Category: Life & Miscellany
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Car: 1 Pedestrian: 0
Well, Happy New Year indeed. This is how I’m kicking off 2012 (not actually kicking anything for some time, methinks); nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, I guess. I was out walking Jessica’s dog Brown in my neighborhood yesterday, when I got hit by a car. It happened at one of those double-T intersections where the…
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Snow falling on cedars
I love it when a journey is required to bring Christmas home. Hoping yours is holly-jolly, merry and bright.
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Leaves through the Looking Glass
The three days Nicole and I spent in Victoria were star-studded with beauty and color, but nothing was quite so breathtaking as the Butchart Gardens, just a few minutes north of the city. Now a Canadian National Historic Site, the Gardens were the private grounds surrounding the home of Robert and Jennie Butchart. So the…
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Tea for two
No stay at the Empress is complete without sitting down to Afternoon Tea. Now, I love a good cuppa no matter where I am, but leaning back in a squashy chair and gazing upward at something like this makes every sip a little more special. The Empress has been pouring tea every afternoon since it…
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Oh, Canada!
Yeah, I know. It’s a week before Christmas, and Hanukkah starts tomorrow. Our tree is up, and we even had our mega-huge holiday party last night (62 people—a new record!). But somehow, my mind is occupied with red-gold maples, not flocked evergreens. Maybe it’s the fact that everyone’s lawns are at their greenest at this…
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A rare treat
The Tailor and I were talking today about holiday traditions. In his family, it’s standard fare to find an orange in one’s stocking on Christmas morning. He’s originally from Kansas, where the tradition hearkens back to the days when citrus fruit was an exotic luxury. I remember my grandmother telling me a similar story about…
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Over the river and through the woods
The last of our guests will be arriving any minute, and then today will be complete. This year we have visitors who made a thousand-mile trek, bearing gifts of California wine and citrus—as well as callers just a short neighborhood stroll away, wrapped in scarves against the damp chill in the air. Each friend is…
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Golden days
Commencement Bay from the North End, Tacoma, WA Pumpkin patches, Vancouver Island, BC First squash haul of the year from Zestful Gardens, Puyallup, WA Cranberry harvest, Long Beach, WA Japanese maple, Butchart Gardens, Brentwood Bay, BC Proctor District in the rain, Tacoma, WA St. Johns Bridge, Portland, OR Have I mentioned that I love autumn…
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When in Rome
Many of my favorite towns (Boulder, Missoula, Portland, the other Portland, Duluth, Tacoma, Providence, etc.) seem to be kindred spirits to one another. There’s something about the coming-together of historic architecture, blue-collar grittiness, a population full of creative types and surrounding natural beauty that … well, for which I’m a total sucker. So based on…
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An anniversary
All this week the radio, the blogs, the instant media, and I’m sure the television, too, have been blaring with recaps and riffs and reflections and rage, on repeat, about that day when we all learned a little more about the nature of fear. And it’s not that I’m avoiding thinking about it—it’s that I…