My baby blue bike was a gift from my daughter and husband a few years back. Totally unexpected, it brought back exciting memories of my first two wheeler Schwinn in the same colour. Complete with plaid seat, basket and rubber bulb horn, what a wonderful surprise. They thought it would be a good means of…

This is the first year in seven that I have seen significant rain in the desert. Truthfully, we have experienced rain here once or twice, for part of a day, but this year we've had six rainy days. Not in a row, but often enough to interrupt with the usual sunshiny routine. Without the walking,…

While cooking together over the holidays we shared mixed messages from our grandmothers. When you're baking: To save eggs (no doubt from the days of rationing) use one fewer egg and you won't notice the difference. And probably a form of post war overcompensation, my grandmother's rule: always add an extra egg for a richer cake.  It…

The weather in the desert has been unseasonably cool and grey. We've even had several occasions of rain, one for twelve hours straight. Better than the frigid and grey back home that has kept a solid sheet of ice on sidewalks and roads for weeks. There was a video on Vancouver's news of two guys…

This photo sums it up, we call it our Christmas still life: KC, L and I went geocaching and added in some pomelo, tangelo and orange picking. The hand squeezed citrus was combined with prosecco for Christmas morning brekkie. Pictured above are our drinks of choice: Laphroig for M, C and KC, B and L, beer…

BC, our home, is in a deep freeze. Having lived there more than half my life, I don't think I've seen many stretches where it gets under -7C (19.4F). "Oh muffin!" you East and Midwest family and followers are crying. I can hear you. I can hear you from sunny California. Heh heh (evil laughter).…

Do you know your home's walk score? This number weighed heavily in our search for a place to live. Plug in your address on the Walkscore website. The higher the score, the more walkable your neighbourhood. Our previous house had a score of 25 out of 100. This one is a 92, can't do much…

When I managed a family life education, aka "edutainment," program, a popular and highly emotional course was "Moving from the home you have loved."  Last week we drove by our old place, the house that I lived in for the longest period of any place  in my life, and saw the beginning phases of demolition. Several…

Back in Spain for a few days, laying low. I picked it up first, Camel Fever we're calling it. AKA Montezuma's revenge. Was it that wonderful salad or shaking hands with the souk vendors, agreeing on a deal? We thought we were being so careful, Ali Baba and I. In the five days in Morocco…

This was our last day in Marrakech. Half way through our shopping we went back to our riad to drop off our finds passing an open area featuring food items for sale. The chickens were so fresh they were still alive: An escape attempt: We decided to have lunch at first restaurant we visited upon…