I had a lot of fun this weekend. Saturday did not start out promising: it was drizzly and cold, but I dragged myself out of bed anyway and to church for confession... only to find a sign saying there was no confession there this week. I didn't have time to go to another church before our band's gig at a children's festival, complete with its own currency called a "uni." You could buy a uni for one dollar and then sell it back for 90 cents, and the extra 10 cents went to a children's charity that helps kids in Bangladesh. Hardingfele grumbled that she would have preferred our tips in standard US currency, but I thought the unis were a fun idea - and they were way more colorful than dollar bills! I should have kept one for my money collection... However, we had a lot of fun spending them on useful things like pesto pasta salad, cranberry oat bars, houseplants, and carp wind socks. Rockstar Tailor had a blast playing games, getting her face painted, and creating an "egg holder" out of what looked like the stuff from a clothes dryer lint trap. We played after the fire breather did his thing, and when the giant walking banana arrived, that was our cue to finish playing. It was just our banjo player, two fiddles, and me on the mandolin so it was a stripped-down sound without any guitar, accordion, or penny whistle.
T came up to visit this weekend, and then she, Anna Banana II, and I went to a handbell concert. You haven't lived until you've heard the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" on handbells. Some of my bandmates were there too; the squeezebox player brought her parents for a Mothers' Day gift, and the banjo player's husband played organ. (That's right, what is a handbell concert without an organ, a brass quintet, and percussion?)
Then yesterday T gave Charlie and Cashmere bunny backrubs. Charlie was so relaxed he looked like he had no bones. He was like a little puddle of bunniness. Cashmere wasn't quite so relaxed, but at least she let me cut her toenails with less fuss than usual. Then T and I went to the Tree Park to see the blooming crabapples, magnolias, and lilacs. It looked and smelled like heaven! and everyone else in town seemed to have the same idea, because it was PACKED. After T left, some other friends of mine hiked through the Tree Park, but I fell asleep on my futon and missed them. Richard Bonomo called and woke me up, so I met them for dinner at a Mexican restaurant, then we all went to Cecil Markovitch's place for a dessert my OTHER choir director had made with the first rhubarb of the season. (He had just bought it at the farmers' market.) Besides Rich, Cecil, and my choir director, Kathbert and Anna Banana II had gone on the hike, and then one B-Boy joined us for dessert. (The other one had some lame excuse about being in Hawaii with his new bride or something.) Cecil showed me his nameless new fish who is bigger than Arphaxad and Amminadab put together, and he gave me a piece of his cool purple Christmas cactus, which he says blooms golden-pink. Like I need another plant... I forgot to mention that Hardingfele and I stopped by a local plant sale right at the end, when everything was half price, and negotiated an even lower price for a weird houseplant which I believe is called a sea onion. One was dormant, so I took that one, since it didn't seem right to pay such a deeply discounted price for a plant in its prime. Since it was so cold this weekend, the denizens of Plant World had to come back inside.
Famous Hat
Monday, May 11, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
True Adventure: Photography Class!
Photography is a funny thing; Palm Tree Fan can take a picture and it looks just like a Thomas Kincaide painting, but if I took that same photo, it would just look like an old cabin with some trees around it. And if my friend Ethel took it, it would be slanted! Both Ethel and I are artistic in other matters, but neither of us has the least bit of talent in photography. At one point, when my point-and-click Vivitar died, I bought a used Yashika and tried to take pictures of my plants and pets. However, I was so busy messing with the f-stop that I didn't think about little things like, say, focusing, and when my photos came back from the developer, they had a little brochure included with them that was entitled: "How To Take Better Photographs."
Ethel tries to be creative with her photography, so creative that sometimes you cannot tell what exactly she took a picture of. Once she signed up for a photography class, but after the first session she said, "This is for people with REAL cameras. I just have an automatic one." You know, the old PhD camera - Push Here Dummy! I offered to let her borrow my Yashika, but she said maybe I should take the class. So I went to the second session and the teacher said, somewhat suspiciously, "You weren't here last week. What's your name?" So I did the only logical thing - I said it was Ethel Jones. She looked at the class roster and said, "Oh, you ARE registered!" and everything was cool... until the REAL Ethel Jones walked in the door. I thought, "Man, I am SO busted!" but the teacher recognized the real Ethel Jones and didn't ask her name. However, I felt it would be unethical for both of us to take a class that only one of us had paid for, so I dropped out. Or stopped being Ethel Jones, depending on how you look at it.
