New Year's Eve with Dr. Crane

And another year passes. I was messing with the phone camera (documenting the holiday lights -- they all get put away tomorrow) and inadvertently caught Niles (David Hyde Pierce) on the tv. We're streaming Frasier these days. Pierce and I were born in the same year and about thirty miles from each other in upstate New York. I'm pretty sure there are many more than six degrees of separation between us.

Holiday lighting.

I'm heading out to the market this morning to pick up the shellfish for our NYE meal of linguini with white clam sauce. In place of clams, we like to use cockles. Happy New Year!

Ye Olde Inn

This guy looks like he's having a tough time choosing his lunch. Beef? Chicken? I would choose pizza.

La Vieille Auberge, Mont Saint-Michel, June 2006.

I'm trying to remember... did Ken and I eat here the night we stayed in a hotel on the Mount? Maybe he'll remember. I think this may also be the hotel we stayed in. The room itself was in another building across the street and a little higher up.

Salty pastures

The bay around the Mont Saint-Michel meets France's mainland in what are called les prés salés, usually translated as salt marshes. But I like "salty pastures." It could be the title of a British sitcom. The prés salés are where certain breeds of sheep graze and the marshes are protected as such. Meat from those sheep is prized as a Norman specialty.

Les prés salés viewed from the Mont. I guess I didn't see any sheep on this day in June 2006.

Speaking of food... There will indeed be a New Year's market in Saint-Aignan on Tuesday. Ken placed an order with the fish monger for a kilo of coques (cockles) and we'll make a white "clam" sauce for linguini on New Year's Eve. He also got some duck legs to have with blackeyed peas on New Year's Day. We're set.

To each his own

Here's Ken taking his own photos of the sands in the bay of Mont Saint-Michel.

We were on a walkway along the ramparts that circle the island. June 2006.

The mornings are almost crisp with temperatures close to freezing. And they're dark as we're covered with a blanket of fog. We never saw the sun yesterday. More of the same is expected through the weekend.

Sand watching

Looking at my blog during the holidays is about as exciting as watching the sand at the Mont Saint-Michel. It might be pretty at first, but it's quickly time to move on to something else.

Visitors to the Mont Saing-Michel admiring the sand. June 2006.

We've started to work on the leftovers from Christmas dinner. Yesterday we had CD2, a repeat of Wednesday. Like love, it was better the second time around. Today we'll have an interlude of something in the Asian style as we plan and plot for the New Year's meals. New Year's Day will be duck and blackeyed peas as is the custom where Ken is from. More so the blackeyed peas and less so the duck. The eve before might be some sort of seafood. Salmon? Cod? Pollock? Cockles in a white wine sauce?

Thanks for stopping by!

One, two, three, go!

I wonder what's going on here?

See Jane run. Run Jane, run. More from the Mont Saint-Michel.

It's Boxing Day in the UK, Canada, and down under. It figures. My gloves are in the shop.

Merry happy ho ho ho!

 Bonnes fêtes de fin d'année !

Happy cactus!

This is the 2024 Christmas card created by our friend Sue in California. She's amazingly creative and talented. I haven't counted recently how many of her cards I've saved over the years. I know I don't have all of them (for some reason). Sometimes her cards are made with her own photos, other times they're orignal works of art like this one. Thank you Sue!