Year of the Pig

Jim and I are both born in 1947 as are our old school friends...some of whom are in Palm Springs at the moment....lucky devils or should I say lucky pigs.,,

This is what it says about us:

A pig represents luck, overall good fortune, wealth, honesty, general prosperity, symbolizing a hard working, a peace-loving person, a truthful, generous, indulgent, patient, reliable, trusting, sincere, giving, sociable person with a large sense of humour and understanding.


Sounds like us, doesn't it guys?

I know I bought this little pig in Italy. There is a famous Bronze Pig of Florence that can bring luck so it may have been Florence. At the time I had forgotten we were born in the Year of the Pig but it seemed like a rather amusing souvenir and we had been to Carrera where the marble quarries are.I may have bought it there since it is marble but I do know it was associated with luck.

I put the toonie down so you could get the scale of it. I like small souvenirs like this!

Well, our sunset in Vancouver tonight isn't too shabby either...

Taken at 5:15pm.  It gets darker sooner here in the "north".

Sunset in Palm Springs last night

Yesterday, Benjamin posted on FB "Another gloomy day." but the the sunset was certainly spectacular.

Photos from Kenny Irwin:

Missing Palm Springs....

Ah well...I guess this miserable virus will eventually leave me. Back to the Doc yesterday since the past two days I seem to have lost half my hearing. It seems there is a sinus congestion that has affected my eardrums so more medication so hope that helps soon. Jim is quite a bit better at least.

We were planning to see Richard and Grace last night before they left for a week in Kauai but I was just too tired and sick.  Hope they have a great time.

From my blog in Oct - Dec 2018....

Itty Bitty Book Review: "It Begins in Betrayal"

"It Begins in Betrayal" by Iona Whishaw

I do enjoy these although one criticism is that too much of the "suspense" was around whether Lane and Darling got out of their predicaments. We know the author is probably never going to kill them off since they are central. It still interesting to see how she does it. It will be interesting to see what she does in the next one. Other people need to be at risk.

I did like this part of her acknowledgements:

"Finally, the glorious Touchwood team - Taryn, Tori, Renée and Colin--deserve not just my abiding gratitude but enormous martinis."

Now, if we all could figure out how to be like this evan a amall part of the time...

“There is in this world no function more important than that of being charming. The forest glade would be incomplete without the humming-bird. To shed joy around, to radiate happiness, to cast light upon dark days, to be the golden thread of our destiny, and the very spirit of grace and harmony, is not this to render a service?” 

– Victor Hugo, Toilers of the Sea

"Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton

Jim prepared a teaching unit for the open textbook project he's working on for this story. It really is a great story and the film is very well done as well. Looking forward to listening to more Desert Island Disks programs ...more about that tomorrow.

The 23 minute film is here:
https://vimeo.com/171496101

Story can be read here:
https://www.newberry.org/sites/default/files/calendar-attachments/Roman%20Fever%20-%20Edith%20Wharton.pdf

Memory from FB six years ago

Listening to Bluegrass  while having brunch at Memphis Blues Barbeque House on Commercial Drive.

When this came up today on FB I reposted and commented that it sounded like a lot more fun than nursing colds. Then I read a comment saying that we must be feeling better and I had replied, "We thought the music would drown out our coughing!"

So, same old, same old...

University Golf Club Restaurant opened yesterday

The restaurant closes for most of January so one good thing about still being in town is we can take advantage of that. We felt well enough to go out to lunch and we are getting a bit stir crazy.  They've made some changes to the menu.

Susan and Carol, you'll be delighted to hear they have avocado toast!

They also have a lettuce wrap which we'll have to try. I don't think it will beat the one at the Cactus Club.  And it seems they now always have clam chowder rather than just a soup of the day which sometimes was a clam chowder. We had our cup of soup and 1/2 sandwich....me, the shrimp and Jim, the roast beef. The price has gone up to $11 from $10 but still a great deal. And the clam chowder was excellent, the thickest I've ever had.  With the huge amount of shrimp in the sandwich I just barely was able to finish it all.

You gotta laugh...

Memory on FB 6 years ago...sounds like I had a bad cold then...

Happy Robbie Burns Day!
Don got the idea of celebrating Robbie Burns Day many years ago and we began with a dinner at their place with haggis, scotch eggs, cock a leekie, soup and the like. Don asked Jim to come prepared to recite the ode to the Haggis. Well, he not only did that, he borrowed a kilt and regalia from Bill Thomas and went the whole hog (Bill eventually gave JIm a kilt outfit). We exchanged doing this at each other's homes for a number of years and then we began to attend the event at the Union Club. Great fun, great entertainment, and great food!

I hope to have a tiny dram of scotch tonight to raise a glass to Robbie Burns. It will be small, though, given this wretched relapse I've had.
Photo of the piping in of the haggis.

