Thankful Thoughts
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Vincennes and a Bit of Paris
Our Paris timeshare was in the neighboring town of Vincennes, which is not technically part of Paris, but where I was corrected by a shopkeeper that they do consider themselves to be part of Paris. Fair enough, it is just over the border anyway. It is a lovely neighborhood, with lots of shops and their very own chateau, the Chateau de Vincennes. On our first full day in Paris, a Saturday, we decided to stay local and get to know our neighborhood. We asked the concierge at our timeshare for a recommendation for lunch, and she sent us to a truly lovely restaurant, Nido. The food, ambiance, and service were…
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Grasse and Saint Tropez
After our adventure driving in to Italy, and driving to Nice the day before, we decided to spend less time in the car and stay a bit closer to home for a couple of days. We looked at the nearby towns, and decided it would be fun to check out the charming hillside town of Grasse. Grasse is known for their perfume, which Carey wanted to get as a Christmas gift for her nieces. It dripped a bit on us, but never really rained enough to justify the umbrella we were carrying. I love the narrow cobblestone streets, with little art galleries, perfumeries, restaurants, and boutiques. What I didn’t really…
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Meme Monday – Dreaming of France
Allow me to bore you a bit with the plans that my cousin Carey and I have for our upcoming trip to France. We are leaving on Friday, September 9th, and coming home on Monday, September 26th. We are both SO EXCITED, and dreaming of France and the things we will see and do is a lot of fun. Our first week will be in the South of France, in a small village called Mougins. This is where the time share is, and looking online, it looks like a picturesque place. We fly through Paris, into Nice. Hopefully our baggage will make it, as we are taking a chance and…
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Thankful Thoughts
Blog friend Jonathan wrote a nice post the other day about things he was thankful for at that moment in time. I like the idea of setting aside the obvious things like family and so on, and concentrating on the more immediate things. Here, then, are 5 things I am thankful for right now. I am thankful that we were able to procure COVID-19 at home tests, so that when Maya started feeling kind of crummy, she took a test. Not thankful that the results were positive, but thankful that she found out quickly. I am thankful for the vaccines, including the booster, that we were able to get. I…
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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. …
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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…
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Q is for Quote – (Semi) Wordless Wednesday
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G is for Green
My favorite colors are blue and green. I adore them both. Not so much for clothes or furniture or cars, but for me, they are the cool, soothing colors of nature. Because it is so dry and brown here much of the year, green is more rare for me than blue, and so I find green more precious. We get a lot of beautiful blue sky here, and not enough green. When we go somewhere that is not California, somewhere with lots of rain, and I see how lush and calming all of that green is, I swoon. Then again, there is that beautiful blue of the ocean and the…
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F is for Free
My readers know of the free tickets that we were given on our flight home from Portland in June, and that we used those tickets to travel to Maui last month. I was so thankful for the opportunity to have a real vacation…traveling to Portland for a long weekend is always lovely, and I was thrilled to see my family there, but it doesn’t really feel like vacation, especially since our main purpose for going up was to scatter my father’s ashes. As I’m sure you have guessed, ‘free’ doesn’t generally mean ‘free’. The tickets were for the cheapest possible seats, and on Alaska Airlines these days, that means you…
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E is for Eye
Our flight to Maui last month included a layover in Seattle. Soon after landing, I started seeing shooting lights in one of my eyes. I (very occasionally) get ocular migraines, which start with weird vision squiggles and blurriness, and sometimes progress to severe nausea. They are related to my sinuses, I am sure. I had some trusty sinus meds in my pocket, and just in case, I went into the news stand store and bought some Excedrin, as that is what always works for me when I have a migraine. I took it and worried and hoped for the best, and we boarded our flight to Maui. After awhile the…
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C is for COVID (Wordless Wednesday)
(Ruining the ‘wordless’ part, but results were thankfully negative)
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Wordless Wednesday, Maui Edition
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Wordless Wednesday – Bastille Day dinner
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Catching Up….
I’m not sure if you will be able to see this video or not…it shows for me. It’s just the view from the house where we stayed last weekend, and the delicious rain outside…not so delightful to those of you not in the midst of a drought. But delightful for me to be sure. It’s been a busy time around here. Or not around here, actually. Last weekend we flew up to Portland to see my family, and also to scatter my father’s ashes, as was his wish. I was simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the trip. So do I tell you about it sequentially, or start with the…
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Meme Monday – Happy Birthday Edition!
Today is my daughter Maya’s 25th birthday! That is somewhat shocking to me, I remember 25 very well. Actually, 25 is when my biological clock started ticking, and I started really wanting a baby. Before that, I was more hypothetical about it. But Ted and I were dating still, had just recently gotten engaged, and I was just graduating from college, into a recession. So it was 5 more years before we had Maya. Anyway, this is her 2nd COVID birthday. She went out yesterday with some friends, and sat in the park and had a lovely time while socially distant. It was almost 80 degrees, so pretty perfect weather…