This is a typical move on the part of Ethel. On another occasion, we were traveling in someone's car to a state park, and she pulled an apple out of her knapsack and asked if I wanted to share it. Now Ethel is the youngest of a gazillion kids, and I think of her like a sister, so neither of us thought anything of sharing this apple as she took a bite, then I took a bite, then she took a bite, then I took a bite... When the apple was gone, she said, "Do you want to split another apple?" and pulled a second one out of her knapsack, and I said, "Ethel! Why didn't we each just eat our own apple?" She said, "I wasn't sure I'd want a whole one."
Famous Hat
Ethel tries to be creative with her photography, so creative that sometimes you cannot tell what exactly she took a picture of. Once she signed up for a photography class, but after the first session she said, "This is for people with REAL cameras. I just have an automatic one." You know, the old PhD camera - Push Here Dummy! I offered to let her borrow my Yashika, but she said maybe I should take the class. So I went to the second session and the teacher said, somewhat suspiciously, "You weren't here last week. What's your name?" So I did the only logical thing - I said it was Ethel Jones. She looked at the class roster and said, "Oh, you ARE registered!" and everything was cool... until the REAL Ethel Jones walked in the door. I thought, "Man, I am SO busted!" but the teacher recognized the real Ethel Jones and didn't ask her name. However, I felt it would be unethical for both of us to take a class that only one of us had paid for, so I dropped out. Or stopped being Ethel Jones, depending on how you look at it.
This is a typical move on the part of Ethel. On another occasion, we were traveling in someone's car to a state park, and she pulled an apple out of her knapsack and asked if I wanted to share it. Now Ethel is the youngest of a gazillion kids, and I think of her like a sister, so neither of us thought anything of sharing this apple as she took a bite, then I took a bite, then she took a bite, then I took a bite... When the apple was gone, she said, "Do you want to split another apple?" and pulled a second one out of her knapsack, and I said, "Ethel! Why didn't we each just eat our own apple?" She said, "I wasn't sure I'd want a whole one."
Famous Hat
Thursday, May 7, 2009
True Adventure: Camping Up North!
Palm Tree Fan sent me some more photos she took, and one of them is from Up North, where my friends and I love to go camping, so that was all the excuse I needed to blog about it! Up at the top of our state is a park on the edge of a Great Lake, with lots of great trails for hiking and biking, canoes to rent, and fish boils to attend! If you have never been to a fish boil, it is kind of like dinner theater, except that when the entertainment is done you eat it. The fish is boiled in a huge cauldron with potatoes and onions, and they stoke the fire until it is raging around the edge of the cauldron, and then suddenly the water boils over and rushes down the side like a volcano erupting. And the end product is DELICIOUS! But watch out for bones.
We have seen many wonderful things at this park, like a mama grebe swimming on the lake with five little babies on her back, and coralroots, which are tiny translucent white plants with red stripes like candy canes, and all sorts of lighthouses. Once T, Anna Banana II, and I canoed out to a little crescent-shaped island, and I hiked all around the perimeter. At another park even further up the peninsula, we saw blue crawfish! Another time we climbed up a tower called Eagle Tower, and just as we got to the top, a bald eagle flew right overhead. Even rainy evenings are fun Up North, because there are all sorts of artsy little shops and cafes to duck into until the storm passes.
Once we stayed at a park further down the penisula, and there were quite a few of us, including both B-Boys, Florita and several of her nieces, Anna Banana II, Richard Bonomo, T, and of course me. We stayed in the "rowdy section," where you can make noise until midnight, and we had built a campfire and were singing songs as I played the mandolin. To our surprise, the ranger came over and told us with some embarrassment that the family at the next campsite had complained about our noise level. He agreed that they should have stayed in the "family section" if they wanted early bedtimes, but we did tone it down... a little. (Things are never very toned down when Florita is around!) The next morning we all got up and went to Mass with the little round priest who comes every year from New England to spend his summers Up North.
