Thankful Thoughts
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Happy Birthday to my Sisters
This picture is at my Dad’s 70th birthday, in 2013. My sisters are twins, and today is their birthday! Melissa is on the left, I am in the middle, and Maya is on the right. Due to NaBloPoMo, I have a lot of new readers, so I will give a bit of background on my relatively unique upbringing. For anyone with a lot of time on their hands (ha!), I wrote about meeting my dad at the age of 21, here, here, and here. The short version is that my parents met in High School, and were great friends, though never dated. My mom dropped out of college at U.C.…
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Picture of the Day
Wow, my hands look old. I’m turning 57 next month, so I guess it’s not surprising. Anyway, my old lady hand is showing off the lovely bracelet that I bought in France this September. I had in mind that I wanted to buy myself a memento in France, something to remember the trip. I went with my cousin…she and I were in charge of our Grandma’s estate after she passed away. Her will said that her sister, my Great Aunt Flo, was entitled to stay in the house as long as she wanted to. So my cousin Carey and I managed that, with repairs and taxes and so on, for…
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Asmara Ethiopian Food
The picture above is not mine, I grabbed it from Trip Advisor. Today, Maya went out with a friend, and Ted and I went into Oakland. We had no big plans, but I wanted to go to a gourmet grocery store to get some fancy Italian chocolates for Christmas gifts, as well as a couple of birthday cards. After buying the chocolates, we wandered up the street to a local independent book store, where Ted bought a book for a gift, and I bought the birthday cards. Then we started walking around, looking to see if we might find something for a late lunch. We didn’t have any luck, nothing…
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Thankful
Quick post today…guests are arriving in 15 minutes or so. This is our table, with casual glasses instead of our crystal. It’s not exactly what I would hope for, I love our crystal, but it’s delicate and our table is tight and I worry it will be broken. So there you go. I haven’t been very good about commenting this week. My iPad often won’t let me log in to comment, so I have to do it on a different computer. Work has been crazy. But I’m loving NaBloPoMo, and hopefully this weekend I will be by your place and say hello. Happy Thanksgiving to my US friends.
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Mulder’s Fabulous Friday!
Hi everyone, this is J’s puppy-boy (PB), Mulder, and I’m here to tell you about the Fabulous Friday that I just had! I have three bosses, my Big Boss, (Ted), my Medium Boss (Julie, aka, J), and my Little Boss, Maya. Medium Boss and I started out the day with a nice walk downtown, She thought we might try to find some new pianos to take my picture with, but they are gone. She was sad about this, but really, I can’t play piano very well, and during rainy season, it is probably a bad idea. Is she even thinking? In the place of the pianos, there is a lot…
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Thanksgiving Prep
This is the current situation at my house. I have washed the good china, and just finished polishing the silver. I’m not going to use our good crystal glasses this year, they are too fragile and I don’t want to risk them getting broken. Back when we got married, almost 30 years ago, couples registered for china, silver, and crystal. We don’t use them often, but we do use them a couple of times a year. Sometimes for Valentine’s Day, always for Canadian Thanksgiving, and then if we have Christmas or U.S. Thanksgiving here. We celebrate two Thanksgivings, just because it is fun. Ted was born in Canada, though his…
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Friday Randomness – 5 Things
Today’s post will be 5 Things I’m thinking about.
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Cheese Glorious Cheese
Here you see my cousin Carey, talking to the Fromager at the little cheese shop in Vincennes, the town where we spent our nights (and some days) just outside of the Paris city limits. I told you about the day we were too worn out from our travels, including lots of driving and late nights, to stick with our initial plan of driving to Versailles. We stayed local, got massages, had a glass of wine and watched people, then got some food to eat, brought it back to our time-share, and watched a movie, ate bread, cheese, salami, and drank wine. And did laundry. It was a nice, lazy day.…
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Onion Soup in France
This sad, sad picture is of our dinner one evening in Cannes. We had had a lovely lunch (I think this was the day we took the boat to Saint Tropez and had a big lunch, so we weren’t terribly hungry), so we thought we would a light dinner. Carey had been wanting French Onion soup, so when I saw ‘Soupe a l’oignon’ on a menu, we decided to give it a try. I don’t think it’s that big of a thing in the South of France, and we hadn’t seen it on any menus yet. This was the soup we received…the broth was not the dark, rich broth, the…
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Picture of the Day – Outside Sacre Coeur
First off, let me apologize for the inordinate use of the word ‘amazing’ in yesterday’s post. The fact that the croissant was delicious and perfectly prepared is not something to cause great surprise. You kind of expect that in France. It was lazy writing. I considered editing the post and finding some other adjectives, but decided to leave it as is. I like this picture of a street musician and his cat, entertaining the tourists on the steps of Sacre Coeur. He’s even wearing a beret. The messy ‘No Entry’ sign on the door takes a bit from the picture, but I like his cat.
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Pictures of the Day – Fruit in Mougins
We absolutely fell in love with the local boulangerie in Mougins. We began our days by walking down our little hill and getting a baguette, croissant, or pastry for breakfast. The quality was AMAZING, and the staff were wonderful. Above is breakfast one day, amazing croissant, amazing fruit, amazing French butter and locally produced jam. The tea is British, I brought my tea bags from home, which I buy from the local Indian shops and are imported from England. The ashtray is useless, but I left it in the picture because it seemed very French to me. Due to COVID, there was often a line in front of the store.…
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Picture of the Day – Locks of Love
There is a relatively recent custom in Paris (and other European cities) for couples to put locks on bridges and railings, which is adding so much weight to said railings, fences, and bridges that they are threatening to destroy them. This is a railing near Sacre Coeur with thousands of locks, and you can see how they might do damage. Of course, the souvenir shops in the area sell the locks, so most tourists don’t know that it is doing damage and that the city has to remove the locks periodically. Personally I don’t get it, and I don’t find it charming or romantic, but clearly there are a lot…
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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…
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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…
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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…