Thankful Thoughts
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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…
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C is for Côte d’Azur
Last September, my cousin Carey and I took a 2 1/2 week trip to France. She and her wife have a time share situation, which they pay a lot of money for, and she offered me the opportunity to go with her to France, since Diane (her wife) didn’t want to go to Europe. Carey lived in France for awhile in the mid-80s, and hadn’t been back since. We spent our first week in the South of France, the Côte d’Azur, in the hillside town of Mougins. Mougins is certainly a touristic area, though not as busy as Nice, Cannes, or Antibes. Like so many of the hillside towns, Mougins…
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B is for Brittany
Back in 2018, we took a trip to France to celebrate our daughter Maya’s graduation from UC Berkeley, as well as our 25th wedding anniversary. Ted and Maya had gone to England the year before, with his mom and brother, to visit family there. On that trip, they took a couple of days on their own in Paris, which they loved. The last time I had been in France was in 1993, on our honeymoon. Ted has a friend, Jean-Marc, from his days in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. Jean-Marc is French and was at Penn studying US History, and now is a professor in Brest, on the…
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Playing Tourist at Home
This last weekend, my cousin spent a couple of days with us, and we played tourist together. She lives in Oceanside, which is near San Diego, and came up to visit us, to see our Great Aunt, and to spend a few days in the Sacramento area, where she has quite a few friends, before jetting off to Orlando with one of these friends for a vacation. This is the cousin that I went to France with last year, and we always have fun together. She flew in on Thursday, and we went to lunch and walked around a bit downtown. In all of her visits to see us, she…
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Wordless Wednesday
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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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Paso Robles and Pismo Beach
Last week, Ted’s brother Steve invited Ted and me to go wine tasting in Paso Robles, which is about 3 1/2 to 4 hours southwest of us. He had won a wine tasting package at a charity auction, which included 3 tastings and a hotel stay. Nice! We started out early on Tuesday morning, spent the night there, and came home on Wednesday afternoon. We started out at Bon Niche, a tiny winery in the nearby town of San Miguel. The winery is owned and run by a woman with help from her parents, who come down a couple of times a year to help out from their home in…
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J’s Index – Alaska
*Note: If you are subscribed to my posts, you may have seen this one already. I accidentally posted it instead of scheduling, but I didn’t intend to have this post go live until I finished my other Alaska posts. So I took it down and am re-posting it now.* This post is an homage to the Harper’s Index, a summary of our trip to Alaska. The photo above is from our whale watching trip. It was so beautiful, it looked like a painting to me. Number of Flights Taken – 7 Number of Boat Trips – 2 Number of Rental Cars – 3 Number of Airbnbs – 3 Number of…
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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…
