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Money Monday – Update
Update on my new PayPal Debit Card – Happily, I was right, you can select the same category for earnings every month. You have to wait until the first of the month, so I set a reminder on my phone for the first of every month, so I don’t forget. From April 1 to April 13, I spent $477.48 on groceries*, and I earned $23.87 in cash back. I’ve been thinking about the money that I earn, and decided that I would like to keep this money separate from other money. So I could leave it in PayPal, or I could put it in another account. I have a high…
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Dinner at Millennium
For Maya’s birthday, we went to dinner at her favorite restaurant, Millennium, which is a renowned vegan restaurant in Oakland. This is our third time there, though she has been more times with her friends. The food is elevated and elegant, the flavors complex. The atmosphere is casual. I recommend sitting outside on the covered patio, inside is quite loud. It was chilly when we were there, but they had heaters and blankets to keep you comfortable. Ready for some food pics? The menu on Fridays and Saturdays is a 4 course prix fixe. The first course is a light appetizer to share, then you choose the next three courses.…
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Salmon with Mustardy French Lentils
This is the salmon dish we had for dinner one night last week, and again this week. The salmon was good, but basic, just salt and pepper and sauté in a pan with a little olive oil. The star of this dish is the lentils, which are mustardy and so good. The original recipe calls for a can of Puy lentils, but I used 1 cup of dried French green lentils (which stay a little firmer and have better flavor than regular brown lentils, I think). I cooked them until tender, and then drained them. Then I used them as though they were the canned type. Because I used so…
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Friday Randomness
Here I was thinking likely I wouldn’t have anything to share with you this week, but then along came life and I have some content. Mostly good this week, so that’s good. First off, the picture above is a little hummingbird (or maybe a big hummingbird, I don’t know) at the feeder outside our kitchen window one autumn. The other night I went outside for a minute and saw it on the ground. The top, where the hook holds the feeder, is plastic, and after many years of service, it gave way and broke. Did something hit it (Bird? Squirrel?), or was it just time? I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll…
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Book Shopping
Now that I’ve caught up on the books I’ve read/listened to for the last couple of weeks, I’ll tell you about my book shopping finds. One recent Friday, Ted worked a half day, and we went to Oakland for our Friday night dinner. We went early to do a little book shopping. We started at East Bay Booksellers, a favorite of ours that suffered a major fire last year, but they are thankfully in a temporary location just down the street while their store is repaired. Then we went to dinner at a local place we really enjoy, and then to Pegasus Books, another great Indy place in the neighborhood.…
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The Third Gilmore Girl
The Third Gilmore Girl ~ Kelly Bishop I came to Gilmore Girls late, as it was on against Buffy and there was no way I was going to miss Buffy. Some friends recommended it though, so I started watching it via DVDs that I got from the library. Like Engie, I feel that Emily, the matriarch of the Gilmore clan, is the best character. I would absolutely not want her for a mother, but as a TV character, she’s awesome. I decided I loved her in the first season when she quipped “Your father doesn’t know what he wants. He’d get his hair cut at the butcher if I let…
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The Girls from Corona del Mar
The Girls from Corona Del Mar ~ Rufi Thorpe At the beginning of The Girls from Corona Del Mar, Mia and Lorrie Ann are high school best friends, and Mia is in trouble. She is pregnant (with a boy she doesn’t even like, she just wanted to get the deed over with so she would no longer be a virgin). Mia has an abortion, and decides that the only way to get out of sports practice the following day (don’t ask me what sport, all sports are the same to me. Likely there was a ball involved) is to have Lorrie Ann take a hammer to her toe and break…
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The Anthropocene Reviewed
The Anthropocene Reviewed ~ John Green A memoir in the form of a collection of essays where the author reviews various aspects of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale, exploring topics both mundane and grand. He reviews hot dogs in Iceland, the QWERT keyboard, Diet Dr. Pepper, orbital sunsets, the plague, Monopoly, the movie Harvey, on and on. In each essay we learn more about the author, about his struggles with anxiety, his family, his hopes and fears. Among other things, he discusses climate change, the pandemic, history, and science. I really enjoyed a lot of these essays, and found them engrossing and moving, but mostly memoir and essay…
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The Friend
The Friend ~ Sigrid Nunez The unnamed protagonist of The Friend is a writer and professor in a tiny apartment in Manhattan, a self proclaimed cat person, who inherits a Great Dane, Apollo, when her mentor and close friend dies of suicide. She is buried in grief for her friend, she does not want a dog, her landlord does not allow dogs, and here she is with a dog that weighs (quite a bit) more than she does. What happens is predictable to any animal lover. She falls in love with Apollo. “When you’re lying in bed full of night thoughts,” she thinks, “such as why did your friend have…
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Be Ready When the Luck Happens
Be Ready When the Luck Happens ~ Ina Garten From the author’s website: ”From a difficult childhood to meeting and marrying the love of her life, Jeffrey, while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, DC to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned…
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Friday Randomness
Isn’t the Maya Angelou quote above lovely? I found it soothing. We had a lovely time at Maya and Sloan’s birthday party last Saturday. We started off by stopping at the Ramazzatti wine tasting room for a wine that was recommended by Ted’s boss. Ted bought a delicious Chardonnay and an even better Cabernet Sauvignon, and we brought those to the party along with our bottle of Champagne. They were really, really good. I hope we will splurge again and have these wines in the future. (Oh, maybe for Ted’s birthday next month!) Ted’s cousin made the cakes. They are both a really delicious carrot cake. Sloan’s cake has no…
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Home Stretch
Home Stretch ~ Graham Norton Another book about growing up gay in Ireland. This one begins with a group of 6 young adults involved in a horrible car accident on the eve of a wedding in 1987. The bride, groom, and bridesmaid are all killed. The survivors are the sister of the bride, the driver, and one other young man. One of the survivors is Conner, who leaves the village rather than live with the constant shame of being the driver who caused the death of three young people. He ends up living in London for a while, then in New York, where he forges a new life for himself.…
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Wordless Wednesday
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The Heart’s Invisible Furies
The Heart’s Invisible Furies ~ John Boyne Cyril Avery is born in Dublin in 1945, to a young unwed woman, Catherine, who relinquishes him to a convent to be adopted. He is raised by Maude and Charles Avery, a couple who want a son because it seems the thing to do. Maude is a writer and is mostly interested in writing her books and chain smoking cigarettes. Charles is a businessman (I don’t remember what he does actually) and is kind of shady. One day when Cyril is 7, Charles’ lawyer comes to the house with his two young children, Julian (7) and Alice (5 or 6). Julian and Cyril…
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Spotted Photo Theme – Circles
OK, I’m squeaking in under the deadline here. iHanna has another Spotted Photo challenge, where the idea is that you go through your phone/iPad photos, and find pictures that match the theme she has given. You’re not out looking for that theme, not taking new photos, just curating the pictures you already have. I’m not a photographer by any means, so mine are not going to be gorgeous like some others, but here they are anyway. A lot of them are food. And I snuck in some memes, which is totally cheating and not cool at all. The Rose Window in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, 2018. I really hope…
