not a willful lull!

I swear, I promise.  Two things have conspired against postings this past week.  

First, I have had a cold.  Not a bad one, happily.  But I have a trip coming up (more on that in a moment), and I babied myself as much as I could.  So that meant a lot of low key time at home (and one evening at Van's

watching most of that trainwreck of a The Bachelorette finale - we couldn't finish, it was so terrible).

Second, it's been hot.  Really hot.  Bloody awful hot.  I think it only made it to 103 here today, a comedown from 108 yesterday when we had an hourlong rolling blackout that, happily, didn't affect us too much.  We've hardly been out because of the heat.

All will change soon.  A big trip coming up, leaving Tuesday morning.  Exciting!  Packing is underway, and it's hard to know how much to bring. 

We'll figure it out.  I won't take the laptop with me, but I'll make an effort to blog as best I can!

a lull

Still haven’t been much in the mood for blogging.  So I guess it’s a very good thing that I am not doing this for money.

So here, another photo to keep this space open.  A cocktail last night after my return from Chicago.

I’ll be back.  I really will.

I know, I know

I'm still here, I just haven't had a combination of right mood and time on my hands.  I will blog more again, I solemnly swear.

1500!

1500 posts.  Wow.  I remember hitting 1000 years ago, and then there was my long hiatus from blogging.  But look at this.  I've kept it up, and here we are.  So, a small pat on the back to me and thank you to all or any of you reading (one or more voracious readers in Singapore, if the stats are to be believed)(I still think it's only, like 3 of you out there).

Onward to 1501 and 1600 and 2000 and who knows?!  I'll leave you with a photo from last night on the back deck, having a cocktail, having a laugh.

I just realized...

...I've been doing this blogging again fairly regularly and prolifically for a year now.  January 15, 2023 was when I resumed the blogging.  Good job, me.  I suppose.

It's always interesting to see the stats on the readership.  They're not especially detailed, but I can see when I go through waves of popularity.  Frankly, I suspect that when the numbers jump up (all the way into the 100s!!!  Insert eye roll here at the thought of that being popular), something is crawling through my blog, triggering the counts.  Or maybe there really is someone or someones in Singapore reading my ramblings.  Germany recently as well, I think.  Really, I think there's only two or three people who look at the blog at all, and that is very fine with me.

So thanks for sticking around this past year, if you actually have.  If you stumble upon this in the future, a hello to you as well.

And now back to the food, travel, and self-deprecation...

Aruba, briefly

Mondays are never good for accomplishing much. Swim practice is over, and it feels like I have only a smidgen of time before heading to bed and a brand new workday. I'd wanted to blog tonight, but I don't have the patience or energy, I admit. So let me just put up a quick entry with a pretty picture from last month's trip to Aruba, with the promise of a longer, better entry to come!

this blog will be back tomorrow

I do want to chime in on the surprise birthday weekend in Baltimore with TK, but more than that, I want to enjoy an evening with Conrad before he heads to Dallas tomorrow for a week and a half. So yes, this blog will be back tomorrow. Or some time soon. After all, it's not like this blog hasn't experienced some gaps before...

I am five

Happy birthday to blog!

A short post, but one I was loathe not to write even if I'm only just in the door from a weekend in LA (and yes, I intend to blog that trip in days ahead). I had the realization earlier this month that I'd been at this blog since 2006, and in looking back, I saw that the anniversary was fast approaching. My first entry was April 24 (or did I misremember what I'd looked up? Ah well, no matter if I did!), and five years later and almost 1000 posts in, I'm still at it. Irregularly at times, but I'm still here, and so is the blog.

Who reads it? I've never really known too well, and it's never been a concern. Life has unrolled in ways unexpected and in many ways quite nicely. Perhaps in 2016 I can report the same.

More to come on LA and such. For now, a quick comparison of me from about the time I started the blog to what I am today (well, yesterday)....

so much for willpower

At some point the photography becomes a compulsion, doesn't it? Oh, it has its uses. Securing permanent residency for Conrad was aided immeasurably by the photographic record of our relationship, both in and of the photos themselves, and for how the way we file them by date helped us reconstruct our relationship story. And then there are the simpler pleasures of the two of us reminiscing over older photos, or sharing them with friends and family who may actually want to see some of them.

But it's a bit much, and it's something I've given a lot of thought to lately. Inundating people with information. Oversharing. The blog and Flickr - can't I sometimes live life without having to document it endlessly?

Apparently not. Ah well.

I had intended last night to enjoy being treated to dinner at Topolobampo by our friend Howard, in town from San Francisco for the weekend with his friend Dennis. No photos. A late dinner, drinks, conversation. And for a while, I was managing to do just that. All was tasty, and the evening slipped along terrifically well.

And then Howard's beef tartare (yes, at Topolobampo) came out. So exquisitely composed, like a Japanese meal, it seemed. Marvelous. I slipped. I asked if I could have a photo. Howard acquiesced.

One course later (we were having three different tasting menus, so Howard was the only one with his particular dishes), out came Howard's spot prawns. Oh my word. I was gushing (without even realizing that Rick Bayless was sitting at the table over my shoulder, dining with his wife in their own restaurant). Bugger. Good effort at not taking photos there, Peter.

