D-Tour Continuation and White Mound County Park in Autumn

 

Sorry that I didn't blog yesterday. Travalon and I had to go to the community gardens and do some volunteer work, and then I talked to Tiffy. I also kind of half-watched the Badger game before talking to her, and the new red-shirt freshman quarterback is amazing! They won 45-7!!

Today Travalon and I had to bring the boat in for the winter, because the neighbor who always helps us is traveling soon. Since I was wearing my new knee-high rubber boots, I was able to just step out of the boat and help guide it onto the trailer. Travalon might need hip boots next year - his knee-high boots weren't quite high enough, since he had to wade deeper into the water to push the back of the boat into the right spot, so then his boots were full of water. Otherwise, things went way more smoothly than they often have in the past. I remember one year we stayed in the boat as Richard Bonomo pulled it out of the water on the trailer, and that was terrifying! We were sure we were going to fall out! But now we've got the system down.

After that, I planned to take the cash my neighbor paid me for the high vis vest I bought her and go to Our Lady of the Valley Cistercian Monastery to buy - you guessed it - a rosary. (She even asked me if that was what I was going to do with the money as she handed it to me.) That was on the half of the figure eight that we didn't get to during the Art D-Tour, so I thought we could poke along that route, although all the art would be gone. First we drove to Sauk and had lunch in a Mexican restaurant, then we checked out the antiques shop across the street, and I bought a little brass bunny and - can you believe it? - three rosaries. We went to the VFW Park, and some of the trees are bare, but now the colors are deeper. Travalon said, "This is going to be one of those one hundred picture days," and indeed he did take 113 photos. Here are a selection of the photos from the park in Sauk.

Then we went to Our Lady of the Valley Monastery, and I followed the directions: ring doorbell, enter building, wait for help. The nun who came to help me seemed a bit confused - all I wanted was to buy a rosary. She disappeared and reappeared to say it was a suggested donation, so I gave her the cash my neighbor had given me and picked out a rosary. Here are some photos of the monastery and the grounds.

Then we drove further down the road it was on, because it was so picturesque. 

We did see one piece of artwork still standing: the word "HEALTH" written with hay bales. When we got to Plain, we went partway up St. Anne's hill again. We didn't go up the really steep part at the top.

Then we hiked around the lake at White Mound County Park again.

And I heard this woodpecker, but Travalon was the one who spotted him.

He made a really cool little video of him, but Blogspot says it is too large to post, so I will have to make it into a YouTube video at some point. I do apologize for leading my readers astray about this path around the lake - I thought it was about three miles long, but according to my FitBit, it is almost four miles long. It takes us a little over an hour to do it.

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When You Totally Sort of Mean Business

 

Today was very rainy all day long, but I did get all my walks in. On one of them, I took this photo of the last vestiges of fall color in our neighborhood:

This evening I had to run a very "adult" errand, going to Farm and Fleet to get knee boots and a high visibility vest. I need the boots for when we are taking in the boat on Saturday, so that I can step into the water once we get to the boat ramp. My neighbor said we should get high vis vests for walking, now that we are going out at O'Dark Thirty for our walks, and a guy whipped around the corner and almost hit us because he probably didn't see us. (Why anyone would drive that speed on our street, especially before 7:30 in the morning, is another question entirely.) I got a high vis vest for my neighbor too, and she'll pay me back. I have been told that they are very useful in an entirely different way, in that they make you seem official so that you can go backstage at major concerts or wander onto an accident scene and ask what's going on, and nobody will question you because you must be a worker - you're wearing a high vis vest! I mean, people like Rich wear them for biking, but I guess they do kind of make you look like a construction worker. I can't yet say if it would work for getting me into normally off-limits places, but I guess it does make me look like I'm all business. I asked Travalon if he would take a picture of me wearing the boots and the high vis vest, and he said I should wear my light-up unicorn horn too, so it looks like I totally mean business, only not really.

I know the vest is kind of really huge on me, but my neighbor said get the biggest size so it would fit over our bulky winter coats.

