a shame to drive more than necessary, but it's a wonderful walk, and that way I don't run into that crazy neighbor who stalked me back home. There were some partiers in Three Foot Bay, but the really loud music was off the front of the island, and when I was able to get to a spot where I could see the water, the source was Midnight Splash, the big party boat in our neighborhood. People can rent Midnight Splash, and I believe it's a house boat so they could stay on it all weekend.
In the evening Travalon and I went to the Monona Terrace for our first (and probably only) Dane Dance this year. We had some soul food (catfish, hush puppies, cole slaw, cheesy hash browns, and street corn) for dinner and a cornbread muffin for dessert. The first band was a Latin band, but the leader spent entirely too much time talking for my taste. Travalon said the colors of my hat and shirt went well together, so I asked him to take a photo.
It was a gorgeous night. Here we both are enjoying it. Travalon took this selfie.
The second band was a Motown cover band. The sun set, and the sky was pink.
Here's the same scene after darkness fell.
Here are the lights of the Monona Terrace.
Sitting on a roof under the lights, listening to music, made me think of a novel I never finished, one where the characters lived in St. Louis and Kansas City. It was my adolescent fever dream of what life as a sophisticated adult would be like, but I still wouldn't know, since I have yet to become a sophisticated adult. However, I do get to listen to music under lights on a rooftop, and I do get to go to St. Louis and Kansas City. I also thought of the novel I did finish, because Kathbert was able to salvage a couple of files of my poetry that Rich had, and so I asked if she could work her magic on the files from the novel. (Each chapter is its own file, and I shuddered at how pretentious their names were.) I remembered this novel as being atrocious, but I read a chapter in the middle of it and had some trouble remembering who was who in the cast of thousands, but I found it hilarious. Then I read the first chapter and found some of the cringier stuff. It's quite dated in some ways. Kathbert said maybe I could salvage the good stuff and write a leaner, better novel. What I need is an editor who could help me do that. Is any of it worth saving? That chapter in the middle is, but it can't stand alone. Also, the pace was frenetic. Reading this novel always puts me in a weird headspace, so I haven't done it in years. The only other person who ever read it was Hardingfele, and she said it was so weird that she couldn't put it down. Is that a positive review?
This morning I still felt kind of off, but not as bad as yesterday. Fortunately I slept well last night, and it was my day to work from home anyway. Travalon didn't have to work today, so he walked with me at lunch on Governor's Island. That was about as exciting as my day got.
Travalon had a more exciting day. He had lunch at the bookstore in Watertown and then went to Oconomowoc. He fished but didn't catch anything. He met an old buddy to go swimming, and then they had a very late dinner. When he texted me that he was just leaving after dinner, I had already come home from Adoration and finished leading Night Prayer. I was a little short on steps, so I put on my high vis vest and went for a walk out in the dark. Now I am sitting on the porch, and a huge orange and brown moth is flying around outside. All day while I was working, hummingbirds came to our feeder. It was a good porch day.
Since I don't have anything else to say, I'll talk about my most popular written work, "Joey Banana." That's not the whole title, but offhand I can't remember what the whole title is, and anyway that's how people refer to it. I asked a couple of children years ago what I should write a story about, and one said multiple universes, and the other said a banana peel, so that was my inspiration. Joey keeps waking up and realizing he's in a parallel universe where bananas are round, where they live under water, etc., and then at one point all the Joeys converge. I think people just like the story because all the characters (including his brother Danny Banana) have Brooklyn accents. People would insist on doing dramatic readings of "Joey Banana" at Rich's house, and Tiffy's nieces, when they were little, said we should write a sequel where Joey goes to Banana Disney. That was a group effort, and my big contribution was that in the Enchanted Forest the birds don't sing, they play the saxophone. This story is old now; one of the little kids I originally wrote it for now has a little kid of her own. Maybe I should try to get it published. Which reminds me, the guy in Minneapolis who is so enamored of that choral work based on my poem "The Mystical Rose" sent me the sheet music he had prepared, and it looks great. Still, neither work will be the first thing of mine that was published, because I did have that article published in Guidepost magazine about our refrigerator. I even got paid! So no matter what happens with "Joey Banana" or "The Mystical Rose," I am a published author.
