Une semaine à Nice

Things slowed down considerably once we got to Nice, which was good because we were pretty tired after our adventure in getting there. This was the family reunion part of the trip, a week to spend with Stephanie’s mom Chris,…

Au revoir Nice, à bientôt!

One thing we hadn’t planned in advance was how and when we were going to get back to Paris from Nice for our flight home Sunday morning. The options we’d considered were a 5+ hour long TGV ride on Friday…

J’ai fait dodo sur un train

I’ve always wanted to sleep on a train. It seemed like just the most romantic and soothing thing in the world. Who hasn’t seen one of those scenic, cross-Canada train trip ads in the Sunday news magazine and thought, “If…

Les plafonds du Louvre

The Louvre is big. Really big. And it has some really big paintings. It’s not cluttered, but I kind of wish I could have taken the Segway tour of the Louvre. For my feet’s sake. There were also a lot…

L’Arc et Quick

I think we were at the Louvre from 10 til 5. Most of that time on our feet except for a late lunch at a cafe in the museum. When we got back to the hotel, we didn’t emerge until…

Le dernier jour

Last Saturday was our last day in France. We started the day off with a little clothes shopping. I had a simple ham and cheese baguette sandwich as a pre-lunch snack. Tasty. We also checked out BHV, a several story…

I went to France and all I got were these lousy groceries*

When Stephanie and I unpacked, these are the treasures we unearthed from our suitcases. From left to right that’s chocolate, easy bechamel, more chocolate, herbes de provence, dijon mayonnaise, fleur de sel, several bottles of wine and liqueur, and one…

Sprouting basil

I came back from France feeling a strong desire to do more. So when better to start than last Monday? The Thermals were playing for two nights at Bottom of the Hill, and tickets were still available the first night.…

Meyer lemonade

Last Christmas I got a gift certificate from FM, part of which I used to buy a hand-press juicer. I started off making orange juice on-demand, then a while back I decided to try my hand at lemonade. The base…

Holy phototropism, Batman!

Explanation here

My 10,000th photo…

…taken on my Canon SD400 since I got it the week I was looking for an apartment in Santa Rosa and Sebastopol back in April 2005. Two years and 10,000 photos. Wow. That’s an average of more than 13 photos…

China Camp State Park

Went out to China Camp State Park with Marcia, Dawn, and Stephanie this afternoon. Beautiful day. Cool winds off the bay, warm sun. Nature. China Camp is nestled between San Pablo Bay and San Rafael. I didn’t know it existed…

Basil: not very fast growing

What has it been already? Like 2 weeks! I’m ready for some insalata caprese now! My favorite moment was Stephanie getting her noise on top of the sprouts to see if they smelled like basil yet. Not yet.

OMG I just sold my car

Last November I finished paying off my car loan. So I figured, what better time to sell it? No response from craigslist. So I sat on it for a while. Until getting back from France. Feeling charged to make some…

Justin’s First Law

If you leave a painting by the side of a building in San Francisco, there’s a good chance it’ll be picked up by a blogger. After seeing The Thermals, I walked from Bottom of the Hill to De Haro to…

Kneeling

Homemade North Carolina BBQ in California?

Last night I decided it was time to cook the pork loin in the fridge, but I wasn’t feeling the typical roast other-white-meat. So I threw together a spice rub (ground mustard, cumin, cayenne, white pepper, etc), rubbed the meat…

Echium

Joy asked me over IM the other day if I could remember the name of a large blue flower she’d told me previously. I couldn’t even remember the conversation let alone the name, but we narrowed down what the flower…

Raclette the event!

Totally forgot to mention that we had a raclette party last Saturday, inspired by our raclette dinner in Paris. I ordered a small 4 tray raclette grill from KlinQ.com (via Amazon) which came all the way from Montreal for the…

How to retouch photos

These are actually the steps I go through before posting a photo to my blog. I’m always curious how other people edit their photos, so I hope you find this enjoyable and/or informative. Rotate the image, if necessary. Occasionally my…