After that all-business purchase, Travalon and I went to the antiques store that is also on Stoughton Road but is still called Maple Bluff Antiques from the days when it was in our neighborhood. Last time I couldn't find any rosaries there, and the proprietress had to help me, and then the two she found were cheap plastic ones. This time I found two really nice sterling silver and glass ones, and she said, "Oh, where did you find these? I had someone in the other day looking for rosaries, and I couldn't find any!" I will post pictures of them eventually. I also talked Travalon into buying me a cheap plastic glow-in-the-dark rosary, along with the Archie bobble-head and Boris and Natasha dolls he got for himself.

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Kathbert's Birthday Song

 

Happy birthday to Kathbert and the Single B-Boy! Years ago I wrote a birthday song for Kathbert, which is sung to a tune that is not original but nobody seems to know what it's called:

                It's that time of year again,
                Reformation's in the air,
                Rodgers throwing interceptions,
                Leaves are falling everywhere,
                The Vilas Zoo is feeding extra hay to the zebra,
                It's time to throw a party for our favorite Libra!
                Everybody sing along, it's time for Kathbert's birthday song,
                We only sing it once a year, it looks as if that time is here!
                So sing it loud and out of tune,
                So they can hear it on the moon -
                It's Kathbert's birthday song!

You would not believe how much grief I got about this song. This is the updated version, of course - it was originally Favre who was throwing interceptions, and my choir director said, "He's not playing that badly this year!" Like Favre ever played badly? It's just a song. (Nobody would quibble with me saying this about Rodgers after last Sunday's game!) Then Kathbert said, "It's not Reformation until October 31st," and I said, "But it's in the air now, like how Christmas is in the air in early December." And a Polish guy was confused when we had Kathbert's birthday party a week late, and he said, "It's not Libra right now, it's Scorpio." I'm surprised nobody said anything about the poor zebra, and in fact they no longer have one at Vilas Zoo. But my OTHER choir director had no complaints about the song, and he sang along with great gusto.

Tonight Travalon and I took a fun but somewhat chilly boat ride, and we saw really cool lights. I have some photographic evidence, although it's not as cool as the real thing. One of our neighbors across the river would have one purple window, but only in the late fall and winter, and they hadn't had it in a couple of years. But today it suddenly reappeared!

What does it mean, and why does it only appear during cold weather? I wonder if it heats the room somehow, or if it's plant lights. But why did it disappear for two years and then come back?

Another neighbor across the river has a light that changes colors. I made a video.

This is probably our last boat trip for this year, except for a short one on Saturday to bring it in for the winter.

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Not Your Average Family Toothbrush

 

I had no idea what to blog about today, but after Night Prayer the Dairyman's Daughter was telling us how she bought these all-natural bamboo toothbrushes that are supposed to be good for the environment. After she had been using one for a month, she noticed odd markings that looked kind of like breasts. She thought, "What is that on my toothbrush?" so she looked at the other one, and sure enough, it had little male parts on it. Then she looked at the box, and it said: "Nudie Toothbrush." She said, "I bought it at a local store and just assumed it would be a family toothbrush!" I will say that I have heard (cough, cough) that if you go to a hotel where it is assumed you would be engaging in naughty things, the toothbrushes they provide do not in fact have genitalia drawn on them but are very plain. Isn't life strange like that?

Last night I had a weird dream that I was watching a movie I can't imagine anyone making. These two guys (characters in a novel I never finished) were trying to get a land use resolution passed in their town, but their archenemy on the town council was trying to stop them. They had to find the state person who could sign off on their resolution, so they were telling their sad story to a woman in a diner... and she was the exact person they needed to sign their paperwork! The soundtrack to this movie was "Estimated Prophet" by the Grateful Dead, over and over and over. What does any of this mean? According to the dream dictionary, dreaming of a resolution has to do with a decision you are making, so this must have something to do with making a decision about going on the Camino with the Bishop. This makes sense, since most other nights lately I've been dreaming I was on a pilgrimage.

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Cleaning in Costume

 

Lately my computer Boethius has become one of the main characters on this blog, but next Monday he will get some more memory, and then maybe he will fade into the background again. I called Graphite because I was having trouble with their online appointment system, and the guy I talked to thought I meant Boethius was out of storage space. I wish I knew more about computers, but Richard Bonomo had to help me look up how much storage space is left, and there's quite a bit - what Boethius needs is more RAM. So that is only $128 instead of over $400. What the guy really wanted me to do was buy a new computer - of course - which is ten times the price of more RAM, but Rich thinks Boethius should work for at least a few more years. Apple computers do last forever - I have one that is over a quarter of a century old, and it still works. I used it to write a complete novel and several unfinished ones.

