It’s that time of year again, time for a trip to France and, because of that, time for a cyber break. But you know I’ll be taking hundreds of photos that I’ll share with you when I get home, so in the meantime, those of you in my hemisphere, have a glorious spring. For those of you in the southern half of the world, may fall be colorful. See you in June.
I grew up for the most part in a small house in Omaha, Nebraska. There were two bedrooms with the bathroom between them. My mom made a beautiful third room out of the unfinished attic, all on her own. My dad says he helped by staying out of the way. 🙂 That was my room, which was great. But to get to the bathroom, I had to go through either my parents’ room or risk my life trying to get through my brother’s messy room.
The bathroom had white, hexagonal tiles on the floor, just like these I saw in a Philadelphia bathroom recently. I’ve seen them other places as well. When I had occasion to sit for a time in the bathroom staring at these tiles, I discovered an unusual talent.
Stereoscopic photography, something we used in college geology class, is basically what Viewmasters do. Two identical photos are placed a small distance apart and when viewed through a viewer, you see them one atop the other, creating a 3-D effect. I could do that with my eyes, counting how many tiles I could get to overlap.
My geography professor didn’t believe me until I described a photo to him. My eyes don’t cross, either. I’m not sure how useful that talent is, but it’s fun and can be done other places than bathrooms.
Did you have tiles like these in your bathroom? Can you see in 3-D? Do you have an unusual/weird talent?
We were all kneading our pasta dough. One after another, people began getting ready to make whatever type of pasta we were making. I was frustrated. My dough still wasn’t ready. Loretta Paganini, of the eponymous cooking school in Chesterland, Ohio, saw my frustration. She said she was told she should be a pastry chef, as her hands were always cold. Cold is good for pastry, not as good for pasta.
Although it takes a bit of time, pasta isn’t difficult to make. Filled shapes take more time than those just cut, such as linguine. Although little Italian grandmothers may roll the dough out with a rolling pin, it’s much easier to use a pasta machine. And by the way, noodles are a type of pasta, not pasta itself. Here’s the recipe I’ve been using since I learned to make ravioli, along with some photos from my ravioli-making day and the link to Loretta’s Italian grandmother’s walnut sauce.
It’s hard to believe that a week ago, I was enjoying my last day in Southern California, taking photos, having the most amazing mocha of my life, and visiting Descanso Gardens (photos will appear on the blog soon.) The thing I most dislike about a vacation (at least a good one), is how quickly on returning home, it seems as if I’d never been gone. 😦
But here I am in rainy, grey NE Illinois, lasagne/a ingredients ready to assemble later, ready for the photo challenge theme, which today is “Security.” I’m going to get very personal here. Although there are obvious things that might make me feel secure, as a Christian, there’s one Person who makes me feel secure and that’s God. As even my elementary French can tell, this is the verse that says, “For me to live is Christ.” That’s my security. And the photo reminds me that there’s a funny story about getting to see this church that I haven’t told in the 2 1/2 years since I took the photo. Upcoming post subject!
Happy Wednesday!
Back from La-La Land, back from sunshine and (at the end, at least, warmth) to rain, gloom, and a high of 42F (although it’s supposed to be in the 50’s in the coming days.) It’s good to travel and good to come home…and even better to have a home I like to come home to!
Each time I visit our daughter, we have a brave, daring adventure. Last visit it was a whirlwind trip up “The 1” to Napa’s wine country. “The 1” has nothing to do with Neo and “The Matrix” and everything to do with the fact that for some unknown reason, highways in California and Arizona (and possibly elsewhere in the west) are called The Whatever Number. At least you know the number. In the Chicago area, they nickname the highways: The Dan Ryan, The Kennedy, The Eisenhower, and so on. If you’re new to the area or don’t use the highways much, you have NO idea what highway the traffic reports are referencing!
This year’s brave, daring adventure was a quick trip to Yosemite National Park, a place I haven’t seen since I was too young to remember what I saw and all photos were black and white without editing. During tourist season, we wouldn’t have been able to spontaneously do this, as reservations have to be made many months (or more) in advance. My understanding is that even trails have to be reserved for hiking during the high season, a far cry from the days when my mom and her family camped in the park for several weeks, an inexpensive vacation for a Lutheran teacher’s family!
No, I’m not talking about not commenting or being on Facebook. But the level of accusation, anger, and animus there and other places these days makes me more fearful for the world than the issues being “discussed.” If we can’t talk nicely, even if we have to eventually agree to disagree, then these are very dangerous times indeed. So I was imagining if all those “a” words I just referenced went away, because we were all doing what our moms tried to teach us.
