Why I Oughta...

Earlier this Summer, I posted a photo (with pride, mind you) of our container-planted Firesticks succulent plant that we've had for five years and talked about how it does well outdoors during the warmer months her in Zone 5b.   Well...a trip to Long Beach California quickly put me in my place with this massive, planted-in-mass Firesticks Cactus display outside of the Hilton Hotel near downtown.   It is flanking their circular driveway and spread across to raised beds.  Photos below: What's not to like about that?  Ombre-coloring from dark green at the bottom that transitions to yellow in the middle and orange at the tips.  Beautiful and a nice piece of [ garden inspiration ] to file away. 

I've lusted after the green Versailles Orangerie planter boxes that you see all over Paris filled with trees in gardens and parks.  I've posted about them a couple of times here on the blog and even thought about trying to make one on my own .  While were were trouncing around Paris this Summer, we certainly saw the original ones with upright wood slats.  But, I also was tuned into a new version: made from metal.   Here, below, is one of them I saw on a side street in Paris.  It has a scrubby tree/shrub in it, but feels fairly underplanted. And, below, are pair of them (unplanted as well) in the park leading to the Eiffel Tower.    A closer look inside these shows they are two-piece containers with an interior 'cage' that seems it can be 'lifted out' (see the corner hooks below).  I'm guessing that two-piece setup is intended for Winter as they can leave the planter in place, but take the tree to the Orangerie for overwintering.  The ot...

The past few seasons, I've planted (at least) one container with an annual flower pattern that we first saw in the beds at Luxembourg Gardens in Paris a few years back.  Here's one example - showing a combination of red, orange/yellow and blue/purple with Blue Salvia (Salvia farinacea), a yellow Zinnia and in front a red Wave petunia.  I've used marigolds in lieu of Zinnias in other years like the corner box last year .   I've drawn other inspiration from this very same garden - from chairs to edging to using cocoa bean mulch to the use of London Planetrees to falling in love with  the orangerie box to espalier of various forms .  One of the things that I was surprised by (not sure why) was that they have updated their annuals and the patterns they were using in their beds around Luxembourg Gardens in Paris this Summer (June 2022).   In the more sunny section of the garden - around the big fountain - they're now showing a series of beds tha...

We've been going to Disney's Boardwalk since for ten years now ( here's a post showing our first visit, I think...back in March of 2012)  and have come to really love and appreciate this resort area of Walt Disney World.  Sure, the Magic Kingdom resorts have the monorail, the electric water pageant and Magic Kingdom Fireworks.  But the Epcot resorts have walking-to two parks, the Skyliner and the Boardwalk area.  On a recent walk around the Boardwalk, I came across this sign that is situated right on the border between the Yacht Club and the Swan and Dolphin bridge that evokes one of those old-time-y vacation postcards.  It has a cute Walt Disney World Resort postmark on the top, even.  But, the part that jumped out to me was the copy in the red bar across the bottom:  "Come to the Showplace of the Shore".  That's a new-to-me tagline for the resort area.  See the signage below: A quick spin around the Google machine shows me, however, that is...

Back in November, I posted a photo of what I called a pair of "underutilized" Disney MagicBands .  I wrote about how they weren't able to "live their best life" because our trip was cut short.  In a post a week earlier where I posted a photo of Pooh Bear as a 50th Anniversary statue , I talked about how we didn't see too many of those statues due to "unforeseen circumstances".  But, in those posts, I didn't really talk about what we *did* do on our trip.  Besides going to a couple of parks and having some good drinks at my favorite restaurant on Disney property (more on that in a different post, I think), Nat and I were down there for the Run Disney Wine & Dine Race Weekend.   Both Nat and I were set to run the 5K, but she was also running another, much longer race.  I was happy to just do the 5K.  Here, below is my bib.   Our race started in the rain and thankfully we had ponchos.  We stood out there for a couple of hours, wait...

