More Christmas Lights

 

Yesterday I worked from home, then I addressed Christmas cards, and when Travalon came home, he signed them, and I got them ready to mail. We took them up to the post office in Waunakee and then went through their Rotary lights display. We also drove around trying to find the house with the music and light show, but what we found was this house.

We also went to Governor Nelson State Park to see the lit-up Christmas tree at a nearby house, and from there we could hear a very loud tundra swan (at least, I think that's what it was) and some geese.

Today I worked on campus and had a couple of cookies from the many treats in the break room. The chair stopped by to give me good chocolates and an envelope full of cash, and my boss gave me a Starbucks gift certificate and some candy. At lunchtime I walked with Hardingfele, and while I thought it was much warmer out today, she wanted to go into the nearby greenhouses. Look at these goofy cacti bending over!

Speaking of cacti, Ma Hat's Christmas cactus is in bloom.

And so is my aunt's geranium.

After our walk, Hardingfele said she had cookies too, like I needed more. I had one that her coworker made, and it tasted like a sparkly pink unicorn, all white chocolate chips and craisins. At first I liked it, but then it just seemed way too sweet. It was like a little girl's conception of a perfect cookie.

I watered my work plants well, hoping they survive three weeks of neglect. The weed won't, but that I don't care about so much. I had to go into the TA office to water an aloe, and I saw this winter sunset.

Then I took a much less crowded 28 bus to Adoration, where Travalon picked me up. We did succeed in finding the house with the light and music show in Waunakee.

Suddenly Bucky Badger popped up!

We saw some other beautifully decorated houses as well.

Sorry that last one's so crooked. I can assure you that it wasn't in real life, it's just an error on the part of the photographer (me). Another thing we didn't take a photo of, but maybe should have, was an inflatable snowman playing a candy cane saxophone. I like to think he was playing Christmas jazz, like what we were listening to as we drove around. Then we came home, and Jolly Bob is still perfuming the air in our condo. When I went into the loft to water those plants, the flowers are getting a bit brown, so this might be the last day for them. I won't know anyway, since we leave tomorrow morning on our big adventure.

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Jolly Bob in Bloom Again

 

As promised, here is the video of the Holiday Train:

I hope that it was worth the wait.

Also, here are our stuffed Christmas trees, which all have smily faces, though it's hard to see on the middle one:

Today after Mass, Travalon and I met Tiffy at the Venezuelan restaurant for brunch. They have a display with a child's dress and a tiny ukulele.

I wonder if it's playable? After Tiffy left, I went to my Brazilian drum lesson, which was delayed because two members of the official Brazilian drumming group who had just gotten back from Rio de Janeiro gave a presentation. I got there a little early for the presentation, which was supposed to start a half hour before our lesson (spoiler alert: it didn't), and I heard the official group practicing. They have people singing, and I thought how much better I'd be at singing than drumming. How do I get that gig? Might as well use those three semesters of Portuguese I studied thirty years ago, right?

Travalon picked me up afterwards, and we went home to watch that disappointing Packers game, though I suppose it was not a disappointment for my uncle who lives in Denver. It's always the worst when the Pack look good early in a game and then just fall apart. I kept thinking I smelled a wonderful fragrance, so I asked Travalon, and he smelled it too. It smelled like when Jolly Bob bloomed two years ago, and when Lazarus bloomed this past summer (they are both dracaenas), so I went into the loft and found this on top of Jolly Bob:

Greg is a dracaena too, but it has never bloomed. I don't even know if it will survive, since it's leaned against the windows in the living room, being too tall to hang out anywhere else in our condo, and right now that has got to be way too cold for a tropical plant like Greg. Anyway, I sent that photo to Tiffy, and she sent me a couple of cool photos of her orchid and her Christmas cactus in bloom, with Christmas lights in the background.

The ukulele group was asking for stories that we could "blame it on the ukulele," so I sent the story of my first ukulele lesson. The leader said, "That is a unique story." I even dug up the video of it:

I will note that my brother's response to this video was, "I hate you!" Of course, he was in Minnesota, which can be very cold in mid-March, while I was gazing out at the ocean in a tropical paradise. That was probably the highlight of my ukulele's existence, because I doubt if it was being dragged out into the cold just to not actually be played at the East Side Club Christmas Party.

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All the Niko Stuff

 

Today was very cold. Travalon and I spent most of the morning snuggled up at home, but eventually we braved the cold to go shopping on State Street. We got a snail ornament at Madison Modern Market.

