Life Lately From Coast To Coast

Things have been crazy since my last Life Lately post. Let's see. . .when I last left you it was the end of November. What's happened lately since?

After all of the Thanksgiving festivities, we tried to cut back on pigging out so much, but then we went for Ethiopian food in West Palm Beach. How can you not pig out when you're eating delicious sambusa, doro wat and miser wat? We took a bunch of people with us who had never eaten Ethiopian before. Thankfully, they loved it. Or, at least they said they did.

Then I took off for Portland, Oregon to visit my family (mom, sister, and two nieces). I made it out of the Charlotte airport in the nick of time before everything shut down due to a winter storm. Thankfully, I had packed lots of socks, mittens, and a hat. Once you get out of southern Florida, it's pretty darn cold.

We went on several fun excursions, including one to the Mt Angel Abbey and Seminary. If you're ever in that neck of the woods, definitely go pay the monks a visit cause there's a cool library, a fascinating museum, and the brother who works at the gift shop makes a seriously delicious mocha.

When your sister is a library person, this is what you do when you visit. Take a tour of a library. This one was designed by the famous Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto. We also toured the Portland Central Library and saw what happens behind the scenes.

The monk leading the tour, Brother Simon, really talked up the book sale they were having. So we bought a book plus a tote bag with the Abbey logo on it. I thought it might come in handy for my sister to take to work or the grocery store. Instead it's become a very coveted cat bed.

That's Georgie about to pounce. I think she was trying to make it very clear to Sebastian that it's her bag, not his.

This is Sebastian. He had to settle for napping on the bed. Yes, I got my Crazy Cat Lady fix while in Portland.

My nieces are seriously talented. My mom and I picked up one of them at her school. Miranda has been painting these great murals on the walls. Why didn't I go to a fun high school like that where they encourage you to turn boring white walls into artwork? Here's one she did with some friends, Kale, Sophia, and Taesha, last year.

And here's one she's working on by herself this year. Notice the underwater theme? Maybe she'll want to come sailing with us one day.

Miranda is also a published writer. I think her sales are probably better than mine. {grin} My other niece, Simone, is an extremely talented photographer. Check out her Flickr page. And they both get great grades and have gorgeous hair. Nothing like my high school days, that's for sure.

I also spent a lot of time visiting my mom at her new digs. She lives in this awesome building with really nice, interesting, and super active seniors. They're so active that I ended up doing back-to-back exercise classes with my mom one morning and couldn't keep up with the 102-year old lady next to me. You know someplace is a great place to live when they have a Crazy Cat Lady & Gents Society. The members get together once a month, drink wine, and talk about their cats. Sounds like my kind of place.

While I was away, Scott hauled out our sailboat on his own. Well, not exactly on his own. So many of our wonderful friends pitched in to help. Yay for wonderful friends! Tickety Boo is now in the workyard for repairs. But let's not talk about that anymore, shall we? It's all too depressing. {Photo credit: Tina Riley}


 
What's been going on in your life lately?

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