Musings
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Cool Blogger Meet Up
I met up with Engie last weekend! She and her husband were in Northern California to attend a wedding, and she had some time open when we could get together. She has had a lot going on lately, and I was grateful that we were able to hang out. I have a membership to the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco (I used to always buy one, but for the last few years they didn’t really have any exhibits that I wanted to see – when Ted and I went to see the exhibit of photographs taken by Paul McCartney in July, I piggy backed onto his ticket purchase, and…
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Friday Randomness
I don’t know this dog’s name, just that she’s a sweet darling girl, and if she is outside when I walk by her house, she comes running over and wags her tail like crazy, hoping for pets. I rarely pet her, she’s a little mouthy and I don’t like being nipped, but she clearly just wants to love the world. She and Mulder were friends, he would pull like crazy when we got close to her house, hoping she would be outside, and they would wag and wiggle and squirm and make darling noises through the fence. I think they would have loved to be playmates. As I said, I…
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Friday Randomness
I’m currently listening to The Bright Years, which I am enjoying. Early on, the protagonist, Lillian, ruminates that she feels resentful of people who express annoyance with their parents for little things, since her parents are both long gone, and she would love to have them here and be gently annoyed by their entirely normal behavior. I was struck by this, especially since my mom died when I was only 42, so most of my friends still had their mothers around. Don’t get me wrong, my mom annoyed me no end in 1,000 little ways. And when people complain about their parents, I get it, and I remember being (often…
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Friday Randomness
Time to get you caught up on the randomness around here. Weekly protest, nice restaurant time, 4th of July insanity, and more! Bougie ProtestI’ll admit, my weekly Anti-Trump protests are pretty easy. They are in a nice part of town, we don’t get a lot of backlash (maybe the finger, maybe a comment, maybe a thumbs down). After, you can shop or dine or go home. It’s easy. Last Saturday Ted came with me, which he doesn’t usually do for work related reasons. The crowd was not as small as I had feared for a holiday weekend. It was a picture perfect day, lovely weather for waving signs and flags…
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Friday Randomness
Fighting the Good Fight – Overheard at a recent protest in our fair city…mom walking with 2 young kids. One of them asks what the people are doing, making so much noise and carrying signs. “They’re fighting for your freedom.” OMG, that brought a tear to my eyes and made me feel like showing up every Saturday is definitely worth my time. Pie Shop – I forgot to mention in my post on Oceanside that we saw this little pie shop, which is in the house where Kelly McGillis’s character lived in the original Top Gun film. There is a large military base nearby, Camp Pendleton, so Top Gun seems…
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32 Years!
Happy Anniversary to us! It feels unreal to me that we’ve been married 32 years now, that we’ve 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 didn’t 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 won’t 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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The One About the Cruise
It’s finally time to tell you about the cruise I went on with my cousins! They are a private bunch, so while I will use their names (less confusing that way, and none are rare names) I will not be sharing photos of them. Unfortunate, because they’re a good looking crew. The cast are: Ethan – I mention him first, because in their family, each kid gets a trip with at least one parent as a gift for their 16th birthday. His sisters went on the offered trip, but Ethan thought outside of the box and said he wanted a trip with the whole family, and they said yes. Kim…
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One Thing a Day
A few years ago, I saw an article in The New Yorker by Ann Patchett, How to Practice (subscription needed, sorry) where she tells of being motivated by the death of a close friend’s father, and the task of going through his things, to declutter her own home, getting rid of things she had been hanging onto for too long. Some of them had a lot of meaning, but she realized that she didn’t need to hang on to them forever. Some of them were beautiful things, but she wasn’t using them. Then a few weeks ago, Elisabeth had a post in which she described helping her parents to declutter,…
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A Few Days in Oceanside
My cousin Carey and her wife live in Oceanside, half way between San Diego and Orange County. When she invited me to go with her on the cruise to Mexico, she also invited me to come down a few days early to see Oceanside and San Diego. The last time I was in San Diego was 1988, and I had never been to Oceanside, so I jumped at the chance. While Carey has lived in Southern California for 11 years, she has never been to the Hotel Del Coronado, and has always wanted to see it from the inside. The Coronado is a beautiful beach resort in San Diego with…
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Tacos 4 Ways
I had a lovely time in SoCal with my cousin, then on our cruise to Mexico with my other cousin (her sister) and her family. I have a bigger post in mind, but I’ve been home an entire week and haven’t managed to put that together, and I’ve barely managed to start coming by your blogs, so for now I will whet your appetite by showing you the tacos we ate. Tacos – I love tacos, and enjoyed the many opportunities I had to enjoy them closer to and in Mexico. Living in California, we get really good tacos here, but it seemed like a good opportunity to try them…
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Friday Randomness
This week’s randomness is pretty random. Silly, sad, poignant, all of the feelings and things. Spotted at Total Wine in the check out aisle. Don’t worry, if Pinot is not your thing, they had a white and a rose as well. Spotted on my morning walk. It’s not really watermelon season yet, but here we are. This is the same area where the woman with the cat on her shoulder was a few weeks ago. The other day I was listening to my local NPR station, to a locally produced show, Forum. It’s a discussion and call in show, and this episode was about rivers as living beings. In the…
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LA Randomness
OK, you all know that Ted and I went to Los Angeles last weekend and had a great time at the Cruel World Festival, but surely you have questions. Such as, How did you get there? Where did you stay? What did you eat? Did you see any stars? What else did you do? If you do not have these questions, skip this post. If you do, I am here to give you answers. How did we get there?We considered flying, it’s a quick one, but when you factor in time getting to the airport, being there ahead of time, and the fact that we would need to rent a…
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Cool Blogger Meet Up!
I got together with Birchie! And San! We had Tapas! As you may know, Birchie was in California recently, and split her time between Sacramento and San Francisco. So I drove to Sacramento last Tuesday after work to meet her for dinner, so we could also meet up with San. When I got there, San was still at work, so I picked Birchie up at her AirBnB, and we went to a little park nearby. The main attraction is Sutter’s Fort, which is one of the first European colonial forts in the Central Valley of California, before the Gold Rush, but it was closed, so we couldn’t go inside. That…
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Never Say Never
I’ve never thought of myself as a cruise person. I know plenty of people who *love* them, but they seem really crowded to me, and I’m not thrilled with the idea of being on a tight schedule when in port. One exception I might make would be an Alaskan cruise, because the opportunity to see so many little towns along the southeast, without having to pack and unpack, is really appealing, and being on a ship and seeing the fjords and wildlife of that region would be amazing. My cousin Carey and her family enjoy cruises, and have been on several. They’ve been to Alaska a couple of times, and…
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Daydreaming of Berkeley
While we were wandering around Berkeley on Saturday, we saw a sign for an open house in the neighborhood, and Ted wanted to go check it out. So we walked a few blocks and found it. Unfortunately, they were closed for the day (but still had their signs up), so we didn’t get to walk around inside. I have to tell you folks, this is the house of my dreams (aside from the shingles, which I could definitely do without). I adore these old craftsman homes with built in shelving and wood everywhere. It’s over 3,000 square feet, but only 2 bedrooms. This is because there is a huge upstairs…