Today I worked on campus and took a quick walk before a lunchtime meeting. Here is another contribution to my "Faces of Campus" series:
I had another meeting after lunch, which was online, and we had our cameras and mics muted so they could talk at us. It was a very refreshing nap. Then in the evening, Travalon and I went swimming in the warm pool. The last few times we have been swimming, it doesn't show up as exercise on my FitBit. I must not be swimming as hard, yet my arms slightly ache. Partly this is because there were pink weights in front of a pile of pink pool noodles, and I was so enchanted with the pinkness of it all that after swimming around for about twenty minutes, I grabbed the weights and used them.
Here are a couple of things I forgot to mention: during my gig a couple of weekends ago, people kept raving over my mandolin, saying how beautiful it is or that they had one like it once but how did I play it without a strap? That's why I love playing gigs - it's definitely not the money, and sometimes it's not the tunes we play (I like some, and some I could live without) - it's the people going all gaga over my antique mandolin. It makes me feel like a Z-list celebrity.
Thursday my shuttle buddy was back, and we talked all the way to work and all the way back, so she must not be sick of me. When the shuttle dropped us back off at the parking lot, I could hear a nearby train blowing its horn. When I was waiting to turn from Aberg onto Sherman, I could see the train behind the houses there, and I hoped to beat it home. As I turned onto Knutson, I looked down at the railroad tracks and could see it in the distance. I waited in the Nau-T-Gal parking lot for what seemed like much longer than it should have taken to get there, and just when I had decided to go to the intersection at Highway M, I could hear it coming so I stayed put. It was the slowest train I'd ever seen pass by on that track.
For some reason today I was remembering how my college roommate and I wrote a newsletter for our dorm. We had both had friends in high school who called us "Biff," so the newsletter, called "Proof You Exist," was written by Biff and Biff. Our house fellow had said her boyfriend who went to another school might bring some guys with him when he came to visit, so one of our headlines was: "Mass Blind Date from Out of State??" The other Biff and I were considered kind of weird by the other people on our dorm floor (fair enough, we were kind of weird), and they complained about the title of the newsletter, so the next issue was called "Irrefutable Evidence of Your Existence," and it was just as goofy, so two other girls said they would take over. They wrote one issue, which everyone said wasn't as good as the work of Biff and Biff, and then, sadly, the newsletter ceased publication. I wonder if I have a copy of either issue somewhere?
Time for bed! Also, time for some DuoLingo bragging:
No calculus yet. I'm still adding fractions, and negative numbers, and sometimes negative fractions. I thought the next unit was imaginary numbers... but maybe I imagined it.
I totally forgot the big news yesterday: I am a published writer! My Guideposts for February/March came a few days ago, and I hadn't had a chance to look at it. I had completely forgotten that my article (for which I have already been paid $50) was going to be in that issue until yesterday, when a package from Guideposts came in the mail, and I remembered that they were going to send me ten extra copies to give to family and friends. I picked up the single issue that had already come and turned to the back page, and there it was!! My article! And the photo of me even looked really good! So now I have been published somewhere besides the side of a bus, and I have been paid for my writing for real, not just the paltry money I get from having monetized this blog.
Not too much happened today; I worked from home and went to Adoration. But I did forget to mention that yesterday the condo board president and his wife had a big container of fortune cookies from Lunar New Year, so they gave me two as I was leaving the meeting, one for me and one for Travalon. Mine said that I should work in education, which struck me as funny because I am not an educator, but I do work at a university. Travalon's said that he would find something he had been looking for, and he lost something on our trip, so maybe...? Here's hoping!
Here is a photo of some rocks I have collected lately.
I cannot remember where I got the lovely, smooth rocks on the top row - I think maybe along a lakeshore. The striped rock on the bottom row is from right outside our building, where there are a lot of rocks, and I think maybe the smiley face rock was too. My whole life I have been one to pick up interesting rocks. Now it's a more expensive hobby when I buy crystals, but I still find free ones outside.