I thought we'd see a lot of these Walt Disney World 50th Anniversary "Fab 50" statues .  But, due to some unforeseen circumstances, I only took a single photo of *just* one of the golden (EARidescent is what they're calling them, I think) character statues that is inside of the Magic Kingdom. Luckily, it is a guy who's big in our house - Pooh Bear.  And, it is a double feature that has the big guy (Winnie the Pooh) giving a nice cuddle to his pal Piglet.   Guess we'll have to go back before the 50th Anniversary Celebration is over. I know this is a minor thing, but it bothers me that there aren't REALLY 50 statues like this one for the 50th Anniversary of Walt Disney World - the Vacation Kingdom.  There are *ONLY* 36 statues .  A bunch of them are two-fers like this Pooh Bear/Piglet one above.  I know that costs are important, but feels like a little bit of the bean counters winning out.

This is the *next* in the series of posts showing the view out my airplane window on a trip back home after a week of work meetings.    The last time was this sunset on the way home from Newark .  Before that was seeing the Aurora Borealis over Alaska .    This time, I saw this rainbow somewhere between Tennessee and O'hare on my regional airplane that wasn't the SpaceJet 1 .  I was sitting in the row of 1 seat on the port side (do they call it port/starboard on airplanes??) of the aircraft - which felt like a nice little perk after being exhausted from the week of work. 1. [For disclosure - and for those who don't know - I work at Edelman Public Relations Worldwide. I work/workeded on the launch on the Mitsubishi Spacejet Family at the Paris Air Show this year. They are a client of Edelman's.] ↩

A few weeks ago, I posted  a photo on the blog of the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) from my JAL flight home .  I've spent quite a bit of time up in the air during the first part of this year.  Thus, I have seen a lot of cloud-time.  Let's post this week another photo from the road - this time on a recent flight home from Newark where I caught the Sunset while we were above the clouds somewhere over Pennsylvania.

I've posted about the food tourism that was a key part of our family visit to St. Louis a couple of weeks ago that included a stop at Blueberry Hill on the Delmar Loop and a visit to the Downtown Imo's pizza ahead of a ballgame .  But, we also made a visit to the "must stop" Ted Drewes for frozen custard.  Nat recalls fondly her visits to Ted Drewes during her time at Wash U, but I had never had the stuff before.  Serious Eats calls Ted Drewes a "national institution" , so the stop was, ummm, warranted.  We pulled into the generous parking lot and hopped out of the van.  You walk around to the street-side of the stand (see the photo below) and wait in the line to order.  All of us ordered our own concretes in the smallest format.  Micro or Mini, I don't remember.  They take cards, so no need to come with cash, but after you order, you kind of stand around and wait for them to call your item out - just like most every other ice cream stand....

I mentioned in my post about our visit to Louis' Lunch - the home of the hamburger sandwich - that we also hit up another foodie-important stop while we were in New Haven.  That was Frank Pepe's Pizzeria Napoletana.  Or "Pepe's" as the locals call it.  There is a style in New Haven and there are a series of places that you can choose from.  According to Eater, this is serious business . There is pizza, and then there is apizza. New Haven-style pizza is the latter; a hotter, crispier, and dirtier descendant of Neapolitan style pie. What ribs are to Kansas City, cheesesteak to Philadelphia, and crabcakes to Baltimore, pizza is to New Haven. Why New Haven?  Again, Eater : At the turn of the twentieth century, New Haven became a popular town for Italian families who settled in the United States during the country's diaspora. Neighborhoods such as Wooster Square became home to many displaced southern Italian families primed with palates that appreciated ...

I'm one lucky guy.  At least when it comes to timing trips with the show that Cherry Blossom trees put on.  Last year, I was in Tokyo during the Cherry Blossom season and documented it here on the blog . And earlier this month, I found myself in our nation's capital when their own Cherry Blossom trees were on full display .   Double bucket list visits, right? I also brushed up on the reason for why the Cherry Blossom trees are even there . Each year, the National Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the 1912 gift of 3,000 cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo to the city of Washington, DC. The gift and annual celebration honor the lasting friendship between the United States and Japan and the continued close relationship between the two countries. My trip to Washington D.C. was brief, but I was able to take in the trees from a few different vantage points.  (I've posted about another trip to DC all the way back in 2012 when I took this photo of ...