We got soap at the Soap Opera, including Niko soap!

I've never seen that before! We got coffee at Fair Trade and then got a couple of CDs at B-Side, a Beatles outtakes CD for Travalon and a Perez Prado CD for me. As we were headed to the vintage clothing store that Travalon wanted to visit, I got a text that Tiffy had arrived in town, so we went to her sister's apartment building, and she gave me some presents she had brought back from Greece.

A Niko shot glass, an icon magnet, a Niko keychain, and a Niko magnet! Of course there is a name for this Evil Eye protector which I can't remember offhand (the Turkish is "nazar"), but I just call them Niko because he is one too. 

We got lunch at Baked Wings and Things, and Travalon had this delicious boozy hot chocolate. (I tasted it.) It had RumChata and peppermint schnapps in it.

Some carolers came in and serenaded us, and then we had to leave to get to the Madison Bach Musicians' Christmas concert. (Travalon did more shopping while we were at it.) It was so wonderful, with the Corelli "Christmas Concerto," some Water Music by Handel, a couple of Schuetz pieces, a Magnificat by a woman composer, and a Mass based on Medieval French carols by Charpentier. When we got there, a sign said there was a ticket available for someone who needed one since someone who had purchased it was sick, and I asked if it was still unclaimed, since the concert was about to start. They said, "You should have it, since you come to all the concerts!" so I even got in free! At intermission Tiffy and I went to buy chocolates (vanilla, raspberry, and orange filled), and everyone was happy that I got the free ticket because I'm such a loyal fan... except when they do non-Baroque music. 

Travalon picked us up, and we went down Monroe Street to see the inflatable Santa parade, and also by the zoo to get a glimpse of the Zoo Lights. It must have been closed today due to the weather, because there was not a single car in the parking lot, and during Zoo Lights you can never find a parking space. Mamastep and her friends were going to do a Krampus parade today, but that was canceled due to the cold; she said they were still meeting for dinner at Prost, but we had planned to go to Lola's tonight, so we stuck with our Plan A. Of course there was a wait, so we went to the Side Car and had drinks, and after about an hour we got seated in the restaurant, which is decorated so beautifully for Christmas. A DJ was playing soul music as we ate dinner and dessert. Those budinos are the best thing ever! They're like a chocolate pot de creme with lavender-infused whipped cream. Then after dinner we went to the Festival of Lights in Olin-Turville Park, which was surprisingly crowded. I swear they even had more new displays than when Travalon and I went through it earlier, like a leg lamp and pink bunny from A Christmas Story. As if stealing from the plot of that movie, Bad Bunny claims he got his name because he and his siblings had to wear bunny costumes once as kids, and being the oldest he felt too dignified for such nonsense so he had an angry expression in the photos. That's how he got his nickname, which is now his stage name. Not sure why he's not Conejito Malo, since his first language is Spanish, but whatever works - he's the most-streamed artist in the world. I'm still laughing about all the people who got their fee fees hurt over the Super Bowl announcing that he would do the halftime show.

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Mass and Mantle Wrapping for Our Lady of Guadalupe

 

Today was a quiet day of working at home, frantically trying to get things done before my vacation starts next week. I started a bit early so I could sneak out early to catch the Big Bendy B Bus. I parked at Lot 206 (since I have a tag), and the bus stop is right there. Three men who were more melanin- and alcohol-enhanced than I was were also waiting for the bus, and of course it was a bit late since it was SO COLD out there. However, I got to my old church just before Mass started, so it's all good. I forget how beautiful it is inside.

I particularly like the blue backdrop on the reredos, which wasn't a color I saw there frequently - usually green for ordinary time, purple for Lent and Advent, red for Pentecost and Christmas, and gold for Easter. My OTHER choir director sang and played some little organ thing, since the big organ was damaged in the fire. Hockey Girl and Richard Bonomo seemed to have organized the whole thing, and after Mass they led a thing where you could be wrapped in a mantle like the one Our Lady of Guadalupe wore. Then there was a cookie reception downstairs, and Travalon stopped in to say hi to Cecil Markovitch and the Single B-Boy when he got there after work. Then we picked up my car from Lot 206 and drove home.

