Eight Wonderful Years!

 

I forgot to mention something that happened at work on Monday: I saw something in my mailbox, so I went into the mailroom and saw it was more cookies like the one featured on this blog last week:

It looked like there was a similar package in my coworker's mailbox, so I told him the faculty member had given us all cookies, and he should go get his. Of course, his package was full of magnets, and it wasn't even for him but for another coworker - someone put it in his mailbox by accident. Boy, did I feel bad for giving him false hope!

DuoLingo keeps giving me these stickers. Here is the May challenge one:

Yesterday Travalon and I took the day off of work, and we went to Horicon Marsh. We started at the spot where we often see the white-headed goose, but a person working there said nobody has seen him for weeks. Did he go to another part of the marsh? Has he come to the end of his life? He wasn't a young goose, since he has been around for years. We did see this pelican that was chased by a goose.

Under the eaves of the building, there were nests with baby swallows in them.

Here is an adult swallow.

Travalon tried to take a photo of a goldfinch, but then this goldfinch chased it away and posed for him.

This catbird had a beautiful song, and the way it's peeking around the branch just made me laugh.

We saw more pelicans when we went down the path by the marsh. I love their bright orange feet.

These swallows are called martins.

Here is a tree swallow, which is the kind nesting under the eaves. They were flying over the water at Horicon Marsh. At our dock we have barn swallows, which have cinnamon breasts instead of white ones.

Then we went to the part of Horicon Marsh on Dike Road, where we saw blue-winged teals.

We also saw terns hovering over the water and then diving into it.

More tree swallows. They are such a pretty metallic blue.

There were sandpipers there too.

And another shot of a tern hovering.

This egret is surrounded by other birds, maybe black-necked sandpipers.

And we saw more pelicans further along the road.

We tried to go to the path where we saw lots of egrets before, but it's closed "due to migration." So we went to Theresa Marsh and saw lots of sandpipers.

We saw the little turtles sitting on the rocks that we always see there, but we also saw these two very large turtles who are, shall we say, sharing an intimate embrace.

I had hoped to see baby coots, and the woman who said the white-headed goose is now missing also told me that the best place to see coots was along Highway 49. We did see coots, but no babies. We saw a swan, so we saw three of the four big white birds. (No whooping cranes.)

Then we went to the boardwalk and saw blue-winged teals.

Here is the female blue-winged teal, dabbling along.

And of course more tree swallows.

This teal is posing so you can see the patch on his wing that is the color named after him. ("Teal" comes from an Old English word for a small duck.) 

These ducks were larger than the teals. They look very much like female mallards, but the darker one on the left leads me to believe this is a pair of black ducks. Update: apparently these are a male and female gadwall duck.

The male teal is preening again, and you can see a little of the blue patch on his wing.

We also saw a muskrat swimming rapidly away from us.

In this photo, you can see that the male teal's head is actually iridescent like a male mallard's.

We came back and changed into fancier clothes, then I went to my adoration hour while Travalon hung out on State Street. I had thought we would go to dinner on State Street, but he suggested that we go to Liliana's, since they are closing. Actually, the story is more complicated than that: they are splitting into two new restaurants. Liliana was the name of the owner's daughter, but the kid is nonbinary now and goes by Ollie, so part of the restaurant will be renamed Ollie's and will be a casual, family restaurant. The other half will be called St. Charles and will be even fancier than Liliana's. The Tuesday Night special last night was a three-course dinner on the theme of "shrimp," but they sold out right before we got there. We still had shrimp; Travalon had shrimp and grits, and I had shrimp and crawfish étouffée. So delicious! Then we came home and tried to watch the video of our wedding, as we always do, but the DVR is not working that well, so some parts of it played well, and other parts (of course our vows and the duet sung by Kathbert and Miss Heartsong, my two favorite parts) got hung up and were all choppy and weird. That was a slight disappointment, but it doesn't really matter - the point is that we've had eight wonderful years together.

Tonight the Bucks were down 14 points at the start of the fourth quarter, and they came back to beat the Celtics! Between that and the stunning Kentucky Derby win, I'm beginning to feel like anything is possible!

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No, No, Not the Nau-Ti-Gal!

 

First, here is a photo one of my bandmates took of Bongo, Mandy, and me:

Tonight there was a zoning board meeting in our town hall, and Travalon even skipped the Bucks game to go with me. (He did record it.) The sky looked beautiful over the parking lot.

