Chancellor's Christmas Party

 

Apparently Travalon and I don't fully understand the rules of soccer, because on Friday morning he was watching Croatia play Brazil, and Brazil scored a goal just before time ran out. They were cheering, and the Croatians looked defeated, so we both assumed the game was over. (I was working from home and not really watching the game, but I saw that moment and thought the same thing.) Travalon turned off the TV, but later he found out more time was added to the game, so Croatia got another chance to score and tie things up, and then they won the shootout. He could have watched some or all of it, had he known.

This morning my Advent calendar let me down: I opened the window for the 12th and there was nothing in it! To be fair, maybe that's because there were two gemstones in the window for the 5th, but still. What a bummer.

After work today I was invited to the Chancellor's Christmas party for campus leadership. (Yes, apparently I am a leader on campus.) I don't really love these parties where you are supposed to mingle with important people, and I managed to evade the Chancellor by getting there before she set up camp beside the checkin table so she could greet everyone. Later I saw her mingling in the crowd, but she never came my way - my powers of invisibility do come in handy. At first I was sitting alone, but then a lovely couple joined me, and we talked about their hometowns of Mineral Point and Prairie du Chien. They drank their free drinks and ate the free food and left, and then the Chair of the Central Committee (I'm the Vice Chair) joined me for a bit with his boss. Then they left, but Travalon arrived, so I wasn't alone too much. After the party we went to Zoo Lights, but they are only open on the weekends, even though all the lights are shining tonight, so we went to the display at Olin-Turville Park. Some of my photos didn't turn out, but here are a few:

This is Maynard T. Mallard, the mascot of the Mallards baseball team:

This is a decoration we saw yesterday as we were driving back from looking at lights in Maple Bluff.

This is an adorable pair of teeny snowmen I saw on a walk at work today.

Here are some photos from the handbell concert on Saturday night.

In this one, they are all wearing silly headwear while playing "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch."

Here are some photos from the holiday train displays at Olbrich Gardens:

And here are some photos from the conservatory there:

I joke that this titan arum plant is my grandchild, because I took care of its parent years ago when I was in college.

And this is a super cute little quail that was running around the conservatory.

These are the stuffies I got during Street Fest.

The Unicorn Seahorse, Ka-ching Bear (because she has a dollar sign on her chest), and a weird little Christmas tree stuffy. I got a beach towel too but have yet to locate that for a photo.

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Quechua and Nahuatl Baroque Music

 

Yesterday Travalon and I had a lazy morning, then we headed to Olbrich to see the holiday train displays there. We ran into Light Bright and her toddler daughter, because my old department was having a holiday party there. Then we went to the Forward FC Clubhouse to watch France beat England in the World Cup. (I was pulling for France because I enjoyed my time there, while Travalon was pulling for England because they haven't won the World Cup since 1966.) On the way home we stopped by Zippy Lube for coffee, then Tiffy texted to say she was in town. She, Richard Bonomo, and I met at our church, then he drove us to the Chinese restaurant across the street from the church where the annual Christmas handbell concert was being held. After dinner we went to the concert, which was wonderful as always, and afterwards there were lots of homemade Christmas treats. We talked to one of the ringers, whom we have known for years - she's the one whose consecration to virginity we attended some years ago. Watching the concert, I couldn't help wondering what the ringers thought of each new technique: "Now you have to hit the bell with a mallet! Now you have to pound it on the table! And now you have to swirl this wooden stick around the outside so it rings like a singing bowl!" I wonder if I would like ringing bells? I do like being part of something larger than myself and creating music by singing or playing just one part among many, but only playing one or two notes is a whole other level of being "just a part of the whole."

Today Travalon and I went to the later Mass and then to the Shamrock Club Christmas Party. (We are so glad we went to the East Side Club Christmas Party last Saturday, because a guy we saw quite a bit of there died yesterday morning!) We sat with a mother and son who chatted with us about traveling in Ireland and music and the Westport neighborhoods. Travalon and I had to sneak out right after lunch (and after I won a gift certificate to Culver's) so we could pick up Tiffy, and she and I could go to a Madison Bach Musicians Christmas concert at First Congo while Travalon went to the zoo and Leopold's. The music was Latin American Baroque, so there was a song in Quechua (language of the Incas) and one in Nahuatl (language of the Aztecs), but mostly the songs were in Spanish. The four singers were incredible, and the music was so beautiful. As my regular readers know, I love Latin music, and I love Baroque music, so putting them together is heaven.

