When Procrastination Pays

As usual, I didn’t get to my Irish homework until last night; the difference this time was that I couldn’t finish it. Our teacher asked us to translate two pages of a crime thriller, and I got most of the way done with the first page and saw it was 11 pm. No way could I stay up to finish the whole thing! But then something amazing happened today – I got an email from our teacher saying she was stuck out of town and had to cancel class this evening. Wow, it’s like the time I had to create a book of different types of poetry in middle school, and of course I put it off until the night before and then realized there was no way I could do it. Wouldn’t you know the next day was a snow day? And I didn’t waste it; nope, I threw myself into writing that poetry book, creating over a dozen poems and illustrating them lavishly. The next day I turned my creation in, and when I got it back, the teacher had written that my book was by far the best one in the whole class, and I should consider becoming a writer. How proud would she be to learn that I am now a semi-professional writer, making tens of dollars writing this blog? And sometimes I even write poetry on it! I was going to write a poem today, but inspiration didn’t strike. Anyway, this gives me a chance to translate the rest of the chapter in the crime novel and impress my Irish teacher. Maybe I should write a poem about Irish crime novels.

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Hiking on the Ice Age Trail

I hope my readers had a good weekend and got to enjoy some of the mild weather while you still can. Friday night I got two pizzas and joined Kathbert and Jilly Moose at Richard Bonomo’s house. Jilly Moose brought Packer cookies. Travalon, meanwhile, was watching Oconomowoc’s high school football team in the playoffs; they were down by 21 points but managed to tie things up and then lost by a touchdown in the last four seconds of the game. Heartbreaking!

Saturday Travalon and one of our neighbors got our boat into our garage, where it can hopefully wait out the winter until we can take it out on the water again. Then he and I took Rodney and went hiking on the Ice Age Trail outside of Lodi, where there is a three-mile loop that goes into the Baraboo Range. This is a range of ancient mountains, over a billion years old, which are just hills now. That’s what a billion years will do to anyone. Then we stopped for a quick soda at the rival resort on Crystal Lake, where they were not nearly as friendly, before going to the resort on the peninsula for lunch. Amazing cheeseburgers! We watched the Badger game before heading to Rich’s next-door neighbor’s birthday party. Kathbert, Jilly Moose, Luxuli, and Prairie Man came too. There were no party games, just food (Travalon and I brought bread, Luxuli and Prairie Man brought a salad, and Rich made a pork dish), and dessert: Rich’s Black Magic cake and pumpkin cream liqueur courtesy of Jilly Moose. We all called it a night kind of early – I think this time change has hit us all very hard! For some reason it always seems worse to me than the spring one, even though at that time you lose an hour of sleep.

Yesterday Travalon and I watched most of the Packer game at the East Side Club with some other members, and we all brought dishes for a potluck. However, the Packers had not shown up to play, or so it seemed, because both their offense and their defense were nonexistent. Travalon and I finally gave up and decided we needed to get outside on such a beautiful day, so we left just as the fourth quarter started and took Rodney to the dog park. Between Travalon looking at his phone, and texts I got from Tiffy, we found out the Pack roared back to life and almost tied things up right at the end… if Rodgers hadn’t thrown an interception. If they’d played like that the whole game, maybe they would have handed Carolina their first defeat this year. Travalon and I met Jilly Moose, Luxuli, Prairie Man, and OK Cap for dinner at Bellitalia, since Luxuli and Prairie Man had square dancing about a block away from there. Then Travalon and I went to the new Peanuts movie, which was cute but seemed to be a little kinder in spirit than the original comic strip. For example, Snoopy was helping Charlie Brown try to win over the Little Red-Headed Girl, when in the comic strip he just regarded him as “that round-headed kid.” I won’t tell you whether Charlie Brown gets the girl or not – you’ll just have to see the movie yourself.

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Girls' Night with Light Bright

Last night I got together for dinner with Light Bright, her mother, and another former coworker of mine (a lab tech) who has recently moved into Light Bright’s neighborhood. Light Bright looks ready to pop – her baby is due on Tuesday! Can you believe it? Her husband fled the house so we could have a real Girls’ Night, and after a delicious dinner of chicken, salad, pesto pasta, and garlic bread all made by Light Bright, we sat out in the living room eating the dark chocolate I had brought and discussing very girlish topics. I’m sure any man who would have overheard our conversation would have been bored to tears! I always wonder what guys discuss when we ladies aren’t around. According to Travalon, the men’s steak nights are hilarious because Cecil Markovitch and Twins Fan are such funny guys, but he has never actually told me the content of their jokes. Knowing that group, probably very little of it has to do with sports, hunting, or fishing, which are the stereotypical guys’ topics of conversation. Anyway, I am a big believer in guys having guys’ night and ladies having ladies’ night, but I also love hanging out in a mixed group. Especially if Cecil Markovitch and Twins Fan are both there!

