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Staycation, Part II
The second half of our Staycation began on Wednesday, when we drove to wine country on our new tires. Ted’s uncle, aunt, and cousin live in Sonoma County, so we started the day having lunch with them. Long-time readers may remember the wedding we attended in 2019, with two ceremonies, beautiful horses, and a big family reunion. That was Ted’s cousin. She now has a 2 1/2 year old daughter, and is on the beginning of her maternity leave with a new baby, due in early October. We had lunch with Ted’s uncle, aunt, cousin, and the pre-schooler. That is one smart kid, and she’s so sweet. It was fun…
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Staycation, Part I
As mentioned in my last post, Ted and I took this week off from work for a staycation. We live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and people come from around the world to visit, so sometimes it is fun to play tourist in our own area. We decided we wanted to do a variety of things…some days chilling and maybe getting things done, some days out and about. Here’s a recap of the first half of our staycation. Saturday, we went to Ted’s parents’ house to celebrate his step-dad’s birthday. It was a low key party, just us, them, and Ted’s brother. Instead of cooking, we brought in take-out,…
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Friday Randomness
What’s new pussycat? Around here, it’s gotten hot again, though thankfully only for a few days, and never over 100 degrees. Today is the beginning of a cool down. One nice thing about September heat waves as opposed to July or early August heat waves, is that the sun goes down a little earlier, so the full heat of the sun isn’t beating on our house for as long. It’s the little things in life, right? I kept seeing this ad on Facebook. It’s for a t-shirt company. My thought? Hannah’s an actor! (Hannah is Engie’s dog) Do you see a resemblance? Here are some gross things. We recently had…
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Friday Randomness
What could be more random than this artichoke that I saw growing in someone’s yard? Not much. I have seen artichokes growing as crops before, driving past farms, but never like this as an ornamental plant in someone’s yard. Pretty! Sometimes when I’m reading your blogs, I wish I could comment with a meme or a picture or whatever. Since that’s not how comments work, I will share a few responses/thoughts here. First off, Engie was saying that she wished she had pictures of puppy Hannah. So I thought I would share some pictures of our sweet puppy boy, Mulder. We got him when he was 7 months old, but…
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Dinners this Week
Sunday I went to the Farmers’ Market, and this was my haul. Yes, I spent $30 on berries alone, but I have been known to do that before. Actually, I have spent quite a bit more in the past. I regret nothing. We eat a lot of berries, so that’s not a problem. Same with the cantaloupe, grapes, and nectarines. More of an issue is the tomatoes. (Also the fruit flies! Damn them.) So, without further ado, here are my plans for dinners this week. I think it’s time to post my corn salad recipe, because it’s delicious and so easy. Probably I should have posted it a month ago…
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Friday Randomness
First off, I’m feeling less stressed. There is no reason to feel better, but one can only stay stressed out for so long. Our company is going to go through another round of layoffs in the next month or so, and they want all employees who live within 50 miles of an office to start coming in a couple of days a week. They say it’s time to get back to normal, pandemic is over, etc. The thing is, my team has never worked in an office, we’ve always been remote, so the idea of having to drive 60-90 minutes each way to sit in a cubicle with coworkers that…
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Green Bean, Olive, and Goat Cheese Salad
It’s been a week. I don’t talk about work much here, but this week was a tough one. I work in the IT industry, and my company did layoffs this week, including my boss. With no warning, as is the general practice. So I’m stressed out. In better news, I made Engie’s green bean and olive salad. (This was Engie’s contribution for Tobia’s Cool Bloggers Summer Salad Challenge) It’s a winner, though Maya said it hasn’t changed her mind about green beans (she’s not a fan). Because I’m stressed out and can’t think of any content for you, I’ll copy the recipe here for you (and for me, I come…
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The Neapolitan Novels
