Swimming in Crystal Lake

 

Today Travalon took the day off of work, because they turned his nephew's life support off and he just wanted to grieve quietly at home. They had originally been planning to do it last night, and his fiancee had asked us to be there, but then they changed the ceremony to 8 am this morning. Apparently all the doctors and nurses line the hallway while the person is being wheeled into the operating room to have their organs harvested as a sign of respect for their sacrifice. I had emailed my band that I couldn't come to practice and then had to email them that never mind, I would be there after all.

It was a productive day for me, working from home, and since Travalon was right there when I got done at five, I suggested we go to Crystal Lake to swim. Before the pandemic they charged $8 to swim at the campground, but during the pandemic it was only open to campers, not the public. Now it is $15 and only open to the public on weekdays. Usually Travalon gets home from work too late to get out there, but today was our big chance, and we took it. Swimming in the lake was so wonderful, and then we climbed on the inflatable obstacle course in the lake, and now my arms are quite sore. Climbing things is so much more fun than lifting weights! We decided to try the pool too, and that was so lovely that we stayed in there quite a while as well, shooting buckets with a Fighting Illini basketball that was just laying around and throwing each other a black and neon green football that was also just laying around. When it comes to sports, if there's a ball involved, I'm all about that! But not pucks so much - hockey is just not my thing. The hills around the lake were so beautiful, and I took this photo (that unfortunately isn't that in focus) of the sunset behind the hills from the car.

As we drove home on Highway Y, we could see beautiful glimpses of the sunset behind the hills, but it is a one-lane highway with nowhere to stop and take a photo. When we got home, we did take a walk in the neighborhood, and I took this photo of the sunset behind Mariner's Inn.

It looked like a painting. We thought how much fun it would be to stay at Crystal Lake Campground, where your big decision every day would be, "Should I swim in the lake or in the pool?" The pool was warm and surrounded by fake palm trees, and it really did feel tropical. Looking at the hills around us, we could pretend we were on St. Lucia or some other tropical island with mountains. What a wonderful evening!

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A Couple of Couples at Horicon Marsh

 

Today we went to Mass at the church closer to us, because afterwards we went to Horicon Marsh with a couple we had met there. That was a lot of fun! We saw a lot of egrets and some pelicans, but no yellow-headed blackbirds or black-necked stilts. We went on the boardwalk and then on Old Marsh Road. Here are some photos.

We saw three pelicans, so we got to see half of the Big White Birds today.

Here is a tern:

I think this is a red-tailed hawk:

The pied-billed grebe is so cute!

Look at all the swallows in this tree!

And here we are!

When I uploaded Travalon's photos to Boethius, I found this photo of the ferry from yesterday:

The other couple had to go to a meeting at three, so after lunch we hurried back to Madison. My FitBit's battery had died completely, so we went to three different places trying to find someone who could change it, but finally we gave up and bought a new FitBit. We also bought a pickleball set and got some bubble tea to reward ourselves for all that adulting. Travalon drove me to band practice, where I played the violin again, and he went to Leopold's and bought two books and had a pandan latte and that fancy drink in the cool glass again. As he was driving me to band practice, he asked if Bongo the Dog would be there, and I said I hadn't seen Bongo in ages. But when I got to the door, there was Bongo to greet me! Travalon got to see him when he came to pick me up. So that was a good way to end the day. Now my new FitBit is charged and synced and ready to go! I will have horrible stats for today, but tomorrow I should be back on track. 

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Heavenly Saturday

 

Sorry that I haven't blogged in so long. Thursday I worked on campus, and I saw this weird structure that looks like a climbing toy for kids that had appeared right outside the Killer Building.

I tested its strength, and it was pretty solid, so I climbed on it myself. Then I asked my coworkers what it was, and one said it was a sculpture, because someone asked to see it from our library. It looks like an airplane from the ground, but it really does from above.

Another one found out it is a piece of sculpture created by a Ho-Chunk artist, and it was displayed at the White House at one point, before the family gifted it to the university. It's the shape of a bird effigy mound, and it points at an actual effigy mound nearby. And I climbed on it? Oops! But I can guarantee that undergrads are going to as well, especially since there is no plaque saying what it is. Apparently there will be a dedication in September.

I was also unanimously elected Vice-Chair of the Central Committee again. I was in a pretty good mood when Travalon came to pick me up, but then he said we had to go say goodbye to his nephew, who had been the best man at our wedding. We drove to Wauwatosa and went to the hospital, which only allows four visitors per room and ends visiting hours at eight, but they waived both rules for us. Travalon's two oldest brothers and their wives were in the room with his nephew, who was braindead but being kept "alive" for organ donation. It was so sad. We met his fiancee, who had to fill out all the organ donation paperwork. Eventually we all headed out, and rain poured on us. Once we got back to Madison, we had trouble finding a restaurant open at that late hour, but TGI Friday's was, and Travalon got this beautiful (and tasty!) drink.