Light Bright had a baby girl last Monday! Her name is Isla Jean. Congratulations!!

I am part of a "secret" club that fights Adultitis, and our secret mission this month was to do an adultitis-filled chore in a Halloween costume. I decided to clean the bathroom today, but a whole Halloween costume would be impractical for cleaning, so I just wore the light-up unicorn horn I got at a Mallards game. I made Travalon take a photo to prove it.

The unicorn horn was a bit uncomfortable, and I couldn't find my Carmen Miranda fruit basket hat, so I put on a sailor hat I got in La Crosse. "Swab that toilet, sailor!" "Aye, aye, captain!" Here's the clean bathroom.

Travalon got into the spirit too, cleaning in the kitchen and taking out the trash. But then I couldn't find a rosary I was sure I had gotten in Minocqua, so we had to go down to the garage and look through the trash bag he had just taken down to see if we could find it. Travalon was very good-natured about this, but we couldn't find the rosary, and now I am wondering if I just thought about getting it but didn't. That was way back in July, after all. It was a tiny rosary made of red and white beads the size you would use for a beading project, like a belt or whatever, so easy to throw away accidentally. I guess I'll just have to go back to Minocqua sometime and see if it is still at the antiques shop. Here are the rest of the rosaries I got during that trip, and a St. Anne's chaplet.

Still to come: more rosaries and another St. Anne's chaplet that I got during our second trip to Minocqua.

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We Conquered the Mammoth Hike Challenge!

 

Ugh, that Packers game! I knew they would have to lose eventually, and Rodgers would throw an interception eventually, but did he have to throw two in a row that turned into touchdowns? And even at that point the Pack were only down by four points, but it was like he lost his mojo and they couldn't score again. How humiliating to lose to Tom Brady by four touchdowns! On top of that, I seem to have a virus. No coughing or fever, so probably not the dreaded COVID, but how could I catch a cold? I haven't been around anyone!! Except Travalon, and he's not sick.

The morning started very oddly, when we went out the door to go to Mass and found two little birds, a robin and a sparrow, standing in front of the front door and staring into it as if they were expecting someone. We were running a bit late already, but I thought we should move them. 

I picked each one up gently and moved it to the garden in our front yard, and then they began to act normally. Here is a better look at the sparrow, now alert and not glassy-eyed.

What happened? Did they fly into the glass door and get stunned? By then we were too late to get to Mass, but maybe God did that on purpose, because it quickly became apparent that my sneezing and constantly running nose were not improving after taking an antihistamine, so I must have had more than allergies. This way I couldn't spread the joy to everyone at my church. 

We did decide to hike on the Ice Age Trail. We hiked on parts of two segments: the Brooklyn Wildlife segment and the Montrose segment. Of course when we got there, Travalon realized I had not put the memory card back in his good camera after uploading his photos from yesterday to Boethius. Clearly I was not running on all cylinders last night because I ALWAYS replace it immediately exactly so this wouldn't happen. Also, I forgot to charge my phone last night, but I charged it in the car on the way to Brooklyn. I took these first two photos with my phone, and the rest are from Travalon's phone, even the photo of him.

Some parts of the Ice Age Trail are right by private property. We were amused by this person's fake geese.

Here is a map of the Brooklyn segment that we did.

And here we are, almost finished with the hike. I look pretty beat, because I thought some exercise would help me fend off whatever virus I was fighting, but it just made me more tired.

On the way home, as we drove up Stoughton Road, we noticed a pond with a park on the map just to the east. It was Acewood Park, and look at the bird party on the pond!

Then we stopped by the antiques store on Cottage Grove Road, mostly because I had to powder my nose. I didn't expect to find any rosaries, since they never seem to have any at that one, but today I found two wall hanging ones, two cheap little ones, and a bracelet one. Then we came home and I entered our miles in the spreadsheet the Mammoth Challenge people had provided, and we were at 40.4 miles! Woo hoo! I submitted our form, and then we watched the game. Now I am really feeling lousy, but is there any point in calling in sick to work tomorrow if I'm working from home? It's not like I'm going to infect my coworkers. 

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