Love
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Honeymoon Photos
For our honeymoon 30 years ago, we went to 3 amazing cities – London, Amsterdam, and Paris. We had a cheap point-and-shoot camera, and of course it was film back then, so we don’t have a ton of pictures and what we have are not great. It’s not like today, where you can take an unlimited number of photos, and immediately see whether they are in focus, centered, etc. Here are a few pictures that I like. I guess Ted had the camera most of the time, because there are more pictures of me than there are of him. We stayed in little Bed and Breakfasts. The one in London…
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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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X is for eXtra
Last week we celebrated the fact that Maya got a promotion at work with an eXtra special meal, dinner at a local vegan restaurant that she loves, Millennium, in Oakland. She’s mostly vegetarian (pescetarian really, though she doesn’t eat fish very often), and has a vegan friend, and they sometimes go here for a special occasion. It’s expensive, but really good. On weekends, meals at Millennium are a Prix Fixe four course meal, including the amuse bouche. You pick from the full menu, an appetizer, entree, and dessert. As Ted doesn’t eat sugar, he had two appetizers instead. I’ll give you pictures and menu descriptions where I can, though the…
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U is for Updates
This whole NaBloPoMo thing has been great, and my idea of using the alphabet prompts has kept me very organized. I pre-loaded a lot of the posts, so I could spend more time coming to your blogs and reading. This has not always worked, since life does get in the way sometimes, so I’m a little behind in the commenting and reading department, but just like all of us, I’m doing my best. For today though, I thought I would catch you up on what I’ve been up to. I took a very quick trip to Portland a couple of weeks ago to say goodbye to my step-mom’s partner, Tom.…
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T is for Things I Miss About Mulder
Yesterday was 6 months since our sweet boy Mulder died from Lymphoma. We all miss him so much. He was such a joy in our lives, and such a good boy (except when he was being a butthead). In honor of Mulder, then, here are some things that I miss with him gone, and a few that I don’t. Things I Miss Things I Don’t Miss Things I Shouldn’t Miss, but I Do
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I is for Incredible!
Today’s post is a ‘guest post’. My sister Maya and her family built a garden house in their back yard in Portland a couple of years ago, and she posted about it recently on Facebook. I asked her if I could share her post here, because I am so amazingly impressed by the entire endeavor. That they did the work themselves, that they used mostly recycled materials, that it came out so beautifully. Truly incredible. I wish I had these powers, but alas, I do not. Without any further ado, here’s my sister’s post. ***** The summer of 2021 a wish/dream of mine came true. The kids had long outgrown…
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H is for Horses
I’ve written about my love of horses before, how I love their beauty and strength. How I’m not much of a rider, and think it would be wonderful to have a horse as a companion pet. Maya and I have decided we want a miniature horse, and we will name it ‘Clip Clop’. Clip Clop would trot around our little townhouse, probably doing damage to our laminate flooring. Clip Clop would come upstairs and sleep at the foot of the bed. Our neighbors would be outraged at first, but then would fall in love with Clip Clop and his/her adorable antics. I would take Clip Clop for long walks and…
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A is for Acceptance
Let us not look for you only in memory,Where we would grow lonely without you.You would want us to find you in presence,Beside us when beauty brightens,When kindness glowsAnd music echoes eternal tones. On the Death of the Beloved ~ John O’Donohue Acceptance is supposed to be the final stage of grief, though of course the stages aren’t really linear, they are more chaotic, and you don’t really know what is coming next. Perhaps denial. Perhaps bargaining. Certainly tears. Acceptance doesn’t mean you like what has happened. You aren’t glad to have lost your parents, your sibling, your friend, or your sweet dog. You don’t want to have the disappointment…
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Dinners Last Week
Another week of figuring out what to make for dinner is in the books. I had it pretty easy this week, we went out a couple of times, but I made up for it by cooking Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. Monday – We had this delicious Garlicky Spinach and Chickpea Soup. I love this soup, it is very tasty. Modifications made for my family’s needs: Ted’s doctor told him that beans are very good for him, but they also are carb heavy, so he needs to balance them out. WTF. I mean, what is he supposed to eat? Frustrating. He had some soup, and some leftover lamb curry for extra…
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There be Whales Here!
Ted and I started our last full day in Juneau by taking a walk through downtown, over to Douglas Island, and back. We saw some totem poles, a huge statue of a humpback whale (photo credit to Ted), and the State Capital Building, which is probably the smallest in the US. After that, we came home and had a light lunch, and then Maya, Kathy, and I went whale watching! I’ve never been whale watching before, though we did go dolphin watching in Maui a few years ago, which was great. We have whale watching off the coast of California, but that’s in the open ocean, while in Juneau you…
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Mendenhall Glacier
Tuesday, we all drove back out to the Mendenhall Glacier, which is where we had gone to see the stars a couple of nights prior. In daylight, it was sort of crowded with tourists, though not too bad. There is a waterfall at one side of the glacier, which we had seen and heard the other night. There is a beaver dam, though it is covered by branches and you couldn’t really see it well. Maya and I had gone to the glacier on our prior trip to Juneau, in 1999 (when she was 3, so she doesn’t remember), and I could see that the glacier has receded some since…
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Juneau
Juneau is so beautiful, I can easily see how my mom, Richard, and Kathy just fell in love with it. The flight from Anchorage to Juneau is pretty quick, and the price difference between coach and first class wasn’t that much, so we splurged. FUN! The picture above is one of many from that flight. The mountains just go on forever. As you can see, we finally got some sunny weather. Don’t get me wrong, I like misty, drizzly weather, but thus far it had really gotten in the way of some of the things I wanted to see, like the stars at night without light pollution, the Aurora Borealis,…
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Homer
Homer is a beautiful town of about 5,500 people approximately 220 miles southwest of Anchorage. Back when we lived in Fairbanks, my brother Richard and I spent a year at a hippy private school, when he was in 3rd grade and I was in 1st. I am not convinced that we learned much in the way of the 3 Rs, but we did a lot of fun projects, like building igloos and making applesauce. Most of the school went to Homer, 3rd graders through 12th graders. It was a very small school, I don’t know how many kids went. Not a lot. The older kids looked after the younger kids,…
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Anchored down in Anchorage
We spent two full days in Anchorage, and mostly took it easy. We started our first day by going to the airport to pick up our rental car. That normally wouldn’t be worth mentioning, but the service we received was so gracious, I feel it warrants mentioning. The clerk at the National car rental counter was having trouble with our rental, it was coming out about $400 more than we were quoted, so he called his supervisor in to help him fix it. She was able to override the system, and tried to figure out how to get it to charge us the quoted price, but somehow it came out…
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Visiting the Old Neighborhood
We lived in Alaska for 5 years when I was young, before moving back to California when the overcrowding from the pipeline construction forced us out of Fairbanks. My mom moved back to Alaska, to Juneau, in 1993, and my brother and his wife followed in 1994. My brother and his wife (Richard and Kathy) had never been to Juneau, so it was a huge leap for them to move there sight unseen, but they fell in love with its spectacular beauty, with the cool weather, so different than Stockton and Sacramento, and the slower pace of life in a much smaller town. As did my mom. I have been…