Anyhow, here is a picture that Palm Tree Fan took Up North, of a place called Cave Point:
And here is another picture Palm Tree Fan took in a town about an hour west of our city. Coworkers tell me this town is full of old buildings and is a really fun place to go shopping. They say it is very cute, and its claim to fame is Cornish Fest. This photo certainly looks like a Thomas Kincaide painting come to life!
Famous Hat
We have seen many wonderful things at this park, like a mama grebe swimming on the lake with five little babies on her back, and coralroots, which are tiny translucent white plants with red stripes like candy canes, and all sorts of lighthouses. Once T, Anna Banana II, and I canoed out to a little crescent-shaped island, and I hiked all around the perimeter. At another park even further up the peninsula, we saw blue crawfish! Another time we climbed up a tower called Eagle Tower, and just as we got to the top, a bald eagle flew right overhead. Even rainy evenings are fun Up North, because there are all sorts of artsy little shops and cafes to duck into until the storm passes.
Once we stayed at a park further down the penisula, and there were quite a few of us, including both B-Boys, Florita and several of her nieces, Anna Banana II, Richard Bonomo, T, and of course me. We stayed in the "rowdy section," where you can make noise until midnight, and we had built a campfire and were singing songs as I played the mandolin. To our surprise, the ranger came over and told us with some embarrassment that the family at the next campsite had complained about our noise level. He agreed that they should have stayed in the "family section" if they wanted early bedtimes, but we did tone it down... a little. (Things are never very toned down when Florita is around!) The next morning we all got up and went to Mass with the little round priest who comes every year from New England to spend his summers Up North.
Anyhow, here is a picture that Palm Tree Fan took Up North, of a place called Cave Point:
And here is another picture Palm Tree Fan took in a town about an hour west of our city. Coworkers tell me this town is full of old buildings and is a really fun place to go shopping. They say it is very cute, and its claim to fame is Cornish Fest. This photo certainly looks like a Thomas Kincaide painting come to life!
Famous Hat
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Scanned Images: Wedding Favors
Today seemed like a good day to do some scanning, and so I am proud to present Scanned Images: Wedding Favors. The following images are the little wedding favor rattan box that was sitting at my table at the wedding reception, and the special Hawaiian Kisses with macadamia nuts that were inside of it.
Figure 1: Small Rattan Box
Figure 2: Contents of Aforementioned Box
Those were the official wedding favors. At this wedding there were the standard Three Types of Guests: Those Who Take Their Favors, Those Who Leave Their Favors, and Those Who Take Both Their Own Favors and Those Left Behind. If you think that I, Famous Hat, fall into the third category, you are only partially correct. I, of course, have my own special category: She Who Also Wants Botanical Keepsakes.
As I may have mentioned, the flora at this wedding was all imported from Hawaii. I fell madly in love with an orchid that had gorgeous chartreuse blossoms with purple throats, and I asked permission to take an offset. Both the bride's mother and sister, who are florists, expressed doubt that the offset would survive a voyage across two states. Not to be denied, I then asked about a beautiful piece of foliage in the bouquets. These bouquets were amazing, with flowers that looked like pale pink peace lilies and all sorts of tropical foliage. The piece I was coveting had yellow-edged leaves and looked somewhat dracaena-like, and there's no plant family I know better than the dracaena one! They are very simple to grow. The bride's sister said she thought a piece of this plant, which is called Song of India (and is, in fact, a dracaena) would easily survive the long car trip and happily grow in a vase of water (much like "Lucky Bamboo," which is also a type of dracaena and not bamboo at all), so I currently have it sitting in Plant World. After eight hours in a car with no water, it looked a little droopy, but as soon as I got home, I cut back the stem and stuck it in a vase of water, and by the next morning it looked perfectly happy.
Here is a picture of what a full-grown Song of India looks like:
Figure 3: Song of India
Famous Hat
Figure 1: Small Rattan Box
Figure 2: Contents of Aforementioned Box
(Macadamia Nut Kisses)
Those were the official wedding favors. At this wedding there were the standard Three Types of Guests: Those Who Take Their Favors, Those Who Leave Their Favors, and Those Who Take Both Their Own Favors and Those Left Behind. If you think that I, Famous Hat, fall into the third category, you are only partially correct. I, of course, have my own special category: She Who Also Wants Botanical Keepsakes.
