Combo Toaster/Toaster oven

Crummy seventies commercials! Sometimes I feel a strange sense of nostalgia for the extreme dreary boringness of that time...

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The Wardrobe of Foulard

Now that fall is here, Foulard can again dress in the the manner to which he has become accustomed. I got back in the habit of wearing a (jacket and) tie to work a year or so, and once you start, it's not something you can easily quit. If you have a desk job like I do (see the picture of my office in the previous post) it's pretty easy to manage--not so much if you have a job that involves actual physical labor.

This summer was a particularly miserable one, with temperatures actually getting up to 100° in Seattle. Since I have a 20-minute walk to work, anything but survival dressing was out of the question.

Now that the seasons have changed, my walk is a pleasant part of my day--the part where I gear up for work and wind down afterward. Getting to wear a jacket and tie (and raincoat if appropriate) makes it even better, since I'm a boulevardier by nature.

The only problem is that I can't find a place to lunch on Pill Hill that lives up to my wardrobe...

Mr. Big Shot's Office

This is where Foulard goes so that people will pay him! There's a big tree outside the window that's getting nice and fall-colorsy...

Trip to New York, 1974

Stephanie's comments about the difficulty and expense of taking a family of four to Paris got me thinking and trying to remember what made vacations to big cities interesting to me when I was a little kid (i.e. under 10) in the seventies. In particular, I remembered a trip to New York and Washington D.C. that my family took in the summer of 1974, when I was eight years old. We drove to my grandmother's apartment in Charleston, West Virginia, and then took the train up to DC and then to New York (if I remember correctly). Here are the details that I remember about "The Big Apple":

Seeing The Magic Show on (or off?) Broadway, starring Doug Henning, and buying a box of Jordan Almonds at the theatre.

Getting a cheap (under $5.00) set of four reproduction movie posters from a book store: King Kong, Dracula (both went up on my bedroom wall at home--they were both very important entities to me), Frankenstein (given to my best friend as a trip souvenir) and Gone With the Wind (discarded, of course).
Going to FAO Schwarz (didn't get anything, but saw how the other half lived) before it was a national chain.

Got an issue of Shazam! comics that I had missed, at some Times Square magazine shop that sold back issues (exactly what kind of store it was is a little unclear to me, but I was very pleased to get my comic)

Having chocolate cake and ginger ale at the museum (Metropolitan, I think)

Zum Zum restaurant (in the Pan Am building, but I don't remember that detail)

Most of our family trips weren't that exciting, and they all involved long stretches of time in the car, since I didn't fly until a few years later, and then flew all the time, solo, after my parents' divorce...

This button is like the Mark of Cain*--it means you are an unaccompanied minor, and will be held prisoner in a 'hospitality room' at the airport between connections. After a couple of trips like this, I managed to emancipate myself, at least while traveling.

*or an albatross around your neck, or a scarlet A...

Café au Dôme

This is one of my favorite places to be--having le petit dejeuner at Le Dôme on Montparnasse.  This isn't my photo, but it's exactly what it looks like.  Yum!

Funky Fanfare

Here's a video someone created for one of my favorite songs: Funky Fanfare (aka Soul Thing), by Keith Mansfield. 

I think this is the secret to a perfect Beyonce video, too: you don't have to listen to her crappy songs!