Holland: glorious spring!

It's midnight and I wanted to get to sleep by 10 PM because I have another full day tomorrow.

Here are some photos and I'll fill in the details later.

No Ordinary Monster

This weekend we have had some crummy weather and so I spent a good amount of time finalizing the book I am making for my Mom.  I am so far behind on my photo review and sorting, and fuhgeddabout all the books I have to draft.  I make a photo book about different adventures using Blurb which is a fantastic resource.  You make the book on your computer using your photos and text, and then submit it online to Blurb and a few weeks later you get a stunning bound book that looks quite professional. 

I am currently working on a 2009 trip with my Mom to Provence and Paris.  It is titled "Magic of Provence:  Lavender, Sunflowers, and the Tour de France."  This will be my fourth book.  Not found on Amazon, alas, which would be part of my bucket-list - get published and sell a book on Amazon.

At any rate, in writing these books I don't just paste photos and talk about what we ate!  I do research online while reviewing the photos and I tend to include historical tidbits.  Sometimes I am amazed, like I am this morning.  Included here is a photo of my Mom next to an interesting statue.  We spent all of two minutes next to it and of course did not know the story.  Here is the story!

This statue commemorates the Tarasque.  The town is named after him and in fact he is found on their coat of arms.  He was a fearsome and deadly monster in Provence who was tamed by Saint Martha (apparently a contemporary of Jesus).  She brought her newly tamed monster to this town and the townspeople killed him.  He offered no resistance, as he was tame.  Saint Martha used this as a teaching moment and converted the town to Christianity. They were sorry for having killed the tame monster and thus the people named the town Tarascon. There is a play based on the Tarasque by a famous French playwright, Alphonse Daudet; there is a French anti-aircraft gun named the Tarasque; there is even a dinosaur named after him!


Think about it: a town, the coat of arms, a play, a military weapon, a dinosaur and finally UNESCO recognized him. This is no ordinary monster!

This week, I love...

I am taking a cue from the various blogs I read and post some articles which interested me this week.  I will have to come back later to edit my own views, but below are the posts.  Enjoy!

Soon I am heading to Paris and you can be sure that the Musee Jacquemart-Andre is on my list to visit

What do I want to do when I re-invent my life?  Here is a thought...  The vagabond lifestyle - lawyer-style

Apropos of the trip to Paris coming up...  Will visiting a writer's haunt draw you closer to that writer?

Another favorite city of mine... Donna Leon - an inspiration

and more on Paris!  Peter talks up the Jacquemart-Andre

Peter talks about Montmartre

I have the first edition of David Downie's book and it is fantastic

I just don't know what to do with myself - check it out! 
Can you believe my luck? A big Manet exhibit, just months after I saw the Monet exhibit in Paris.


What is a post without a photo.  Rialto Fish Market, July 2010:
 

Coming around again: Meadowlark

Good morning everyone!  I joined my photo club at the too-early hour of 7 AM at Meadowlark Gardens.  Each year our club arranges to have the park photographer (Bill Folsum - and check out his website!  http://www.wfolsom.com/) meet us before it opens to let us in and wander.  Typically the timing is good for the cherry blossoms.  Each year I miss out (in part because htis would mean I have to get up before 6 AM on a Sunday, and I'm spoiled and lazy) in order to do this.  This morning the alarm went off and I briefly thought of stabbing the alarm clock but I heaved myself out of bed anyway.  Sigh.

Here is the result.  Interestingly enough I have photos taken from one year ago (April 2, 2010) at a more godly hour - see the link far below.  Last year at this time the blossoms were a little bit better but not hugely so.  Of this set I think my favorite is the one that is second up from the bottom.  The Blues...

Enjoy!

THE OLD SET FROM 2010 - ONE YEAR AGO ALMOST EXACTLY.

http://skywalkerbeth.blogspot.com/2010/04/two-more-weeks-have-gone-by.html

Happy birthday old girl!

She was inaugurated on March 31, 1889.

What else happened in 1889?

In January Coca Cola Company was incorporated in Atlanta (it was a different name back then).
In February the Dakotas, Montana and Washington were admitted into the union.
Just two weeks before Dame Eiffel was inaugurated, a German by the name of van Zeppelin patented his "navigable balloon".
In April the George Washington Bridge linking NJ and NYC opened.
In May, Bayer Aspirin was introduced.
In June the Canadian Pacific Railway is completed from coast to coast.
In July the WSJ began publishing.
In August the first ship-to-shore wireless message received in the US.
In September Nintendo company was founded.  It made playing cards.
In October the Moulin Rouge opened in Paris.
In November was the debut of the first jukebox (in San Francisco).
In December a Gilbert & Sullivan play opened in London.

