Snapshots from the Week

 I'm back and with pictures, thanks to advice I found on a Google users forum, after Google customer service threw up their hands.

                                                                               1.

Diet substitute for sugar

A number of little things went wrong this week, mostly because I was impatient to scratch things off my to-do list.  This made me a cranky driver, a curmudgeonly customer, and prone to eating handfuls of sugar-free Ricola lozenges due to being on a New Year's diet.

Returned, alas

Example:  After much research, I asked Jerry to buy me a new carry-on bag for Christmas.

It turned out not to fit on top of my suitcase, plus it looked like something you carry a bowling ball around in.

First, I called the wrong company for a pre-paid return label and after they failed to find a record of it,  I had to slink back apologetically and tell them, no, it wasn't their company that  sold it.  When I finally got the label,  I tried to take the package to a UPS store, instead of FedEx.  Two tricky park jobs and a long line later, I got the package in the mail (or whatever--the Universe of FedEx).

The whole week seemed to go like that.

                                                                            

                                                                                      2.

Department of Travel Porn:  I'm susceptible.  Yet another luscious cruise brochure arrived, and  again I was seduced, although we haven't bought tickets yet.

It was a brochure from Viking Cruises.  All the glammy photos, plus the idea of gliding along European rivers, stopping here and there to check out Monet's this-and-that, no unpacking, no figuring out transit, no search for a place to eat.

This time it's a cruise up the Seine from Paris to Rouen, with a side trip to the D-Day beaches, including Omaha Beach.  Even Jerry's hooked.  Who knows, maybe we'll do it, but not until 2014.

Begins and ends in Paris

Lest you think we're hopelessly affluent, I remind you that my car is 17 years old, Jerry's is 9 years old, and we have two bathrooms in desperate need of remodeling.  It's a matter of priorities and the Grim Reaper.

Would you rather do this:

Or remodel this:

Yes, that's Formica, c. 1964

I thought so.  (The man who cuts my hair says he'd do the bathroom, but then he's a wealthy salon owner who can  do both.)                               

                                                                                    3.

After one of the horrible Errand Days, we put together a surprisingly good dinner and watched a very good movie.

This  Dill and Caper Sauce in Parade magazine transforms salmon:

1/2 cup plain low-fat Greek yogurt
2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 T chopped fresh dill
1 T chopped capers

Whisk it all together and drizzle over salmon. (This recipe is enough for six salmon fillets. I cut it in half.)

                                                                               4.

Here's the movie:

Clint Eastwood makes me crazy sometimes with his over-the-top sentimentality and scenes that are maudlin-to-the-max, but this movie has little of that.   He plays an aging baseball scout with failing eyesight who goes on a scouting trip with his grown daughter, played by Amy Adams.

                                                                               5.

The adorable Rylan, aged 2-1/2, came to visit last weekend, and his Aunt Claudia and I took him to Live Oak Park in North Berkeley.

After he conquered the tot lot, he ventured into the big kids playground:

                                                                                     6.
A book recommendation:

This is a really good read.  It's the story of a tech-money couple in Orange County who have a falling-out over financial difficulties and unwittingly abandon their young sons to the care of their Mexican housekeeper, an illegal immigrant.  Reminds me of one of my all-time favorite books, T.C. Boyle's Tortilla Curtain.

                                                                                   7.

 I just discovered this:

Suzanne's birthday gift due in August, wrapped belatedly for Christmas, and still hanging around the house.  Sorry, Suzanne!