We just got home from a weekend in LA to celebrate Jay’s grandma Mildred’s 100th birthday. She’s such an amazing person—funny, full of incredible stories, and still extremely present, even after living in this crazy world for 100 years. It’s hard to even wrap your head around all that she’s lived through: the depression, too many wars, the population of the world growing from 1.6 billion to close to 7 billion. Wow.

Happy birthday Grandma Mildred. Here’s to your 101st year!

Our view in Tuscany

We’re home now and I finally have enough brain power (post jet-lag) to upload some more photos. So I just posted a bunch more photos over here (on Flickr) of the final day we spent in Lake Como, and the 10 nights we spent in Tuscany. We stayed at Jay’s dad’s first cousin’s place in the hills of Massarosa. They’ve lived there for 15 years and have a beautiful b&b, with the gorgeous view you see in the photo above. We did day trips from there—to Lucca (ancient walled city), to the beaches of Viareggio; to Florence, to the hill towns north of Lucca, to a local winery, and to Vinci (birthplace of Leonardo).

Enjoy the photos!

Lake Como View

Since I last posted, we’ve traveled from Amsterdam to Italy. We met up with Jay’s parents in Milan, and yesterday we drove up to Lake Como. I actually did the driving! It wasn’t bad—Jay’s a great navigator, and we only kinda got lost once and almost went to Switzerland!

We’re spending three nights here before we head down to Tuscany. We’re staying in the little town of Tremezzo, which is on the west side of the lake. When Jay and I visited here in 2000, we stayed in Varenna, which is on the east side. There are some lovely little towns here on the west, but unfortunately the main road running up along the lake on this side runs right through the towns, so there is a constant din of traffic. We’re going to head to Bellagio and/or Varenna tomorrow on one of the boats, so it will be interesting to see if they’re still as quiet and peaceful as Jay and I remember from our last visit.

So I’ve posted some photos from the last day or so you can check out (see photo set on Flickr). They mostly include some views of the lake, and our visit to the Villa Carlotta botanical gardens, which are right down the road from where we’re staying:

Villa Carlotta is the most famous public villa of Lake Como, in particular for its centuries-old 70,000sqm botanical gardens. . . . It was built, as a summer home, by Marquis Giorgio Clerici, an important gentleman from the Spanish and Austrian Milan.

The gardens are very beautiful and varied–including bamboo, pines, azealas, citrus fruits, hidden pathways, arbors, etc.

You can see more photos over here.

Thanks uncle Steve!

On the elusive 11 (our car was in the shop) on the way to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Picasso exhibit:

Drinking a cappuccino at Stella’s:

Outside SAM after the exhibit (it was awesome):

Enjoying the view over Puget Sound:

A walk through the Market (Pike Place Pigs):

A fine dinner to come later (after a nap!).

Much love to you Jay! You are the best.

It was quite cold today (mid-20s) so even though it was sunny, the snow stuck around.

Looks like a nice seat:

Watch out:

What’s left on the table (even after a bit melted):

A’s snowman:

J’s snowman:

Icicles:

Before I get way, way behind, I wanted to post something about our camping trip we took in June to Cape Disappointment State Park. It’s at the very south tip of the Washington Coast, right on the Pacific Ocean / Columbia River junction. Jay and I spent two nights there (too short!) in one of their cabins and had a great time exploring the park and the many beautiful hiking trails. It’s the area where Lewis & Clarke “found” the Pacific Ocean, so there’s all sorts of historic information, including a museum / interpretive center.

I’ve posted a more full set of photos here.

If the photos look a little fuzzy, they’re supposed to be that way! I took them with my plastic Diana lens with my SLR camera–my new favorite camera set-up. I’ve been posting a lot of photos recently at my photography website (www.anastasiafuller.com) taken with this lens. I’m really loving it, and loving experimenting with it.

in London (photo by Chris Dent)

On this eve of a new decade / year, here’s a retrospective of 2009 with some of my favorite things. (This is a personal post; check out this blog post for our 2009 biz/Juxtaprose thanks!)

places visited:

• Myvatn Nature Baths, Myvatn, Iceland
• the chocolate stores, galleries, and museums of Paris, France
• wandering through London on a beautiful fall day

concerts / live performances:

• Leonard Cohen (Coachella)
• The Flaming Lips (Marymoor Park)
• Akron/Family (Bumbershoot)

album(s) (in no particular order):

• The Avett Brothers: I and Love and You
• Bill Callahan: Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
• Amadou & Miriam: Welcome to Mali
• Built to Spill: There Is No Enemy
• Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs
• Wilco: Wilco
• The Flaming Lips: Embryonic
• St. Vincent: Actor
• Rodrigo y Gabriel: 11:11
• Mr. Smolin: Bring Back the Real Don Steele
• Akron/Family: Set ‘em Wild, Set ‘em Free
• Taken By Trees: East of Eden
• Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
• Neko Case: Middle Cyclone
• Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
• Leonard Cohen: Live in London

movies (note: I didn’t check the dates; I think these were all 2009; or at least I saw them in 2009):