It was snowing a bit, but we decided to go to Alt Brew to see the Irish band, even if Famie and the red-headed flute player couldn't make it. The show started at six, and it was almost eight by the time we got there, but we did still get to see the university Irish dancers do a number. We saw two Shamrock Club members there, the two we saw up at the protest - they sure do get around! A woman told a story about a shillelagh she had inherited, and after things had wrapped up, she came over and said to me, "I thought you looked familiar! I was trying to remember where I knew you from all night! You go to Mamastep's parties, don't you?" Then I remembered her - she had twins when she was like my age now, which inspired me at the time (there was still hope for me!) but now I can't imagine having a baby or two. Honestly, I can't imagine having school-aged kids like we would now if we had succeeded back then. I'm just too old and tired. They say kids keep you young... but do they? They seem to age some people very fast.

Speaking of kids, Travalon got another drawing of "six seven" from one. Apparently in this depiction, the two integers are romantically involved.

I said the next time a kid says "Six seven" to him, he should respond in Roman numerals: "Vee I! Vee I I!" Would that shut them up? Probably not, but it's a better chant than "Six seven!" 

Also, I completed the December Challenge on DuoLingo.

Travalon asked me, "Who is this Arab guy in a turban?" and I said, "No, that's Vikram. He's Sikh. He's from India." I know Vikram owns a cafe, and oddly Lin, the lazy lesbian whose grandmother Lucy is always on her case to get a job, works for him. That discrepancy is never explained - get off her back, Lucy, she already has a job! Lin is always subverting Vikram's carefully laid plans, and yet somehow things always turn out even better. Vikram also has a podcast where people call in with household questions, and he has a wife named Priti. But to know all this backstory, you have to do Spanish or French, because there was nothing about these characters in the Irish course. Which seems odd, because if there is one group of people who love a good story, it's the Irish. Missed opportunity there, DuoLingo!

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Holiday Train 2025

 

Yesterday was the last day of class on campus, so there were so many treats left over, plus one of my colleagues in FART 5 brought in shortbread with mint frosting, as I discovered when I went up to talk to Seabird. At lunch I went to an early music concert. In the evening I was originally going to meet with my two Union peeps at the Labor Temple, taking the 202 shuttle down, but one couldn't do it so we canceled. Instead, I went to the music club for their Wednesday singalong. The last time I took the 38 bus, it was a big bendy bus, which are second most comfortable after the shuttles. (Which are long-distance buses so it's hilarious that we take them around town.) This time it was a regular city bus, plus it was packed so I had to stand and hang onto the straps from the ceiling. I knew I had to get off at Atwood and Winnebago, but the screen announcing the next stop was malfunctioning and spewing nonsense, and the voice announcement was so quiet that I could barely hear it. When the bus had thinned out a bit, I asked the bus driver if she could let me know when we reached my stop, and she said, "I don't go that far." Say WHAT?? She said there are different 38 buses, some go here and some go there, which seems like a design flaw in the system, but nonetheless I was promised by the online schedule that the bus coming at her time would indeed go to my stop. When I told her that, she said, "I'm 40 minutes behind schedule." So she let me off, but sometimes I lead a slightly charmed life, and not five minutes later another 38 came and picked me up. However, that bus driver said he was new on that route and had no idea if he went to my stop, plus we had to stop on Jenifer Street for all the people who also needed to go further on the first 38 bus when it abruptly stopped... including a woman in a wheelchair, so that was quite a delay. 

Finally I got to the music club and rushed into the bathroom to powder my nose, but when I tried to unzip my big, ancient, and very warm coat, the zipper broke. I figured I'd deal with it later, so I sat in the back of the room and kind of half sang until the break, when we all ate cheese and the club owner talked me into playing a mandolin hanging on the wall. Only it wasn't a mandolin, it was a mandola, tuned an octave down and with such a huge stretch between frets that it broke my brain trying to make the simplest of chords. Eventually I was mostly able to make chords that sounded right, and by then I was deep into the song circle, so when Travalon arrived, I had to crawl over walkers and wheelchairs (many singers are not young) and managed to kick over someone's water despite trying to be careful. Oops! I still couldn't fix my zipper and panicked about waiting in the cold with an unzipped coat, so Travalon brought me to Goodwill (after a quick dinner at Subway), where I immediately found a perfectly good winter coat that fit for only $10. (Again with the slightly charmed life.) Despite that emergency errand, we got up to Columbus with time to spare and went looking at Christmas lights in town. Here are some photos.

