NaBloPoMo
-
Picture of the Day – Street Performer in Paris
Our last day in Paris found us back at Sacre Coeur. Carey liked the neighborhood vibe, and wanted to climb the front steps to the church, which we had missed before. This time we knew which Metro train to take, and what exit to take. It was Sunday now, and more crowded than the first time we were there. I think it’s generally a crowded area, though, unless you are staying close by and get there early. As we approached the church, this man was putting on quite a show. You can’t really see it in this picture, but he is balancing a soccer ball. He started out doing all…
-
Paris! Part III
Our 3rd full day in Paris started with a VERY fancy lunch, at one of the restaurants in one of the train stations, Gare de Lyon. The restaurant is Le Train Bleu. We didn’t have reservations anywhere on our trip, because we really never knew where we would be and didn’t want to have to work around it. So when I tried to make a reservation the day before and saw they were booked for the next month, we decided to give walking in a try. Happily, this worked for us. We arrived just before noon, and were told that they had reservations for 1:00, so if we could make…
-
Picture of the Day – Tapestries
Exciting new feature! A temporary installation, if you will. It’s almost bedtime on November 1st, and I’ve been debating back and forth about writing here every day for the month, as I have done several times before. I thought about how, when I was in France, I had intended to post here every day, at least a picture, and my iPad started acting poopy. It’s still poopy, I tried to load this picture using it, and it tried four time and failed and gave me error messages. Then when I boot up a regular computer, the picture is there, four times. Whatever. Anyway, I’m going to try to post every…
-
NaBloPoMo – Day 30
Here we are, my 30th post in 30 days. I’m pretty much out of ideas, so I am posting this meme that I saw somewhere. We can talk about that. We can talk about avocados and whether we love them or not. We can talk about other foods that are like this. We can talk about memes and how stupid and funny they can be sometimes. Whatever. I’ll start. I adore avocados. I don’t actually find them to be as persnickety as this meme suggests, and I often find myself in possession of perfectly ripe avocados. We had quesadillas for dinner last night, and I diced a lovely avocado, and…
-
Meme Monday – Ready for Christmas?
I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. Ours was very nice, delicious food, good company, lots of laughs. Overall a winner. After Thanksgiving, we had a little friends and family time. Ted had lunch with his best friend on Friday, and Maya went into San Francisco with a friend to visit another friend of theirs, who recently had an appendectomy. I had to do a bit of work, but not too much. Working from home is a blessing and a curse. I didn’t have to go in to the office, which was the blessing. I did have to work, which maybe I might have avoided if I weren’t so available.…
-
Sunday Morning Walk
Our walk on a recent Sunday morning brought us to a local park, which has a large pond. We mostly see birds at this pond…geese and ducks and coots. But we sometimes see a heron of some sort, and if we are lucky, a turtle. Generally the turtles are in the water swimming, and the pictures I get of them are not very good. But if you look at this picture, in the lower right corner, there is a little turtle sitting on a rock or something. Perhaps, like Yertle the Turtle, he is the king of all he surveys. Or perhaps the queen. Or perhaps it is just enjoying…
-
Z is for Zany
I had trouble with this one. What to write about? I dislike zebras, they are brutal murderous wild animals. I did a search for zany questions, and came up with this list. I will take it as is, and try to answer. Seems like a good way to wrap up my A-Z. I intend to write posts through the end of the month, so maybe I’ll be here a few more days before slowing down again. Who knows. My search has 70 questions, and I gave up way before that. Sorry. I felt like the last question I answered was pretty much the last straw. Here goes: 1. Is cereal…
-
Y is for Yes Please
My N post was about items that I will say ‘No, thank you’ if they are offered to me. Being that it is a holiday Friday, and I am lazy, here are a few items that I enjoy, and if they are offered to me, I will say, ‘Yes please’. In no particular order… Potatoes. French fries, potato chips, latkes (Happy Hanukkah tonight!), hashed browns, baked potatoes, whatever. I love them. Salads. So many different salads are delicious. Green salad, pasta salad, tuna salad, chicken salad, arugula salad, Caesar salad… Pasta. So many pastas that I love, but my personal favorite is the mushroom pasta at a restaurant in Oakland,…
-
X is for Gen X
Generation X, a term typically used to describe the generation of Americans born between 1965 and 1980, although some sources used slightly different ranges. It has sometimes been called the “middle child” generation, as it follows the well-known baby boomer generation and precedes the millennial generation. It has fewer members than either of those groups, which is one of the reasons that Generation X is considered to be forgotten or overlooked when the generations are discussed. Members of Generation X, or Gen Xers, grew up in a time when there were more dual-income families, single-parent households, and children of divorce than when boomers were growing up. Consequently, many Gen Xers…
-
W is for Wordless Wednesday
-
V is for Victory
Last week, as I was putting together my Smokey post, WordPress went wonky on me. I was trying to post a picture of Smokey on the bed with Rags and a few other items, and it would not load. But there was a button that said, ‘retry’, so I kept retrying. Eventually everything went south, and I could not see my plugins or post anything. Very frustrating. Enter Ted, my handy tech support. Ted self hosts our blogs, so he contacted the company that we work with, and walked through the errors we were getting. It wasn’t just my blog, but all of the sites we have. Sometimes we could…
-
Meme Monday – Thanksgiving Edition
I’m taking a break from my alphabet related posts today, to share a couple of Thanksgiving themed memes. I’ll figure something out for the letter V tomorrow. We’re about ready for Thanksgiving. We’re going to Ted’s parents house this year, which is our standard. Last year, of course, was the outlier, and we had a very small Thanksgiving at our house. This year is closer to normal, there will be 10 of us. We divide and conquer when it comes to the cooking, and our menu is pretty standard. I will be making: Shrimp Cocktail (appetizer) – Ina Garten recipe, from Food Network My Grandma’s Fruit Salad – Originally posted…
-
U is for Unicorn
I remember reading a book once, that had to do with the famous Unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters in New York. Perhaps it was a mystery, perhaps even a young adult mystery? I’m not sure. When I was a teenager, I loved unicorns, and my mom used to buy me beautiful wall calendars every year that featured pictures of them. We have been to New York a couple of times, but I have never been to see the tapestries there, nor have I been to see the unicorn tapestries in Paris. Both seem like a beautiful way to spend an afternoon. A bit of history that I have discovered this…
-
T is for Tree
Our first trip to Hawaii was in 2005, the same year that I started my blog. There are no pictures of that trip here, because we went to Hawaii in June, and I started my blog in November. One thing that amazed me was the Banyan Tree near the Waikiki aquarium. California is not tropical, and I had never seen a Banyan Tree. Banyan trees are not native to Hawaii, they were brought from India, where, according to this site, Banyan is a derivative of the word ‘Banya’, which means merchant in the Gujarati language of India, where Banyan trees provided much needed shade for merchants selling their wares. …
-
S is for Smokey
When I was very small, my brother Richard was my hero, and he was my curator for what was good and interesting in the world. What Richard wanted, I wanted. Then my mom and my Great Aunt Flo went to Yosemite for a little vacation, and my mom wanted to bring us gifts home. She saw some tom-toms that would be perfect for Richard, but there was only one set at the gift shop. She looked around, distressed, not sure what to get for me. She settled on a stuffed Smokey Bear. I never looked back. Smokey was my absolute Best Friend. I took him everywhere. I was, however, very…