Where Are All the Trains?

 

Lately I have not been hearing trains pass by our place. This is not only sad for me, but it's very bad news for the economy, because it means people aren't buying things or the supplies are low. Anyway, they're not sending goods via train as often as they had been just a few months ago. But then this evening as I was leaving for adoration, I heard a train. I almost ran out to watch it, but I had to get ready to go. It just made me happy to know it was there.

Today I worked from home in the morning, then I took the afternoon off for my annual physical. I'm healthy, just old - they told me I needed a shingles vaccine, and they asked if I wanted it today or later, since it can give you flu-like symptoms and I already have a cold. I said today because I didn't want to come back... and only after they gave it to me did they tell me I need a second one between two and six months from now. Also, because of my advanced age I have to get a delicate part of my anatomy squished every year, as if every three years wasn't bad enough. Oh joy.

At least I am feeling a lot better today, not 100% but maybe 80%, and the weather was so much nicer today. Travalon and I went out in the morning to look for birds off the dock, and then I went at lunchtime and saw coots, a motorboat, and a kayaker. Spring is really on its way! Several times I have seen two pairs of common mergansers from our dock, so hopefully they stick around for a little while. Here are some photos of ring-necked ducks with their fancy bills with designs on them.

I think this one is doing a mating dance, and that is why he has stuck his head up like this.

This is a male bufflehead.

And another shot of the male ring-necked duck.

Here are some coots.

And I believe this is a common merganser in flight.

You can see what stunning birds they are as they fly by. It doesn't look like Travalon got a shot of them swimming, but I posted a shot of them he took the other day. Today we didn't see any swans.

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St. Patrick's Day 2023

 

Sorry that it has been so long since I blogged. I was very busy on Friday and Saturday, and then yesterday I felt awful. Still not feeling 100%. Friday Tiffy came to town, and our big plan was to meet Jilly Moose and Hockey Girl at the Harmony Bar to see Irish music, but it was packed in there!! We decided to get dinner at a nearby Laotian restaurant, then we talked about other places to hear Irish music, but in the end Hockey Girl just headed home after dinner. The rest of us went to Tiffy's sister's place and watched a TV show about zoo animals, so that was our exciting St. Patrick's Day. At least Jilly Moose and I had seen the band the Sunday before, at the Brink Lounge.

Saturday Travalon and I met Tiffy and Rich for coffee, then Travalon spent the day at the Kohl Center watching the state high school basketball tournament. Tiffy and I just kind of hung out, getting lunch at Himal Chuli, walking at East Towne Mall because it was so cold outside, and of course getting bubble tea, although I got mine unsweetened and unbubbled due to Lent. We spent a lot of time just hanging out in the beautiful top floor gathering space of her sister's apartment building, watching it snow on and off. Eventually we met Rich at the Mexican restaurant right by his house, then he had us over for his famous brownies, because Tiffy had never tried them. By then it was after sundown, so I had a brownie too. We talked a long time, and Travalon was surprised that he beat me home.

Sunday I woke up feeling awful, and we didn't go to Mass right away. Someone posted that there were hundreds of swans on the part of the river with the little island, so we headed up there (really close to the church where we often go to Mass), and Travalon took photos. When we got home, I took a COVID test, but it was negative, so that's a relief. Still, we had to drag ourselves to the Shamrock Club St. Patrick's Day party... and we got there a little late and missed most of the band I had wanted to see on Friday, who were there playing. Oops! Travalon was just happy he could watch the Badgers win their second NIT game. We only bought three raffle tickets, and two of them were winners, so we came home with a bright green Aran wool cable-knit sweater and some CDs. I felt so sorry for the woman across the table from us, who had a bunch of raffle tickets and didn't win a single thing. Some people won a lot, but they seemed to have bought dozens of tickets.

We were supposed to go to a friend's mother's funeral out of town, but Travalon let our friend know we were sick, and he napped while I took the world's slowest rosary walk outside. I had already said I'd miss Irish class for the funeral, and I didn't have much of a voice, so I skipped it. More sadly, I had to miss our first band practice in months. After all the jonesin' I've been doing to make music with others! We did go to the 5 pm Mass at our usual church downtown, but I sat through the whole thing because I was so light-headed when standing. It wasn't so bad when moving, so I did go up for communion. Then we had a very quiet evening and went to bed very early, by our standards.