Has anyone ever asked you for a headshot? Do people just have those on hand? I have a really good one that's got to be like fifteen years old, so I feel weird to use it. I asked my coworker who does our web design stuff to take one of me today, but it looked awful. Who knows, maybe I just look awful. Weird, because I'd been eating well the last few days, and usually I look worse after eating sugar. They want a headshot of me because they're going to publish a short article I wrote in Guidepost magazine. It has always been a dream of mine to have something published in Guidepost, and now it's coming true! If I can give them a decent headshot, anyway...
This evening I met my former neighbor, the one I walked with all through the pandemic, for dinner at Bellitalia. She had some train videos she wanted to show me from her extensive travels for the last four months, and she wanted to know what was new in the old neighborhood. She wanted cannoli but I couldn't even finish my pasta so I was going to pass on dessert, yet somehow she convinced me to split the cannoli with her. Then we went to try to find the comet, but we couldn't see it. How are all these people posting photos of it and rhapsodizing about how they can see it with their bare eyes? I tried taking a photo of the western sky, in case a three-second exposure would reveal what my eyes couldn't see, but all I got was a really good photo of the Big Dipper. Rich said the comet should be very bright right now, and people were saying they could even see it in the city, so I don't know why I am not seeing anything. We were all joking that it's a big hoax and there is no comet. It's supposed to be visible for a couple more weeks, but getting fainter every day, so I may still have a chance. Stay tuned...
Friday I took the afternoon off of work to go to my Irish teacher's funeral. At first I hardly saw anyone there that I knew, but some arrived right before the brief service. I talked the dance teacher into going to the party afterwards at the East Side Club, and we hung out for the whole party. I knew a lot of the musicians, who played Irish tunes for two hours. It was great! After the musicians packed up and we all got ready to leave, one musician said we had to have another gathering for all the people who were out of town, and she mentioned all the people I'd been expecting to see there. The dance teacher told me more details about the Irish teacher's illness: she found out in August that she had 12-18 months to live, but it moved so quickly that she actually had less than two months. I'm somewhat out of the loop, so I hadn't known she was sick, but everyone else was just shocked that it happened so quickly.
Saturday Travalon and I went to Hartland to have coffee at one of the Trail Businesses, and they gave me 10% off my pumpkin latte because we mentioned that we were there because of the Mammoth Hike Challenge. Then we took a hike on the Hartland section of the Ice Age Trail, which is right in town. I have photos, but for some reason they are taking forever to load, so I'll post them tomorrow.
We met Travalon's old school buddy and his girlfriend for lunch at the Delafield Brewhaus, which is another Trail Business. His buddy asked me why I prefer minor-key music, so I tried to briefly explain about equal temperament, and it turns out his girlfriend knows a lot about music. Cool! Then Travalon and I hiked on the Lapham Peak segment of the Ice Age Trail, and there were candelabras and all sorts of gravestones with punny names like Manny Bones and Myra Maines, we assume in preparation for a Fright Hike later this month that we saw advertised. Travalon took photos, so look for those tomorrow.
We had some time before the concert in Milwaukee, so we drove down to Vernon Marsh. To our surprise, the marsh was technically closed September through November, but we sat on a bench overlooking it, and I spotted an egret, so at least we saw one marsh bird. The colors were more intense in the eastern part of the state than back in Madison, maybe because the drought wasn't as bad there.
We tried to grab a bite to eat at Subway before the concert, but their bathroom was out of order, so we went across the street to Potbelly, which had a working bathroom and slightly fancier sandwiches. Then we went to the beautiful Pabst Theater to see the Little River Band. At this point none of the original members are left, and in fact none of the current members are even Australian, so it feels a little like they're a cover band, but they were really good and could nail the harmonies in all those hit songs.