Yesterday I worked from home, then Tiffy and I had dinner at Amber Indian restaurant and drove out to the outdoor theater to see "Chekhov's Shorts," a number of very funny scenes by Chekhov that he apparently had not worked into a whole play. On the way home I really had to go to the bathroom, and wouldn't you know that I was stopped by not one but two trains? I tried to go around the second one and got very lost in Maple Bluff, ending up right behind the train again anyway.

I just want to note that the rosary Tiffy got for me years ago in Mexico and gave to me when she found it again in her house matches the color scheme of my portrait of Niko.

Today I walked with my neighbor while Travalon watched cartoons, then I said we could do whatever he wanted, since it had been such a rough week for him. He was close to his nephew - they used to go to Comic Con and geek out about stuff. Travalon wanted to go to Lake Wisconsin, so first we drove to Sauk and stopped at the antiques shop there, since they have a wide selection of comic books, and Travalon wanted to peruse them in honor of his nephew. I found a rosary - sorry, no photo yet. It's a beautiful Kelly green. Then we took the Merrimac ferry over the lake and went to Fitz's for lunch. Because of the way the shade was, I had to have my back to the lake, but I was looking at lots of beautiful flowers.

It was a beautiful day, and the weather was perfect, but it somehow felt even more blissful than that, like we were actually in Heaven. I mentioned it to Travalon, and he felt it too, so we wondered if it was a message from his nephew that he was doing well up there. After our haddock cake sandwiches we split a salted caramel shake, then we went for a walk on the path to Paradise Island. We went to Merrimac, since they were having a festival in their park, and Travalon took some photos of the lake.

Then we went to Devil's Lake and swam at the South Shore beach. Travalon took some photos of the bluffs that were all around us.

We went for a walk on the nearby boardwalk, and I took this photo looking back at the busy beach:

We also saw this intriguing inflatable in the water. My photo:

Travalon's photo of it:

I don't know what it is, but I want one! There were so many people at Devil's Lake, and most of them seemed to be grilling something, so I said I was jonesin' for a burger. When we got back to town, we went to Portillo's, because even though it's a chain, it has just about the best burgers I've ever tasted. They really taste like they were grilled at Devil's Lake just before you get them. Then we just came home and sat on our screened-in porch, because it had been such a perfect day that we were afraid anything more would possibly ruin it. It had really been heavenly, and we really think it was a gift from Travalon's nephew.

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Barbie and Ken and Niko

 

Today my neighbor picked me up from work, and we went to the Barbie movie. We ordered the "Out of the Box" shandy, which was supposed to be bright pink, but ours was pretty faded.

The theater was completely packed, and a number of people brought kids, although nothing about the marketing of this movie in any way implies that it is for children. However, I think the more adult jokes were subtle enough that they probably flew right over the kids' heads so no harm, no foul. I have to say that the movie was pretty hilarious, although it did have a lot of deeper moments touching on mortality, the meaning of life, and how men and women relate. Plus Rhea Perlman! Remember Carla from Cheers? I would recommend the movie, and I can see why people see it more than once. Unlike Oppenheimer, the three-hour epic I got through without having to pee once, I did have to leave in the middle of the Kens' dance number, so if I do see it again, maybe I can choose a different scene for my bathroom break. Niko watched the movie with me, as well as my neighbor, and he was pleased to see someone in the credits named Nico, even if they did spell it wrong.

Please pray for Travalon's nephew, who was the best man at our wedding. He was involved in an accident at work and has sustained a serious brain injury. They don't know if he will survive the night, and they say he will almost certainly never be the same even if he does survive. I guess we will know more tomorrow.

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Nikoheimer

 

Yesterday I worked from home, then my neighbor and I dressed in pink (and I wore Niko) to go to the Barbie movie. We wanted to go to the 6:00 showing, but it was sold out... and so was the 6:30 showing and the 7:00 showing. I think there was a really late showing, like 9:00, that we could have gotten into, but I had to work today. Instead, we went to Oppenheimer at 6:30, and that was so good. They even let us order off the children's menu, so I had a child-sized pizza, and it was perfect. Since I was wearing Niko, he got to watch the movie too, except when I had a napkin over him while I was eating. I don't want to get pizza sauce on my Niko! A lot of the other people in our theater were wearing pink, so they must also have been Barbie refugees. One woman said, "A lot of people are doing Barbenheimer, but we're doing Oppenbarbie because we watched Oppenheimer first." After the movie we bought tickets for Barbie for tomorrow.

I did take a couple of photos of lotuses blooming just off our dock.