As promised, here is the video of the Holiday Train. There is a brief video Tiffy made of it passing a railroad crossing in Caledonia, then there are videos Travalon and I made of it coming into and leaving Columbus. Enjoy!

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Holiday Train 2022

 

Yesterday toward the end of the day, my boss stopped by to tell me I could work from home today, then he said, "Oh wait, you always work from home on Fridays." There was supposed to be a snowstorm, and even the technophobe faculty member had said their meeting was going to be on Zoom. Sure enough, when we woke up this morning, it was snowing very hard. Poor Travalon had to go into work in the afternoon, and he said on the way in it was treacherous, but it wasn't so bad on the way home. I took some pictures of the snow.

Since the roads were much clearer by the time Travalon got home, we decided to go to Columbus to to see the Holiday Train. On the way there it started to snow, but we kept going. One of the houses by the tracks had some lovely lights.

Lots of people joined us to see the train pass by and slow down as it approached the Columbus train station, where there was a show. Travalon and I both got great videos of the train, which I will post at some point. Here is a photo he took of the train after it had passed us.

This is a house in town that someone told us belonged to an electrician.

Travalon remembered that there was a bridge going over the train tracks, so we headed that way and parked in front of this little Protestant church.

There was a guy there with a camera set up on a stand and a thing like a police scanner, only to listen to the train people. Other people joined us, and then the Holiday Train passed underneath us, and we got awesome videos of that too. I hope to post them soon.

Once we came home, I did my Duolingo lessons and got this:

That is nice, but I don't really care since I'm on such a high from seeing the Holiday Train. It's two of my favorite things combined: trains and Christmas lights. The only way it could be improved is if it played good music instead of terrible music.

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Almost Like Christmas (It IS a Feast Day)

 

Sorry that I haven't blogged in several days. Tuesday after Adoration I was just too tired, although my eye was a lot better. Last night Travalon and I went to Mass in Waunakee for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, since I had a meeting tonight, then we looked at Christmas lights up there. We went through the Rotary Lights display, and we went to the house that has a light display set to music. One song was a kid singing about how he farted on Santa's lap - there really is a Christmas song for every occasion! 

Today was an eventful day. At lunchtime I went to give blood, and it took them half an hour to figure out if I could give while on steroid eye drops, then it only took five minutes for the donation itself. They always tell me I'm faster than average, which I chalk up to drinking so much water. Afterwards there were packaged goodies, but I made a beeline for the homemade Christmas treats. Not long after that, one of our professors and one of our grad students (but from different programs, so I'm not sure if they know each other) were in the middle elevator in our building when it got stuck!!! It took the experts forty-five minutes to rescue them - yikes!! This is why I have always heeded the advice of a coworker back at the hospital, who said if you have to pee, do it BEFORE getting into the elevator. This is further proof that our building hates us and wants to kill us, but again there is no plan to renovate or rebuild it.

Here are some recent pictures. Duolingo gave me a year-end report, and apparently I rock.

Yesterday on my lunchtime walk, I saw this adolescent swan among the mallards and coots. Is my buddy the coot among them? I sure hope so! I never found him on Tuesday.

I posted a photo of this house in a nearby neighborhood last year, but this year they seem to have even more plastic light-up snowmen. Where do they store them in the offseason? 

This evening felt like Christmas came a few weeks early, because first our Ice Age Trail patches arrived in the mail, and then I was going through stuff we had bought in the last few months, and I had forgotten about some of it myself, like this cuddly horse and cool hat from the Ukraine festival.

And I had completely forgotten about this larger cuddly bubble tea.

This is yet another blacklight poster with mushrooms on it. At least it's different - the first two were identical, so one is at Rich's house, since he has a blacklight too.

I had completely forgotten about this T-shirt that I got at an antiques shop. It doesn't glow under blacklight, alas, but it's so beautiful.

I got this bag and pillow for hardly anything at St. Vinny's during Street Fest. I know I got some other stuff too, so I'll have to hunt that down. Like, there were some stuffies. Look for those photos in a future blog post. And oh yeah, I forgot about the unicorn seahorse.

I got these treasures, including a chakra pyramid and a pyrite pyramid, on the trip I took with Tiffy to Galena.

And these are the crystals from my first eight days of the Advent calendar!

