Central Park Sessions: Latin Music

Yesterday I went back to the Central Park Sessions for Latin Music Night. I met Travalon there, and we tried some of the different food carts as a salsa band played on the main stage. Then a really good band played in the beer tent while the next main stage act got ready. They were an electronic music group from Mexico City, and we weren’t as crazy about their music. Hockey Girl joined us, and she wasn’t too crazy about the electronic music either, but after that band finished, the really good group in the beer tent started up again. The headliner group was Cuban, and their music was fantastic. Hockey Girl said she hadn’t had high expectations, but she really loved them. Travalon was tired, so he headed home and stopped to get drunken donuts (flavors: gin and juice, lavender margarita, Potosi Steamboat Shandy – which is one of Travalon’s favorite beers – and vanilla bean old fashioned), while Hockey Girl and I stayed to the end. She said how beautiful the park was in the dark with the vendors’ tents lit up. Finally we called it a night, and when I got home, Travalon and I tried a couple of the donuts. We had the other two for breakfast today. Wow, are they good! They were made by Dough Baby on State Street. One of their flavors for August is a Key Lime donut, so we may have to stop by before the month is over.

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Central Park Session: Bluegrass

Yesterday Hockey Girl and I went to Central Park to hear a couple of bluegrass bands. The opening band was a local one, and they had a ton of people: a banjo, a guitar, a bass, a mandolin, a fiddle, and a Dobro. They were really good. There were all sorts of food vendors, so I had some jerk chicken for dinner. It was such a beautiful night. The second band were from Nashville, and they were amazing. When I tried to put on social media that I was at the concert, I saw a number of other events going on in the area, and one was peace lanterns at Tenney Park, so when the band went on break, Hockey Girl and I headed over there. The lanterns were beautiful, floating in the lagoon, but people in canoes were just taking them off the water as we got there. They were to commemorate the atom bombs dropped on Japan. There was even a musical group there, so we got to hear lots of music last night. Tonight I’m going back again for Latin music!

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I Love Tennis

Isn’t it funny how you can thoroughly enjoy something you have no natural aptitude for? In general, people like things that come naturally to them, and I am no exception, but for tennis. Oh tennis, why do I love you so? Last night Travalon and I played again, and if we had to play by the rules, it probably would have been no fun. However, our goal is just to get the ball over the net, and then it is so much fun. I am slowly improving as we play more, and even my backhand stroke is getting better. I was surprised at how much control I had over a lot of my shots. Playing tennis makes me so happy, and it always has. Do I have hopelessly preppy tastes without preppy money? I love tennis and boating. It sounds so bourgeois, but neither really costs that much: there are plenty of public tennis courts, and if you have a little boat, then boating is cheap too. Why should rich people have all the fun? Anyone who wants to play tennis or go boating, let me know. I’m almost always up for either one!

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Missing Light Bright's Inspiration

I don’t miss my old job, except for one thing: delivering the mail with Light Bright, when we got to walk about a mile, and we would discuss what I should blog about each day. She often came up with brilliant ideas, and I could use that now. The only thing remotely exciting that happened to me last night was when Travalon and I were coming back from swimming at the health club, and a deer leapt in front of our car. I have seen them on the side of the road before, but that was the closest either of us has ever gotten to hitting one… and hopefully it remains the closest! Light Bright might have had some great insight from that event, or she might have done something goofy on our mail delivery walk. She was a font of interesting blog topics. I could use that mail walk, too – it’s tough to sit still at work all day after a weekend of constant motion. Maybe Rich is right and I should figure out a way to row across the lake to work – that would get this need to move out of my system! My little half-hour walk at lunch just isn’t enough exercise for a whole day.

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Epic Canoe Trip on the Yahara River

I hope my readers had a good weekend and got to enjoy the cooler weather. Friday I took off of work for the Daughter of Denni’s annual bike pub crawl, but the weather was so cool, wet, and windy that I decided to just drive from bar to bar with Travalon. We did end up walking from the Olbrich Beer Garden to a woman's house, a lovely two-mile walk along the shores of Lake Monona, so we did get some exercise. Then we met Cali and OK Cap for the Dane Dance on the Monona Terrace rooftop for some more exercise. The first band was a salsa band, and then we were going to leave, but the second band was a really good soul music group, so we stayed for part of their set too.