Today I worked from home again, then I went to Adoration. While I was there, Travalon took photos of Squeaky the Hummingbird at our feeder.

After dinner I walked with my neighbor, and we saw this Barbie sunset. It was pinker in real life.

The other day I saw a faculty member who studies shamanism (he is Catholic himself), and I mentioned my thoughts about nonspiritual people having bad trips on psychedelic drugs. Not only did he tell me he thought I was totally right about that, he said at our university, if they are giving a person a dose of psychedelics and that person has no religious background, they are extra careful to guide their trip. I thought that was extraordinary: at a secular university, they tacitly acknowledge that a lack of religion in a person's life makes them vulnerable to having their mind blown by seeing the spiritual realm. Why is nobody talking about this?? I know I often mock people who want "instant enlightenment" without putting in the hard work, but if they try to take a pill to become enlightened without the knowledge first, it's not just cheating, it's downright dangerous for them! I have run into people now and then, usually from the hippie generation so about fifteen years older than I am, who scorn religion but seemed fascinated by me. I have often felt like I could sell them on some garbage to become "instantly enlightened," but of course I couldn't do that and live with myself, and when they hear the answer to my spiritual development is sooo boring (Mass and the Rosary), they tune out. But now I'm thinking I need to save these people from doing something that potentially blows their minds, and not in a good way.

Travalon wants me to note that he is "un-adulting" by listening to 80's music while making the stuffies dance. It's like their own little nightclub.

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Priest Meet and Greet

 

First of all, I have some photos from yesterday. The day was so good that God put a bow on it! Travalon noticed these clouds seemed to be wearing a bow.

Here is the mysterious harlequin juggler, playing with children and his light-up clubs.

The end of the sunset and the glowing boat in the lower left.

This morning Travalon went to Oconomowoc to see his family, then he went to Mass in Hartland, attended a baseball game, went hiking, and swam in a lake. Meanwhile, I went to Mass at our usual church downtown, and afterwards Rich said instead of brunch at a restaurant, let's go to a church dinner at St. Dennis way over on the east side. However, when we got there, it was a parish festival that would have food trucks, not an organized meal in the basement, and the food trucks wouldn't be there for another hour. They were having Mass outside, and it was only half over. The guy who had wanted us to come stayed because he was helping with bingo, but Rich, another woman, and I went to a nearby restaurant, and it was one I'd been curious to try. My crab cake Benedict was really good. Check out the beautiful set they brought to Rich when he ordered his usual "hot chocolate, extra large, extra strong, maximum fat."

Rich, Kathbert, and I went for a long walk in the Arboretum, checking out the skunk cabbages that are very stressed by the drought. I told Kathbert about Operation Illumination, and she had some good suggestions. Rich was bitten by a bug, and he asked, "Is this a tick?" I said no, and he asked if I was sure because he had squished it, but I said, "Ticks don't have wings." The other two often rely on me for insect and plant identification, since back in the day Ma Hat enrolled me in summer classes on plant identification and bought me all sorts of guidebooks for plants and insects. I still remember almost all of this training - I remember one course was on edible plants in the forest, and at the end of the class we made a meal of all wild plants. I'm not saying I'm a hardcore survivalist, but I could probably eke out an existence for quite a while in the summer if I got lost in the woods.

Getting into Irish class was tricky. I had to do it from Rich's computer, and I had to log into my gmail account to get my access code for Zoom. Then I had to log into my Yahoo email to get the Zoom link, but it sent a verification to my work email, so then I had to log into that. It was ridiculous. Rich's camera made my eyes look this amazing aquamarine color; in real life they're a mossy greenish-gray. And every time I tried to say something in Irish, my brain wanted to say it in French instead. Which reminds me that Travalon is now doing some online Croatian course, so sometimes he and I are doing our language courses at the same time.

After Irish class, Rich and I went to St. James for a meet and greet with our new parish priests, only they were talking at the whole group, and once they shut up, people started playing loud music. There was way too much food there, ice cream and brownies and cookies and stuff I didn't even try. Anyway, I never got to meet any priests. Then we ran back to Rich's house, and he made me a light dinner before I headed off to band practice. They had asked me to bring my violin because Hardingfele got us a gig at a Ukranian picnic, but then she can't even attend it, so we were down to one fiddle. However, when I got there, Hardingfele was there with her fiddle too, so tonight we had three of us on violin. It took me a while to tune the violin because the strings kept slipping (they had been loosened for a long time), but playing the violin came right back to me. I guess it's like riding a bike. I did enjoy getting to play melody. Hopefully I can learn these Ukranian tunes well enough for this gig...