This morning I woke up in time to get to work, but after actually getting out of bed, I realized it made no sense to go into work. I did work from home, but maybe that was a mistake - I've never had so many people respond to my emails with, "You are completely misunderstanding what I'm asking for." Somehow I did make it through the work day (and tomorrow I'm working from home anyway, so I get another day to recover), then when Travalon came home, we went to the dock to see if we could find the swans we could hear. They sound like puppies yelping. They kept flying by, and one flock flew right overhead, but Travalon didn't have his camera ready, so no photo of those. Here are some other photos. First are the swans we saw yesterday on the Upper Yahara, with some Canada geese, mallards, and what are either graylag geese or snow geese.

In these two photos, you can clearly see the other kind of goose.

Here are more of that other kind of goose.

Here is an action shot of a Canada goose.

Why is this swan all alone with the ducks and geese?

This morning around ten Travalon and I took a walk out to the dock, and we saw a pair of common mergansers. The male has a black head, and the female has a brown head.

Then this evening after work, we saw tundra swans flying in front of the sunset.

I hope you enjoy this extra-long blog post. I should get to bed if I have any hope of getting over whatever virus this is.

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Watching a Historic Basketball Game

 

Today I worked from home in the morning and on campus in the afternoon. I had to take a long walk across campus in the drizzle, but actually I enjoyed that. People have always noticed that I seem to like those cool, drizzly days that everyone else hates, and they always said I would love Seattle, but of course the one time I was there it was sunny every single day. I think my ancestors were mostly from cool, rainy places, so maybe it's genetic. However, I do love sunny days as well, and after all, I have ancestors from West Africa. Just not as many.

This evening Travalon was watching two Catholic high school basketball teams play in the state tournament, and there was some floppy-haired kid named Eric Kenesie who was on fire. He scored every time he had the ball, so the other team was fouling him, but then he made all his free throws so that strategy wasn't working for them either. We thought that name would be pronounced Ke-NEE-see, and we wondered what ethnicity that was, but then the announcers called him something that sounded like Kennessy, rhyming with Hennessy, which is an Irish name, so I'm going to guess it's an Irish name? He actually broke the record for most points in a Wisconsin high school basketball state tournament game, 51 points, so we were watching history unfold. And he's only a junior, so next year he can come back and do it all again. Travalon hopes his team, the Lancers, win state because they never have before.

OK, so I was just reading about this kid, and his parents were both big-time college athletes in their day. He is not only a starter on the basketball team but the starting quarterback of the football team and a starting infielder on the baseball team. He has five younger siblings, so if they are also as athletic as he is, this school could be a contender for years to come.

Saturday when we saw my classmate at the Brink Lounge, she had a cupcake someone had given her for her birthday with a four-leaf clover candle on top. I thought the candle was so cute, and when we were leaving, I saw that she had abandoned it on the table, so I brought it home. And guess what? It glows under blacklight! Now I don't want to burn it.

Since Hannibal O'Leary, the lion I got at the Mardi Gras parade, is also bright green, I checked to see if he does too. Answer: sort of?

Funny that the white parts on him look blue in this photo. I guess that's from the purplish glow of the blacklight itself. Of course I forgot something that I was going to test. At work there are these German journals just sitting around on a table in the common area, and one looks like it has a cover that would glow under blacklight. I meant to take it today, since nobody is around during Spring Break to see me do it, and I was going to test my theory. I have to remember to grab it before someone gets sick of it just sitting there and recycles it.

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The Badgers in the NIT

 

Yesterday after Adoration, Travalon met me downtown and we had dinner at the Chinese restaurant on State Street with the salt and pepper shrimp that we like so much. We walked to the Kohl Center to see the Badgers play the Bradley Braves in the NIT, or National Invitational Tournament. Everything said "Where college basketball began" because the tournament is a year older than the NCAA Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. It used to be more prestigious because it is invitation-only while the NCAA is based on rankings, but sometime in the middle of the last century it became the also-ran tournament. Some people were very upset that we only made it into the NIT and not the NCAA, but a lot of big names, like Michigan and Florida and Oregon, were also in the NIT this year. 

