So. Travel, you say. I'm in England now, in Torquay staying with a friend who is playing hostess to the international pack of us. We are eating lasagna that she made and exchanging gifts (spoiler: theirs were all better than mine)(plus I got beauty treatment gifts to eliminate total body sagging ( Read more... )

So, kayaking in Elkhorn Slough. I stayed ashore with the dog and we walked around and collected burrs in our paws and failed to poop for almost a whole day. We were actually staying in Capitola, which is a pretty little resort town with its share of tiny quaint shoppies, in a hotel that had a miniature fenced porch for each ground-floor room and a ( Read more... )

Horoscope horoscope horoscope ( Read more... )

So, against the combined advice of YOU, I am having my Sony laptop repaired. Till then, no Second Life. And this happens just when nothing much is going on, so no great loss (especially since I have sold the bulk of my real estate there, leaving only one plot of land for official business). It's a little sad, this end-of-era housecleaning, but it ( Read more... )

Another wonderful road trip with gothchick_marie: stunning scenery, the absolute BEST weather, a spicy pinot noir named "Poppy", and lots of blue jays. Oh, and Hearst Castle, lunch at Nepenthe, the magical oddness of Deetjen's (in whose restaurant I ate till I was sick--something you all know I do) and hours soaking sun with the breeze cooling us. I got tan and ( Read more... )

Well! Due to popular demand the stalker story has been written and sent out. Grubby, n'est-ce pas? AND funny if you were on our end of things ( Read more... )

All right. Here they are.

1. Pix of houses we looooved. Or I loved.

This one is PERFECT: huge, airy, light, cheap, perfect condition. It's in a borderline dangerous neighborhood and lives above a fast-food joint. Too bad. I'd live there anyway, but the bf is much too prudent. Sigh.

( Read more... )

Did you read Joshua Kosman's prayerfully adoring review of last Wednesday's performance of the Cello Concerto No. 2 (Wednesday, Jan. 20th)? He is practically babbling. He loves the SF Symphony, he loves Michael Tilson Thomas, he worships Yo-Yo Ma utterly. It's so moving. And I really like his critical analysis--so many pretty words. I sit back and ( Read more... )

I cooked a huge batch of poulet Provençal so that gothchick_marie doesn't starve after I leave, found room in my suitcase for 800 packages of stroopwafels--demand is exceeding supply ridiculously even if I am the only market in North America (P.S. They all fit.), retrieved the random knitting needle or wads of yarn Adelheid licked to shreds or hid, found all my ( Read more... )

I promise plus photos.

Still in the Netherlands, visited Brugge (I want to live there. I found my perfect house. One of them anyway.) where we stayed in a B&B run by the Belgian version of Martha Stewart, ran around (figuratively speaking) in the snow, which is still pretty, met gothchick_marie's mother, went househunting with gothchick_marie, fell in love with Adelheid the ( Read more... )