For some reason one day there was that little turquoise triangle in with the big crystal, so is it a bonus crystal? It came with the big red one on the top row on Sunday. Aren't they lovely? And I'm only a third of the way through the calendar. This is the best Advent calendar ever!

Tonight Travalon and I tried Stephen Colbert's Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor, Americone Dream. It's so good! Travalon said he could eat a gallon of it. It's vanilla with a caramel swirl and chocolate-covered pieces of waffle cone. I'm surprised that, as such a huge fan of Colbert, I haven't tried it before, since he's always talking about it on his show. Plus the proceeds go to charity, so it's win-win-lose... for my waistline. My old boss Handywoman once suggested a flavor of ice cream to Ben and Jerry's for a contest, and she won, so she got free ice cream and a trip to somewhere tropical. Now I'm forgetting all the details (was it in the Caribbean? did the flavor include chocolate?), but how cool is that?

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A Pink Eye and a Lonely Coot

Yesterday Travalon and I slept late after the party the night before, so we went to the later Mass closer to our house. Then we hit the road right away and stopped at Lapham Peak, where we were finally able to go all the way to the top. It was quite cold up there! We met Tiffy in Milwaukee and went to Conejito's for lunch. It's an inexpensive Mexican restaurant, and there are some cool things in the neighborhood, like this mural.

And this colorful water tower on top of a building. If you look closely, there's a picture on the building of the water tower.

Travalon dropped Tiffy and me off at the St. Joseph's Chapel. Isn't it beautiful? My OTHER choir once sang here, and the acoustics are marvelous.

Travalon went to the National Bobblehead Museum, while Tiffy and I were at a concert of Medieval liturgical music, mostly chant, interspersed with Medieval Christmas carols. At one point I was kind of asleep, and Tiffy thought I was just meditating, but then she realized I was asleep, and she laughed at me. When she told Travalon, he said, "You were channeling me!" because he sleeps through every show.

On the way home, Travalon and I stopped at a Country Christmas, a light show you drive through.

This one is new, after the Waukesha Holiday Parade tragedy last year.

I felt fine all day, but we got back to Madison early enough to run to the grocery store, and while we were there my eye started to hurt. The cashier looked at me funny, and when I got home, I saw my eye was all red. I thought it was an allergic reaction, so I took an antihistamine and went to bed, but this morning it wasn't any better. Travalon took me to Urgent Care, so he missed most of the Croatia/Japan game in the World Cup. I had to wait two hours to see a doctor who examined me for one minute and said I needed to see an eye doctor. They could fit me in early this afternoon, so we came home, then Travalon had to go to work, so he missed the shootout where Croatia beat Japan.

I went for a walk after the game, and I saw a larger black bird walking toward me. Was it a crow? Then I realized it was a coot. What?? They don't usually walk around on land! Here's a photo so you can see his funny big chicken feet.

I tried to guide him toward the water, but he was running very fast all over the place. He tried to fly, and then I could see his left wing was shortened. He managed to sneak under the tennis court fence, but then he couldn't figure out how to get back out. I could have caught him, but I needed to get to my eye appointment, so I opened the door and chased him out. He headed toward the water... and then I realized it was frozen near us. The last I saw of him, he was across the way under a dock, where he had found a tiny patch of open water. 

I went to my eye appointment, and the doctor said I have viral pinkeye and that it's very contagious. He prescribed steroid eye drops to help with the pain, so I stopped to pick them up on my way home, but they said there was a complication with health insurance and it would be half an hour. I went home and saw the coot still across the river, under the dock, then I went inside and the pharmacy had already called to say my prescription was ready, so then I had to run back over there. Finally I called the wildlife rescue people, but by then it was getting dark, so they said keep an eye on the coot. I'll be working from home tomorrow, so I can check on him then. I feel bad for him, cold and alone when all his friends have migrated. Hopefully his little patch of water doesn't freeze up with him stuck inside! I should have caught him in the tennis court and canceled my eye appointment. 

Oh yeah, and the Packers won. They were losing to the Bears the whole time we were listening to the game in the car, but they had a huge fourth quarter while we were at the concert, so we came out to the surprising and welcome news that they had won by nine points.