The game was a lot of fun because there wasn't as much noise and rigamarole as during a regular season game, and less people were in the crowd, but all the people on the far side of the stadium seemed to be Bradley fans. I liked that, because it reminded me of old cartoons of basketball games, where one side of the stadium cheered for one team and the other side cheered for the other team. Of course, both teams have red as their color, so it was hard to tell who was a fan of which team unless they cheered. One of our players, a tall, rangy kid named Steven Crowl, was on fire. He kept hitting threes, and he got so many rebounds that he almost had a double-double. He had nine rebounds, and we were watching for his tenth, but then the coach pulled him and put the bench warmers in because the Badgers were up by nineteen points. They won, and they will play in their next tournament game on Sunday. Of course, we can't go because we have to go to a funeral, and if we didn't, I'd have to do Irish class and band practice. 

We saw this beautifully lit building on the walk back to our cars.

I am not sure why, but this photo of that weird rosary is rotated. You can see how it's brown and yellow, but the starting beads are jewel toned. What an odd color scheme.

The Mister Magoo doll that Travalon got at the antiques shop in Florida also got rotated.

I got this Swarovski crystal prism at a different antiques shop in Florida.

Here is Merlin Bear with his dragons, his Irish wife, and his French daughter.

Everyone thinks the bright green stuffed lion I got at the Mardi Gras parade in Mobile is something for St. Patrick's Day, so I decided to name him Hannibal O'Leary. I had already named him Hannibal after the town we visited in Missouri, and O'Leary just seems to go with that.

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Have We Saved the Daylight Yet?

 

Today was just as bad as I'd feared. The alarm went off and I couldn't believe it - it seemed like a cruel joke. Travalon had just as much trouble getting up. Then I went to work and wanted some more coffee, but the Mini Moos had not arrived yet that we had ordered last week, and they are real cream, so my choices would have been black coffee or fake creamers. Yuck. I was about to have a cup of black coffee when my young coworker remembered that the Mini Moos had come on Friday but she hadn't brought them up from the mailroom, so she went and got them. I happily had a cup of coffee with real cream in it, but then we had a tutorial on our new copier, so we were standing around it for an hour. I thought it was so hard for me to stand for that long because I'm old and out of shape, but my young coworker, who is literally half my age, said she was about to pass out from standing so long. As soon as the tutorial was over I took a brisk walk, but my legs are still a bit sore even now, many hours later.

I do have to say that when I started this job nearly five years ago, the only things I had to dodge while crossing campus were students and vehicles, but now when I walk across campus, I also have to dodge cranes and food delivery robots. As cool as both things are, they can get in the way. The cranes seem to have settled near my building during the pandemic, when there were no people around, and now they don't seem to care that the students are back. Of course the food delivery robots appeared on campus four months before the pandemic hit, and at the time people were mocking the administration for what they saw as a stupid waste of money, but once the poor students were quarantined in their dorms with only the robots to bring them food, it seemed like the most prescient decision ever. It does make me wonder what will be the next hazard in the years to come. I feel like the frog in Froggert, having to evade all these hazards.

Someone posted a thing on social media that said: "Did we do it? Did we save the daylight?" and someone else responded: "Was hoping maybe this time we saved it once and for all." If we haven't saved it yet, maybe it's time for a serious conversation about whether it's even worth saving.

Time for a DuoLingo brag!

Again, this is nothing I was doing on purpose. It's just that I must do more DuoLingo than a lot of the other people in the league. Part of it is that DuoLingo plays a dirty trick of giving me two-for-one points for the next fifteen minutes all the time, so then I feel duty-bound to use them. But I thought this was a particularly pretty sticker. Once I got a trophy for winning the tournament, and it was opalescent. I mean, it was virtual - it's not like I have a DuoLingo trophy sitting on my bookcase. They should probably sell them - who wouldn't want an opalescent trophy to prove they do too much DuoLingo?