I made a trip down to Dallas earlier this month for a work thing and one evening, after dinner had ended, I asked the door guy at our hotel how far the 'grassy knoll' was and he pointed down the street and told me it was about six blocks away.  So...off I went walking.  It was a nice evening and sure enough, after walking for a bit, I came across this seven story building.  That has a very famous sixth floor .  I had been to Dallas with my Mom and Dad back when I was in High School and we took the tour of the museum (and even went out for the night to BillyBob's in Ft. Worth ), so I have experience down there.  This time, I arrived after the museum was closed, but it was still a nice experience.  I didn't go down to the Grassy Knoll, but did stand at the corner and visualized that film that we've all seen thousands of time. Every time one of these cars raced under the bridge, I could picture the vintage, grainy footage of the limo racing off....

Just like my recent trip to the Bay Area , I spent all of about 24 hours in New York recently.  The entirety of it between Newark Airport and offices and a hotel in SoHo.  That photo above, is the view I had for an afternoon, which was pretty nice.  Back when I was working at Google and would occasionally travel to NYC, I never got below 15th Street, so this is a whole new territory for me being Downtown and all.  How cosmopolitan, eh?!?!

Another *super quick* trip to San Francisco.  And...another blog post and photo about it.   Back in February of 2015, I posted an almost identical photo from the Edelman office that you see above. Doesn't appear that much has changed at that intersection over the past few years.   Did I take in the sights?  Nope.  Not really.  Mostly just worked and went to meetings.  Then headed to the airport to hustle home.  The Chamber of Commerce did, however, turn the fog machine on for me...which was an awfully nice tough.  

I found myself in Philadelphia recently and unfortunately, I didn't have time for much outside of the scheduled events.  (sounds familiar, right?  Just like my recent trip to Denver where I didn't get to go to the Cherry Cricket !)  And that means my trip didn't include a visit to Pat's and Geno's for the typical tourist showdown.  Let alone Steve's - which I think the eaters have coalesced around as being tops in town, right?   I did, however, have time for a steak at the airport where Geno's has an outpost. I got my 'with wiz' and it wasn't awesome. But, shame on me for thinking it was going to be right?  Kinda like the equivalent of getting pie at the DiFara's in Vegas at the Ceasar's Food Court , right?  You know what you're doing when you enter into an agreement like this.  It always turns out the same.

I experienced the one that I think everyone likely does:  having to raise the shower head up to actually my height. But, also this one:  a sky lounge.   We were up there on a Sunday night and it was still packed.  Couples, groups.  And us.  Three American dudes and a Canadian.  I had 3/4 of a beer before I had to call it a night.  Loads of fun and quite a few deposits into the memory bank.

Back late last year, we had dinner at Raglan Road in Disney Springs and it.was.awesome. We were down there with Nat's folks and they really love a good Irish pub.  They seek them out when they're traveling.  Because we're always eager to try new things on our Disney trips, it seemed perfect to head there and give this place a try.  I had ZERO expectations.  And was totally blown away. They had live entertainment and some incredible dancing on a few different stages.  And there's customer participation.  They invited some kids to go up on stage and if you know my kids, you know that the two girls are sooooo different.  One is bashful and very deliberate.  The other is up for just about anything. So, without much encouragement, up the Bird went on stage.  And she danced!  She was the youngest of all the participants, but that didn't stop her.  Afterwards, she got a few stickers and this sweet certificate recognizing her for d...

One of the prettiest sights these eyes have ever seen:  snow falling on the beautifully decorated Hollywood Boulevard while some appropriate-era Christmas song is playing over the loudspeakers. We were told about this 'snow' by my friend Adam and he recommended this time of year for a visit.  We've taken him up on his recommendation a few times now and it never gets old.

I don't know about you, but this just blew my mind.  Up in Canada, Smarties are called Rockets.  And something that is like a cheap M&M are called a Smarties. Weird, right?

I am back this week from a week long visit to Canada at some internal meetings.  And, although this was the first time I'd flown into Canada, I came away liking everything about the experience.  I have been a couple of times including a few road trips to Windsor in my college days (with some Fraternity brothers) and right after (with the Pawlak brothers) and my parents took us to see the Niagara Falls back when I was a kid.  But, this time was different:  it was for work and I was on my own.   We stayed in the Yorkville neighborhood and had a bunch of great meals and walked everywhere during the full week.  I did, even, eat poutine and drank a Labatt's Blue, in addition to a few other Canadian treats.  I'll post about the poutine and candy and such later this week once I dig through my email inbox and have some time!