April 23, 2019 at 12:26 pm (destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, favorites, London, restaurants
It’s been a few weeks, at least, since self was able to join Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge.
Today, self is in London. She walked around her Bloomsbury neighborhood and took pictures, all with an eye to the current Fun Foto Challenge, SIGNS. Here are a few:
Right outside the British Museum, which self visited yesterday.
Directly across the street from the British Museum: This bubble tea place is always full.
An Alley Off Bury Place
Stay tuned.
April 17, 2019 at 12:42 am (Books, Food and Drink, Places, Recommended, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: 9/11, history, Iraq, London, memories, news, novel, reading lists, restaurants
Asymmetry, p. 196:
One afternoon we were sitting in Bloomsbury Square, keeping half an eye on our charges, when Lachlan pointed toward the iron railings on the far side of the park and said that the original ones had been dismantled and melted down for ammunition during the Second World War. These new ones were shorter, and unlocked all day; square’s been open to the public ever since. I could not pass Bloomsbury Square after that without wondering where the old iron had ended up. On which fronts. In whose bodies. It was around this time that the avowal to do away with Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction was accelerating toward its first anti-climax. Blair had declared it time to repay America for its help sixty years earlier and pledged Britain’s commitment to sniffing out all remaining stockpiles of genocidal intent. Forty-eight hours later, Clinton announced that Iraq intended to cooperate; a month after that, UNSCOM reported that in fact Iraq was not cooperating, and lo, the British-American bombing began. I watched the Desert Fox airstrikes with Alastair, sitting in our usual spot in The Lamb, whose ceiling had been strung with Christmas bunting and the bar transformed into a lukewarm buffet of mince pies and a faux cauldron of brandy-spiked mulled wine.
March 6, 2019 at 5:25 pm (destinations, Flowers, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Recommended)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Garden, indulgence, Redwood City, restaurants
For this week’s Fun Foto Challenge, PATTERNS, self is posting pictures from Lovejoy’s, an English-style tearoom tucked away in downtown Redwood City, CA, only a block from the library; and a picture of a plant with bright orange flowers that just began sprouting in her backyard. This winter saw heavy rain, hopefully in a month or so there will be tons of flowers blooming.
Tea at Lovejoy’s, downtown Redwood City, 1 March 2019
Adorable Porcelain Cup and Saucer, Perfect for Tea!
About to Bloom: 28 February 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
March 2, 2019 at 6:48 am (Books, Food and Drink, Surprises, Women Writers)
Tags: Fridays, humor, novel, science fiction
Lacking lips, Ghuh’loloan held the Human-style mug up, flattened her face back into her body so that it lay almost horizontally, and poured a little waterfall into her wide mouth. Her whole body shivered. ‘Ho! Oh ho!’
So, here’s a question: Why do aliens need gender? Is this something essential to reproduction? Self would have thought, being such a superior life force, aliens would have found a more efficient way to reproduce.
She honestly didn’t think about this until she noticed the pronouns in the passage above: Her.
Stay tuned.
February 27, 2019 at 8:57 pm (Food and Drink, Links, Places, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: California, Cambridge, Cee Neuner, indulgences, literary festivals, London, restaurants
Self missed last week’s Fun Foto Challenge. But this week, the Challenge is SMOOTH.
Here are: a sidewalk near Fleet Street, London (smooth sidewalk); a canal in Cambridge (smooth, tranquil boat ride); and sweet potato fries and an assortment of (smooth) dips!
London, Near Fleet Street: 20 November 2018
And here’s Cambridge University, during last November’s Cambridge Literary Festival:
Cambridge, England: 25 November 2018
And here’s a dish from Coupa Cafe, whose owner might be Venezuelan because there are a number of Venezuelan items on the menu:
Sweet Potato Fries w/ an Assortment of Dips: Coupa Cafe, Los Altos, CA
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
February 8, 2019 at 2:46 am (Conversations, destinations, Food and Drink, Lists, plans, Plays, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: lunch, Mendocino, restaurants, Shakespeare, teaching
Drove up to Mendocino, which as the crow flies is only 200 miles from Redwood City, but always takes self at least FIVE HOURS.
On the way, she stopped by Yorkville Market and had lunch:
And then she mulled over the writing exercises she should start tomorrow with.
Should she have the students practice writing one very, very, very long, run-on sentence? With points to whoever can come up with the most run-on sentence?
Or, for fun, should she have them write a piece that’s all bad grammar and deliberately wrong spelling? Hamberder, anyone? Smocking guns?
Should she have them write a piece that’s all dialogue?
