Watertown Train Graffiti

 

There is not much to say about today, except that I had a couple of colleagues who called me with questions, and I wondered when I became the font of all wisdom. In both cases I was able to help them, so maybe I should mention this in my annual review, whenever that happens. As I was leaving Adoration, the steam whistle at the Union Terrace sounded, which seemed odd because it usually goes off one hour before sunset, but this was a quarter of an hour early. Usually that means a storm is coming, but so far no storm has transpired. I did see a train coming as I was heading to Adoration, but I passed before it would have impeded my forward progress, and then I saw the arms go up as I was returning from Adoration, so I just missed one. Oddly, no video has been posted yet on social media of either train.

As promised, here are screen shots of the video Travalon made yesterday in Watertown, of graffiti on the first train he saw.

This post is long enough, so I'll tackle the second train tomorrow.

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Playing Chords by Ear

 

It's been a challenge walking at lunch this summer. Jackson's Landing was closed, but apparently it is now open again, although it's much harder to get to with the bridge closed. The road to Governor's Island is under construction, so there's another close place that's impossible to get to this summer. I've been walking in the shade of the little patch of trees in our neighborhood, but there are two porta-potties there for the boat users, and today as I was walking around in the grass, a truck came to pump out the porta-potties. I didn't want any part of that, so I went to an even more meager patch of shade, but that was too close to the construction of the new restaurant and apartment building where Mariner's Inn had been, so I ended up walking behind my building in a very meager patch of shade. In the construction zone, a dump truck made an unearthly noise every time it dumped out a load of dirt, and then a little Bobcat drove up the pile of dirt, and I kept thinking it might tip right over. Ugh - I'm so glad I don't have to work in construction!

After work, Travalon went to Watertown and saw two trains. Here is the old train depot, which is now a used car showroom.

Here are some photos of graffiti; there's lots of great graffiti in the videos he made, so I'll try to make screenshots tomorrow.

And this is the main building at Maranatha Baptist University.

This evening I went to the big Moldy Jam group at the music club. I had a lot of fun playing fiddle yesterday and almost brought the violin, but instead I brought the mandolin and tried to figure out chords. In some ways it's easier to learn tunes by ear than figure out chords by ear, so this is a worthy skill to work on. One of the owners of the club sat next to me and played guitar, and he's really good at picking out chords, so that helped. And if I felt like it, I could play the tune - the mandolin is versatile like that. We had a new young person come, an employee at the big software firm south of town that so many people work at. The Single B-Boy worked there for years. They might have been the only person besides me who had to get up for work in the morning, since most of the Moldy Jam people are retirement age. I think I've been playing too much, though - my inner elbow hurts, and Dr. Google tells me I have Golf Elbow, which is nothing serious but is a repetition injury, so maybe it's best that I put the instruments down for a day or two and rest.

Travalon just sent me a couple more photos. His new Casey Jones dog arrived in the mail today.

And this is our favorite view at Pheasant Branch.

You can see why we love to go there.

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Green Donut Day

This morning the priest said there would be "frog donuts" after Mass, so once Travalon and I had prepared the plastic for recycling, we went to the gym to find out what a frog donut was. Answer:

It's a regular old donut with green frosting and a gummy frog in the center. It wasn't even mint or lime flavored. We were in line behind a very elderly lady who was taking forever to decide which donut of all the identical ones she wanted, but I was giving her grace due to her age... until she picked a donut and then just stood there in my way yapping with someone. Finally I said, "Excuse me, can I get a donut?" and she seemed surprised and said, "Sorry - I'll get out of your way." Kids are really unaware of their surroundings, but are the elderly as well? Will I be like this someday? Am I like this now?

We didn't have a lot of time, so we just took a quick hike at Pheasant Branch, and on the way home we picked up some Mountain Dew donuts from Kwik Trip. We split one, so today I had one and a half green donuts, which is one and a half more donuts in any color than usual. The donut was lemon-lime flavored and didn't taste that much like Mountain Dew, in my opinion. Then we went back to the spot off Fair Oaks where the train cars sit, and we found some graffiti.

There was a beautiful creek behind the train cars.

And what is this sign? Is it a command to the trains?

Right by the tracks we found this red grass. 

After that we went to the East Side Club to hear a band, but Travalon got both the name of the band wrong and the start time, so we thought we were just a few minutes late and were confused when the band was on break, but it turned out they had started an hour earlier. Eventually they returned, and we listened to a few songs while eating cheeseburgers fresh off the grill, but soon it was time for me to go the Slow Irish Session. We had some issues with the group being in several tempos at the same time today. The guitarist from my band and a grad student from our department were among the people who came, besides some of the regulars, and a couple danced to the waltzes and polkas. Apparently they were there last time too, but I was sick so they were new to me. Meanwhile, Travalon went back to hear the band at the East Side Club, then he went to the arcade. After he picked me up, we sat on the dock until the sun set completely. Here is a photo.

Here are some screenshots of graffiti I got from videos on social media.

But the graffiti here cannot compare to that in LA. Travalon sent me a video of trains in Los Angeles, and I captured some screenshots. Check out this train as it is approaching you.

 

Here it is from the sides.

This is more like our graffiti, but still way more colorful.

The walls have just as much graffiti as the trains!

Wisconsin, we have to step up our graffiti game. This stuff is amazing.

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