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Very Boring Post

Some days I have nothing to say, and no poetic muse inspired me today, so here’s an update on my exercise progress: I have been running in place for a mile every morning (except yesterday, but I walked 12,000 steps and went up the equivalent of 11 flights of stairs), and it seems to be making a difference. However, I have been bad about getting to the gym for weight training. My old UGGH Club buddies are back to their usual shenanigans at 6:00 am, and there is no way I am getting up that early. When Travalon and I go to the club on Monday evenings, we swim. Tonight I plan to do weights for the first time in ages – maybe I will even do Strength Training without Mercy! My other usual source of exercise is my lunchtime rosary walk, but yesterday I didn’t do it, between hiking at Cherokee Marsh and walking around the exhibit hall all afternoon. Today I went to a lunchtime seminar on financial planning for women. That was fun – they fed us well, and I saw some old pals there – but obviously there was no time for a walk. Still, I did run in the morning and will do weights this evening, so this week my exercise regimen is going better than my prayer life!

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Cherokee Marsh

Today was a really fun day for me. I took the morning off of work, and Travalon, Rodney, and I went for a hike in Cherokee Marsh. Then in the afternoon I manned a booth with a coworker at a library association meeting, and all we had to do was smile at people and answer questions about our books. And this counts as work! I love it!

Here are some photos from my recent adventures. First, Tiffy, Travalon, Richard Bonomo, and I at the corn maze:

Here are some photos of the fall foliage at Devil's Lake:

And a couple of shots from the Merrimac Ferry on our way back home:

This is out of order, but here are some photos of Governor Dodge State Park:

This is a lovely shot Rich took of the autumn colors in the Arboretum:

Here are a more recent photo of Roche-a-Cri, a photo of Chickadee Rock in the same state park, and a couple of shots of Rabbit Rock, which is in a little wayside park.

Finally, here are Travalon and Rodney in Cherokee Marsh.

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Freakfest 2015

I completely forgot to mention in yesterday’s post that Travalon really wanted to see Freakfest down on State Street, so we went to that after leaving Rich’s house. I hadn’t been there in years, and I remembered it being really insane and the sort of thing I try to avoid. However, the costumes were often quite amazing, and usually very entertaining. These days the party is an official one, with security personnel and a $5 cover charge, so things are a lot tamer. There is live music as well. I was disappointed by the costumes: everyone seemed to be either a banana, a minion (like from the movies), or Chewbacca. I did see one group that was the people from Scooby-Doo, with a cardboard Mystery Machine, but they didn’t have a Scooby-Doo with them. One guy was dressed like an outlet, and another guy was a crayon, and that was about it for cool costumes. Maybe it was the rotten weather, but I didn’t even see the usual sexy costumes on the girls this year. I’m not sure why bananas are so popular this year, but maybe it’s because Brian the dog from Family Guy always dresses up in a banana suit.

Travalon and I tried to go to a bar on State Street, but they were all totally packed. We ended up heading back home to the Nau-Ti-Gal, where their Halloween party was just winding down. The musicians were just packing up as we arrived. The costumes there were more homemade, and the drinks were really good – I had pumpkin-infused brandy and Travalon had an amazing White Russian that tasted just like a chocolate milkshake. In case you are curious, Travalon and I did not dress up as anything. In the old days I was creative for Halloween, but this year I couldn’t think of anything to do. Perhaps I went as a boring, middle-aged married woman.

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Return to Roche-a-Cri

I hope all my readers had a great weekend. Friday I had a quiet evening and talked to Ma Hat on the phone for a long time. Saturday the weather was kind of rotten; Travalon and I had been planning to attend the Badger football game, but we decided against it, since it rained all day long. I did have to get some bloodwork done, but the good news (I got the results today) is that my numbers are already improved over early October, and I have only been running for a couple of weeks. Wow, those are some fast results! I will definitely keep running! The tests required fasting, so afterwards Travalon and I had breakfast at the Heritage Café, and then we watched the game on TV from the warmth and dryness of our living room. The movie theater in Sun Prairie was showing The Jungle Book, which is one of my favorite movies, so we went to that, and then we went to Rich’s house to help him decorate for Halloween and hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. Kathbert also joined us for dinner. We had very nerdy conversation (poor Travalon!) about musical modes and what the chemical structure of fake vanilla could be that makes me so crazy when I eat it. (We never did figure that one out.)

Yesterday was much more beautiful, so Travalon and I headed back to Roche-a-Cri State Park to do some hiking with Rodney. We took the long trail, so thanks to the wonders of the time change, we almost ran out of daylight before heading to Rabbit Rock, a small park in Adams County just north of Roche-a-Cri. There was still enough light for us to follow a trail around the rock and, according to my iPhone, we went up the equivalent of seven flights of stairs, so with going up the choir loft at my church and the stairs to our condo, my grand total for yesterday was twelve flights of stairs. I also took over fifteen thousand steps yesterday. This morning I was kind of sore… The only bad thing about yesterday was that sad Packer game. They can’t win them all, and at least they were beaten by an undefeated team, but both the offense and the defense just looked awful last night in Denver. The safety was the final insult. But they are still our Packers, and I love them win or lose. Unlike any other team in the NFL, we can count on them to stay with us forever.

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