Holidays
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Meme Monday – COVID Christmas Edition
Merry Christmas to everyone, and let’s just hope that 2021 brings us an end to the Pandemic, and an end to the stupidity of Trump and his evil minions. I know things won’t change on January 1st, but I will say that the world already feels lighter and more hopeful, and has to me since the election in November turned out well, and since the announcements of (hopefully) safe and effective vaccines. I’m sleeping better at least. We’ve never spent Christmas just us before. It’s going to feel weird. But we will see some of Ted’s family on Christmas Eve, outside with masks. California is a shit storm right now,…
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Meme Monday – Rudolf and Santa
This is the year when it all comes out, I guess, when we finally get to talk about what jerks Santa and the other reindeer are in the TV show, and to a somewhat lesser extent, the song. I saw Nance discuss it on her blog, in a discussion with her husband. I’ve seen it on Facebook several times. And now there’s a meme. Well, actually, I’ve seen a couple of memes about it. Just like #Metoo and #BlackLivesMatter, though, isn’t the reality that it has NEVER BEEN OK? NEVER? Hasn’t it always been shitty how poor Rudolph was treated? Hasn’t it always been shitty that every woman you know…
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Wordless Wednesday – Cute Ghosts
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the…
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Friday Randomness
This is Ted’s cousin, Sewdaye, and her husband Bryan, who were married in early September. They had a Hindu ceremony on Friday, which brought back so many memories of our own wedding, 26 years ago. The pundit who performed their ceremony (and ours) was Ted’s mom’s cousin, who flew over from England both times. Here we are with him and his wife after the wedding. It was a wonderful day. Saturday they had what I call a western ceremony, which to me means western civilization, not cowboy boots. This wedding was also beautiful, weather was perfect, and it was great to see so much family. Ted’s family is divided between…
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Happy Birthday Puppy Boy!
Mulder is 4 years old today! Happy Birthday Puppy Boy! We took him for a nice long walk, and I gave him a piece of bacon this morning. Ted just brushed his teeth and he had a carrot (his reward for teeth brushing or fur brushing), and later I am going to bake him some homemade peanut butter dog cookies. In case you are ever so inclined, here is the recipe. I once made him some from an Ina Garten recipe, but he likes these just as much, and they are fewer ingredients and easier to make, so I’ll go with these. Someone from the dog rescue where we got…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Giving Thanks
As always, there is much to be thankful for. (For which to be thankful…better grammar, but sounds awkward). For those of us in California this year, we are thankful for the mixed blessing of rain. Mostly good, because look at the difference in our air quality from last Saturday to today. I’ve never spent so much time looking at air quality indexes before. At some point the air quality was over 300, which is extremely hazardous. In the picture above, it is likely about 185 or so. The lower picture was good air quality, maybe around 20. It felt so good to go out and take our first long…
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Ode to Sancerre
I adore California Chardonnay, and haven’t found a lot of French Chardonnay that I enjoy. I wish this were not true, because I feel less sophisticated for preferring a big oakey wine to one that is more subtle. But I live in California, and buttery and oakey wines are very popular here. While we were in France this summer, I decided to steer away from French Chardonnays, and instead went with a lovely Sauvignon Blanc, Sancerre. When we came home and found ourselves longing for France, we stated looking for Sancerre around here. You can find fairly decent selections of wine at your local Safeway, and even CVS and…
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Paris
Oh Paris, why did we shortchange you? When planning our trip, we were tight on time. We only had so much vacation saved up, only so much $$ to spend, and we wanted to go when we wanted to go. We wanted to see more of France than just Paris, and of course, we wanted to see Jean-Marc, which meant the long drive to the West Coast. I do not regret any of it, but I do wish very much that we had had 3 or 4 more days in Paris. When you’re looking at your calendar and planning, you don’t really realize how much time gets spent getting from…
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Normandy
After we left Brittany, we drove slowly back toward Paris, with a few stops along the way. On our way out to the coast, we had noticed that we could see Mont-Saint-Michel, which is pretty amazing. You’re just driving along, and then you glance over and see what looks like a medieval fortress that looks like it’s floating. Well, it’s not floating, and it doesn’t look that way when you are close, but from the freeway it appeared that way to me. So we decided to stop and at least look at it on our way to Normandy. Mont-Saint-Michel is an island right off the coast of Normandy (where Normandy…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Our Time in France – Part 2
Our first day of touring France, aka, not driving 8 hours from Paris to the West Coast of Brittany, Ted’s friend Jean-Marc took us to visit the medieval town of Locronan. As with any village or town in the area, there is a lovely church, St. Ronan. St. Ronan was an Irish pilgrim whose relics were housed for a time in the church. Most of the street signs in Brittany are in two languages, French and Breton. There is a movement to bring back the Breton language, and there are quite a few immersion schools for children to learn Breton. Surprisingly, this was illegal until somewhat recently. Anyway, we drove…
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Good Eats / Birthday Weekend / Bloody Mary recipe
Thursday was Maya’s birthday, and we celebrated by going to our favorite Dim Sum restaurant in San Francisco, then we did some shopping near Union Square with her gift cards. At some Dim Sum restaurants, you order off of a menu (like the place we went last year). At others, the staff bring food around to the tables, either on carts or on trays, and you say yes or no to each item as they bring it around. So they come by and say, “shrimp dumplings?” and you say yes or no, and if you say yes, they give you the shrimp dumplings and mark your check to show that…
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Catching Up
Sorry for the long silence. My stupid keyboard broke, the little Bluetooth one that I use with my iPad Mini. A few keys still worked properly, but some did not work at all, and some would spit out completely different characters. I went onto some user forums to see if there was a way to fix it, and there was, but it did not work. Rats. Sure, I could have borrowed Ted’s laptop, or written on our regular computer, but somehow it just never happened. I like writing on my iPad, but I can’t stand the stupid touchpad. When Christmas came around, I thought maybe I would get a new…