Should she ask them to capture every nuance of a piece of reality . . . in one sentence?
Should she have them practice writing a conversation that grows from an association of ideas (like a Harold Pinter play?)
Should she have them practice delaying the outcome for as long as possible?
She can’t decide. She’ll have to sleep on it.
BTW, this is one of the plays being presented by the Mendocino Theatre Company in 2019:
Mendocino Theatre Company, 2019 Season
Stay tuned.
January 16, 2019 at 1:09 am (Conversations, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: humor, short story, speculative fiction, work-in-progress
Self found this unfinished story in one of her old computer files.
An angel is roomies with a struggling college student. “He” is the angel.
He sat down and picked up an apple from a bowl on the kitchen table. “I’m hungry. Feed me.”
“You took an apple,” I said.
“Not enough,” he said. “A gammon joint. With apple and whiskey sauce.”
This is a very demanding angel!
lol
lol
lol
Stay tuned.
December 30, 2018 at 11:25 pm (destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Lists, Places, Sundays, Traveling)
Tags: Durham, England, London, Philadelphia, photography, restaurants
Showing the ways people move from one place to another on land: roads, walkways, stairs, elevators, escalators, railway tracks, ski lifts, runways, canals, locks, parking lots, driveways, tunnels.
The Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant, Downtown Philadelphia, 5 December 2018
Crossing Over the River Wear, Durham, 29 November 2018
Millenium Bridge, London, 22 November 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
December 5, 2018 at 6:22 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Movies, Places, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, England, humor, indulgence, London, memories, museums, Oxford, restaurants
Self loves posting for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge. It gives her a chance to post photographs from her archives that might otherwise be overlooked. Such as the close-up of her bedside lamp at The Penn Club, where she stays whenever she is in London:
Room # 1, The Penn Club: Bedford Place, London
Or this tea-set:
London Review Cakeshop: Bury St., London
Or this amusing pair of socks:
Gift Shop, Ashmolean: Oxford, England
Thank you, Cee Neuner, for the prompt!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
December 2, 2018 at 5:42 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Holidays, Lists, Places, plans, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: Christmas, complaints, exhibits, history, Holidays, indulgences, London, museums, shopping, travel books
Self is in her room, reading a copy of The Guardian.
The trial of the “man who drove his car into a crowd of activists who had been protesting against a white nationalist rally, leaving one woman dead and several injured,” has begun in Charlottesville, Virginia.
This morning, self returned to the Royal Academy of Art for a repeat viewing of the Oceania Exhibit.
Royal Academy of Art: Sunday, 2 December 2018
She liked it even more, the second time around. She stayed watching the video for nearly an hour.
The little handout that accompanies the exhibit starts with:
Two-hundred and fifty years ago, in August 1768, four months before George III founded the Royal Academy of Arts, Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook left Plymouth in command of the HMS Endeavour.
She remembers reading a book by Tony Horwitz: Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before and, well, that book must have made quite an impression because it fixed Captain Cook’s voyage forever in her memory and now, 15 years later, here she is, in London, having seen the Oceania exhibit twice!
As she left the Royal Academy (still in a daze of cultural overload), she happened to notice that there was a store across the street called FORTNUM & MASON. And the display windows were so Christmas-y! She decided to check it out:
Fortnum & Mason: Sunday, 2 December 2018
Self entered through a revolving door and promptly found herself in the middle of a mob scene the like of which she has never experienced in London. What she means: people were grabbing blue boxes of chocolates off shelves directly in front of her, and pushing them into shopping carts. Yes, dear blog readers. English people were pushing shopping carts around a store, the contents consisting entirely of chocolate. There were boxes of dark chocolate, boxes of milk chocolate, boxes of assorted chocolate, boxes of chocolate with nuts, boxes of chocolate with creamy centers — you name it.
Self decided then and there that she would not leave the store without sampling some of this delightful chocolate. A shopgirl told her to take a number. She was # 19. She then asked the shopgirl what were the most popular chocolate purchases, and the girl replied, without any hesitation: TRUFFLES. Caramel Salt.
OMGGGGGGG
Chocolate Counter, Fortnum & Mason: Sunday, 2 December 2018
She wanted to buy a box of chocolates for son and daughter-in-law, but didn’t know what kind they liked: milk chocolate or not? And this is when self bitterly regretted that her Verizon phone does not work. Has not worked for two months. In fact, Verizon just e-mailed self that she would not be able to avail of their international services. Thank you, Verizon, FOR TELLING SELF WHAT SHE ALREADY KNOWS.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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