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Bird Nerds: Tracking the Tundra Swans

 

Sorry that it has been several days since I blogged. Thursday was Travalon's birthday, so we went out to a Thai restaurant for curry duck (and free fried bananas for dessert), and last night I talked to Tiffy. I did forget to mention one thing from our trip to Oconomowoc: a couple of teenage boys asked us as we walked down the street who would win the World Cup, and I said without missing a beat, "Belgium." (As you can see, my prognostication skills are quite weak, since Belgium is already eliminated.) They wanted to know why I said that, so I said, "They were number two seed going into the tournament." Is this true? Was I thinking of the Netherlands instead? I have no idea where this vague memory comes from. The one kid admitted that he didn't know anything about the World Cup, but he thought Portugal would win it all because they have Ronaldo. Okay, true, but Ronaldo has played in FIVE World Cups, which makes him old enough to be most of the other players' father. I think Portugal is still in it, so Rando Kid might be better at this than I am.

Speaking of the World Cup, this morning we watched the Netherlands beat Team USA, then we went to find the tundra swans. I kept hearing them, and seeing them in the distance or flying overhead while out walking on weekdays, so I knew they were around. We went to Jackson's Landing, where we had seen them last December, but all we saw were tons of these house sparrows, which are invasive. A pair was released in Central Park in the Nineteenth Century by some Shakespeare fan who wanted to release a pair of each kind of bird mentioned by the Bard, and now they have really taken over.

Then we went to Governor Nelson State Park, where we saw lots of coots and mallards, but no swans. A middle-aged couple walked by and asked if we saw anything interesting, since I was looking through the binoculars, and I said we were trying to find the tundra swans. The woman said there had been five over by Maple Bluff the other day, so we thought we should head that way. Here are some coots.

We went to the little pond in Waunakee where we often see a bird party this time of year, but the only thing we saw was some sort of dredging boat, so the birds have probably been scared off. As we were driving back toward our house, we saw about a dozen swans fly overhead! I suggested we swing by Mazanet Marina, but what we saw there were three sandhill cranes. Travalon took photos, but they weren't in focus. Travalon suggested we go to Governor's Island to find the swans, and when we turned onto Cinder Lane, we saw a bunch of wild turkeys, but the camera was in the backseat, so no photos. We did see four swans far out in Warner Bay, with what looks like goldeneye ducks around them.

We hiked around Governor's Island, and we heard swans! They sound like puppies yelping in the sky. Then we saw about a half dozen flying overhead. When we got back to Warner Bay, we saw these seven much closer to us, along with the four that were further away. This appears to be a family of two adults (white with black bills) and five teenagers (grayer with orange bills).

Travalon suggested going to Tenney Park and looking by the locks, and we did see some birds there. The photos of a coot and a female bufflehead hanging out together didn't really turn out, but this photo of a pair of mallards turned out really well.

By then we were very cold from so much outside time, so we went to Ancora, hoping to get a warm drink, but they had just closed. As we passed the Zippy Lube on Sherman, I saw people inside and remembered that it was reopening as a coffee shop, so we stopped. They had just opened on Travalon's birthday! They serve coffee, donuts, breakfast sandwiches, and fried chicken. We got mochas and very chocolate donuts that were so good.

In the evening we went to the East Side Club Christmas Party. On the way we stopped to see a house I see on my bus rides home. It's so lit up!

Here's the Christmas Tree at the East Side Club.

And this was the decorative bowl at our table.

At first Travalon and I were sitting alone at a big table, but soon an old neighbor of mine and her twin joined us, and I realized I know her twin because she's friends with some current neighbors of ours. Then two more women joined us. As always, our table was the last to go up for food, but this year they said get salad first and then everyone would get food after that. By the time our table went up, they were out of salad, so we got no salad but ended up being the first ones to get the rest of the turkey dinner. There was also pie, and Tom and Jerry drinks after dinner, and wine at the table. The Wauna Ukes played again this year, but they didn't invite me to join them, and I didn't bring my own ukulele because it seemed rude to invite myself to play with them when I haven't practiced with them. (They did invite me to practice with them after I played with them last year, but they practice at one on Fridays. I assume that is pm, while I am at work. I could make one am practice, but the next day would be rough!) One of the twins wanted to learn the ukulele, so she talked to them afterwards, and they said they had beginner lessons on Saturdays, but that doesn't help me, since I'm not a beginner. The other twin plays the guitar. There were some door prizes, then after those were given out, the guy distributing them came to our table (since he had gone to high school with the twins), and he gave a couple of us vodka socks. I am very excited - I desperately needed more socks! I will wear them tomorrow.

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