The latest kitty escapade

Yep, I know.  Not a travel story, nor travel photos.  But I think this was funny enough to share.  Funny now, that is.  Not so funny when it happened (Friday).

I have two kitties named Cecily and Ophelia.  They are sisters and I got them as "rescue cats"; someone had left them as wee babies in a box at a veterinary hospital.  Very sweet girls, I love them to bits.

Above:  bravely looking to see what is outside.  They are indoor cats only. 

A few years ago, I discovered that Ophelia had CRF (Chronic Renal Failure).  She has been on a special diet and special meds since that discovery.  Six months after that, we discovered that she also had HCM (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy).  She is now on heart meds.  Young kitty - 7 years old only.  Both diseases are incurable but if you are lucky they are manageable. This will shorten her life, but she is stable and comfortable and has already outlasted what is expected of this combination.

Miss Ophelia, ready for her closeup. 

Very recently we found that her blood pressure was rising, which is a side effect of the kidney issues. 
I can't begin to tell you the experiments with the RXs and the number of vet visits.  She even has a cardiologist! 

One med tried for a while.  Too much, BP too low.  Tried another.  Another vet visit with BP check.  THROUGH THE ROOF high.  Ouch!  I decided to have a home vet visit because it has to be less stressful than collecting her to go to the vet, right?  I wanted a true and correct blood pressure reading, as we felt the vet visit was enough to cause stress and artificially raise her pressure.  This sentence is key to the story. 

Well.

The home vet and I plotted carefully what to do.  I should mention here that this kitty is *very* gentle and  friendly but painfully shy.  Were she a person, you'd think of her as a Victorian grand dame.  High maintenance and prone to fainting fits (OK, OK, not fainting, but under stress she will hide and won't come out).  She has an uncanny sense when something is different and if it's time to go to the vet just one look in her direction and it's under the bed. 

Da girls. 

The plan was for me to arrive at home ten minutes before the vet, pretend that "nothing was going on" and once I picked her up I'd put her in my office.  I'd let the vet in the house and Ophelia would be in my office with nowhere to run and hide. 

Well.

It was all going perfectly.  I got home from work, did my usual puttering around, kitties followed me.  I casually reached down to pick her up and carried her into my office and closed the door.  She was on alert because the door was closed but sat on my lap purring and preening.  I saw the vet arrive and park and I got up to exit my office.  Ophelia clearly wanted to follow me but I made it out without her.

I let the vet into the house.

I walked upstairs, vet following me (in retrospect I should have asked for her to remain out of sight until I got into the office myself).  I opened the door.  A moment of hesitation and I think my cat saw the vet.  Were it not for that I think I would have been OK.

My cat shot between my legs like a greased eel, and made a beeline for the bedroom adjacent where she likes to hide under the bed.  OH NO OH NO!  I followed her.  She ran all the way under the bed and into the hall.  The vet was still standing there blocking the stairs.  She ran back into the bedroom, wide-eyed and  panicked.  I was there.  She ran back into the hallway and SAILED through the banister and landed on the stairwell.  This was easily a 5 foot jump.  Easily.  She landed and didn't slow down.  She raced through the house and finally his under the couch.  Oh No! 

Before following her downstairs I had the presence of mind to close both bedroom doors but I left the office door open.  We both tried to coax her out, the vet on one side, me on the other.  She ran into the kitchen.  Then she ran upstairs.  I expected this and was very glad the only open door was the office.  Her sister had followed her up the stairs, also very confused.  It was mayhem.  Ophelia ran into the office and under my desk, her sister in hot pursuit but at the last minute Cecily turned around and left the office.  I went in and closed the office door behind me.  MY blood pressure was probably sky high as well!

I finally coaxed her out from under the desk and held her in my lap.  I calmed her down a little and then called the vet to come in.  As soon as she did, Ophelia started wriggling, her eyes bugging out.  Nonetheless the door was closed, les jeux sont faits!

I let her down and she made a beeline for the desk.  I didn't know a cat could become one with a computer tower. 

Ophelia on my deck. 