As I may have mentioned, the flora at this wedding was all imported from Hawaii. I fell madly in love with an orchid that had gorgeous chartreuse blossoms with purple throats, and I asked permission to take an offset. Both the bride's mother and sister, who are florists, expressed doubt that the offset would survive a voyage across two states. Not to be denied, I then asked about a beautiful piece of foliage in the bouquets. These bouquets were amazing, with flowers that looked like pale pink peace lilies and all sorts of tropical foliage. The piece I was coveting had yellow-edged leaves and looked somewhat dracaena-like, and there's no plant family I know better than the dracaena one! They are very simple to grow. The bride's sister said she thought a piece of this plant, which is called Song of India (and is, in fact, a dracaena) would easily survive the long car trip and happily grow in a vase of water (much like "Lucky Bamboo," which is also a type of dracaena and not bamboo at all), so I currently have it sitting in Plant World. After eight hours in a car with no water, it looked a little droopy, but as soon as I got home, I cut back the stem and stuck it in a vase of water, and by the next morning it looked perfectly happy.
Here is a picture of what a full-grown Song of India looks like:
Figure 3: Song of India
(Photo credit: "borrowed" off the internet)
Famous Hat
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Hey, Music! Whatcha Tryin' to Tell Me?
Yesterday I moved most of the denizens of Plant World to their summer home on my balcony. It's surprising how much work moving plants is... Before completely finishing the job, I sat on my balcony to admire my plants (and rest), which is where Hardingfele and Tailor found me when they stopped by to pull garlic mustard and help me pump up my bike tires. Then somehow I never got around to moving the rest of the plants outside after that...
Plants always seem to be happier outside. Here is a direct quote from my coworker Palm Tree Fan regarding her house plants: "Most plants grow towards the sun.... mine grow towards the sink... the main water source!" Yet the bleeding hearts in her garden seem to be thriving:
Figure 1: Bleeding Hearts in Palm Tree Fan's Garden
On another topic dear to my heart, people often say music speaks to them. I usually don't know what people are singing in the songs I like, even when they are in English, but here are some examples of songs that speak to me. (Do I listen? That is another question.)
Kanye West says to me: "I ain't sayin' she's no gold digger, But she don't go with no broke n----"
Now I once had a date with a man who was both poor and black, but the take-home message I got from that relationship was that poets are bad news. He used to quote Nabokov over the phone to me and read me his own poetry, but after our one and only date we each thought the other one was completely insane. (Fair enough, we were probably both right.) I didn't learn my lesson anyhow, since I'm still stupid crazy about "artistic" men.
Andre 3000 says to me: "Now don't have me break this down for nuthin'! I wanna see you on your baddest behavior! Lend me some sugar - I am your neighbor! Sh-sh-shake it like a Polaroid picture. You know what to do!"
On a related theme (sugar), El Gran Combo asks me: "Que, que fue, fue azuquita pal' cafe?" Which translates to something like: "What, what was it, was it that sweetened the coffee?"
And of course Khaled says something to me in the song "Didi" that sounds like: "Eye leeky eye leeky eye kapom pee." Since I don't know Arabic, I don't have any idea what he's trying to tell me, but that doesn't stop me from singing along!
Famous Hat
Plants always seem to be happier outside. Here is a direct quote from my coworker Palm Tree Fan regarding her house plants: "Most plants grow towards the sun.... mine grow towards the sink... the main water source!" Yet the bleeding hearts in her garden seem to be thriving:
Figure 1: Bleeding Hearts in Palm Tree Fan's Garden(Photo credit: Palm Tree Fan)
On another topic dear to my heart, people often say music speaks to them. I usually don't know what people are singing in the songs I like, even when they are in English, but here are some examples of songs that speak to me. (Do I listen? That is another question.)