Some humour...

We're both a bit better but we're both really glad we're not boarding a plane today...we have problems with our ears when we don't have colds!

Some things are too funny not to share

From Linda's blog:

The weekly meeting....Brexit

* If you're not from Canada or the UK, you may not know that the Prime Minister of the UK meets with the Queen every week for an informal talk.

What a difference a day makes...

I was surprised that my doctor was so encouraging because I certainly didn't feel very good. I had a terrible night last night and knew we weren't going anywhere anytime soon and delayed our flights. So today at the Doc's he was quite concerned about the mucous in my lungs and put me on antibiotics to ward off pneumonia and doubled my doses of the inhaler.

I don't understand it but I really hope these eyes become less irritated soon. It's quite painful.

On the upside, Jim is getting better and I hope that continues.

We feel so much better going through this at home in Canada. I'm not sure all this stuff would have been covered by our Emergency Medical Insurance.

Brighter days must be ahead...

Alexa had a baby...she called her Dot.

Well, for 39.99 how can you go wrong.  We'll take it to PS and set it up there.  It also could be handy as an extra speaker in the apartment too.

News from the Doc

He figures we can go ahead with our plans for Friday. He gave me a very strong inhaler. Now I seem to have a bad eye infection just like Jim so I guess I'll be back tomorrow.

It will be nice to get away from this rain. I just asked Alexa for the weather in PS....18 C. and sunny skies.  Here it's 5 C and raining.

This made me smile thiis morning

I had a pretty rough night with this cold. I hope the doctor wil be encouraging today.

Eclipse

We had a good view of the moon and watched it out the window from time to time until it went completely black. Early to bed last night so did see it go red. We had a good view as it rose over Pacific Spirit Park and there really wasn't any light interference.

These are some photos Ron Grender and posted on FB.

Not feeling in the pink....

Jim seems to be getting better at least. I'm glad he went to the doctor again as he had a terrible eye infection along with everything else so that is now being treated. 

I do hope we will be able to leave Friday for PS as planned but I see we have trip interruption/ delay insurance on our Emergency Medical for the US.

A pretty picture at least.

A sky painters sunset over English Bay, Stanley Park and Downtown Vancouver. Jericho Pier and Jericho Sailing 
Centre on the right. Captured from lovely Locarno Beach in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada ~ November 23, 
2018 

From: Seaside Signs.

Thinking of pleasanter things...

Jim has come down with a terrible cold and I now have it but not as bad so far. I usually get off more lightly than Jim does with these things. We've had to cancel all social engagements since we really don't want to infect anyone and we''re pretty weak. We do hope to see Richard and Grace before we leave next Friday but they are going to Kauai Jan 30 for a week with friends so we certainly don't want them to get sick.

It looks lovely!

This is now a week and these tulips are still going strong. The only other tulips that lasted so long were Carqueiranne tulips but those were grown in a field and were like little trees. Carqueiranne is famous for tulips and tulips are on the city crest. This isn't the complete crest...can't seem to get that but you can see the tulips and the plow.

You can see some of our Provence poster here with all the things we love, the cypress pines,  olive trees, palm trees, the Mediterranean. Jim was asked today to do the keynote address for the Huxley conference in April 2020 in Toulon. He's feeling pretty miserable so that gave him a lift.

And it also gave him a lift to have home made lasagna.  I was going to make this Saturday when Grace and Richard were coming for dinner but thought I might as well make it Friday.

Itty Bitty Book Review: "Murder in the Marais"

"Murder in the Marais" by Cara Black

Well, she's no P.D. James but then who is? It's pretty good and it was her first of now 18. But, I'll be a sucker to try a few more because of the Paris settings...always in a different neighbourhood. I just loved those details and also typically French stuff like "Minitel" (we actually had one of those...didn't work in Canada of course but those were the days we were collecting "computer memorabilia") and of course food and drink. In this novel, folks seemed to be drinking a lot of Pernod. Not a drink I associate with Paris...more the south of France.

And being set in the Marais reminded me of our first time visiting this neighbourhood our first time in Paris in 1972,  We were looking around for a place for lunch and one restaurant had "tuna steak" as its special of the day. We were quite astounded to see that people actually ate the fish not out of a can. We thought we better give it a try and it was absolutely delicious...yum. It was hard to find tuna not out of the can at home those days although we did try. We ended up having to buy a huge quantity in a big piece at quite a price as I remember.

She's a pretty interesting person.
http://carablack.com/bio/

Books...

We're looking forward to buying even more books even though they may have to be stored in our garage. We've already started storing them there but we do have nice California Closets so it's not too bad. It's great fun for us and they will all go back as donations to the local libraries at some point.