Saturday Travalon and I had nowhere to be, so we decided to attempt our epic canoe trip to the part of the Yahara River where it becomes a tiny creek. Travalon almost fell out of the canoe as we were getting in, so we got discouraged for a moment, but the weather was perfect so we soldiered on. We stopped for a rest and snack break at the School Road pier, then we continued on, past the island, to the part of the river we had never been on before. There were a lot of lily pads, and both the white lilies and the tall yellow lotuses were blooming like crazy. I saw so many types of dragonflies! When we were way back in the marsh, at the spot where Token Creek comes into the Yahara, I needed to take care of some personal business, and nobody was around for miles. But – can you believe this? – a motorboat came up the river, with two guys and a big brown dog in it. What are the odds?? They went up Token Creek, so we went up the little creek that is the Yahara at that point. On our way back, we saw them again, and they were going really fast in the no-wake zone. Then we stopped at School Road for another break, and two guys drove their car right up to the pier, took down a canoe, and set off without moving their car out of the way. Was it just Rude Day that day? When we got back to our neighborhood, we could hear a really good Jimmy Buffett tribute band at the Nau-Ti-Gal and an okay cover band at Mariner’s Inn. We sat on our dock for a while, resting and listening to the okay band, until we got the energy to go to Banzo for dinner. Natty Nation, a great local reggae band, was playing at the Union Terrace that night, and it was a beautiful evening, but we were too tired to do anything after canoeing for eight miles round trip.

Yesterday we had brunch outside at the Crema Café, then we took a hike in Monona along the bike path I used to ride to work, back when I lived on Pirate Island and worked in Middleton. Cecil Markovitch called and asked if we wanted to meet him and the Single B-Boy at Eno Vino, a new rooftop bar downtown, so we wrapped up our walk and met them a little after three. However, the bar didn’t open until four, so we went to the Rigby for a quick drink beforehand. Can I just say that the view from Eno Vino is magnificent? It looks over Lake Monona. We had a cheese platter there, and I had a drink that was like a mango meringue pie, if such a thing exists. Then we walked to the new seafood place near our church, and Rich joined us for dinner. We were starting to get tired and achy again from our adventure the day before, so we called it an early night again. Prairie Man wants to go on a long canoe trip this fall, which we can’t do anyway, but I’m wondering if it would kill us. Even this morning the alarm woke us up (which is unusual), and we could barely move to get out of bed. Ah well, it was worth it to achieve my dream of finding out what is beyond the part of the marsh we can get to in our little boat. Answer: a whole lot of marsh!

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Another Anti-Equal Temperament Rant

Last night I went to the final Concert on the Square with Hockey Girl. The theme was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and I didn’t have as much enthusiasm about that as last week’s concert, which surprised Hockey Girl. “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like Beethoven!” she said, and I said, “Really? I’ve met plenty of people who hate classical music,” so then she said, “People with no taste, but you like some good music.” For example, we both love Bach. It has always fascinated me that people are surprised that I would like Baroque music but not Romantic music, when to me they are nothing alike. I am a simple creature who likes things fast-paced and minor key, hence I love Baroque music, salsa, and hip hop. It doesn’t seem odd to me at all; in fact, it seems stranger to me that someone would love both Bach and Schubert than that someone would love both Bach and Tupac. Then I told Hockey Girl about tuning systems other than the dreaded Equal Temperament, and she was riveted. “Why have I never heard about this before?” she wondered, and I said it blew my mind too when I learned about it, but at least it explained some things, like why I was so loyal to a particular recording of Vivaldi’s L’Estro Armonico that I found out years later was not in equal temperament. It just sounded better to me than other recordings – well, of course it did! It sounded like what Vivaldi intended. I told Hockey Girl how in the Early Music Festival I had often noticed a magical note arising over the others, and then I found out it was an overtone that arises when people sing or play in perfect fourths and fifths. This, people, is what we have lost by buying into the evil compromise of equal temperament. Citizens for a Return Of Sanity to Sound (CROSS) would just like to remind everyone that it doesn’t have to be this way. Educate yourselves and choose sanity in sound!

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Long Mallards Game

Last night Travalon, Jilly Moose, OK Cap, and I went to a Mallards game. This one was a fundraiser for the Overture Center, so we had to pay a little more for our tickets, but we did get hats. Of course, they are exactly like the hats we got when my work group went to a Mallard game earlier this summer. The game went very quickly because of the amazing defensive playing on both sides (they were playing the Kenosha Kingfish), and also the pitching. In the ninth inning both teams were scoreless. Late in the game I discovered that some coworkers of mine were sitting at the end of our row, and they had even been looking for me, but we somehow hadn’t seen each other until that point. In the bottom of the tenth, the Mallards had the bases loaded and three outs, and the batter hit a pop-up fly that was easily caught, so they went into an eleventh inning. We headed home at that point, but one of my coworkers stayed for the eleventh inning, and he said the Mallards again had the bases loaded because the Kenosha pitcher was exhausted and kept walking them, then a batter hit something deep into right field that nobody caught, and the guy on third got home so the game was over. It sounds exciting, but we were so tired!

I have to say that at first I thought the Kingfish’s logo was brilliant: it is a round fish with gills that look like baseball stitching, so it is a baseball AND a fish, plus it is wearing a crown so it is a king too. But then I was thinking that there is no such thing as a kingfish, and a kingfisher is a bird, so it lost some of its luster for me. Here it is, so you can see for yourself: 

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