Another walk in the park

Today was a gorgeous La Mirada day. Blue skies, 75 degrees (sorry Sandy and Mia), a little cool breeze...so I thought it would be nice to discover a new park and take Lulu for a walk.

First I went to gas the pick up and to Sam's. I bought myself a pair of house shoes and a really cute top.

Lulu was really excited to be going out, she loves to (try) to climb up on the pick up, but she needs help. The park is Creek Park, but the tail end of it, it's a block away from Stater Brothers, in Tacuba. It's a long and narrow area, very quiet, with big trees and nice green lawns. It has bridges and benches. The creek runs through the middle, it was carrying quite a bit of water.



We had a nice long walk, but I forgot to bring water and Lulu was tired and panting so I decided to go back home. It was a nice walk.



Tomorrow Norbert is coming over after I take Marvin to dialysis, he's going to fix the Mustang's tail lights, then we'll go have lunch at El Torito.

Friday I was asked to sub for Norma, so I said OK. I just don't like to wake up early anymore!

This weekend is the Superbowl. I'll cheer for the 49ers!

Capritxos

If you have seen Sonia's updates in Facebook, you may have got the feeling that things are going to change, and they are.

She explained to me that Taco Ganxo is only profitable during July and August, when there's some tourism in San Feliu, but the rest of the year they hardly make enough to keep it open. It seems that the natives don't care so much for  Mexican food. Eric and Sonia have really tried, and the place couldn't be in a better area, and they sure had it nicely decorated and  seems like a very pleasant place to stop and have some tacos and a Margarita.

They have thought of different options, like moving to the Tarragona area of Salou, or even going to a foreign country, but as things are it didn't come to pass.

Nicole didn't want to move either, she wants to stay in the school where she has her friends, etc. And that was also something they wanted.

All in all, they are going to keep the establishment, but in a couple of weeks it will be Taco Ganxo no more.

It will become "Capritxos" which translates to "whimsy" in English. A friend of Sonia is a good baker and she makes very nice cupcakes, so they will be selling pastries, dulces, cupcakes, and serve tea and coffee etc.

Here's the new logo:

 

Eric may go to work for a while in Saudi Arabia in a restaurant, and check the possibilities for opening a Mexican Restaurant there.

 

I wish them the very best in this new endeavor!

 

PS By the way, don't say anything about this in Facebook, or to her, since she doesn't want people to know until the new establishment is open.

A do-nothing day

I have been watching a lot of movies lately. Late at night. The last ones I watched were "Jeff who lives at home" "Sleep walk with me" "Celeste and Jesse forever" and so on, many of them are Indie type movies and I had not heard much about them  before watching them. I enjoyed them.

But I have not been going to sleep before 2-3AM most of this week.

This morning, not a dialysis day, Marvin had a shower, and I changed him, then I fed Lulu and took her outside. It was around 9:30AM and I told Marvin I was going back to bed, which I did.

I woke up around noon and was hungry, so I cooked pancakes and bacon for us. Then I went to my room and turned on the computer and checked my mail and Facebook, and played some games.

After days of 80 degrees weather, yesterday and today we had lots of rain. It was not cold, just gray and rainy and I felt like doing nothing. So I went back to bed. And slept. At some point, Lulu jumped in bed with me (a no no) but I just let her, she sat down by my feet and was nice and quiet.

I woke up at 4, and did some laundry. And took Lulu out and read my book and watched some TV, and talked to Marvin about dinner.

I had made chicken enchiladas the day before and had some leftovers but we didn't want to have it again, so I suggested Chinese food. On a rainy day won ton soup sounded appealing. So that's what we had, along with  sweet and sour chicken. By the way, this week has been an all chicken week. I have cooked chicken tacos, chicken and farfalle, chicken and dumplings, chicken salad, and chicken enchiladas.

So I called Jay's Kitchen and ordered dinner and went to pick it up. There was nothing much on TV so Marvin went to bed fairly early. I took Lulu outside and played with her a little and she went to her kennel and is nicely sleeping.

Now is 11:11PM and I am not sleepy. Should I watch another movie? But then I will get in the same cycle as before. I guess that's what it means to be retired :)

Back to Work

Last Thursday, Jersey School's Secretary called me to ask if I could sub for Kindergarten on Friday. I had been planning to go and have lunch with Jennifer anyway, so I said OK.

This is the first time I subbed this school year with 31 children. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many! This is what I missed...NOT

This is Kindergarten 201, where I began my teaching. Then  after a few years I moved to room 202. Ms. Lleonart is now teaching in #201.

The children were OK, a little rambuctious but in general they were pretty well behaved and good listeners. The Principal told me they were the better class, the worse one being Jennifer's. She has most of the problem kids.

At the end of the day, the kids told me I was a fun teacher and when I was coming back? :) I also met some of the parents, some of which I knew from other years, and they asked me if I had come back for good to teaching and were disappointed when I said I was just subbing.

Here's a picture of 2 K teachers, Jennifer and Norma in the playground.. I have of course worked with both for many years. 

And of course, my plaque is still above the water fountain in the playground :)

2 movies

I didn't want to watch this movie because I it's sad and depressing, but it won best foreign movie at the Golden Globes, and is up for best movie, AND best foreign movie at the Oscars. It has also won a ton of other awards, for the movie, the director, and actor and actress. Indeed it is sad and depressing, but is also deserving of a best actor and actress awards. I am not sure about best movie because of the theme and I found it excruciatingly slow. The actor, Jean Luis Trintignant, was one of my favorite French actors when I was growing up. He was with Brigitte Bardot in the movie "And God Created Woman" and he was such a hunk.

                                                    Here he is now

The actress, Emanuelle Riva, was in one of my favorite movies, "Hiroshima, mon amour". At 85, she's the oldest actress to receive an Oscar nomination.