Is it pretentious that I chose the Italian covers for these novels? Maybe. Anyway, it’s time to talk about the Neapolitan Novels, by Elena Ferrante. Many of us read the first book in the series, My Brilliant Friend, for Engie’s Cool Bloggers Book Club in February. Some of us adored it, some tolerated it, some wished they had taken that time to deep clean their bathtub. I’m in the adored it category, so I went on and read the other three books in the series, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child. I also listened to them…
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Miscellaneous Monday
This is going to be one of those random posts, just things I’m thinking about. (I mean, that is the name of my blog, right?) First I will dip my toes into politics a bit, and say that I am feeling MUCH more hopeful about the possibility of no Trump presidency than I was a couple of weeks ago. Ever since Biden’s horrible debate, I’ve been so stressed out. I think he’s been a very good President, and doesn’t get enough credit for his accomplishments. I honestly doubt that he could put in another 4 years, though, it’s a hell of a job. But we have a whole system set…
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Lemon Pistachio Cake
This last weekend, we celebrated the birthdays of Ted’s mom and uncle, who are one day short of 15 years apart in age. We had a Mexican theme, with lamb birria tacos, grilled shrimp salsa, guacamole and so on, but I’m here today to tell you about the cake. Ted’s cousin Sewdaye made a beautiful Lemon Pistachio Cake, and frosted it with a lemon ricotta whipped cream frosting. I am generally not a big fan of cake, I’m much more team pie or ice cream, but this cake was amazing and has absolutely changed my mind. Of course, we did serve it with ice cream – pistachio gelato, lemon marionberry,…
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45(ish) Books
I’ve seen people discussing the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, and my first thought was, ‘that seems kind of premature, doesn’t it?’ Then I went and checked it out, and found I had read 25 of the books, so decided to write a blog post about it. Blog fodder! Then I found that Engie had done exactly that. Great minds think alike! So, here’s my list, with links to my book reviews. That’s it for the official list, which was compiled by writers. As might be expected, readers chimed in, and the Times compiled a list of readers’ 100 favorites as well. The two lists…
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Bastille Day Randomness
Happy Bastille Day everyone! Bastille Day holds a special place in my heart, as my first full day in Paris on my honeymoon 31 years ago was on Bastille Day. I fell in love with France that day, and have been fortunate enough to go back twice since then. When Engie asked me to help her celebrate her 20 years of blogging (WOW!), and told me my day would be July 14th, I decided to write about France (again). So I’m her guest today! I’m sorry, I know I’ve written about my 2022 trip a LOT, and my 2018 trip less but still a lot, so likely you will not…
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Summer Salad Challenge
I was going to write about politics today, about how genuinely afraid I am for our democracy since last week’s Supreme Court ruling. About how I fear that Biden’s age is going to be a real issue in the election this fall, and how I wish he had decided not to run for a second term, and yet I worry that if he drops out now, it will be too late and again, Trump wins and we are all well and truly screwed. About how I thought the insurrection on January 6th was the end of Trump’s political career, that there was no way folks would support him after that.…
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Happy Independence Day
Happy Independence Day to my American friends! Our plans today include a small family BBQ with Ted’s parents and maybe his brother. I am looking forward to a good hot dog, as that is something I do not eat very often. Ted and I had a lovely anniversary together yesterday. We started the day slowly, went for a walk early before it got too hot, went to the grocery store for things for today’s bbq, and lazed around a bit. Then we hopped on our local transit (BART) and went in to San Francisco for the day. We took a cable car from the Embarcadero to the end of that…
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Catching Up
The picture above is from my favorite local church. In 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, they put up a sign that said “Created in God’s Image, Black Lives Matter, To God and To Us.” That sign was up for almost 4 years, and now has been replaced with the sign above, which has rainbow ribbons over the cross, and says “Nothing can ever separate you from the love of God. <3” Again, I had to pull over and take a picture, it made me so happy. If I were a believer, I would definitely go to this church. Well, a few things have happened since I was…
