Fans of Gypsy Jazz can usually recall their first encounter with Django. Mine was through a movie - Sweet and Lowdown with Sean Penn. My husband and I were avid participants in the film fest and the plot of the movie looked neat.  Up the spiral shaped BMW Museum we walked - passing one shiny [...]

I watched the first fifteen minutes of Fever Pitch while eating my lunch and the narrator made me laugh. He said that Red Sox fans are pathetic creatures. He said that with love, of course. If you’re not a fan it’s hard to understand that statement. I got it. Of course I did. The Red [...]

I love hiking despite the fact that I have things “to work on” while I’m in the woods. Some of these things are fairly irrational, such as my fear of falling. I am also overly cautious and am not in the shape I want to be. Yet I still go out there and hike - [...]

I know. I take the term “loction independent” to extremes. That seems a fitting way to start this musing, which was prompted by a post on Sharon’s blog, about what being “location independent” really means. I am a writer. I have clients. This means that sometimes I find myself tapping furiously at the keyboard when [...]

The first time I had Greek yogurt with honey and walnuts was in Santorini. We traveled there in May. The wind is fierce that time of year and because of that, the jet stream is filled with sand from the Sahara desert. When asked about it, shop owners look worried - they’ll inevitably need to [...]

As you probably noticed, my “photo a day” project didn’t work out. But, I’ve taken a ton of pictures. I’ll upload them to flickr so you can see what I’ve done, where I’ve been. In a way, my goal was nearly doomed to failure. There were too many rules, too much pressure. Where’s the creativity [...]

You should see us on vacation - particularly when we go to Europe. It’s usually a group of us. We have a general idea of what we’d like to see but chances are, we only book our rental car and plane tickets in advance. We talk about it at breakfast - where should we go [...]

Ah. Life. There’s always something to do, isn’t there? Today as I type I am aware that I need to do the dishes, change the cat litter, fold some laundry (oh no, is the laundry still wet in the dryer?), and do some food shopping. And that doesn’t even include the various things I need [...]

Martha Stewart I’m not - and I don’t want to be. My expectations are pretty simple. I want to live in a decluttered, well decorated environment. I wouldn’t want to try to be someone else anyway. I’m too set in my ways - too accustomed to my own personal style. I simply want my home [...]

When I learned that my college friend Jennifer and her band, The Honorable Mentions were trying to write and record a song a week I felt simultaneously happy for her as the music is mad cool, and also guilty because I don’t have a similar aspiration or my own. I want one! Gimme.
So what’ll it [...]

It happens to me nearly every time I go to the nail salon. I always show up with something in mind - a manicure or a pedicure usually. This is a typical conversation:

Me. I’d like a manicure, please.
Them. Okay, choose a color.
So I do. Then I sit down and the manicure commences.
Them. You want French [...]

I was at the spa the other day using the pool, the steam room, the jacuzzi. I had set aside that time to relax and unwind and maybe drink a cup of tea or two in the process. When I arrived, I saw a 20-something woman sitting in the waiting room restlessly flipping through a [...]

The trip to San Francisco happened last week from the 4th - 5th (that was for my own notes and remembrance!) but I haven’t written a post about this place until now. Why is that? It’s because I didn’t understand something. I couldn’t figure out why I liked it…
Let me explain. I have a history [...]

Reading the paper. How long has it been since I’ve had the knowledge of the world stamped black at my fingertips? These moments  are far away from me. The newspaper itself seems lost in a dimension of another time. It’s a past that I never truly experienced.
We almost always had a computer around. When I [...]

I love working from home. My office is in front of this big window with a nice view of the forest behind the house. Sometimes, I can see squirrels moving back and forth like a skittering tight rope dancer  across the power lines. One time it was carrying a plastic bag - I dislike those [...]

Yesterday I made a whole pile of crepes that we all did different things with. My husband likes to take them and stack them up like pancakes and top them with real maple syrup (an expensive find here in CA but New England habits are hard to break). My dad and I each had a [...]

Image by Galaga Gal via Flickr

My husband and I have a long history of time spent drinking Irish Coffees. Our favorite place to go when we lived in Germany was a little place in Starnberg called Cappuccino where the owner considered making Irish Coffees to be an art form. Watching him make them could hypnotize [...]

I feel as if I am beginning something. I don’t know what yet, but the direction that my blog has taken makes me feel as if I am on the cusp of something - grand? No, probably not. But definitely creative. Whatever I do, I’ll be creative. I’ll create. Cakes. Jewelry. Maybe I’ll learn how [...]

I’ve realized something.  I believe that the blog that bears my name needs to be a reflection of me. What does that mean? It means that since this is my blog that I have a right to be random. That’s right. You heard correctly. I’m tired of planning a blog and sticking with a theme.
I [...]