If you are wondering about her blood pressure, you are on the right track.  After extracting her from the wedge between the wall and the tower, we were able to take her BP.  The funny thing is, after all of that, once we got her out and she realized she was not going to be Kitty a l'orange or Kung Pao Kitty or anything, she calmed right down.  No fighting the cuff, nothing.  She was quite still and in fact I merely petted her as we did this, no holding.  We took 6 readings, each one slightly lower.  Her heart rate was in the normal range as well. 

CALGON, TAKE ME AWAY!

The funniest comment came from the vet. She said when Ophelia jumped from the hallway, through the banister, to the stairs below, it was "graceful and perfectly executed". 

Ophelia NOT under stress.

Jour du Macaron - US Style

Today is the day Pierre Herme in Paris has set aside at the International Macaron Day!  In honor of that I will gobble some macarons.  It is rough, but someone must do it.  I made two pilgrimages yesterday so that I could do this today. 

Yesterday was a busy day for me.  First, the ritual "first pedi of the year" which I always do the weekend spring commences (I give my tootsies a rest all winter, no nail polish)  Now, I have purple toes - and I walked around in flip flops all day yesterday! 

Second:  two separate visits to local macaron purveyors.  This is not easy to find in metro Washington DC.  As it happens, one outlet is near my salon, so before I got the pedi I wandered down to the Wine Cabinet and picked up a box of Michel Patisserie macarons. 

Then, off to Patisserie Poupon on Wisconsin Avenue in DC.  I had to park over 8 blocks away which was great as it was a beautiful day (and indeed, yesterday was the last day of winter wasn't it?).  The flowers that are already blooming are a sight to behold.  Magnolia trees, cherry blossoms in all their pink glory, a wide variety of flowers - not merely pansies - I was amazed at how pretty it all was, this last day of winter.  I only bought a few macarons at the Patisserie.  They didn't seem to have the selection that Michel Patisserie had. 

I couldn't wait for today, I scarfed three of the eight yesterday (lemon, coffee, and raspberry).  Today I have five left, and here are some photos.  I also noted that Michel's had a much better presentation.  The little pebbly green one is the one I bought at Patisserie Poupon.  Not the same effect.  Michel's macarons were also much, much better.  Maybe Patisserie Poupon was having an off day but their macarons looked listless and just weren't all that tasty.  The lemon one wasn't bad, but I am not even sure what the green one was.  Not pistachio as I expected (unless it was so faint as to be undetectable).  Not mint either. 

While the Michel macarons are not quite Laduree or Gerard Mulot quality, they are nonetheless very good and a good compromise when you need a quick fix and are not in the middle of a quick weekend in Paris.   See:  http://skywalkerbeth.blogspot.com/2011/01/fueled-by-macarons.html

EDIT:  I just bit into Michel's Passionfruit macaron.  Just as good as the ones in Paris!

Green Day

I don't actually have any photos of St. Patrick's Day parties or people dressed up like leprechauns or whatnot.  So I searched my flickr photos for a few cheery photos which had a lot of green in them.

This one shows grapes before they will be made into wine.  Not exactly an Irish kind of drink but what the heck.

A tulip photo, and how apropos is this - green AND orange!

Green door, in Provence (Isle s/Sorgue) and again, very apropos:

An awful lot of green with an orange Monarch!

And last but not least, oranges which have green leaves of course.  This was taken at Mercato Centrale in Firenze.  Also not Irish.

I did find a few Ireland photos, taken 11 years ago, that might be worth a look here.

This one was taken at a bar somewhere on the west coast.  Probably Galway.  I believe that was the path to the loo.  It does have the requisite beer sign, so you know this is a true St. Patrick's Day post!

This was definitely Galway.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY EVERYONE!

And now, Japan

In Japan, there are five classical elements.  Earth, water, fire, air, and heaven or "void".  Three of them have rebelled today (yesterday in Japan).  Earth, water, and fire.  It wasn't even a month ago and Christchurch suffered a devastating earthquake. And today I woke to the news of Japan's tragedy, of an even worse magnitude. Tsunamis to boot. The nuclear reactors of three plants may be at peril and with them countless more people. 

Thinking of Japan today.  The iris is the symbol of hope.  In the days to come we can hope that they can contain the damage and that there are few aftershocks and that things do not get worse. 

Where will they go from here? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_elements_(Japanese_philosophy)

Small and White, Clean and Bright...

