Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Louis Kahn

And before I lose my wifi connection, a few pics of the the IIM campus designed by Louis Kahn. I haven't seen too many of his buildings. I had mixed feelings about the film My Architect, a documentary made by Kahn's son in which he comes to terms with his father's architecture and personal life (turns out that Kahn had two families and that neither knew of the other until Louis Kahn died...) Leaaving the personal angle aside, the buildings were lovely. It's a modernism that rises from the earth rather than being like a UFO landing from outerspace... It fits its place and purpose without needing any shallow tokens of Indianism or modernism. Must make it a point to see more of Kahn's work...

Don't you want to take one home with you?

Spotted the new Tata Nano in Ahmedabad yesterday. Billed as the 1000-dollar car, it is meant to carry a family of four. I wouldn't mind one of these some day. Last year I drove a grand total of 600 miles or 50 miles a month or 12.5 miles a week. Hey boss, in case you're reading this, it's not that I'm not going to the flugelbindery regularly... It's just that I like public transportation. I wish I had a picture of the way that the Indian family of four gets around now... I'll try to snap a picture and post it soon...

And apologies for the delay in posting. I've been on the road in India. And gotten a year older. And a year wiser. And certainly a year more fabulous...

xoxo

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Time for a facelift?

The old me...



The new me...



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(Art) Miami (Vice)

I'm in Miami! For Art Basel Miami! A strange concept this, Basel Miami, but lots of art to see. Will try to post some pictures soon.

But actually at this minute I'm in a Starbucks -- some last minute flugelbindery came up -- I'm being driven crazy by early Christmas tracks...

Must get out and see some art!

b....b....

Much to think about...

The 'Thinker' and Female Figurine From Cernavodă
Fired Clay
Hamangia, Cernavodă, 5000-4600 BC
National History Museum of Romania, Bucharest: 15906, 15907

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P.S. Of course -- what was he thinking about? My interpretation in the comments!

The lost art of letter writing

certainly existed in the past. I've heard so much about these letters, heard bits of them quoted, well here's a chance to read more than a bit. They are fully cross-indexed and also include images when they are referred to in the letters. What a treasure trove!

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Seven of my favorite things

Jane, over at her lovely blog The Nearness of Distance, tagged me to list seven of my favorite things. Oh! so many ways I could with this. Big, broad concepts and categories, or super-micro specifics. I'm enjoying thinking about this list so much, I might do 7 seven lists! But here's a first crack:

1. I love hazelnut ice cream, often accompanied with pistachio. I'm easily swayed by other flavors (had a heady babà-al-rhum over the summer in Italy -- I had to have it every night I was in town...), but I always come back to my true (ice cream) love, hazelnut.
2. I do love Champagne. It's a recent love. Of course, I would always drink it on those special occasions - New Year's, weddings - but in London I discovered as an everyday going-out drink. It's not that I uncork a bottle at home (though I should! and I recently came upon a stash of superbly priced half-bottles...), but if I'm in that situation of having a drink before dinner, rather than a glass of white wine or an American cocktail, I find myself asking for Champagne. I know the French will shudder, but even a Champagne cocktail makes happy.
3. Puris and shrikhand are one of my favorites since I was a child. Puris are a Indian bread, which is deep fried until it puffs up and becomes crispy. And they are incomparable when you get them straight from the frying pan. Well made, they are not too oily. You eat them with whatever is in your plate, but if you happen to have shrikhand, then -- joy! Shrikhand is Maharashtrian and Gujarati dessert made from strained yogurt and flavored with safron. It is the alchemy of simplicity. That's it, but what a combination -- and then if you have the puris you are truly set for bliss.
4. Carnegie Hall is one of my 3 favorite places in New York, and thus by extension the world. This is my way of including classical music -- I was tempted to pick a favorite recording or performer, but next time. Right now I would like to savor the thought of being enveloped in the hall's generous acoustic. It's the kind of place that involves you in the music. There's no sitting back with analytic distance. Even at the back of the hall, the music reaches up to your ear.
   
5. I love Room 56 at the National Gallery in London. When I have only a few hours in London, then I'll stop in here.
6. I love walking in cities. I'm an active person - I used to run, and still do versions of this on the modern torture machines. I drive, a fast car, carefully. But really my favorite method of locomotion is walking. And my favorite place to do it is in a city. Any city will do, but hopefully some place with an interesting street life. It doesn't have to beautiful, but that is fine too.
7. And why not admit..

xo

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A New York Dream Sequence

... might look like this. Late afternoon, late autumn, soft sunlight. And no one on the street! Until you remember it is Thanksgiving! Mutatis mutandis like Stockholm in mid-June at 4 am...

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Design Real

What New York Is All About*

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* An absurdly grand statement, of course. But New York is like a hologram. Break off any piece of it, and you still have the whole....

Last poem

It's Jane's fault really. Earlier this week she linked to this song from the film Les choses de la vie. If you like French "songs" (you know that spoken singing that the French manage so well -- you know one of these days I'm going to learn French and launch a career as a singer) and melancholy songs, then this is the track for you... as delicious as pressing into a bruise (sorry for that image).