We went to our usual spot where the tracks cross a road just east of the train station, and this year only one other intrepid guy joined us. Usually there are tons of people waiting to see the Holiday Train. I spotted the colorful train in the distance not too long after we got there, then we heard the horn, and soon it came into view as all three of us made videos of it. A couple of cars pulled up just in the nick of time to see it, but the people never got out. The guy who was out in the cold with us was very friendly, and we talked to him as we walked back to our car. We ran to Kwik Trip so I could powder my nose (being out in the cold sure makes me have to pee!), and Travalon got a warm beverage, then we took our positions on the bridge over the tracks just to the west of the station. We could hear the, let's say not my style, music coming from the band riding on the Holiday Train, then a guy talked, and we knew the train would be coming soon. It was so cool having it pass under us, not just the lights, but the sheer power of it. We got videos of that too, and soon I will edit them and throw the finished product on YouTube and put a link in a forthcoming post.

On the way home we saw more Christmas lights in Sun Prairie.

I'm a very lazy person who never gets around to decorating for the holidays, but I sure do appreciate other peoples' efforts!

Today at work there were even more treats, and I went way over my calorie budget. What if you can't decide between gingerbread and marzipan? Why, just have some gingerbread stuffed with marzipan! And so much chocolate, like letters made of chocolate (those were Dutch), and Russian chocolate, and German chocolate. Over lunch I had an interview for an autism study, and on the way there the free 80 bus came at a good time with just a short walk, but afterwards I wasn't sure when any buses were coming. I went to the nearest stop, and it has a screen showing when the next buses are coming, but then it flipped to the next round of buses just as I got there. I pressed a button on the bottom, thinking it would bring the first screen back, but it brought up a screen saying this was a solar-powered screen, yada yada, and in 30 seconds it would go back to the bus schedules, but don't press it again or it would be delayed. I waited well over 30 seconds and the message never went away, so I was about to walk to the next bus stop when the 204 shuttle pulled up at my stop. Now the 206 shuttle is the one to my park and ride parking lot on the north side, and I've taken the 202 to the south park and ride at the Labor Temple, but I'd never taken the 204. It does a reverse loop of campus from the other two and then goes to a park and ride on the west side, I think right near where my old "single gal" condo was. I got on it, and it took me to the bus stop across the street from where my own shuttle picks up, and from there it was not even a block to walk to my building. Just another example of my slightly charmed life. 

In the late afternoon there was a Nordic party, and two grad students were playing Nordic music on their violins. It was so beautiful! They were standing by the elevators, and I could hear it down on my floor five floors below them, so I went up and listened to them for a bit before having some Nordic treats, because if there was one thing I needed more of today, it was treats. I couldn't stay for the whole party, because the woman bringing my ukulele shirt was coming at six, so I had to catch the shuttle that picks up at five... only today for some reason he was ten minutes late. I got to my place just as the woman was trying to figure out where she was, but then she saw my license plate and recognized it as my email address, so it has already come in handy. Here's the shirt:

She insisted I take an XL instead of a 2XL - "you're not that big!" she said - and maybe she's right because it seems to fit just fine. Must be because I've lost weight, although today won't help that cause... Then I had to log on a bit late to my Union meeting. We were having elections for officers, and I'm relieved that the Treasurer for the local we merged with still wants the job, so I declined a nomination for Treasurer and threw my hat in the ring for Trustee, which is a job that takes ten minutes per year when we do an audit of the finances. There were three Trustee positions, and three of us nominated, so there won't be an election for that position. The president of our old local, the guy who looks like a leprechaun and has the most Irish name you can imagine, is now the president of the merged local, but the vice president is also a Trustee like me - I guess we'd had enough of being officers. Not long after the meeting Travalon came home, and he told me the kids had a coloring contest involving "six seven."

Not quite as fun as blog monsters, and really, will this ridiculous fad ever die? I feel like a grumpy old person, but this whole thing has outlasted its fifteen minutes of fame, and it's completely meaningless. If you ask a kid what "six seven" means, they can't tell you, because it doesn't mean anything. But it has hand gestures that go with it, and last Friday when I asked Tiffy if she knew about "Six seven," she did the gestures, so even she knows about it, and I didn't think she was ever around kids. There's even a Wikipedia entry with a video of someone doing the gestures. The song this came from wasn't a big hit, so how does everyone know about it? How can something be so mysterious and yet so uninteresting? It's like a mystery I don't want to solve.