Since we got back from Milwaukee pretty late last night, we didn't wake up until about two minutes before our usual Mass started, so off we went to the one at 10:30 north of us again. Today was actually sunny, so after having pandan lattes at Leopold's, we went out to Cross Plains to a pizza place that is a Trail Business, and then we walked on the boardwalks there that are part of the Ice Age Trail. I hated to go inside for Irish class, but it got overcast and cool anyway, plus we did something really fun. We broke into two teams, and each one had to give a place, a character, a weather condition, a food, and an animal for the other team to create a story. So the other team took our words to create a story about a pelican with a cucumber stuck in its pouch, wandering through the snow, so it went into a church to warm up, and a cowboy helped pull the cucumber out of its pouch. We took their words to create a story about a teacher who caught a mouse in her house, but the mouse said it would grant her one wish if she let it go. She wanted to go to the moon, so suddenly there she was on the moon, and there was fog that smelled like chocolate so she realized the moon was made of chocolate, not cheese.
I had even more fun at band practice. The bandmate who hosts practice lent me her grandson's violin, and our bass player also brought her violin, so the three of us played Irish jigs and reels while the guitarist played rhythm. I was surprised at how well I was doing. Maybe it's time to bring the fiddle to the slow Irish jam instead of the mandolin. I had brought the mandolin with me to practice today, and at first I did use it to play a harmony on "Amazing Grace." It's hardly neglected, so don't feel sorry for it. We don't have any upcoming gigs, so we might as well do whatever we want during practice.
Friday after work and before I talked to Tiffy, I played pickleball with my neighbor again. We played so much this past week that I lost three and a half pounds! I can see why this craze is sweeping the nation - not only is it fun, it does seem to work for weight loss!
Yesterday Travalon and I met Cecil Markovitch and the woman with the fabulous porch at Cecil's house, and Kathbert (who lives across the hall from Cecil) came to say hi, but we couldn't talk her into joining our pilgrimage. Then Rich drove up "just to say hi," but we did succeed in talking him into joining us. Travalon and I drove in one car with Rich in the backseat, and the others drove in Cecil's car. I told Rich about my mystical experience on Wednesday and asked for advice with the practical implications, and he had some good suggestions, so I will be working on this project. (I still haven't finished my project he inspired on our last pilgrimage, for St. Joseph's Day last year. I was going to write a book about twenty-five things I wished I'd known at twenty-five, but I'm stalled at sixteen.) We stopped at the Schultz Cheese Haus, which the others hadn't been to, then somehow our car ended up at one Culver's in Oshkosh while the other car ended up at the one at the next exit. We found them and had lunch together, and I ordered broccoli as a side instead of French fries. I thought it was fantastic that they offered that option!
We got to the Lady of Good Hope Shrine (I think that's the name?) in Champion a bit later than Cecil had been planning, maybe due to the stop at the Cheese Haus. (That was Travalon's idea, and I thought it was a great one!) Cecil went off to pray, and I went to the gift shop to buy a rosary. I bought a Murano glass one that looks like a leopard - photos soon! Here are photos Travalon took at the shrine. First, the church:
Here's the shrine:
He and I went to a county park nearby and took a hike, since we hadn't gotten any exercise yet. When we returned to the shrine, all of us went to a supper club in Appleton for dinner. I had the daily special, skate, which is a fish like a stingray. It was delicious! And guess what the vegetable was with it? Broccoli! I certainly got my daily recommended allowance of broccoli that day! After dinner everyone else had grasshoppers, but Travalon had a salted caramel ice cream drink, and I got one that was supposed to have an orange flavor, but it just tasted like vanilla ice cream. When will I learn that grasshoppers are the best ice cream drinks? This happens every time I order something else. After that we headed home, and this time Rich rode in the other car, since we didn't have to go back to Cecil's place. When I got home, I still needed steps, and so did my neighbor. Plus she wanted to tell me about the second family she just found out about. That's the danger with these genetics tests... She had asked her new half-sister if her fingers curved the way everyone's does in her family, and as we were walking this woman sent a photo. We just laughed so hard when we saw her fingers curve the same way!