We were concerned because there is a proposal to tear down the Nau-Ti-Gal restaurant and replace it with a six-story apartment building. We weren't happy about this on many levels: the aesthetic, the traffic volume, the impact on wildlife, and the fact that the area would be rezoned from commercial to private. We would lose access to the riverfront and a restaurant that we could walk to. To our pleasant surprise, the board had all the same issues we did, and they told the developer to come back with something more acceptable. I think our condo association is going to submit a statement, and I proposed a draft one:

The Lighthouse Bay Condo Association (Board?) would like to raise some issues with the proposal for the current Nau-Ti-Gal site. The number of units proposed (140) would greatly increase the population density in this neighborhood, with an attendant increase in traffic. This would have a negative impact on the quality of life in our neighborhood, since many people walk or bike along the road. It would also have a negative impact on the wildlife, the very thing that drew a lot of us to this area. Another issue is that this proposal would take an area that has been public since the 19th century and make it private, cutting off access to the riverfront for the neighborhood and depriving us of a place to go for fun. The riverfront restaurant that we could walk to has been very popular in our neighborhood, and we feel that any proposal should allow for a commercial venture, for example, another bar or restaurant. One association member suggested a coffeehouse. Finally, the aesthetic impact of a six-story building in this area of natural beauty cannot be overstated. We strongly oppose the proposal as it stands and hope that it is either substantially rewritten with these concerns in mind or taken off the table altogether.

I will keep my regular readers (some of whom have eaten at the Nau-Ti-Gal) apprised of all developments in this matter.

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Lakeshore Path and Tiedeman's Pond

 

After blogging yesterday, I googled "Is a fascinator a hat?" and apparently everyone was wondering the same thing, because the question autofilled. According to Wikipedia, the answer is no, so the woman who won "Best Woman's Hat" yesterday at the Kentucky Derby Party technically shouldn't have won, but she did have the best headwear. Today at brunch we had lots of people, including Cecil Markovitch and Hockey Girl, and when I posed the question, Hockey Girl was quite definitive that she felt a fascinator is, in fact, a hat. I am still not sure where I stand on this issue. Guess I'm a fascinator agnostic.

After brunch, Travalon and I drove to the parking lot by Picnic Point and took a walk along Lakeshore Path, thinking we might see coots. We didn't see any, but we did see lots of red-winged blackbirds.

And we saw baby geese!

When we turned around and came back, two of the babies ran right toward us. That was cute but kind of scary, since we figured the parents might attack us. But they seem to be unconcerned about humans.

Here is a regular red-winged blackbird:

This one only has the yellow stripe, not the bright red shoulder patch, but he's kind of speckled too, so maybe he's a juvenile?

Then we went to Tiedeman's Pond and saw lots of birds and mammals. We saw great blue herons.

And a beautiful white egret.

This heron looks like he has a mullet!

And of course we saw red-winged blackbirds.

Here you can see the egret and the herons are all close together. There are three herons.

We also saw a little quail-like bird running around in the bushes as we walked on the boardwalk, but Travalon wasn't able to get a photo of it. We both thought he took a photo of the sandhill crane that was posing in front of us, but nothing uploaded to my computer. He did take a photo of a female red-winged blackbird.

And here is the egret from the other side of the pond.

We saw a pair of wood ducks.

There is a blond squirrel there, just like the one in our neighborhood (which we haven't see in months).

When we got back to where we'd started, the egret was still there.

Some people with a bunch of little kids were all excited about a woodchuck, and sure enough, we saw there was one climbing a low bush.

Tonight at band practice, Bongo the chocolate lab was snuggling up to me because so many of our bandmates are cat people and don't really like him. As soon as we started playing, he left the room, so I wondered if he hated the sound of the mandolin. But then every time we would stop playing, he would return to snuggle up to me again. I said we could do the "Bongo Test": if we are taking so long between songs that Bongo comes back to snuggle, then our audience would be losing interest. Hardingfele said her cat Vinnie is better, and I said, "But he attacked you so badly that you had to go to the emergency room - twice!" It turns out Bongo has also sent his grandma to the emergency room twice, but that is because he is still a puppy in his head but a huge dog in real life, so he pulled her so hard during walks that twice she injured her arm. I said that's the difference - he didn't hurt her on purpose. Vinnie purposely attacked Hardingfele so badly that she needed stitches. And who wants a pet like that?

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Shocking Kentucky Derby Win

 

This morning Travalon came to help me with the garden; they were selling plants there, but I had forgotten my spade, and there isn't one in the community shed, so we just spread my hay out on my plot and will come back next week to plant. (I have to have something planted by the end of the day next Sunday.) Then we took a walk on Governor's Island, and we saw a yellow warbler posing for us, so Travalon bemoaned that he hadn't brought his good camera. Fortunately he already took a good picture of one at Patrick Marsh, which I posted on this blog. Then we came home so he could get his good camera before we went to Jackson's Landing for another walk, but he forgot it and had to run back upstairs for it. Good thing he got it, because there are baby cranes!

