Tant de Brouillard – Foggy Morn in Pensacola
I learned a new word today, le brouillard, from a blogger who liked my Pensacola parade post. I always take a look to see, and this time, it was like taking a brief vacation to a place I love – the villages of France, and the morning market, or marche. His blog is My French Heaven, and he writes in French and English, good exercise for those of us who need to polish up our language skills. Warning: the photos on his blog are EXPLICIT. You will want to eat those oysters, vegetables and sweets right off the page.
He was waiting, this morning, for ‘le brouillard se dissipe’ and I smiled because on my way home from the early service this morning, I had to stop and take some photos of foggy Pensacola and the foggy bayou:
If, in the midst of this crazy time of the year, you can give yourself a small gift and a short virtual vacation, take a moment to have a cup of green tea and visit my friend Stephane at My French Heaven.
Great Weather for the Pensacola Christmas Parade
The weather in Pensacola is crazy right now, after a couple months of cooling temperatures, we are up in the 70’s during the days and down in the 60’s at night, maybe the 50’s – it is so warm that our aloe is blossoming, she thinks it is spring.
The good news is that the Pensacola Christmas Parade is tomorrow night, and it looks like it will be a balmy evening with NO RAIN! We are looking forward to taking our grandson – this will be his third Christmas Parade, but this is the first time he is really walking and talking, and we think the sound and lights (it always starts with the motorcycle police and the fire engines blasting and all their emergency lights spinning) are going to blow him away. This year he will be able to shout “beads! beads!” and scramble with the other kids for beads and candies; the parade is a wild mix of Christmas and Mardi Gras. It is a hilarious experience, and we are eager to see it through his eyes.
“Do You Think You Would Move To Seattle?”
“If anything happened to me, do you think you would move to Seattle?” AdventureMan asked, knowing the heat and long humid summers in Pensacola are hard on me. What are the clues? Maybe my grumbling and complaining, maybe that I won’t walk in the garden with him because of the heat and humidity, the snakes, the mosquitoes, the red ants, LOL.
I really love Seattle. I love it that women of all ages can wear jeans and look comfortable in their own skin. So many of those stoic Scandinavian women don’t even bother with make-up anymore, so secure are they. They don’t color their hair. They are comfortable to be exactly who they are. They walk. They are like the French; they get their exercise in their daily life by walking and keeping active. They read books and discuss them. They make interesting political choices. Yes, I really like Seattle.
On the other hand . . . this is one of only two times I saw the sun when I was in Seattle:
It rained. Sometimes it rained more lightly, sometimes it drizzled, and now and then it poured. It rained particularly hard and cold one night as I was trying to get my Mom into a restaurant and we had to park far away. And here is the weather forecast for Seattle today from Weather Underground:
Weather Underground Forecast for Tuesday, December 04, 2012. Another strong Pacific storm will slam into the West Coast Tuesday, renewing rain and high elevation snow for areas that were hit hard by three storms in the past week. This storm will be slightly farther north than the previous storms, bringing areas of heavy rain and high elevation snow from Washington through the San Francisco Bay Area. The heaviest precipitation is expected to fall in Washington and Oregon, but heavy rain is possible in the far northern part of California.
Pensacola is truly lovely from October to March . . . yesterday was in the 70’s. It was wonderful to see the sun 🙂
Brrrrrrrrrr . . .
It’s COLD this morning, 42°F, 5°C, and I have donned my long pink flannel nightgown. I grew up in flannel nightgowns, which are not very attractive, but they are nice and warm. When they are brand new, they are too hot, my current one is about half-old, and I have one that I know I need to part with – it is so thin it tears at the slightest encouragement – but I love them when they get old and thin, LOL!
Once I make the leap to scrap one of these trusty flannel nightgowns, they are great for polishing silver. I know, I know, who polishes silver anymore? My sister Big Diamond says she puts her silver in the dishwasher, and uses it every day because people just don’t entertain formally as we once did.
Living in a place that’s warm most of the time, my flannel nightgowns don’t get a lot of wear and are lasting a lot longer than they used to. Ditto all my beautiful winter clothes. Vanity, vanity, I spent money of beautiful wools in Germany, Austria and England for hard winters back in Edmonds, WA, and now I have a closet full of beautiful winter clothes that I rarely get a chance to wear. Today, I can pull out an old friend and wear it!
Fairbanks, Alaska or Brazil
I would have loved to be able to actually watch and see when the actual 2 millionth visitor visited, but as it does, life got in the way. There were things that needed doing, people that needed time and attention, and I by the time I got back to check, I had already gone over.
Using StatCounter, I was able to go back 78 people and figure out that it was either the visitor from Brasil or a visitor from Fairbanks, Alaska.
A couple times, I have thought I would quit blogging, like when I hit 5 years, then six, or maybe when I hit 2 million hits . . . Now, I don’t know. There are times when it is hard to get inspired, hard to think of anything I might have to say that you might find interesting, too.
I have a little trick. When I am stumped, I think of our aqua aerobics group in Doha, Qatar. We weren’t very serious, but we were very committed. We had to show up because the others counted on us. Our motto was “any exercise is better than no exercise” and on very cold days in January, exercise counted as sitting in the hot tub and kicking. We talked to pass the time, and not to think about exercising. We talked about books we had read, dishes we had cooked, movies we have seen, and events in the news. So when I can’t think of anything much to say, I think about my friends, the Aqua Babes (LOL!) and I can usually come up with something.
A long time ago, in Kuwait, there was a blogger called (something) Red, I followed, and she thought about quitting and asked us to give her reasons why or why not. I remember writing that we blog because it’s what we do, we write because it is something in us that needs to be written. Until I wrote that to her, I didn’t even know that I thought that. I guess that is why I keep on, because there is something in me that needs to do what I am doing, and when I don’t need to do it, I will stop.
First Winter Weather Coming
From Weather Underground:
AdventureMan will be pulling out his long underwear, LOL!
Tomatoes and Peppers!
Suddenly, a cold front is pushing into Florida, and in Pensacola the day dawned . . . well, not crisp, but almost fresh! Tonight it is supposed to get below 70°F, which is significant because when night temperatures go below 70°F, tomato blossoms set fruit.
We were in Zambia when we might normally have started our tomatoes, so AdventureMan started them in later June, from seed. He has a glorious crop of different kinds of tomatoes growing, and it appears, so far, knock on wood, to be our best crop of tomatoes ever, ripening now that the temperatures are under 90°F in the daytime. We also have a beautiful crop of peppers, one so hot that when I started cutting it to include in a soup, I started having trouble breathing and decided that one was probably not a good one for me. I like peppers, but I think I am allergic to one of them.
I am starting to feel alive again! Cooler temperatures give me so much more energy.
We had a wonderful, rainy summer, and now it is time for the fun gardening time.
Wind Map
My sister Sparkle posted this site – and she is right, it is amazing. Just look at how the hugeness of Isaac is still drawing wind and power from the Gulf states, well into the heartland of the US:
When you go to the website, Wind Map, it is actually animated, and you can watch the winds flow over the nation. Wow. Thanks, Sparkle.
Wind Advisory, High Surf Advisory for Pensacola
Woke up this morning to more wind and grey skies, occasional rain, more of the same. We are still in an outer band – as is South Carolina, LOL. This storm is going to effect a lot of states before it finally clears out.
These warnings are from Weather Underground, my favorite weather site.
High Wind Advisory
High Surf Advisory
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