The other movie "Moonrise Kingdom" has also received sterling reviews and I loved it. It is warm, quirky, and whimsical. I love the photography and the landscapes. Beautiful. Very sweet. It left me smiling.

Books

I just noticed I didn't write my book list for December, or how many books I had read in 2012. So here it is:

Books I read: 80 (that's 10 books less than in 2011)

That's the books I read in December 2012:

Kate Jacobs - Knit the Season

Alysa Valdes-Rodriguez - The Three Kings

Nancy Thayer - summer breeze

Stuart Woods - Unnatural Acts

Mary & Carol Higgins Clark - Santa Cruise

Debie Macomber- The Perfect Christmas

Elin Hilderbrand - Summerland

Lisa Jackson - Beach Season

I have been watching more movies at home lately. The last ones I've watched are "Silver Linings Playbook" , "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"

I hope you are all having a nice January, those of you in cold weather cities, bundle up!, we are supposed to have some nice weather this week, in the 70's :)

2013 Oscars

These are the 2013 Oscar nominated movies:

"Amour"
"Argo"
"Beasts of the Southern Wild"
"Django Unchained"
"Les Misérables"
"Life of Pi"
"Lincoln"
"Silver Linings Playbook"
"Zero Dark Thirty"

I don't know much about either of them, and there's a few that I have no wish to see, although I may watch the one that wins the Oscar.

The ones I may watch are: Amour (way sad), Beasts of the Southern Wild because it sounds interesting, Silver Linings Playbook because I like Bradley Cooper, and maybe Life of Pi.

I have no interest in Argo, although I understand is a good movie and I like Ben Affleck, Django Unchained although I like other Tarantino movies, Les Miserables because is all singing and I know the story, Lincoln because I am not into historic movies, Zero Dark Thirty because Bin Laden is dead so i know the ending :)

By the way, for what I read, the favorite to win is Lincoln.

All in all, not  what I would have chosen for Oscar. But then I am not a critic. Most of those movies are way too heavy for me. I'm more into fluff :)

Kale chips

I've been hearing and reading about kale chips. Marvin saw a show in The Chew and they did kale chips, so he asked me to get some kale next time I went to the store.

Truthfully I had no idea how kale looks. So I checked the produce section and read the names of vegetables I wasn't so familiar with, until I found the curly kale.

After reading several recipes, really they are very easy to make, I made some today. This is the recipe I used:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/crispy-kale-chips-recipe/index.html

I made some pork chops to go with the kale chips. They were nice and crunchy, very crispy. Maybe I won't put so much salt next time :)

Here's how it looks before cooking:

and here's after:

Reyes Magos

Today is the Epiphany.

In Spain this is the day when we get and receive presents from the 3 Kings.



I remember as a little girl, waking up with Nuri and going to the living room, where my mom and dad set up our gifts. They really made a nice settings.
 One I remember well is when we both got a  doll's bedroom set complete with beds, wardrobe -with dresses hanging on little hangers-  and a dresser with a chair. They  were doll size, but the dolls were quite large, they were the first walking dolls, you could hold their hand and they would walk with you. The furniture was blue with little details of flowers around the edges. My doll had brown hair and Nuri's doll had blond hair. We were the envy of the neighborhood girls.

When I came to the US, nobody had heard of this holiday, so I had to adapt to Santa Claus and presents on Christmas Day, but every year I always give the girls something on January 6th. They were lucky to get presents twice :)

I am still not feeling well, my energy is very low, I just lay down and rest and keep on coughing and sneezing. Lizzie came over this weekend and we had lunch at Ricardo's on Saturday, and Chipotle for dinner. This morning, after Lizzie got her Reyes Magos gift, Sandy will be getting hers in the mail,  I fixed some waffles and sausage and hasbrowns. Lizzie left back to San Diego in the afternoon.

If I had felt better, I would have bought a tortel de Reyes, which is a special round pastry, they sell it here in Mexican bakeries.

I saw 60 minutes tonight, because they had a segment on the Barcelona FC. It made me a bit weepy, seeing the Camp Nou, the catalan flags, etc. Sigh.

Energy

I didn't know this month was a NaBloPoMo month. I know Sandy wrote it on her post, so I googled it and sure enough it is! Well I don't think I'll write every day since I already missed 2 days. But I will try to write at least once or twice a week.
I started the year by getting sick. I think it was the flu, but maybe it was just a bad cold. Some fever, a lot of coughing, headache and body aches. Fortunately I feel better today.

We had invited Norbert to spend New Year dinner with us. I was not feeling great but I had things all bought and semi prepared so I fixed the meal. We had some appetizers for starters, then wedges of iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing and bacon sprinkles, potatoes au gratin, broccoli, and fillet mignon. For dessert we had a Napoleon pastry, and turron.

While I was preparing the meal, Norbert took the Christmas lights down.  I didn't eat very much and strangely enough, we didn't open a bottle of champagne (was going to open the one Mia sent). We just had water :)

By the way, the night before, New Year's Eve, Marvin and I we both stayed up and had some wine to toast the New Year. I was starting to feel a little off so I didn't go to the Jacuzzi as I had planned, did that the day before, maybe is when I caught a cold! 

Yesterday I was in bed most of the day, and today I too Marvin to dialysis and just rested some more. Tomorrow Bettie and Lee are coming over to visit, and Lizzie will be here to spend the weekend.

 I am not making any resolutions for the year other than to take things a day at a time, to enjoy each day as much as possible. And  to insert some more energy in all its aspects into my life!

The NaBloPoMo theme this month is ENERGY

a : dynamic quality  energy>

b : the capacity of acting or being active energy>

c : a usually positive spiritual force  energy flowing through all people>