Père Noël est passé

Le Père Noël est passé à 22h20 le 24 décembre pendant que Tiggy dormait. Tiggy a été sage et il va découvrir ses cadeaux dans quelques heures.

 

Paris, Je t’aime

We recently rented Paris, Je t’aime. Some of the shorts are better than others but I should first explain that the film is a mosaic of roughly 20 short films – or vignettes – each set in a different neighborhood in Paris. Each short provides a snapshot of the dynamics that distinguish each neighborhood and its residents. Each film flows into the next, so at first, it isn’t really when one ends and another begins.  It’s like observing, from across the street, an apartment building in which every tenant had the lights on and the windows open. The dinner conversations would be quite different in each home.

Now that I have that out of the way, back to the vignettes. Some work better than others. One short film – which I thought was quite funny – followed a tourist reading his Paris guide book in the metro, while watching two people make out on the opposite platform. The warnings in his book start playing out in real life. In another short story, a woman leaves her apartment in a working-class suburb, puts her baby in a nursery, and travels by light rail, bus and metro to work for a wealthy family in Paris doing exactly what she could be doing at home: taking care of a baby.

One story made little sense to me. It was set in Paris’s Chinatown and was about a traveling salesman trying to sell a Chinese beauty-parlor owner a line of Western-inspired hair care products that target Asian hair problems. I suppose it has something to do with immigrant communities defining their own Paris, but I’m not sure.

Whole Foods

I went back to Whole Foods last night for the first time since July. We went in to buy cheese and a few specialty products we can’t find elsewhere. This should have taken us 10 – 15 minutes. We planned on getting in, buying our cheese and leaving immediately thereafter, but ended up staying longer than an hour. This always happens. We get distracted by promotions, exotic foods and food displays, sample some exotic culinary item – this time is was the green tea ice cream wrapped in rice paper for me– and end up staying, browsing and reading food labels. I decided to try super foods this time. And we’re running low on virgin olive oil. The rice paper ice cream can wait but the virgin olive oil An hour later, we are are loading up the Murano with groceries for the week.

Happy Holidays

A couple of weeks ago, we started noticing a lot of abandoned shopping carts in our residential community. Our neighbors had suddenly started ditching carts – mostly from QFC – near the mailboxes, blocking the garbage chute, in front of the elevator and other common areas. With two supermarkets within walking distance, shopping carts often popped up around the residence – near the garage and the 253 bus stop in particular – but now they were everywhere. It was almost comical. Maybe a resident was trying – and failing – to do with shopping carts what artists have done with the decorated cows and pigs on city streets. One Saturday, David and I counted 10 carts lined up near the bike rack in the garage. The sense of entitlement of these people started to grate on my nerves at that moment: they cart their purchases home then abandon the shopping carts on in the common areas to serve as eye sores and obstacles for every body else.

I was about to bring up the shopping cart mystery to David one evening when I heard a neighbor entering the building through the garage, the wheels of her QFC cart groaning under the weight of the large fir tree she was pushing. A week later, the elevator was carpeted with pine needles. When we got off on our floor, we found a shopping cart blocking the way and a thick, incriminating trail of tree debris leading to a neighbor’s apartment. They had apparantly hauled their Christmas tree home on a shopping cart, then ditched the cart near the elevator for someone else to deal with. So that explains the all the shopping carts lying around. What’s the point of getting a tree if you can’t show some holiday spirit?

 

Foot-friendly Redmond

 

Lots of changes are afoot on downtown Redmond streets. I recently noticed, for instance, that the "Walk" signs stay illuminated much longer. I have been complaining about the "Walk" signs since I moved here, because I could never make it across the street on time with my big stroller. Pedestrians now have time to cross the street before the lights start blinking and drivers start making right turns on their heels. Well almost. At least I can make it across the street with our 17-year-old dog, who likes to take his time.

 

 

Oregon Coast

 

Fort-to-Sea Trail in Astoria, Oregon

 

This toddler-friendly and mostly flat hike covers much of the same fields, forest and dunes that the Lewis and Clark expedition encountered.

Southern Exposure: Oregon Coast

We reserved a room at the Hillside Inn in Seaside – just north of Cannon Beach – with the aim of driving along the lovely stretch of Highway 101 between Seaside and those tall dunes some 20 miles south of Tillamook.

 

 

By the time we pulled into the Hillside Hotel parking lot, it was already dark (we left Redmond around 3 pm). The sign out front read "no vacancy," which is surprisingly reassuring when you know your reservation is confirmed and there’s a warm room waiting for you. It seems we have made a wise choice: not only was the hotel near downtown shops and restaurants, it was also just a few blocks from the beach. We did a quick scan of our hotel room – crisp linen, two full-sized beds and other requisite amenities – and went outside to walk along the beach, listening to the waves break in the distance. The moon was full and our stomachs were empty. Tiggy couldn’t understand why he kept sinking when he walked on the loose sand and had fun exaggerating his efforts. But when the novelty wore off, he insisted that I carry him back to the oceanfront promenade. People are allowed to drive on and light fires on at least some Oregon beaches it seems. I’m surprised environmentalists aren’t putting up a fight. We spotted a restaurant called Pigs N Pancake, which seemed to be a big hit but were up for neither.

 

Cannon Beach was our first stop on our Second day. Lots of hotels boasted about their authentic New England charm – and indeed the city center has a small town feel to it – but it was the craggy seaside cliffs and plunging views of the Pacific Ocean that sold us.

 

Dune-buggies abound

On our way to the Oregon Dunes recreation area, we watched people in the distance riding dune buggies up and down billowy sand plains – I think they call those dunes in modern English – across the sand mounds. We’d see the off-road buggies disappear behind the sand, identifiable only by the tips of the little pennant flags affixed to poles on the rear of the vehicles. We figured the vehicle were all rentals, since they all had the same flags waving from their buggy backs. I wondered how much it would have cost us to rent one for an hour.

 

 

The Oregon Dunes

I made it halfway up the giant dune with Tiggy in my arms before my knees started buckling. So we regrouped and I made it to the top solo. The view from the top was spectacular.

 

 

On our way back north, we visited the Tillamook Cheese and ice cream plant. This was a nice and relaxing way to wrap up the day. Not is it entirely indoors, warm and comfortable, the tour of the plant is self guided and thus self paced. The production lines fascinated Tiggy.