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Niko's First Music Festival

 

Yesterday was very hot, so my neighbor only wanted to walk in the morning. I ended up walking inside in the air conditioning the rest of the day, and then in the evening I went downtown to meet Tiffy. We had dinner at Himal Chuli, eating inside (which is unusual for us), then she got bubble tea but I didn't want any. We went to the roof of her sister's apartment building, but sitting inside because of the heat, and after a while I did want some bubble tea, so we went back down to get some. I probably should have headed home at that point, knowing the storm was coming, but honestly I wanted to watch it from that vantage point. At first it was very cool, with lots of lightning, but then the wind really picked up, and the construction cranes working on a nearby building started spinning around, so we got a bit freaked out and went down to the ground floor. We sat in the lobby, which has large windows but somehow felt safer, and we watched what looked like a hurricane outside. When the wind died down a bit, we went to her sister's apartment and sat in the dark, watching the storm until it seemed to have died down. I went to my car parked at the church, not even a block away, and by then there was just a light drizzle and some intermittent lightning flashing in the distance. There were flash flood warnings, but I didn't even encounter any standing water on my drive home. Travalon had said the power was out at our place, and it still was when I got there. We couldn't shower, and I had to grab a bottle of water from the fridge to brush my teeth, but we went to bed and slept for almost six hours.

I'm not totally sure when the power came back on, but I woke up about a quarter to six this morning, and Travalon had gotten up to turn off the lamp in the living room and apparently the TV, which came back on but was muted. I showered and tried to get back to sleep but couldn't, so eventually I just got up and started my day. We met Tiffy, Rich, and Jilly Moose for coffee downtown, sitting in the back garden because the day was a much pleasanter temperature. Rich headed for home while the rest of us went to the Union Terrace, where we found a perfect table in the shade. Jill had to leave for work just before one, while Travalon, Tiffy, and I had some lunch and then headed to the Edgewater Hotel for their free music festival.

At first when I saw the setup at the Edgewater, I thought, "Man, we gave up our perfect table at the Terrace for this?" Only the stage was under a tent, while all the chairs were set up in the sun. It was too loud in front of the band anyway, so we found a lovely place to sit along the side, among the shrubs, where we could see the band from the side so they weren't so loud. There was a refreshing lake breeze, and we were safely in the shade in a spot that would only get shadier. We got there midway through the set of the first band, the Jimmies, who are very popular locally. I'd never heard them before, but they have a horn section called the "Brassholes," and they played all sorts of stuff, like Latin tunes and New Orleans style tunes. 

The second band was Panchromatic Steel, a local steel drum band. They are always good, and I got up and danced a lot in front of my chair. Lots of women were wearing tropical prints, and I wished I'd dressed more tropical instead of New Orleans with Mardi Gras beads. Though the weather was perfect, we did need to stay hydrated, and waters were $3. Fair enough, there was no cover charge so they had to make their money somehow.

The third band was Natty Nation, a local reggae band. We got some expensive but very fresh and delicious grilled shrimp, and Travalon got the Mideastern platter, but I ate all of his olives because he didn't want them. I felt mesmerized by the backbeat of the reggae, but Travalon needed a break, so he got fish and chips at the Boathouse, the restaurant on the water. I had a bite of his fish, and the breading was so good, almost like an apple pie crust. Tiffy said she was "dotty" because she has a lot of spots on her arms from the sun, so I said I should call her Dotty on the blog, but she said, "Then nobody will know who you're talking about." Anyway, she got her blog name from Evil Cherry Minnie, and who am I to argue with an evil, fruit-scented Disney character?

The last band was the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, all the way from New Orleans, and they were as awesome as you are imagining they were. It's all about the dialogue between the trumpet and the trombone while the rhythm section lays down that syncopation. We saw a dog that looked like a friend's dog, so Tiffy took a photo of it. We also saw a guy coming toward us who looked like one of those Venetian Carnival clowns or something, with a white face and red spades painted on his cheeks, and red harlequin pants. He set his bag of juggling pins down right in front of us, then he took three, turned them on because they lit up, and went over to an open area and began juggling. I took a photo, but it hasn't downloaded from the Cloud yet. That was maybe not even the weirdest thing we saw there today, because earlier there was a big group of people who all seemed to be best friends but didn't go together at all, including what looked like a man in a dress and a guy "Pseudo-Bro" who looked kind of like Tiffy's brother. Pseudo-Bro convinced them all to go to the Union Terrace just before the headliners came on, which seemed crazy. I guess they weren't there for New Orleans jazz.

It was such a beautiful night. Just before we left, we went to gaze out over the lake at the remnants of the sunset, and the breeze had picked up. A boat docked below us glowed in the sequence of the colors of the rainbow. I could have stayed there for hours, but we are tired due to our shorter sleep last night, so I will wrap this up and go to bed.

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