That got me into thinking of other sad songs which I enjoy so much. And when I mean sad, I don't mean operatic sad, which is exultantly sad, but exactly the melancholy of chanson. Of course, some of what makes these songs so affecting is within the songs, but some is also within the listener: memories, associations, thinking about what you've been through - perhaps with a "thank goodness that's over" - but reliving it in the process. Perhaps I'll share my full list (it's actually pretty short right now, six tracks, but I'm working on it).

But for now I wanted to share this one. But be warned, proceed with caution. This melancholia is contagious!

"I Have Dreamed of You so Much"
Robert Desnos, Terezina Concentration Camp, May 1945

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real. Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make your dear voice come alive again?

I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body. For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many days and years, I would surely become a shadow.

O scales of feeling.

I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up. I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and face of some passerby.

I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.

(Translation from here.)

* * *

And now head over here to hear Sophie Auster sing it:



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P.S. Sophie Auster uses portions of her father's translation of this poem.

At last a few words

You've noticed the obvious by now, and made your deductions: more pictures, less words. Not that there's anything wrong with that, not at all. Some of the best blogs are only pictures. But my thing has been words (all told a wise choice given my limited skills with a lens).

So today I promise you words but no pictures...

* * *

I was out last night for dinner with a group of Italians. My friend M was in town (or more precisely my friend's wife's sister, but my friend's wife is also my friend, and she being Italian and I Indian her sister is my friend too -- you know how it is). In any case, she had her own flugelbindery going on, so I joined a group dinner, trying to blend in and managing like a turkey among penguins (strange image, doesn't really fit, but just liked the image).

What I noticed immediately that everyone was dressed the same, the men at least, and not the same in the sense of a uniform (though that would have been fantastic!), but in the sense of very similar choices.

It was a mild day in Boston (for November... 14C). Most people on the street were without a coat. I had my coat open, as I'm a bit sensitive to the chill. The Italians were all wearing down-filled coats, like the Michelin Man, but more stylish, and no one was was opening that zipper an inch... Those who wore glasses all had heavy squarish frames (I was thinking Marcello Mastroianni in 8 1/2 but looking back I see that his frames were less square). Beneath the coats, most had sweaters with a particular collar (which I have an instinct is mock something or the other...) There was less uniformity in the shoes, but more than a few pairs of suedes.

Another undeniable fact was that all these office penguins where pretty stylish, as penguins go. Or what I mean more precisely is that they were more stylishly dressed than their American brother flugelbinders. The basics were right: good material, well pressed, and the right size. On this theme, impressive how men with little bellies and thinning hair manage to convey that slightly dapper impression as well.

I'm sure there's something to be learned here, but I'm not sure what. That if you're in the right herd, the herd mentality can be good? Or perhaps the opposite -- no herd is worth following. Or perhaps it was emblematic of what office work can do to you. Not sure, not sure at all.

But when the professor began singing after taking a big sip from his Scotch, I knew everything would be fine.

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Oooooo... I've been bad

Sorry loyal readers, I've been bad, bad, bad. This is one of the longest gaps in my postings ever... I've had good reasons. The flugelbindery has been working around the clock, and I've been binding harder than in a long time... Excuses, excuses.

But I do have this for you... From my early morning drive to Montréal, and part of my child hood that I miss living in the cities that I now do: The cold autumn air that greedily strokes your face, reminding you that soon you will be in his dominion. And the melancholy squawking of birds as they flee south toward sunnier climes.

A friend of mine asked me recently, why don't the birds just stay in the warm south? A question I am contemplating myself these days...

BB

Yes, but is it art?

As promised, at last, a few images from The Frieze Art Fair... I always enjoy art fairs because you get to see it all. Frieze is pretty blue chip, big galleries and famous names. But still, there's fun stuff to be found.

One of the pieces that seemed to get the most attention in terms of foot traffic was this first piece (Questions to my father 6, Karl Haendel). People would stop in front of it and read through it all -- it takes quite a while. The crowd gathered in front makes a pretty successful work of art by some measures. But then again, I'm not sure -- is it art? Ponder that while looking at a few other images below...


Art boys and girls, always rushing around...


Except when stopping to chat:


Or to have coffee (or Champagne!)


This one, made from chairs won a prize (getting into the Tate's collection):



And this made me laugh:


Is there an implication here for the balance between the genders?



And surely the most fantastic piece was this... The picture sort of gives it away...


When you approach, you see the lights, but when you look in:


It's bottomless. I really want one of these for my next apt. I lacked the needed 140,000 (don't recall the currency, but does it matter? Pounds? Euros...) So apparently did the Tate.


And an Ian Davenport is always fun. Those lines and colors, hypnotizing...

BB

bb in b, or back on the road

I was back on the road this week, but a different kind of trip. Those of you who have been reading along since the beginning know of my flugelbindery road trips (think very short trips, at someone else's expense, the kind of trip where everyone you encounter at the airport is suddenly very polite to you, and you keep reminding yourself "It's not me. It's not me.")

This was mainly personal. Well, there was some work in Barcelona, but the two extra days weren't hard work, not all. And the two days in Germany, doing some wine tasting (of the swallowing, not spitting variety), and the 3 days in London (among other things visiting the Frieze Art Fair --more pictures soon), all of this was just for fun!