Kanye West says to me: "I ain't sayin' she's no gold digger, But she don't go with no broke n----"
Now I once had a date with a man who was both poor and black, but the take-home message I got from that relationship was that poets are bad news. He used to quote Nabokov over the phone to me and read me his own poetry, but after our one and only date we each thought the other one was completely insane. (Fair enough, we were probably both right.) I didn't learn my lesson anyhow, since I'm still stupid crazy about "artistic" men.
Andre 3000 says to me: "Now don't have me break this down for nuthin'! I wanna see you on your baddest behavior! Lend me some sugar - I am your neighbor! Sh-sh-shake it like a Polaroid picture. You know what to do!"
On a related theme (sugar), El Gran Combo asks me: "Que, que fue, fue azuquita pal' cafe?" Which translates to something like: "What, what was it, was it that sweetened the coffee?"
And of course Khaled says something to me in the song "Didi" that sounds like: "Eye leeky eye leeky eye kapom pee." Since I don't know Arabic, I don't have any idea what he's trying to tell me, but that doesn't stop me from singing along!
Famous Hat
Monday, May 4, 2009
True Adventure: B-Boy Wedding!
This weekend Richard Bonomo, A-Fooze, her Mexican fiance, and I drove two states south to attend the wedding of one of the B-Boys. (That's right, ladies, there is only one totally available B-Boy left! Supplies are limited so hurry on down!) We took Erin Caitlyn O'Honda since she is younger than the Bonomobile and gets way better mileage, and El Fiance's truck probably would have broken down before we got to the border of our own state. On the way down we ate lots of junk food and played games like "Twenty Questions" and the one where the first person thinks of the name of a city and then the next person has to think of a city starting with the last letter of that city's name. Unfortunately, we quickly found that most cities seem to end with A, O, or S, while only a limited number start with those letters. I said, "We should do countries, since they end in more letters. Like you could do England-Denmark-Kenya-Argentina-" and A-Fooze interrupted, "No fair playing with yourself!"
The tiny town where the wedding was held is most known for being the birthplace of Walt Disney, and loudspeakers at the corners of Main Street USA blared such songs as "It's a Small World" and "When You Wish Upon a Star." When I commented to the owner of a local bed-and-breakfast that she must get tired of hearing that, she said she turns it on for the tourists. Oops! Open mouth, insert foot. The bride's family hails from Hawaii and so they had imported all the flowers and the priest from there. Because this town was too small to accomodate two weddings, and another one was happening in the afternoon, the wedding was in the morning and the reception was in yet another town which is most well known for having a name that rhymes with "bacon." The reception was lovely, with a gorgeous orchid at each table in a glass vase full of black Hawaiian sand (imported, natch). Then Rich, A-Fooze, El Fiance, and I got back into Erin Caitlyn O'Honda and drove two states north, arriving home after midnight.
Yesterday I slept through Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety but did wake up long enough to go to the Lutheran Church and sing the Bach cantata/train for the triathlon. (Same thing, right?) As Florita (who was at the wedding) would say, "Iguanitas, las ranitas," which translates to "little iguanas, little frogs" - it's all the same thing. Then I went back to sleep until evening Mass at OLPS. At no time yesterday did I go grocery shopping, so this morning YES, there were no bananas! Charlie doesn't mind, since he likes broccoli and carrots, but Cashmere was quite put out. I gave her a bunny treat and explained that I had no bananas to give her, but she sat giving me the stink eye as I ate my breakfast grits, so I did what any mature human would do - I swiveled my chair around so my back was facing her. There isn't a rabbit on the face of this earth who can glare at you like old Cashmere can! Shh, don't tell her, but I just bought a banana at the cafeteria and ate it.
Famous Hat
The tiny town where the wedding was held is most known for being the birthplace of Walt Disney, and loudspeakers at the corners of Main Street USA blared such songs as "It's a Small World" and "When You Wish Upon a Star." When I commented to the owner of a local bed-and-breakfast that she must get tired of hearing that, she said she turns it on for the tourists. Oops! Open mouth, insert foot. The bride's family hails from Hawaii and so they had imported all the flowers and the priest from there. Because this town was too small to accomodate two weddings, and another one was happening in the afternoon, the wedding was in the morning and the reception was in yet another town which is most well known for having a name that rhymes with "bacon." The reception was lovely, with a gorgeous orchid at each table in a glass vase full of black Hawaiian sand (imported, natch). Then Rich, A-Fooze, El Fiance, and I got back into Erin Caitlyn O'Honda and drove two states north, arriving home after midnight.