These are very small babies, so they must have hatched in the last few days. Then we drove to Jackson's Landing, and we saw a lone crane. I'm guessing its mate is on the nest with unhatched eggs.

This photo makes me laugh - it's not the best photo of a red-winged blackbird, but you can see its beak is wide open, and they are very noisy birds, always making that weird, metallic sound they make.

Then we went to the Kentucky Derby party at the Edgewood Hotel, and that was perfection. They were giving out straw hats - here is a photo of Travalon wearing one. The other one is in front of me because it was entirely too large for my head.

They also gave out swag bags, which contained cheap sunglasses, a weird pin, baseball caps that said "Maker's Mark," and a Maker's Mark bowtie. I tried to follow the instructions to put one on Travalon, but they didn't make any sense after Step Four (I'm not saying that's because of the mint julep I had just enjoyed, but I'm not saying it's not), and anyway, it was too small for his neck. We sat at a table with a friendly couple from Monticello (the town, not Jefferson's plantation), and the woman had a fabulous hat with a horse and some roses on it. We each got a ticket when we arrived, and I wasted mine playing the ring game, where you try to toss a ring around a bottle of wine. My first throw was wild, but that was because my purse was on my arm and knocking my aim off. I put it down, and my other try was so good that I did get a bottle, but it bounced off. I saw other people walking around with bottles of wine, so some people must have succeeded. It was $5 to buy another ticket, so I didn't bother.

Travalon used his ticket to bet on a horse. There were containers for each horse, and if you picked the winning horse, they would draw from that container so you might win a standup paddle board, a cooler, or a Maker's Mark sign. Since I didn't particularly want any of those prizes, I didn't pay $5 to get another ticket to bet on a horse. Travalon bet on Simplification because he liked his name; I would have bet on a beautiful, shiny black horse that ended up coming in third. 

There were two bands that played, both playing funk music. The first one played songs we recognized, like Stevie Wonder and Tower of Power and James Brown, while the second one played nothing that I recognized, so they may have all been original songs, but I did like them all. They were from Chicago. Before the race, they had the Bucks game on the giant TV screen, which made Travalon happy, but then they turned it off for some reason with only two minutes to go, and the Bucks were only up by three, not like fifteen or something, so it was anyone's game at that point. I kept peeking at my phone and knew the Bucks won by two, but Travalon didn't want to know, so I didn't tell him. Of course a friend texted him and said, "What a game! Giannis comes through again!" So he didn't say the Bucks won, but in fact he did. Travalon had taped the game, so he watched it when we got home.

Finally it was the pre-race coverage. They said a horse had to pull out, so another horse that had been planning to race in New York today was invited to join the Derby. This horse was an 80-1 long shot, and he had the outermost position, which of course is a disadvantage because then he had to run further. He wasn't even one of the choices for betting on at our party. When the race started, he was toward the back of the pack, but he kept making his way forward to where the two favorites were running neck-and-neck, and then he suddenly had a burst of speed, pulled in front of both of them, and won!!! Can you imagine the kind of money you could have made if you had actually bet on this horse?? It did make me deliriously happy, since it felt like anything could happen if that could. However, it complicated things for the drawing at our party. Should they choose the container for the horse that dropped out? Should they choose the one for the horse that came in second? They decided to do the latter, and the prizes were awarded. There were also prizes (Maker's Mark jackets) for the best man's and woman's hat. The woman who won had this fabulous fascinator that looked like something out of Dr. Seuss. Now is a fascinator really a hat? It has to be held onto your head, whereas a hat stays on your head via gravity, and it serves a purpose, either keeping your head warm or shading you from the sun. Fascinators are awesome, and far more popular in Britain where it isn't as cold and it isn't as sunny. Maybe they could catch on here for going out at night when the weather is warm enough. I didn't realize they were popular for the Kentucky Derby; I usually think of women wearing big straw hats covered with flowers, but I saw almost as many fascinators as what I would call "real" hats at this Derby party. Since the British Royal Family loves fascinators, maybe Jilly Moose can tell us something about this, like are they technically hats? I mean, I guess they are headwear, but so is a headband, and nobody would call that a hat. Maybe this gets into a philosophical debate about what is a hat. A fascinator wouldn't be the Platonic ideal, but maybe it kind of qualifies. Feel free to leave your thoughts about this important debate in the comments.

Famous Hat