Love
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Friday Randomness
This has been a lovely, relaxing week. Iâm up against my PTO cap, which means that if I donât take some paid time off, I will stop accruing. My company drastically lowered our cap a few years ago (it was admittedly pretty high), and when they did that I didnât accrue any time for about a year and a half. I donât want that to happen again. So, I took the week off. We have July 2nd and 3rd as company holidays this year, so I get 5 days off but only have to take 3 vacation days. Or in this case, staycation days. What, one might ask, did I…
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This is 60
Wow, seeing the number there is a little alarming. Today is my 60th birthday, and while 30, 40, and 50 didnât hit me, 60 is feeling a little different. Funny, because the last birthday that felt like a real change was when I turned 20, and I felt for the first time like my childhood was well and truly over. This is a stupid ad I keep seeing while playing NYT games. I feel targeted. So here we are, not quite a Senior Citizen for movie theater discounts, not quite eligible for Social Security, but certainly getting closer to both. When I started my blog 20 years ago, I was…
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Flashback Friday
Yesterdayâs post was a list of 13 things that I have given away recently. Todayâs post is about something that I tried to give away, but couldnât. Looking at the picture above, from an Easter Sunday years ago, notice the adorable hat Iâm wearing. I love that hat. I will never wear it again, however, and Maya doesnât want it, and no one on Buy Nothing wants it, and I canât bear to think of it going to Goodwill and no one wanting it and it being used for stuffing or rags or something. It needs to remain a hat. This is our beautiful girl, Genevieve, borrowing my hat back…
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Wordless Wednesday
This is the picture drawn of Mulder for the âBad Artâ fundraiser. Click the picture if you want to go to the post with the original.
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Bad Art Fundraiser
Sorry for the late notice friends, but if you are at all interested in having a custom made âbad artâ digital portrait of your pet, The Friends of Animal Services in Oakland, CA is having a fundraiser. You donate $35 for one portrait, or $50 for two, then they send you a link via email for you to upload a picture. They will then assign your photo to one of their artists, who will send you a custom made copy. Be patient, theyâre busy, so it could take a while. This is the picture I am submitting, Mulder in May of 2023. You have until this Wednesday to contribute if…
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Portland Randomness
We had a lovely time in Portland last weekend! My step-mom, my sisters, and their families live in Portland, and we havenât been up to âjust visitâ in a long time. Actually, itâs been over a decade. We have gone up for weddings and parties and funerals and to scatter my fatherâs ashes, but a visit with no schedule, no plans? I think our last one was in 2013. (Edited to say, um, the 2013 trip was for my Dadâs 70th birthday, so itâs been even longer since we went up without an occasion than I thought. No wonder Tedâs mom asked, âand why are you going up?â) The last…
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32 Years!
Happy Anniversary to us! It feels unreal to me that weâve been married 32 years now, that weâve been together for over 37 years. I look at our wedding pictures, and goodness, we look young. I was 27 the year we got married, which didnât feel particularly young at the time, but does to me now. Ted took the week off from work, and I have both today and tomorrow as company holidays this year, so we wonât have to go to work. What will we do with ourselves? We have tickets to go to one of the fine art museums, which has an exhibit of photographs by Paul McCartney.…
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Friday Randomness
A Mystery SolvedBirchie and I had some delicious ice cream after our evening snack last week, at Salt and Straw. Birchie had the Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons (Iâm 80% sure), and I had the Coffee and Love Nuts (coffee ice cream with chocolate covered pecans – delicious!) I paid using the credit card I always use for restaurants, because it gives me 3 points per dollar spent. I requested a paper receipt, as I generally do, because I donât want to sign up for more emails, but I do want a receipt in case something goes wrong. When I got home and checked my email, I saw that I…
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Cruel World Music Festival
A month or so ago, Ted read that one of our favorite bands, âTil Tuesday, was reuniting for the Cruel World music festival in Los Angeles. They havenât played together in decades, and with the all original lineup, itâs been about 35 years I think. We looked at the lineup for the concert, and it looked like a lot of fun, and the price wasnât horrible, so we decided to go. We drove down on Friday, and came home on Sunday, so it was a quick trip for sure. We considered flying, but couldnât find any flights that made money sense, especially since we would need to rent a car…
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Happy Birthday Ted!
Today is Tedâs 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, weâre going to Los Angeles to the Cruel World music festival! There will be some great 80s and 90s bands, like New Order, âTil Tuesday, Madness, Garbage, The Go Goâs, Devo, and more. That will be a lot of fun, but for now itâs time to party. In honor of my beloved husband, letâs 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 werenât trying to post every day at the same time, and I wasnât trying to keep up and read your posts. I did get behind a couple of times on reading and commenting though, so thatâs 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 donât post anything for a couple of…
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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday
I wanted to include this picture in last weekâs post about my mom and great-Auntâs birthday, but I didnât have it. Now I have it! This is my Great Aunt Floâs wedding, on her 26th birthday in 1950. My Mom is the flower girl, with her curls and her hoop skirt, and itâs her 8th birthday. I think her dress is yellow. My Grandma is next to the bride, and then my other Great Aunt. I donât know the other bridesmaid, nor any of the groomsmen. My Great Uncle Wes died before I was born, so I never met him. Doesnât this look like a beautiful wedding?
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Birthday Girls
Today my mom would have been 83, had she not died too young at the age of 66 in 2008. Today my Great Aunt Flo would have been 101, had she not died at the ripe old age of 100 last year. This is my mom when she was a little girl, with her Shirley Temple curls in her red hair. And here she is in college. She went to UC Berkeley, though she dropped out for a while. After she married, had my brother (six days after getting married), had me, and got divorced (I think her divorce became final on my day of birth, but Iâm not 100%…
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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. âWhen youâre lying in bed full of night thoughts,â she thinks, âsuch as why did your friend have…
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Spotted Photo Theme – Circles
OK, Iâm 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. Youâre not out looking for that theme, not taking new photos, just curating the pictures you already have. Iâm 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…