I spent a very rainy Sunday going through photos from last summer.  Dad and I hiked at Schynige Platte and at the end of the hike (or the beginning, depending on which way to decide to go first) is an astounding Alpine garden.  They have Alpine flowers from all various altitudes and care for them so that they thrive despite being "out of their element".  While in the Berner Oberland we managed to spy some Edelweiss, which is a very elusive flower.  We mostly saw it in flower boxes outside some restaurants, but this photo is taken in the garden.  Here is the link to the garden, too.

http://www.alpengarten.ch/homeenglish

The sign relates to other flowers near the Edelweiss. 

Blossoms of snow...

Random photos of March past

Other photos taken in early March of previous years...    nothing too exciting or colorful, just random.  Early March is not a particularly colorful time of year but the buds are stirring!  By late March things are picking up... 

2005, Mom and Dad in Florida:

2007, Hilton Head, family and friends:

2008, Savannah, Georgia:

2010, Meadowlark Gardens:

To Fridays!

This morning, I merely went to my flickr account and in the search box I typed "fun".  A number of my photos came up, and here are two of them.  In case you are wondering, that is an aeronautical chart and I was doing some flight planning for a flight lesson.  That is my breakfast nook which doubles as a work station and kitty magnet (it might be the paper which is the kitty magnet).  The first photo is much better composed, the second one was chaos when kitty number two decided to join the fun.  Note that I've moved the cup of tea when the table became more crowded!

Have a fun Friday everyone!

Another church ceiling photo, and an APOLOGY!

Good morning everyone, two posts in one day - check it out.

I am posting this in response to Genie's admiration of Sainte Chappelle's jewel like ceiling.  I'd also like to use this time to apologize to all my blog readers. 

As I am usually logged in, when I do reply with comments I cannot see that I had that dreaded WORD VERIFICATION turned on!  I found out by accident when I tried to reply to Genie and was logged out. 

That word verification feature is such a pain in the arse (pardon my British-ism).  I don't know how it came to be enabled, it must be a default.  It was easy to turn off, and it makes the blog commenting experience so much easier and pleasant - take this from someone who comments a fair bit on other blogs (and sometimes refrains due to that feature, especially if I've already commented on several others that day). 

If you happen to have a blog, it's not a bad idea to check that feature out and to consider turning it off (not to be pushy or anything). 

Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi

Taken randomly from my flickr account today.  Just this morning someone "favorited" this photo I took of the ceiling of the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi and I thought I'd share it with you.  It was taken in Assisi shortly after the New Year three years ago.  I had to add quite a bit of light in post processing.  This was in no small part due to the fact that the original was taken without flash and quite surreptitously as I walked out the door!  In the original you could see blues and greens but rather dark.

The Basilica, and in particular the ceiling, was badly damaged by an earthquake in 1997.  They managed to restore it in record time and the Basilica was reopened only two years later.



Quake in New Zealand

Yesterday (Tuesday in New Zealand) a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch - the second large quake in less than six months.  They are saying this quake is an aftershock from the last one.  News reports state that at least sixty-five people have died!  I hope they are able to rescue people trapped in the rubble and that no more people die.  I also learned this morning that the Christchurch Cathedral was severely damaged as well (photo below).  I've visited New Zealand once, about five years ago.  Christchurch is beautiful and the people are very friendly.  This is a sad sad day.

Here is the link to the New Zealand Red Cross:

http://www.redcross.org.nz/cms_display.php

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow...

This is where I will be parked tomorrow.  Have a great weekend everyone!

Wish me luck!

I just entered a photo contest sponsored by Alaska Airways.  The rules were that the photos must have been taken after Jan 1, 2010, and, must be taken in a locale where Alaska Airways flies - or the region.

Below were my choices.  The prizes are airline tickets, of course!

1.  My nephew Micah at Daytona Beach

2.  Pebble Beach Wedding

3.  Leesburg garden shed (used to be a house a very long time ago):

The cure for anything is salt water...

The cure for anything is salt water...  sweat, tears, or the sea.  Isak Dinesen. 

One of my all time favorite quotes.  I can't wait for the time when I can be doing this:

or wandering here:

Keep the faith everyone, spring is nearly here...

Wintertime fun

The National Gallery of Art has an ice rink.  Last weekend on my way to visit the museum I stopped to watch the skaters for a while.