I actually held off on any more until dessert. I loved my dessert muchly - multiple coconut confections in the dish. One more photo.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Photos, and since I had them, a blog post to go with.

Forgive the oversharing. And brace yourselves. Tonight's dinner of braised chicken thighs is almost ready to be served, and that may mean still more photos ahead.

This is me, on vacation

Yes, you think that it's all about dining out at fabulous places and taking photos to rub it in, but, in fact, I'm usually hooked up to the Internet back at the hotel room, surfing the day's news (and music charts from the UK, from the looks of the screen) before blogging for your enjoyment. Because it IS all about you, you know!

;-)




Photos from the recent Honolulu trip. That t-shirt both makes me smile and makes me want to go back to New Zealand again....

I should be going to bed...

(ETA I ended up going to bed because Blogger just wouldn't upload photos. I'm doing this as I eat my porridge)

...but I napped a bunch when I got home from the hospital this afternoon. Yes, the hospital: one more night there for observation. Oh, the fun of having an IV inserted (third attempt was the charm). Ah, how wonderful to urinate into a plastic container so they can track (presumably) my hydration levels.

Anyway, enough of that. Conrad and I have spent much time quietly today - in the hospital and at home - planning the NZ trip. I've also been playing with my iTunes on the new laptop, and figuring out what I love about ACDSee 8, which I downloaded a few days back.

In the meantime, I finally got around to some of our own photos. I'm posting a shot of my salmon from the other night:

I'm also posting a shot of some flowers sent me. Kristina and Christopher had some lilies delivered a handful of days back; in bud at the time, they are blooming wonderfully. They are not as heavily fragrant as some other lilies, but I did catch their scent on coming home today. I am sorry not to be skilled at flower photography, but among all the lovely bouquets and plants I have received, I did want to capture at least one on photo while it was still in its prime:

Sunny Saturday

It's cliched, perhaps, but there is something about a gorgeous day - sunny, not too warm - that really does make a body feel good to be alive. Heading home from Conrad's hotel this morning up Lake Shore Drive, I watched the runners, the sun on the lake. And then to have a good, hard, strong practice? Terrific! I've capped it all with a venti misto and low fat cinnamon swirl coffee cake from Starbucks and some leftover rice casserole for lunch, and I'm good to go.

So, of course, I'll stay in this afternoon!

Hey, it takes a lot of work to be this fishbelly white. Days like this make anyone feel good, but I am anything but a sun worshipper. Besides, there is always work to be done. Alas.

Eh. I'll do it this afternoon.

It was a late night last night. Conrad's company function hosted cocktails until 1:00, and I was there to meet a few of Conrad's colleagues from out of town. We had a lovely chat with one woman, Lei, from the Honolulu office. We shared travel and dining experiences, and ended, I sort of recall, by talking of our visits to Sedona. It's a place I hope Conrad and I can return to this year: we've been twice now, last in 2004. The photo of us is from that trip. Yes, like many communities that rely on tourism, it has its share of tackiness and traps. Ignore them. The natural surroundings are remarkable, and when you sit outside your hotel room at night, able to see the stars because so little light from town bleeds into the night sky, you'll be glad. Or you will be, at least, if you come from a big city.

The other shot is from that same afternoon of hiking. I think that's a yucca. I'm not sure. My grasp of southwest plants is shaky unless I'm cooking with them! I found it fascinating, though, the skeleton of the flowering stalk still there in November. I get a little funnily obsessed about sights like that when I'm on trips; I'll keep returning to them, utterly fascinated for that day or so. Mary Alice moments extended, I guess. I use the shot for my profile in Last.fm (a fun site, if you are like me and you love the stats you can harvest from iTunes and the like).

Just for the sake of a profile photo....

Oh look, a second token entry. I'm not yet used to this site, and there are doubtless many ins and outs I should know. Ah well.

For the sole purpose of adding a photo to my profile, I'm putting it in an entry. The photo was taken at Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver at the end of March.


In other news: 5700 yards at practice this morning, bringing me to 21,500 for the week and to 134 miles already this year. A mile a day, that is! I'm utterly chuffed.

Token May entry

I've been commenting a bunch lately on Jeph's blog without adding too much to this one. Really, I still play more with my Yahoo! blog than this one. Still, in case anyone actually sees the comments and wander over here, I thought more than a blank entry would be nice.

But what to write?

The title of this thing is Peter.Food.Travel.Musings. Maybe I should have called it Mumblings.Ramblings.Ill-formed and Shallow Opinons.

But here:

Peter
Food

Travel
Musings

Okay, I'm stumped on a photo for that one....

Off to the pool. The mean coach in me has to crack the whip this morning!

A second blog site?

Interesting - I used to think these blog sites were vanity, sheer vanity. People with nothing interesting to say boring the heck out of people who have nothing better to do.

Silly me.

I won't remotely pretend I have anything particularly interesting to say. I'm more testing the waters of this and seeing how it holds up. You may also venture to my Yahoo! 360 blog and check out the older things there.

In the meantime, though, I guess I'm following the NBF over to this site solely so that I can post comments to his blog. His old space wouldn't allow it, gosh darn it!