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Cool Blogger Meet Up!
I got together with Birchie! And San! We had Tapas! As you may know, Birchie was in California recently, and split her time between Sacramento and San Francisco. So I drove to Sacramento last Tuesday after work to meet her for dinner, so we could also meet up with San. When I got there, San was still at work, so I picked Birchie up at her AirBnB, and we went to a little park nearby. The main attraction is Sutter’s Fort, which is one of the first European colonial forts in the Central Valley of California, before the Gold Rush, but it was closed, so we couldn’t go inside. That…
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Friday Randomness
The most exciting thing this week was time spent with Birchie and San (!!!), but that deserves its own post, so you will have to wait on that. Instead you will get my regular weekly roundup type post. What else then? Well, I had a lovely Mother’s Day weekend. On Saturday, Maya took me to lunch downtown, where she had Penne con Vodka, and I had a citrus and arugula salad. We did some shopping and she bought me expensive face cream to add to my collection. Ted’s mom is awaiting hip replacement surgery, and isn’t up to going to a restaurant, so he brought her a seafood lunch from…
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33 Place Brugmann
33 Place Brugmann ~ Alice Austin It is August, 1939, in a wealthy Brussels neighborhood. The residents of a prosperous apartment building include a Jewish art dealer, Leo Raphael, his wife Sophia, and their children, Julian and Esther; an architect, Francois Sauvin and his art student daughter, Charlotte; an army colonel; a lawyer; a seamstress; a notary; and a few other well-to-do tenants. The art dealer and his family emigrate to England, where Julian joins the Royal Air Force, and Esther becomes a war nurse. The remaining residents stay in Brussels and have to find their way under the increasing limitations and dangers of Nazi occupation. The story unfolds in…
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Wordless Sunday – Happy Mother’s Day
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Friday Randomness
Mother’s Day is coming up this weekend, and I wish you all joy. If you have kids, I hope you have a good relationship with them and are able to celebrate in some way. If you still have your mom, I hope you have a good relationship with her, and are able to celebrate in some way. If you have a bad relationship with your mother or your child(ren), I wish you peace. If you no longer have your mother or your child(ren), I wish you peace. Mother’s Day can be a complicated and difficult day. Ever since my mom died in 2008, it has been a complicated and difficult…
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The Paris Express
The Paris Express ~ Emma Donoghue A full cast of characters ride the express train from Granville, Normandy to Paris in October of 1895. Among them are a young physiologist, a painter, an aging Russian housekeeper, a young boy traveling alone, a (very) pregnant woman, a few parliamentarians, and a young anarchist with dreams of glory for her cause (and a bomb). The train itself is a character and has some consciousness of the danger, but no emotions nor any control over preventing it. As we travel along the route, we learn more of each character, of their secrets and hopes. Mado, the anarchist, has made a bomb and is…
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Never Say Never
I’ve never thought of myself as a cruise person. I know plenty of people who *love* them, but they seem really crowded to me, and I’m not thrilled with the idea of being on a tight schedule when in port. One exception I might make would be an Alaskan cruise, because the opportunity to see so many little towns along the southeast, without having to pack and unpack, is really appealing, and being on a ship and seeing the fjords and wildlife of that region would be amazing. My cousin Carey and her family enjoy cruises, and have been on several. They’ve been to Alaska a couple of times, and…
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Happy Birthday Ted!
Today is Ted’s birthday, and we are going to celebrate in the best way, with family and friends. He and I will celebrate some more later this month, we’re going to Los Angeles to the Cruel World music festival! There will be some great 80s and 90s bands, like New Order, ‘Til Tuesday, Madness, Garbage, The Go Go’s, Devo, and more. That will be a lot of fun, but for now it’s time to party. In honor of my beloved husband, let’s do a Saturday Six, shall we? Six Things About Ted
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Friday Randomness
The pretty flowers above are from a little tree I saw in Berkeley last week. Well, I did it! I blogged every day in April. It was a lot easier than NaBloPoMo, because you all weren’t trying to post every day at the same time, and I wasn’t trying to keep up and read your posts. I did get behind a couple of times on reading and commenting though, so that’s one downside. One thing I notice when I blog more often is that I find a lot more blog fodder in my life. When I find myself in a blog drought, and don’t post anything for a couple of…
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Memorial Days
Memorial Days ~ Geraldine Brooks Fiction writer Geraldine Brooks was married to non-fiction writer Tony Horwitz for 35 years when, on Memorial Day in 2019, just before his 61st birthday, he suddenly collapsed on a sidewalk in Washington, DC and died in the middle of a tour for his most recent book. Memorial Days is her memoir of his death and the time following, and mostly alternates between the confusing and horrible days just after his death, and a trip she takes in 2023 to a tiny Australian island in order to grieve his loss in her own way, away from Western culture and its constructs. She is heartbroken, tired…
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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday
I wanted to include this picture in last week’s post about my mom and great-Aunt’s birthday, but I didn’t have it. Now I have it! This is my Great Aunt Flo’s wedding, on her 26th birthday in 1950. My Mom is the flower girl, with her curls and her hoop skirt, and it’s her 8th birthday. I think her dress is yellow. My Grandma is next to the bride, and then my other Great Aunt. I don’t know the other bridesmaid, nor any of the groomsmen. My Great Uncle Wes died before I was born, so I never met him. Doesn’t this look like a beautiful wedding?
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Daydreaming of Berkeley
While we were wandering around Berkeley on Saturday, we saw a sign for an open house in the neighborhood, and Ted wanted to go check it out. So we walked a few blocks and found it. Unfortunately, they were closed for the day (but still had their signs up), so we didn’t get to walk around inside. I have to tell you folks, this is the house of my dreams (aside from the shingles, which I could definitely do without). I adore these old craftsman homes with built in shelving and wood everywhere. It’s over 3,000 square feet, but only 2 bedrooms. This is because there is a huge upstairs…
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Independent Bookstore Day
Saturday was Independent Bookstore Day, so Ted and I decided to go to Berkeley and see what we might find there. The last time we went book shopping, we went to two bookstores, East Bay Booksellers and Pegasus Books. This time we went to Mrs. Dalloway’s. I started out taking pictures of books that I want to read but will probably listen via my Libby App, and then eventually succumbed to temptation and bought some books. First up, the books I will listen to via Libby. Real Americans ~ Rachel Khong Ted saw this one and said it sounded like a book I would enjoy, and I feel like some…
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All Fours
All Fours ~ Miranda July In All Fours, Miranda July’s unnamed peri-menopausal protagonist decides that she will take a recent windfall and drive across the country alone rather than flying, because she wants to become the kind of person who does such things, and hopes that by changing her basic self, she will be able to recapture the ecstatic love she shared with her husband when their infant child was in the NICU seven years ago. Our protagonist, a semi-famous artist who creates art in several genres, makes her plans and starts out on her trip, but only gets about half an hour away from home before being waylaid by…
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Cool Bloggers Walking Club
Mostly pictures for Elisabeth’s Cool Bloggers Walking Club are beautiful, of nature, of walks with dogs and children and so on. Today we are keeping it real, and I’m sharing pictures from the suburbs, from my morning walk to a local grocery store to get some eggs and probiotics. This is our local BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station, which is about a block away from our house. Very convenient for Maya, who works in San Francisco 3 days a week, or when we want to go to the airport. If you look carefully in the lower(ish) left of the picture, you can see the mailbox, which is where I…
