Musings

I’ve heard of tea towels now and then, and now I have one. I still don’t know the role they play in tea-time—to coddle the pot, perhaps? Speaking of time (or herbal thyme, here in French on this tea towel of “Paree”), isn’t that the essence of life?

Thanks for this thoughtful gift; you know who you are!

Posted at 8:02 PM | Comments Off on French time/thym

Sometime early in our marriage, we bought this canoe ornament (across bottom of photo), and it’s one of the few decorating our living room. Truth: it’s been there continuously for several years (with the lights)—it’s a canoe, after all.

Posted at 9:32 PM | Comments Off on Local lighting

By some prominent calendars this is an important eve, as in the fading day before a day of huge import…so here’s a sky pic of the eve-sky that the Apple-land algorithm has made “lighter” than it was to my eyeballs standing there looking up. In short: stars! evening!

Posted at 9:34 PM | Comments Off on Starlightbright

We just finished watching a season/year of Top Chef, if you can’t tell/figure out this visual clue.

Posted at 7:50 PM | Comments Off on Still avoiding USA political news

As the household menu-planner (mostly), I’ve been trying to move us away from red meats and toward fish and non-meat proteins for dinners. This is one of our current favorites….

Posted at 7:50 PM | Comments Off on Not your grandma’s salmon salad

Oh, and the new coffee maker is a Ninja! I can’t figure out how coffee-making fits with a mercenary warrior, but the device makes lovely coffee.

Posted at 10:08 PM | Comments Off on Footnote to yesterday

The morning routine began as normal: measure water into the electric drip coffee maker, measure ground coffee, assemble machine, poke on-button, watch the blue light illuminate, return to morning fog—wince and check a few headlines.

Cock ear toward pot…hmm. No gurgling. Glance. Yup, there’s the blue light. Wha?

Despite off-on restarting, gentle shaking, etc., still no heat.

Hmm. Plan B.

I dug out our souvenir Moka Pot, and remembered that it always takes a long time (to me) to heat and brew. Still, it did so, and I sipped fine hot coffee. Whew.

I invaded the Guru’s fog with the news…and he sipped the substitute coffee, and surfaced…. By noon we had researched electric coffee makers in our preferred price range, (no, not paying $400 plus tax—or more), and fetched the chosen model home. By one, we’d unboxed, done the two water-only brews to clean the new machine, and had actual coffee brewing.

Serendipity followed by mission accomplished.

Posted at 7:28 PM | 1 Comment »

Street seating decoration…bar bow…or barbeau? I don’t speak French and my sense of its etymology is…poor. But I think barbeau is related to barbed, like a type of fish-face. This, however, is an inexpensive fake-velvet bow on the separator-fence of a neighborhood tavern. So, bar-bow?

Posted at 9:30 PM | Comments Off on What’s in a name?

This morning was all fog…and I somehow thought obscurity matched my mood.

This evening we had a flare of orange-pink, and I somehow thought things were looking up.

Posted at 8:01 PM | Comments Off on Day bracketing

At BookClub, we always talk about more than The Book. This time, we also went out to check our hostess’s new patio upgrade (already had the waterfall; the fireplace is new), and furthermore did a bit of star-gazing (not shown—heh).

Posted at 10:01 PM | Comments Off on Extras