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Return of PLESH

 

Today I worked from home and went to Adoration, and the only thing interesting about that is how, as I was heading home, things escalated quickly. When I left the church, the snow was softly falling, but about halfway home it had turned into some sort of sleet thing that was hard to get off the windshield, and I was driving nineteen miles an hour in an attempt not to slide off the road but this guy insisted on driving right on my tail even though - apparently he was unaware - there was a lane just to the left where he could have passed me if he was in such a gosh-darned hurry in such bad weather. Finally I got to the back roads where there was no traffic, and I could putter along at nineteen miles an hour, barely able to see out the windshield and trying not to slip all over the road, without anyone breathing down my tailpipe. 

I just ordered a travel-sized bottle of lotion that is supposed to be the smell most attractive to Capricorns because a) we are going to travel soon, and b) the Sagittarius who lives here with me loves the smell of it. I wonder if he'd like the smell that is supposed to be formulated for his own sign just as much? Anyway, it came with a free bag of tiny crystals.

I am not sure what to do with this. None of them really glow under regular blacklight; a few of them glow really well under the special blacklight flashlight, but that didn't show up in a photo.

Meanwhile, at work Travalon cannot escape "Six Seven." It's even in the coloring books!

Tiffy once had a coworker who said the two worst hotels he ever stayed at were called Westward Ho and Shady Elms, so he advised against staying at any hotel with the words "Ho" or "Shady" in the name. We figured this meant the worst hotel in the world must be called "Shady Ho," which definitely sounds like a place businessmen cheating on their wives would take their mistresses for an afternoon tryst. I thought about this when Travalon brought stuff home from his storage shed, and one thing was a plush, hot pink pillow that I used when taking the train to New Orleans, so I then named it Pink Little Easy Shady Ho, or PLESH. (Since New Orleans is the Big Easy.) I had forgotten about PLESH and another hot pink pillow with neon orange abstract designs that look a little like houses, and I was delighted to see them again, but they got kind of dirty being in a storage shed. I wonder if I can throw them in the washing machine?

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I Will Be Avoiding Buzz Saws

 

Today I worked on campus, and it was so cold out that on my morning break I went up to the conference room on the 14th floor to walk around. From that vantage point, I could see several swans on the lake. They won't be here long, since the water is already freezing over. Then an email came to our jam group, that a very fine mandolin player had lost all the fingers on his right hand in a buzz saw accident. That really hit home for me - I can't imagine never being able to play music again! At lunch I walked with Hardingfele in her building, and I told her about this terrible story. For some reason she was wondering whatever happened to Toque McToque and Light Bright, and I said as far as I know they are both still working on campus, so we searched for them and found they had both won awards recently. Then again, so did I, not too long ago - my Staff Excellence Award. Hardingfele said they were both looking old, which is odd because they are younger than we are, but she has a point. There was a video of Light Bright, and I couldn't believe how haggard she looked. Maybe two little kids will do that to you.

In the afternoon, after many emails had flown around about "How can we help?" and "Here's the address to send get-well cards," the afflicted mandolinist himself sent a rather lengthy email (how? without fingers?) with details about the accident, and how the doctors had surgically reattached his fingers but weren't sure how much function he would regain. He seemed surprisingly upbeat and even joked that someone said he should write a song called: "I Fought the Saw, and the Saw Won." He said since he's still got his thumb, he should be able to hold a pick somehow. This guy was very welcoming to me when I first joined Moldy Jam, since we were both playing mandolin, and he is so good that it would be an utter shame if he could never play again.

After work I went to the church we have been attending for Immaculate Conception, and Travalon joined me just as Mass was starting. I was so jazzed that we sang "The Angel Gabriel" at communion, since it's one of my favorite hymns, and the only one I know written by Basques. Someday I'll try to learn the words in the original Basque... It's actually a much easier language to sing in than English, but then again, what isn't? We have words like "world," which comes up a lot in the "Lamb of God." Basque has simpler vowels and not much in the way of consonant clusters. It's kind of like Latin that way, another easy language to sing in. German and French are a little harder, but English is the worst. That I know of, anyway. Who created this language?? Not a singer, I can tell you that much.

After Mass I saw the guy from the Care for Creation Team and Moldy Jam, so we commiserated about the shocking story of the day, then I took the long way home to pass this house.

In real life the lights were a rainbow of colors. I'm not sure why on the photo they show up as magenta, green, and cyan, but I have some vague recollection that those are the colors that make up light, the way red, yellow, and blue make up pigments. It must have something to do with that.

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