Today Travalon and I went to the bilingual Mass at our church downtown, and I'm really starting to get into it. Some Hispanic people greeted me warmly - it's like we're becoming one group. Plus the priest gave a really good homily about how trying to live without prayer is like trying to drive with your eyes shut, and he also said we shouldn't get news about the church from unreliable sources that say Pope Francis is going to baptize chickens now or you need to prepare for the Second Coming by covering yourself in butter. He says it in both English and Spanish, so I am getting some exposure to Spanish. Then a bunch of us went to brunch nearby, and on the way back Travalon and I went to Fontana Sports to see if they had pickleball sets. I wanted one like my neighbor has, with two paddles and three balls in a handy little bag, but all they had was a huge one that included everything, even the net. We don't need a net - we have a tennis court. Travalon did find yet another stuffed red panda, and I got an Ice Age Trail bucket hat, because if there's one thing I need (besides another rosary), it's another bucket hat. Then we took a walk at Governor's Island and the woods across from the bluff, then he went to Devil's Lake to go swimming. He took some photos.
He brought his good camera but forgot to put the battery back into it, so those photos were with his cell phone. At the dam in Sauk he didn't see any pelicans, but he did see a blue heron.
Meanwhile, I did Irish class and then went to band practice. My one bandmate had taken those early music classes this past week, with her violin tuned to A-440 and her viol tuned to A-415, but I said, "In this band, we tune to A-Accordion." That joke didn't get as big a laugh as I'd hoped, but it's true - we have to tune to the accordion because she can't tune. There is a weird conspiracy theory I've seen online that A should be at 432 Hz because that vibrates with our bodies' natural frequency, and the fact that the modern A is 440 Hz explains everything that's wrong with society these days, but I don't buy that. If they said what was wrong with society today is equal temperament, that I'd believe!
I still feel great joy from my mystical experience on Wednesday of hearing from God directly. The closer you get to the Divine, the less interest you have in money and prestige and other worldly concerns, although you don't lose interest in the material world altogether - in fact, you feel more connected to the natural world. I also listened to some sacred music today that made me feel more connected to the Divine. I have Ma and Pa Hat to thank for this background in both music and religion, since they gave me violin lessons from a very young age and brought me to church. I feel bad for people who haven't had the same exposure, because everyone should get to experience this joy. Once you have felt Divine Love so immediately, you desire the same joy for everyone.
I thought I might not have time for a lot of exercise today, so I went for a good walk this morning. When I went out on the pier, I saw my favorite boat, the big yellow catamaran, coming down the channel to dock at its usual spot. I had been wondering if it would come back this year. Alas, apparently Midnight Splash will not be back. We haven't seen it, and the website to reserve it appears to be defunct.
Travalon and I drove out to Sauk, where I had three beautiful rosaries on layaway.
I had my gift card with me, and if I'd had the self-discipline not to spend any of it, it would have mostly covered the cost of the rosaries, but of course I had to buy narwhal socks (as part of a generous donation to the World Wildlife Fund) and a Packer hat that arrived yesterday. The hat is even better than I'd hoped; it's a floral bucket hat, but I didn't realize it had a drawstring, so it's perfect for boating or windy days.
After that, we went to the dam and saw pelicans and a blue heron, but when I downloaded the photos from Travalon's camera to my computer, I found a good photo of our buddy Tux Duck too. Of course, he doesn't live in Sauk - he lives just off our dock!
Then we drove to the Spring Green General Store for lunch, and I got a free iced latte because of being with the band. We sat out on the back porch, and eventually my bandmates showed up and were somewhat shocked to find out we'd be playing outside. I, on the other hand, felt like the day had been saved. I wasn't looking forward to spending two hours inside on such a beautiful day, especially since we'd had to spend so much time in the car to get there. There are train tracks right by the general store, so I imagined a train coming through and drowning out our music, but that never happened. We had very little audience that weren't people we knew, and I thought a couple of people I knew were going to try to make it but didn't. We joked that we were practicing, but honestly it was so beautiful on that back porch, and we were so in the groove, that I didn't care about our lack of audience.
We started at one, and at ten to two my FitBit told me I still had 110 steps to get. That surprised me, because I'd been sitting the whole time, so it picked up some movement from me. That gave me an idea: I always wear the FitBit on my left wrist, but what if I moved it to my right wrist? That's the one that moves a lot with all my picking. I am happy to say that not only did this idea work and I got my steps for the hour, but I even got a workout that was apparently "outdoor biking," and I got my 10,000 steps. Crazy!
