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Delays and cancellations made
Delays and cancellations made our trip home an extra-long day. Our 10:10 flight from Pittsburgh had a mechanical failure which forced us to switch to a later flight so we missed our connection in Chicago. The next plane out of Chicago to Tokyo also had a mechanical failure–we waited for five hours while they flew…
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My maternal grandmother, Romayne,
My maternal grandmother, Romayne, had a fondness for shoes. Her closet was full of shoes to match every outfit. I’ve never thought I inherited that same love of shoes as closet is full of practical styles in black. But yesterday I realised my heritage. I was shopping for yet another pair of black leather shoes…
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This year’s Father’s Day
This year’s Father’s Day Death March was the best ever. Since the fateful Father’s Day hike about ten years ago (It was long, hot and very wearying), we’ve carried on a tradition of a fruitless and terrible trip as selected by Tod’s father. We’ve driven for hours to walk for ten minutes in a grassy…
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Everyone says that Seth,
Everyone says that Seth, our six week old nephew, is a good tempered baby. He must know that a baby skeptic (me) is in the house because he wailed for 45 minutes straight last night, putting his good behaviour in serious doubt. Just as I suspected. 😉 However, his crying didn’t seem to damped the…
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Winding up a vacation
Winding up a vacation is always a bummer. I’m shaking sand out of things and putting them back into their places. Tod’s showering and finishing up his packing. Soon we’ll be checking out and heading for the Philadelphia Airport to catch a flight to Dulles then on to Pittsburgh. The mood in the condotel is…
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Get any far-flung, multi-generational
Get any far-flung, multi-generational family together and you’re going to get new words introduced into the collective vocabulary. A daughter’s use of “right” or a cousin’s use of “quite.” But my family coins new phrases wholesale. Here are some of the ones we’ve come up with this week: Spiral. (adj) Hip, cool, groovy. “This record…
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“Making movies” is what
“Making movies” is what you’re doing when you think through how a situation will play out–a romantic dinner, a confrontation with a colleague, a trip to the dentist. I was making movies when I thought of a way to mark the recent passage of several relatives whose funerals I had missed: my sister and I…
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[sigh of relief] I
[sigh of relief] I went for several days without e-mail. No blog. No chat. OK, I know I’m on holiday and supposed to be relaxing, but there’s only so much offline time a girl can take. Suffering from computer DTs, I phoned Apple to find out where to buy an iBook in the Jersey Shore…
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We combined fire and
We combined fire and cottonwood last night after Tod discovered that it burns beautifully. With lighters in hand, we walked the neighborhood looking for patches and drifts of the white, fluffy seeds. Touching flame to an edge caused the seeds to catch fire in a wavefront like a fuse burning down. Fire consumed them so…
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Grilled leg of lamb.
Grilled leg of lamb. Pierogies and blintzes. Falafel and hummus. Coming to Chicago is always an excuse for feasting on things that are hard to get in Tokyo. And the prices can’t be compared. Our leg of lamb was $18 from a local slaughterhouse. (I’m sure it would be $18/lb in Tokyo). Our filling Polish…
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