Yesterday I slept through Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety but did wake up long enough to go to the Lutheran Church and sing the Bach cantata/train for the triathlon. (Same thing, right?) As Florita (who was at the wedding) would say, "Iguanitas, las ranitas," which translates to "little iguanas, little frogs" - it's all the same thing. Then I went back to sleep until evening Mass at OLPS. At no time yesterday did I go grocery shopping, so this morning YES, there were no bananas! Charlie doesn't mind, since he likes broccoli and carrots, but Cashmere was quite put out. I gave her a bunny treat and explained that I had no bananas to give her, but she sat giving me the stink eye as I ate my breakfast grits, so I did what any mature human would do - I swiveled my chair around so my back was facing her. There isn't a rabbit on the face of this earth who can glare at you like old Cashmere can! Shh, don't tell her, but I just bought a banana at the cafeteria and ate it.
Famous Hat
Friday, May 1, 2009
Ultimate Cross-Training
Last night I did some grueling training for the triathlon in the basement of a Lutheran church, after training earlier in the stairwell at work. I am sure you are thinking, "OK, Famous Hat, I can buy that you are training in the stairwell by running (or at least walking at a brisk pace) up a bunch of stairs, but training in a Lutheran church? Come on! Maybe if it were a Shaker one..." (After all, they do spinning! just not on exercycles.) But I have it on good authority (my choir director) that what we were doing was "just like training for a triathlon." In his words.
This coming Sunday is something the Lutherans call "Cantate Sunday," and we are working on a Bach cantata, something in German about praising God. (Sorry, I studied Romance languages.) It is a beautiful piece, but we sopranos get quite a workout with a lot of high notes and hardly any time to breathe. Between you and me, what's up with old JS's fondness for having melismas on umlauted vowels? Seriously, it's like he purposely picks the most difficult vowel sound to put all those notes into. Even in Latin, a much easier language to sing in than German, he still finds some whacked-out vowel to put his melismas on; I remember singing something by him where we had to sing "Vi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-irgo Maria" because he couldn't possibly have put the melisma on the "O." In the cantata we are currently working on, he also has some goofy syllabification that is counterintuitive. I think the word is "reichlich," and we all want to sing "re-e-eichlic" but of course Bach wrote "reich-li-i-ich." Since many of his choir members were his own children, we wondered if he wrote some of these cantatas to punish them for something.
I think my choir director was trying to encourage us sopranos as we worked on this gorgeous yet grueling piece, so he said it was just like training for a triathlon. Afterwards I asked him if, in fact, it could count as training, and he said yes. So there you go. Some people work out to salsa or techno, but I work out by singing Bach!
Famous Hat
This coming Sunday is something the Lutherans call "Cantate Sunday," and we are working on a Bach cantata, something in German about praising God. (Sorry, I studied Romance languages.) It is a beautiful piece, but we sopranos get quite a workout with a lot of high notes and hardly any time to breathe. Between you and me, what's up with old JS's fondness for having melismas on umlauted vowels? Seriously, it's like he purposely picks the most difficult vowel sound to put all those notes into. Even in Latin, a much easier language to sing in than German, he still finds some whacked-out vowel to put his melismas on; I remember singing something by him where we had to sing "Vi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-irgo Maria" because he couldn't possibly have put the melisma on the "O." In the cantata we are currently working on, he also has some goofy syllabification that is counterintuitive. I think the word is "reichlich," and we all want to sing "re-e-eichlic" but of course Bach wrote "reich-li-i-ich." Since many of his choir members were his own children, we wondered if he wrote some of these cantatas to punish them for something.
I think my choir director was trying to encourage us sopranos as we worked on this gorgeous yet grueling piece, so he said it was just like training for a triathlon. Afterwards I asked him if, in fact, it could count as training, and he said yes. So there you go. Some people work out to salsa or techno, but I work out by singing Bach!
Famous Hat
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