Reflections – Page 2 – Home here and there

Stop at Sculpterra

Entering Sculpterra Winery & Sculpture Garden

On day 1 we drove down to Pismo Beach from the Bay Area. The main tourist attraction Highway 1 along Big Sur was out of the question because you can’t get through right now due to a landslide. The last couple of years this has been a pretty regular occurrence but it sure is beautiful when it is open.

So on this fine day we took 101 instead and stopped at the Sculpterra Winery & Sculpture Garden in Paso Robles. It was a nice break from the road and the adults had a glass of wine while wandering through the gardens.

There are quite a few sculptures in the garden and it’s really beautiful out there

The best thing? Probably the late afternoon sun on the fall leaves. It’s magic right there.

Family visits and running around

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind and after not going to bed before midnight for a couple of days I gave in and was not typing blog posts for NaBloPoMo. I am writing this on my phone in the back of our trusted minivan. My BIL and SIL arrived and now we are on our way down the coast. They already got the full on Northern California winter experience with non stop rain for a whole day. Yesterday was sunny though and we took a ferry Ride to San Francisco. The day started out with a surprise flat tire. Luckily we were right around the corner from a tire shop and they fixed it in 20 minutes so we actually made said ferry in time. Good that I am always on the early side.

Ferry terminal.from the water in Richmond

In my opinion taking the ferry is the absolute best way to travel to the city. I was surprised how many Holiday decorations were already up.

Now I have to spend some time researching our first stop along the way. Can you tell yet I am not quite up to speed? Usually I have that planned out ahead of time. Stay tuned for more road trip reports to come.

Wordless Wednesday

Backdating

I have caught myself backdating posts the last couple of days since I had/have a hard time keeping up with posting let alone commenting on other blogs. So please don’t think I am ignoring your posts – I have been skimming but was a little short on time commenting. I am trying to catch up – promise!
One annoying thing was that our internet at home was out over the weekend. I don’t know if I should call it luck that it was an more centralist issue that not only affected us? At least we did not have to wait for AT&T to show up at our house but “just” needed to wait for them to fix the bigger issue at hand. We don’t have AT&T service but our provider still uses their lines in our neighborhood. It really makes you realize for how many things you rely on the internet working these days. Not to mention that typing on the phone is not the best.
Part of me was asking myself “What were you thinking when you signed up for NaBloPoMo?” We have BIL and SIL visiting this week and besides the birthday celebrations last weekend I spend a decent amount of cleaning. With all the back problems the house cleaning fell a little short. But hey, I was still able to walk the next day so I guess overall it is getting better. The added fitness classes, chiropractor and PT visits don’t help with my time management but I feel like it’s starting to pay off what is all that counts right now.

So anyway, I guess this is a sort of apology post and I hope you stick around even if I don’t manage to catch up on all the posts you have written!
How is NaBloPoMo going for you this year?

Picture perfect

A couple of years ago I started wishing for a drawing or other creation for my birthday from my kids. I thought it would be a good idea to have these memories at some point. I got a sketchbook exactly for this purpose. – so every birthday for myself and my husband another page (or two) get filled.

This year my daughter made me a family portrait in water color and my son drew me a penguin (my favorite animal).

Somehow my daughter also got roped into making me vouchers for my other presents.

I got tickets for a Christmas concert in the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco that also includes a part of Christmas Oratorio by Bach (hence the image). And also the tickets for the Matchbox Magic Flute (below). I love the cards as much as the voucher itself and will keep them in the sketchbook, too. Do you keep special birthday cards as memento? What would you wish for if you had to pick an outing?

Birthday Saturday

We always start birthdays with cake for breakfast. This year I even had two cakes (it was actually three total but one we already had at work a day previously). After getting the cake from my colleagues another co-worker stopped by the lab and what do you think – with another cake. Since everyone was already filled up on cake I took the second one home and my family gave me one, too. So lots of cake all around.

Most of the rest of the day was spent as usual but we did go out for dinner followed by the musical play “The Matchbox Magic Flute”. I thought it was great! I wished for it and had the condition that no-one complained. It turned out it would not have been necessary since everyone liked it. Maybe that is something we can do more often together as a family. With everyone having different interests it’s sometimes hard to find something everyone likes.

Member Night at the SF MOMA

Last Christmas we were gifted a SF MOMA membership so I thought it would be nice to take advantage of the member event they had tonight. It’s free for members and they have music and drinks and you can wander around and enjoy the art. We don’t go out just my husband and I that often so it was a nice treat.

They also opened up the Amy Sherald exhibition (she painted the Michelle Obama portrait which they also had on display). It officially opens tomorrow so we got a little preview.

It was a nice way to start the weekend. I could get used to it.

Do you have any fun plans for the upcoming weekend?

Favorite market in town

It’s Thursday and usually I try to do a quick shopping stop before work at my favorite supermarket. On that morning they do get a bread delivery by my favorite baker Morrell’s Bread. Their sesame loaf is so good (and this is coming from a German). The baker is also at the farmers market and opens up the bake shop once a week but this way I can get some of my fruit and veggie shopping done. I started shopping at Monterey market when the kids were little and my husband played soccer on Saturdays Close by. On a Saturday it’s a mad house (at least it used to be) so one has to be patient to get through the isles. Mornings during the week are much better.

Sometimes the selection makes it quite hard to decide on something.

And they have beautiful flowers, too.

I was very tempted to get one of the dried flower wreaths. Aren’t they pretty?

Most of the time it’s Monterey Market and Trader Joe’s or Grocery Outlet. I almost never set foot in our Safeway since I never can find anything I am looking for (and neither can the employees).

Do you have a favorite supermarket? Morning or evening shopping, week or weekend?

Wordless Wednesday

Things I just can’t get used to

After living in the US for 19 years now there are very few things these days that surprise or annoy me but there are two things I still can’t get used to. If you are from the US please do not take this personally. I think that most likely you can find something in any country that would annoy you. For example I find it annoying in Germany that you can’t turn right when the traffic light is red period (unless there is a green right arrow attached to the corner, what almost never is the case). A prerequisite would be that you know differently. Maybe there even would be something that is different when moving to another state? When we first moved here I came across differences almost every day and I constantly compared. I don’t even remember anymore when I stopped doing this. One difference I recently noticed when being in Germany is that plastic caps now stay attached to the bottle. Of course you can unscrew them but they will stay attached on a little corner. It took me some getting used to but you don’t have lids rolling to the ground. This already brings me to one of my annoyances:

Packaging – this is an ongoing joke in our household. Some packaging is so hard to remove. Especially food packaging seems to be designed in a way to make scissors or a knife necessary or makes such a big mess when you trying to open it. Why? Should it not be possible to design it in a way that it actually works for you instead of against you?

The second one is toilette paper – why in the world is it only 2- layers? I am fully aware that I can fold it up and get more layers but really? If you have ever been to Germany maybe you know what I mean. I am not sure how it is in the rest of Europe but 3- or even 4-layer toilette paper is pretty standard. My husband was very excited the other day because he found one with 3-layers – it ended up being so flimsy that it the 2 versus 3 did not make a difference. Maybe it is time for a bidet?

That’s it for today. Do you have anything like that? Anything weird to you that you noticed while traveling?