Travalon had gone fishing after a few songs, and we saw a bunch of motorcycles pass by, then a bit after that we saw and heard a bunch of emergency vehicles pass by. I wondered if something happened to a motorcyclist, but Hardingfele (whose husband recently had a heart attack - he's okay now) said the crappy way 2023 has been going, maybe it was for Travalon. Of course that thought had crossed my mind, and she said maybe I should call him, but not long after that I saw his car returning. Then we heard Med Flight overhead, so we knew the accident must have been very bad. Oddly, I can't find a story about it in the news. There was a really bad accident up near Horicon, but that's far from where we were.
We each got $1.50 in tips. Back in the day, we actually made enough money at this that it basically covered all the expenses, like gas and new strings and fixing up my instruments, but now it's a pricier hobby. I don't know if we're getting worse, and that's why we have less gigs and tips, but I still love doing it so I'll just keep doing it. Travalon made some really good videos, but Blogspot says they are too large to load onto the blog, so for now enjoy Travalon playing an instrument on the Riverwalk in Beaver Dam.
In the evening we went to a talk that was part of a conference on the novel put on by a couple of faculty members in my department. They had specifically invited me to the reception to thank me for all my help organizing things, and they said I could bring Travalon too. The talk really fascinated me because the renowned author was talking about how her book was based on interactions with her friends, and how they reacted to being in her book. I thought that was kind of a mean thing of her to do, but then I thought, don't I do the same thing with this blog? She said she changed some things and then she remembered things happening the way she wrote them, but when she prepared for her talk, she went back to old emails and realized things had happened differently. I feel like this person is my soul sister, because in my own diary I once put a line in my roommate's mouth even though I'd said it, because it seemed funnier for her to have said it. Why lie in my own diary? I would have liked to discuss such things with this author, but tons of other people wanted to talk to her, so Travalon and I just had some delicious food at the reception and then headed to the Union Terrace. There was a really good band playing there called the Hails, so we sat and listened to them. They were the opening band for another group that we didn't like as well, so then we headed home. We walked so much there and back that I got another two workouts and walked over six and a half miles. To think that this morning I was was concerned that I wouldn't get much exercise or outdoor time! Fortunately neither turned out to be true on this beautiful day.
This weekend I told Tiffy about how Richard Bonomo and I did a dramatic reading of that scene of a children's play that a faculty member randomly received in the mail, and she asked if I had ever written a play. So I told her about Pizza Bear, the musical that was basically a double entendre ("Pizza Bear REALLY delivers!") back when I was in high school, and we both must have terrible memories because according to this very blog, we discussed Pizza Bear back on 20 November, 2020. I don't think the script exists anymore, but lonely Mrs. Lion, lonely Mrs. Tiger, and lonely Miss Panther each had a sad song about why they were so lonely (answer: Mr. Lion was leaving her alone with all the kids so he could bowl with his buddies, Mr. Tiger was always working late, and there was no Mr. Panther), and then the Greek chorus of giraffes sang in Andrews Sisters-style harmony: "Oh Pizza Pizza Pizza Bear, he brings it here, he brings it there, oh Pizza Bear delivers!" Tiffy thought we could do something with the script, like it would need a denouement, and I said I vaguely remember that it had one where Mr. Lion, Mr. Tiger, and Miss Panther's friend Mr. Leopard wondered why the ladies were ordering so much pizza. But this is a memory from more than three decades ago, so who knows how it really ended?
