You just can’t do it all

Since probably March, or whenever the lineup came out, we’d been planning to go to the first day of Summerfest, June 18. Susan wanted to go see Alejandro Escovedo and I wanted to go see the Dream Syndicate. But then Susan realized she’d double booked herself with a trip to Connecticut, and at first I thought, “ok, so Mark and I will go”. But Mark had a bum knee and it seemed like all the walking at Summerfest would not be good for his knee. Steve and Heike couldn’t go, and neither could Jane & Jonathan. So I accepted an invite to go as a plus one to an event with one of the other Willy St. Board members. The two of us have been trying to get together for weeks, and something always goes wrong preventing us. This time was no different – the other Board member cancelled the night before due to a work requirement. And unbeknownst to me until shortly before all this, Mark had deemed his knee healed and gone back to walking. Unlike the beginning of the June when walking a couple of blocks was really uncomfortable for him, the amount of walking we’d do at Summerfest would probably have been OK. But, when I asked him at about 8:30pm the night before, he still didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want to go all by myself, so no Dream Syndicate. They are coming back to the Midwest in October but it’s going to be when we’re walking in Yorkshire.

Here’s a pretty decent amateur recording.

And the Shepherd Express review.

To try to make myself feel better about missing Summerfest, I went to this event about music venues in Madison. It was fun, I just thought it’d be a bit more personal. The panelists had a lot of good stories, but I didn’t share much of mine. Tho I did talk to Tony C. a bit about Slatewood, the record store that Jeff Lusis and I owned (I mean I guess I was part owner since we borrowed the money to buy it from my dad), where we sold tickets for Merlyn’s and Frank Productions.

When I got there they were playing local music on the PA and while I was standing at the bar ordering my NA beer, it was a Spooner song, can’t really remember which one, but it was a nice moment for me – standing at the bar at the High Noon, and I could hear Dave Benton’s guitar.

I missed Jasper going to his first baseball game, with Grandpa Jeff (Al’s dad) and Mika and Gamma (Emma’s parents). I would’ve loved to have been there, but I had other stuff that day, and besides, it probably would’ve been awkward. Lots of pictures, though. Emma said he made it six innings, which is longer than his dad made it at his first game, a White Sox game. I think we left in about the third inning. We spent a lot on concessions for Al, same as Jasper.

I was glad I got my strawberries picked at Tipi on June 14. Heavy rain the following week ended their strawberry season. Tho we did buy a bunch of quarts of picked-for-us strawberries at the farmers market the following week, from Flyte Family Farms. And of course, now that strawberries are winding down, that’s another flavor of FOMO – hoping to not miss the blueberries when they start. I have none left in the freezer so it’s a big box of blueberries year this year.

I made a cake (it’s an instagram star) for Fathers Day for Mark, with Flyte strawberries and no-churn dulce de leche ice cream from Washington Post, a recipe Mark saw and thought looked good. The Post recipe is for vanilla, but I didn’t have plain sweetened condensed milk, only the dulce de leche. The ice cream was really good on Fathers Day, but got a little hard and crunchy after that. Also only good in small bites, since it was pretty stunningly rich. 

I’ve started getting my every other week CSA boxes from Vitruvian Farms. The first one was June 16, so I have to go pick up the 2nd one today, June 30. The first box had a bunch of salad turnips with greens, and evidently today’s box does as well, so I’m glad I made some hoisin sauce, since unlike the ice cream, the turnips sautéed in hoisin with their greens were plenty good the next day and even the day after that. I just have to decide if I’m biking or driving to get the box, since we’re under a high heat warning today. I’m leaning to driving because in addition to the heat, I am running out of time. <grin>

And speaking of not so good leftover, along with the turnips, I made some red curry with CSA box veggies, but didn’t have the good kind of curry paste, the Maesri in a can. The Thai Kitchen stuff, that I used happily for years before I started using the Maesri, had too much fish sauce that got pretty unpleasant leftover.

It looked like week 2 bug class was going to be another rainy one, but it stopped in time for our hike around the grounds of the nature center. Jasper and a couple of the other kids suited up to stomp in puddles.

On our way home from bug class, we stopped by my friends Nina’s to pick up some dishes I’d left there after her graduation party. You know, that was the one with the rhubarb and cream cake. 

Jasper got to play with Nina’s cats.

And rock on the porch.

The weekend after Fathers Day, we went to probably the ultimate FOMO event, the American Library Association conference in Chicago, where there’s so much going on, you can’t possibly do it all. I’ll have to tell you about the conference in the next post.

Because we were going to the library concert, we missed the Last Session, the memorial for Bob Queen, who was such a big part of all the outdoor live music we’re so lucky to have in Madison in the summer.

But speaking of weather and cancellations, even though the rain stopped for bug class, it started again, and they postponed the first concert of Concerts on the Square from Wednesday to Thursday. The night before we left for the library conference. Which was good for me, because I had a meeting Wednesday, so the Thursday shift meant I could go, although once again at the cost of something else. We missed the volunteer appreciation party for us Goodman Community Center volunteers. We had a nice night at the concert though – we got sandwiches at Alimentari. Since I’d done the long bike ride out to Goodman and back, I treated myself to a bar of Italian nougat that I like so much. I ate it in the park after I picked up the sandwiches and was waiting for the cleaners to get done so I could go home and pack.

The program was Billy Joel and Elton John, the Madison Chamber Orchestra with an outfit called Jeans N’ Classics, that goes around performing pop music with classical orchestras (who I think we saw another year, too) and I still have some Billy Joel songs stuck in my head.