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St. Patrick's Day Festivities

 

This morning was the start of the depravity known as Daylight Saving Time, and I figured we would never get up in time to get to our church downtown. Sure enough, we had to go to the later, nearby Mass at a church that is sort of ugly inside and has terrible music for the most part, not hymns but worship songs. Hymns are easy for everyone to sing, but worship songs take too much skill for the average member of the congregation - even I get lost with all those gratuitous time signature changes and random accidentals. However, the people who go to this church do seem to be more the "normal" Catholics I have been searching for. After Mass there were snacks, and we sat with another couple who also love animals. I can't tell you how sick I am of overly religious people who say animals are of no importance because they have no souls. (Neither of those things is true, either.) It's too bad a person has to choose between beautiful liturgy and decent people who are not hung up on if you receive in your hand and don't wear a chapel veil, etc., but I'll take the decent people all day long.

Then Travalon and I ran to the Capitol for a ceremony for St. Patrick's Day. The pipes and drums played, the Trinity Dancers dances, and then they unfurled the Irish flag as the Irish National Anthem played. We were invited to march in the parade as members of the Shamrock Club, but it was cold and Travalon is still a bit under the weather, so we found a restaurant on the Square where we could sit and face the windows, and we watched the parade from the warmth. I poked my head outside a couple of times to hear music, but I certainly don't need any candy or any more beads!

After my Irish class, Travalon and I met Jilly Moose at the Brink Lounge for the annual St. Patrick's Day Eve party. My Irish teacher and her husband arrived at the same moment, and I saw another classmate who was celebrating her birthday today, and my first Irish teacher, and Travalon saw the Daughter of Denni. We enjoyed some Irish music and some adult beverages, but for some reason the kitchen had stopped serving food even though the party was far from over, so I just had a bag of pretzels. Afterwards we went with Jilly Moose to Erin's Snug Irish Pub for some real food, then we rushed home for Night Prayer. The Dairyman's Daughter has an orange tabby and a brown tabby who regularly Zoom-bomb, and tonight the orange tabby had his eyes closed and was moving his mouth during the Canticle of Simeon, so that it looked like he was praying it too. I had a hard time not laughing about that! He looked so pious! Almost too pious, like the people who go to the liturgically beautiful churches. Maybe I'd rather go to church with the brown tabby - he's supposed to be much naughtier. My kind of Cat-holic!

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Bach Around the Clock

 

Yesterday it was snowing very hard in the morning, so I worked from home. Travalon dropped me off at work in the afternoon, then I walked downtown and hung out until an organ concert at the Lutheran church where I used to sing. It was part of the "Bach Around the Clock" festival, and afterwards there was a reception with all sorts of treats. Of course, I have given up sugar for Lent, so I only had cheese and crackers - even alcohol is sugar, so I didn't indulge in the wine or beer either. Travalon had some treats when he came to pick me up. I saw all sorts of people there, church organists and people from the Lutheran choir, and of course Kathbert and Pete the Sailor Man. It was a lot of fun.

Today Travalon and I had a relaxing morning watching Pixar shorts, then we went to Sauk and saw one eagle sitting in a tree across the river at the dam. We went to Wollersheim and had lunch at their bistro, then Travalon dropped me off at the Episcopal church on Regent Street, where the Bach Around the Clock festival had been going on since ten in the morning. I found Pete the Sailor Man, Kathbert, and Richard Bonomo sitting together, so I squeezed in next to them to listen to my former OTHER choir director play Bach on the organ. Afterwards there was birthday cake for Bach's birthday, and it was evening by then, so I indulged because I can have sugar on Sundays. The four of us did our annual ritual of putting flowers on Mr. Why's grave and taking a photo to send to his mother, then Rich, Pete, and I had dinner at the Mexican restaurant right by Rich's house. By the time we left dinner, it was starting to snow again. Seeing all this snow does give me an urge to go cross country skiing. I haven't done that in years.

Here are some recent photos. The first are some ring-necked ducks Travalon saw off our dock.

And this is the local crane couple. Some people call them Frazier and Lileth. We had been calling them Bob and Hitachi.

Here are photos from Sauk. This is looking back at Prairie du Sac from the dam.

Here is the eagle.

At the reception after the concert today, I said something that Rich said sounded like a song title, but later we couldn't remember exactly what it was. Something about working around the start of the darkness, and I said it would be a good blog title, but now I can remember it even less than we could on the ride home. I did say at dinner that Rich was the most Aquarius person ever, in fact he was the Aquariest, so I thought about making that the blog post title, but then I decided, why not call it Bach Around the Clock? That was a big part of my day, after all.

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