Thankful Thoughts
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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday
Thank you Sarah at The Shu Box for the lovely surprise that arrived on Monday! #SecretSANtaSwap2023
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Dinners Last Week
I’m sure you missed my ‘Dinners Last Week’ posts during NaBloPoMo, so here I am back at it. Maybe I can give you an idea for something to cook, because THAT is the hard part for me. Figuring out what to cook. And like the meme, above, sometimes I have ideas earlier in the week, or even earlier in the day, and then when it’s time to cook, I think, “Couldn’t we just eat cheese and crackers? What about eggs?” I generally stick with my plan, because I have the ingredients. I like cooking, it’s just that by 5:00 when I get off of work, I’ve lost my verve. I…
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Throwback Thursday – Happy Hanukkah!
Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah! Let’s rewind to 2006, and you can enjoy Maya singing. The video quality isn’t great, it’s 2006 after all. We’re not Jewish, we just like to celebrate things, and when Maya was little, we wanted to expose her to different cultures. Of course, that confused her, when she was in first grade she told her teacher we were Jewish. Our celebration consists of a nice dinner with latkes and small gifts the first night, and lighting the menorah every night (if we remember – Ted is pretty good about this.) Today I’m working 1/2 day, then I’ll start cooking – brisket braised in…
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Throwback Thursday
This is a picture of me and my roommate Troy, back in 1988 or 1989. He’s putting me in the garbage can at an amusement park, which is clearly HILARIOUS. I love this picture. When I was 21, I moved from Stockton to San Francisco with Troy, to attend San Francisco State University. We had worked together at a hotel in Stockton, and I wanted to move to San Francisco, and so did he. He had lived on his own before (I had not), so he had some furniture and an idea at least of how things like signing up for utilities and paying bills worked. But we were both…
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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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W is for Worth It
There are some products that are extra money or extra effort, but they are worth it to me. Today’s quick post is about a few of them. Eggs – I am very picky about my eggs. I like a dark orange yolk with a rich taste. I started buying pasture raised eggs because I felt bad for the chickens, not having room to run around and be in the sunshine, and then I found I much preferred the taste too. Pasture raised eggs come from chickens that have a more varied diet, and live a better life (I think), than chickens kept in cages. My brand of choice is Vital…
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V is for VIP
Imagine my surprise recently when checking out at the grocery store, when the checker got a message in the computer that I was a VIP and they needed to bring me a gift! What? Me? A VIP? The woman behind me was hilarious and bowed down to me in an ‘I’m not worthy’ way. Of course, the whole VIP thing locked up the computer and we had to wait for someone to go fetch my gift and unlock the computer, so I’m glad that the people behind me were amused and patient. My gift, as you can see above, was cheese related. It included a lovely cheese board, some cheese…
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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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P is for Paris
I’ve been to Paris three times now. First on my honeymoon, pictured above. Then I went with Ted and Maya in 2018, celebrating her graduation from college and our 25th wedding anniversary. The third time was last year when I went with my cousin. Every time, I love Paris more. I haven’t traveled all that much in my life (it’s expensive!), but so far, Paris is my favorite city. So much beauty, so much art, such a cool vibe, such delicious food and wine. The picture above is of the Palais Garnier, which is called the Opera house, but now is mostly where the ballets are held, since they built…
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O is for Orange – Wordless Wednesday
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N is for Normandy
I’ve spent a few days in Normandy, France. Both times I went to Monet’s Gardens in Giverny, to Rouen, and to Mont Saint-Michel. In 2018 we also went to the coast to see Omaha beach, one of the beaches where the Allies came ashore in World War II. When we stopped at Omaha Beach, preparations were underway for the June anniversary commemorations, so there were ugly fences and bleachers up, but I got some good pictures. The fields of poppies always make me think of World War I, even though Flanders is not French. In the historic center of Rouen, between Omaha Beach and Paris, there is a lovely square…
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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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G is for Giverny
Giverny is the village where Impressionist painter Claude Monet built his beautiful gardens, which he painted over and over again. I’ve been fortunate enough to see these lovely gardens twice, first in early June of 2018, and then again in late September of 2022. It was lovely to see the difference in flowers, between late spring and late summer. The first 3 pictures above are from my 2022 visit, and the bottom 3 are from 2018. Here I am last September in Paris, at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, which in addition to these huge paintings of his water lilies also houses a lovely collection of impressionist art. Not…
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D is for Decor
Elisabeth recently redecorated her daughter’s bedroom, and posted wonderful pictures of the final project. This brought to mind one room we have redone in our home, the downstairs bathroom. Back in 2018 we had a leak under our home that caused a lot of disruption, due to re-piping the downstairs from under the slab to through the walls. You can read about it, and see pictures of the open walls and pipes, here if you’re so inclined. When they re-piped the bathroom, they took down the horrible huge mirror, and tore open the wall behind it, to get to the pipes. After they closed everything up again, the room needed…
