Culture
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Facebook Friday
One thing I enjoy about Facebook is the Memories feature, where you can see what you posted in a prior year on this date. I thought it might be fun to share a few with you. Sometimes I post something thoughtful, like a timely quote. Usually it’s more about what I’m doing in my life. Like whether I’m having a decent hair day or not. For those of you not on Facebook, it displays your profile picture and your name, and then your text, so I was doing a third person thing here. Why? Who knows. Clearly this is a different day. Sometimes, it’s a meme. There were plenty of…
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Top 4 / Bottom 4 / Meh 4 Christmas Movies
Elisabeth had a Top 5/Bottom 5 Christmas movies post, which looked like fun. Here are mine, though I couldn’t come up with 5 of each category, so we’ll only have 4, so I added a meh category. Top 4 Bottom 4 Meh 4
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Whamageddon
I’m in, again. The first time I heard of Whamageddon, I made it all of the way from December 1st to December 24th without hearing the Wham! classic ‘Last Christmas’, but last year the DJ at Ted’s company party played it, and I think that was December 2nd. (To clarify, I do not have strong feelings about this song. I like it fine, but I don’t love it.) We’ll see how it goes this year. Stout hearts. UPDATE: The acoustics at the party were HORRIBLE at this year’s company party, so I have no idea whether he played the song or not. SO I’M STILL IN!
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Z is for Zero
As in, I have Zero idea what to write about today. I could tell you why I hate Zebras (short answer, don’t watch nature programs if you don’t want to suddenly hate an entire species. Also orcas, same reason.) I could tell you that I am not the biggest fan of Zucchini, because it can be bitter (like me after watching a nature video with Zebras), though if it’s cooked correctly and generally if the Zucchini are smaller, this isn’t an issue. There’s a place nearby that has pretty amazing deep fried Zucchini that they serve with ranch dressing, though in that situation I could probably just eat the fried…
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Y is for Yoga
Yoga has been a big deal in my family, specifically for my step-mom and my mother-in-law. My step-mom, Julie, was in college in San Francisco in 1968 when her first husband, Bruce, was killed in a helicopter accident in Vietnam. She was 21, and was unmoored by the loss. She felt that she had to get out of the Bay Area, there were too many memories here, too much pain. So she did some backpacking in Europe for a while, and then moved to Portland, Oregon. She started taking yoga classes to help her calm her mind and get through her grief. At some point she was asked if she…
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W is for Worth It
There are some products that are extra money or extra effort, but they are worth it to me. Today’s quick post is about a few of them. Eggs – I am very picky about my eggs. I like a dark orange yolk with a rich taste. I started buying pasture raised eggs because I felt bad for the chickens, not having room to run around and be in the sunshine, and then I found I much preferred the taste too. Pasture raised eggs come from chickens that have a more varied diet, and live a better life (I think), than chickens kept in cages. My brand of choice is Vital…
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S is for Self-Care
Back in September, my BIL took Ted and me down to Paso Robles to do some wine tasting. On our way down, sitting in the back seat, I listened to an episode of the Ezra Klein podcast with author and psychiatrist Pooja Lakshmin. Ezra was out on book leave at the time, so the host was Tressie McMillan Cottom, and they were discussing Lakshmin’s new book, Real Self-Care. Lakshmin says that the externalization of self-care and the wellness industry haven’t done anything to actually reduce stress in our lives, and that what is needed is real internal work, as well as societal change. She argues that there is nothing wrong…
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P is for Paris
I’ve been to Paris three times now. First on my honeymoon, pictured above. Then I went with Ted and Maya in 2018, celebrating her graduation from college and our 25th wedding anniversary. The third time was last year when I went with my cousin. Every time, I love Paris more. I haven’t traveled all that much in my life (it’s expensive!), but so far, Paris is my favorite city. So much beauty, so much art, such a cool vibe, such delicious food and wine. The picture above is of the Palais Garnier, which is called the Opera house, but now is mostly where the ballets are held, since they built…
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G is for Giverny
Giverny is the village where Impressionist painter Claude Monet built his beautiful gardens, which he painted over and over again. I’ve been fortunate enough to see these lovely gardens twice, first in early June of 2018, and then again in late September of 2022. It was lovely to see the difference in flowers, between late spring and late summer. The first 3 pictures above are from my 2022 visit, and the bottom 3 are from 2018. Here I am last September in Paris, at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, which in addition to these huge paintings of his water lilies also houses a lovely collection of impressionist art. Not…
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B is for Brittany
Back in 2018, we took a trip to France to celebrate our daughter Maya’s graduation from UC Berkeley, as well as our 25th wedding anniversary. Ted and Maya had gone to England the year before, with his mom and brother, to visit family there. On that trip, they took a couple of days on their own in Paris, which they loved. The last time I had been in France was in 1993, on our honeymoon. Ted has a friend, Jean-Marc, from his days in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. Jean-Marc is French and was at Penn studying US History, and now is a professor in Brest, on the…
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What I’ve Been Reading
Tom Lake takes place in 2020, a family in lockdown on their cherry orchard in Northern Michigan. It is harvest season, and while the family picks cherries, the mother, Lara, tells her three adult daughters the story of her summer at a summer stock theater, Tom Lake, when she played Emily in Our Town, and dated an actor who later went on to be an Oscar Winner. Ann Patchett gives us a beautifully written book that weaves back and forth from the 1980s to the 2020s, as the daughters learn about their mother’s time as an actress in Los Angeles and in Michigan, about her life before marriage. We also…
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Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends! This is our table from a couple of years ago, I haven’t gotten this far yet. Still in the ‘make a list for the grocery store’ phase. Enjoy your long weekend and family, if you gather together. We celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving, just the three of us, because Ted was born in Ontario. I wish it weren’t going to be hot today, and hopeful that the turkey breast we buy will fit in the toaster oven.
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How do you travel?
This picture gives you an idea of how large the cruise ships are that come into Juneau. For those of you who have been on a cruise, this is nothing new. For me it’s just amazing. There are 3 ships in this picture, bringing thousands of people to a relatively small area. On a busy day with 7 ships, about 20,000 tourists visit Juneau. By contrast, the population of Juneau is about 33,000. A lot of the residents who live and work in the valley rarely, if ever, come to the downtown area, because it can be so crowded. There are pluses and minuses to seeing Alaska this way, I…
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A Shameful Past
Just across the street from our Airbnb in Juneau is a lovely Russian Orthodox Church, which I remembered seeing the last time I was there in 1999. While waiting for it to be time to meet the shuttle for our whale watching trip, I decided to walk over and see if I could peek inside the church. It’s a lovely little church with a long history in Juneau. From the church website: St. Nicholas Orthodox Church was founded in 1893, at the request of the local Tlingit community. Constructed locally by Tlingit people and Serbian miners in 1893-94, the church was built on land donated by Yees Ganalax and using plans and…
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Songs About Relationships
I’m not sure if I have mentioned it here before, but my husband Ted has a music podcast, Planet LP, which has morphed over the years. When he first started as a way to entertain himself and stay creative in the early days of the podcast, he talked about music and books. Then he took on a cohost and the format turned to music only. Eventually, his cohost realized that he was too busy for the commitment, and is now an occasional guest. At one point Ted’s podcast was once a week, but when he started at his current job, he realized he had far less down time than his…