The next day at coffee I was thinking that I had written another play, and it started to come back to me. In college I was at a party where this guy was fascinated by the concept (or at least the name) of Hieronymus Bosch, and then his friend said, "Yeah, Hieronymus Bosch was my neighbor. I used to play with all the little Bosches. And then there was Mrs. Davis-Bosch. She was always... different." From that starting point I had written a play where Mrs. Davis-Bosch was a lounge singer who disappeared, and Hieronymus went to find her and somehow time-traveled back to the Etruscans. Hence the name: Hieronymus Bosch Meets the Etruscans. I believe the denouement of that one was that just as the Etruscans were about to kill Hieronymus, Boethius appeared in a deus ex machina that was just a sports car, and they drove away. Did they ever find Mrs. Davis-Bosch? I think she had decided to leave Hieronymus for a hot young Etruscan warrior, if I remember correctly. Since I have saved virtually every notebook I ever wrote in since college, it is always possible that this masterpiece is still lurking around here somewhere.
Tiffy thought that play sounded too pretentious, exactly like what someone who is a sophomore in college would write, so she thought we should focus on Pizza Bear. Though we can't even remember that we came up with a great plot twist two years and two months ago, with Pizza Bear being chased by a car (maybe driven by Mr. Lion?), and he throws his box of pizza up in the air, rolls under the moving car, emerges on the other side unharmed, and catches the box of pizza. After all, if Pizza Bear doesn't have to stick to his own species in matters of love, why should the laws of physics apply to him?
Today was a very quiet day, although the sun art is back, since it was sunny out. It's something to look forward to in mid-January, anyway. I heard a couple of random things on the radio on my actual birthday, since I had to drive that day. First, in the early evening they have "Not Headline News" on the hip-hop station I listen to, and it's always a sentence or two about a story in the news with a snarky retort. They have never mentioned celebrity birthdays before, but on my birthday they did - they said, "Today is Mel Gibson's birthday... he's expecting a dinner invitation from Trump!" and, "Today is J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday. He was the original George R.R. Martin. But unlike George, he could finish a book!"
Then the late night DJs always talk about random things, and that night they were talking about a girl they knew who met a guy she really hit it off with, but then she said she couldn't keep seeing him because they were incompatible signs. The DJs were mocking her, and they wanted people to call in, so I was sorely tempted to say forget about that, I'm a Capricorn happily married to a Sagittarius. Some girl called in who was a Leo who would only date Sagittarii, and they asked if she was single, so she said, "I'm working on me right now." The DJs felt this proved their hypothesis that women who care about astrology end up with cats.
When Travalon and I were at the mall yesterday, he wanted to go to the bookstore, so I was looking at a book about relational astrology, and as always it says Travalon and I would be a challenging match. I don't feel like we are at all, so either you can't base anything on that, or my Capricorn Sun goes with his Cancer Moon, and his Sagittarius Sun goes with my Leo Moon. I do know from when I worked at a place dealing with state retirees, an awful lot of people married someone whose birthday was about a month away from theirs, so they all should have been terrible matches, astrologically speaking. Maybe people born in the same season are compatible, like Travalon and I both know the anguish of winter birthdays. That is a suffering someone like the Dairyman's Daughter will never know, since her birthday is right in the middle of the summer so she can have big outdoor parties. Even Tiffy can usually do things outdoors for her birthday, although in September it sometimes does rain. I remember once treating her to a Betty Lou Cruise on a very rainy day. Still, it seems unlikely she would have a birthday party canceled due to a snow storm, like I have. (Actually, it wasn't canceled completely, because Kathbert and Mr. Icon both managed to make it to Rich's house, but I couldn't, so there was a birthday party without the birthday girl. Fortunately Tiffy was staying at my place, so I wasn't snowed in alone on my birthday.)
Here are some recent photos. First, our church was still decorated for Christmas yesterday.
This is the Irish teddy bear Travalon got at the Oconomowoc Antiques Mall, to go with my French teddy bear. Unlike the French one, which is supposed to be a girl but is kind of wearing traditional male garb, this one is wearing very traditional female clothes.
And once again, some DuoLingo bragging:
One thing about my birthday that was kind of cool was that I wrote in Mariah, my diary, and it was the last entry in Mariah Fifty-One on my fifty-first birthday. I love how that worked out!
I am a third-hand gift, a straw hat with a wide brim. I used to have natural and navy stripes, but after much time in the sun, the navy ones have faded to a sort of chocolatey tone. The big blue flower around the brim was my wearer's own touch.