• Inglorious Basterds
• Man on Wire
• Up
• The Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Extract (just saw this last night; so funny!)

tv (basically didn’t watch any live tv this year; all tv shows were via web streaming / DVD; we’re still 1-2 seasons behind on some of these; shhh):

• Dollhouse
• Damages
• Mad Men
• Battlestar Gallactica (maybe not the ending, but the rest of it was very enjoyable)

books I read this year (not all from 2009; I rarely read books when they first come out):

• Revenge of the Spellmans: Lisa Lutz (the exception to the 2009 pub date; I also read the first draft of The Spellmans Strike Again (coming March 2010!)
• The Girl who Fell from the Sky: Heidi W. Durrow (one of our clients, I got a manuscript version of her book, coming February 2010—definitely keep an eye out)
• What the Dead Know: Laura Lippman
• The Maisie Dobbs series: Jacqueline Winspear
• Innocent Blood: P.D. James (I picked this up at an “English Pub” in Paris, where they had a wall full of English language books)
• The Road: Cormac McCarthy (I don’t think I’m going to ruin the book by seeing the movie)

food / dining:

• Chez Omar, Paris
• all the fresh food from our garden!
• weekly fresh salmon from the Farmer’s Market during the summer, grilled on our grill with freshly picked corn, and a bottle of wine
• John Henry’s, Palm Springs

chocolate (yes, it gets its own category):

• La Chocolaterie de Jacques Genin, Paris (no website, but check out this article)
• Chocolate Mussy, Paris (8 rue du Bourg Tibourg, Marais)

art:

• André Kertéz photography exhibit at the Reykjavik Library (Iceland)
• Ara Güler photography exhibit, Paris
• Ferdinando Scianna photography exhibit, Paris
• Photoquai 2009, Paris
• visiting the Louvre, the Rodin Museum, and seeing all the amazing art in Paris

chance meeting:

• meeting and talking with the fine art photographer Tim Rudman and his wife, Ingrid Rudman, at Lake Myvatn in Iceland; then running into them again, two days later, in a totally different part of Iceland and having another great conversation

spa experience(s):

• Olympus Spa (Lynnwood, WA) – where I spent 6 hours of my 38th birthday!
• all the hot pools of Iceland: Myvatn Nature Baths and the “swimming pools” of Husavik and Reykjavik

None of these things would have been the same had I not shared them with friends, family, a cranky cat, and “strangers” met along the way. Mostly none would have been the same without Jay (I love you!). Looking forward to more adventures in 2010 and beyond.

Fortuitously, Ian (Anastasia’s cousin) is chillin’ at Fine and Full Manor now—and so there’s like a power trio thing going on, except, since it’s all chillin’, it’s not really so much a “power” trio, but like a quantum counter spin / looks like you’re going backwards but it’s really so fast it’s time travel thing—as seen is this most excellent picture:

chillin' with the petz

Thanks to Ian for sending the picture!

Blackcomb Mountain, BC

For the first time ever, Jay and I went on a winter “snow” vacation instead of a winter “sun” vacation. We just got home from a long weekend at Whistler. While not entirely injury free (we are both trying to learn to snowboard, and both had some falls on Saturday), we did have a lot of fun. This set of photos are from the day we went up the mountains on the lifts for some tourist activity. They just built a “peak to peak” gondola for the Olympics that goes between Blackcomb and Whistler mountains — it was quite a view.

We were joined on the trip with Jen, John, Colin, and our friend Jesse (who was John’s snowboard friend, since the rest of us are still beginners).

So, we’ve checked out the feature and it’s very nice—it’s actually an interview with Alli and a photo tour of her kitchen, including some close-ups of her 1924 stove and some cool pix of her house:

Kitchen Tour: Alli’s Vintage Hacienda

There are also a couple Thanksgiving recipes, which are also posted on Alli 411, where you can leave comments.

Check it all out!

This morning we went into Berkeley for a live broadcast and taping of the program "West Coast Live" which is a 2-hour syndicated public radio show. It was great – and I definitely recommend listening to it (you can catch it tonight at 10pm streaming on KCLU). You can also find out more about it here. Lisa was interviewed along with two other authors with interludes of live music and chatting between the hosts. Here’s the line-up:

March 24: Live from the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley

• CRAIG CHILDS, author of House of Rain
• LISA LUTZ , author of The Spellman Files
• ANN CUMMINS, author of Yellowcake
• Music by ANCIENT FUTURE
• The Fabulous Mike Greensill

An interesting thing I noticed as we were hanging out in the "green room" at the Freight & Salvage – there was a lot of writing on the wall (of bands, performers, etc who had been there), and there was this one:

For those of you who have read "The Spellman Files" you know that "Lost Weekends" are a big part of it, so it was auspicious to see this written on the wall.

Also, I’ve included a couple new Ear Reverends’ tracks in there too.

P.S. the new Ear Reverends’s album, Err or Man, is in the works—I shall be announcing its release here in a couple months!