But now the somber time approaches. The return journey. True, cheered by glass of the bubbly, but still, time to get home, back to work, and back on that torture machine known as the elliptical trainer...

But more soon!

xoxo

BB

A Serenade to Myself

Yesterday on my commute from New York to Boston I launched iTunes to listen to music while I worked. I used to do this often, but these days work in silence, except while on trains or buses, since it not only blocks out sounds but transports the mind.

For reasons unknown, I decided to type Serenade into the search box, and thereby created this play list for myself. It has its oddities, but really worked quite well.

Especially startling and pleasing was the transition from the Mozart Wind Serenade to the Serenade from Shostakovitch String Quarter No. 15, to Frank Sinatra and the Moonlight Serenade, to Dvorak's Serenade.

There don't seem to be that many serenades in popular music, at least by explicit name.

It might have been one of those "you had to be there to appreciate it" moments...

BB

P.S. What incredible articulation Sinatra has -- he takes as much care with his consonants as the best singers in lieder...

Last night, at last

Last night, at last, I made it up to the High Line, the elevated freight line that was built in the 1930s abandoned around 1980 and has recently been converted into an elevated urban park. I know I wasn't at all original in looking up at the High Line snaking its way from the Meat Packing District up to the 30s, wishing I could find someway to sneak up. Because in the decade after beign abandoned it came to be colonized by plant life -- native grasses took over and if you looked down on it from a nearby building it looked like a ribbon-field running through the city.

The new renovation has kept that feel to it, and the native grasses, just streamlining things and making connections to new builds and creating entry points.

I only had my cellphone camera with me and caught these two pics:





What was going on in there, we were meant to wonder and we did...

BB

Venice Biennale

At last, long overdue, a few images on the Venice Biennale. I wish I had more to say... Having been for the 8 years, there is purely the sportive aspect: will, grit, endurance, surivival (you can imagine the t-shirt -- I survived number 53!). Having said that, this year didn't seem to me quite up to previous years. My own yardstick is how infrequently I was tempted to reach for my camera to create a mental cue card for a fascinating work of art. Having said that, it's big (BIG), so there is always something worth seeing.

But first, taking a step back, way, way back, here's a few images from Pompei. This was the second time I visited and I enjoyed it even more than last time. I'm always captivated by the decorative motifs -- timeless:



Somehow I had never visited the amphitheatre. Well here it is:


And now Venice: Tomas Saraceno "Galaxies forming along filaments..."


Susan Hefuna, "Building" (she works on onion-skin type paper, layering images)



Hans-Peter Feldmann, "Shadow Play"



Sadamasa Motonaga, "Water work"


Mona Hatoum, who I first saw at the Biennale four years ago was back at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia. I wish I had taken more pictures. Much of the collection is decorative 19th C art, where she had brilliant mixed her work into the collection, subtly and subversively. Then she had some newer work on display as well. This cloud of barbed wire was amazing to look at:


Now I've got to get back to work... cooking work that is...

BB

Impressionism

{a fine activity for a cloudy autumn day is to remember the days of summer...}

{photo credit: me! please do not reproduce without permission}


{photo credit: Tran Huu Dung via Dennis Dutton}

That it should come to this...

Last week I was swilling fiano and falanghina, was almost satiated with buffalo mozzarella and even the very fresh and wonderful fior di latte, was touring the biennale like a jaded 10-year veteran (whilst retaining my own native enthusiasm), was eating brioche for breakfast, pasta for lunch, and nice salads and vegetables for dinner (and discovered myself amazing not to have gained a pound while traveling), was sunning my... wrists* on some rocky and sandy beaches, was wandering Rome and Venice with the keys to my kind friends' apartments safely tucked away in my bag, was charmingly overcharged by a Roman taxi driver**, and was invited for a quick coffee at the late Sol Lewitt's Amalfi coast house*** and was looking at his hand-drawn wall decorations and drawing table...

Today I am bouncing in along the motorway in a Greyhound bus from Boston to New York.****

BB

* I sunburn really badly and very quickly. So personally the early 20th C swimsuits are just fine for me... from neck to ankles all nicely covered... It does dampen the sex appeal a little, but what's one to do?

** Have you ever been swindled, known it was happening, but somehow enjoyed the other person going through motions of trying to fool you that you don't object? The taxi driver has the middle seat down covering the meter. Then he mumbled something about extra charges. But he was so much like Roberto Benigni in Last Night that I didn't want to burst his buble. His patter was so obvious, but charming nonetheless...

*** Sol Lewitt is in my personal pantheons of greats. Of course, not only me, but conceptual art is a specialized cup of tea outside the art world, but when I first saw his installation at Dia: Beacon I knew it was my kind of art. Since then I have become something of fanatic. Anyway, Sol Lewitt's widow invited a friend to spend the week at their house, and he invited a friend, who in turn invited me. Lewitt had a half-dozen drawings executed on his walls. And I got to see his drawing table (pictues next time -- not much to see but so inspiring!)

**** In fairness to both Greyhound and myself I should mention that it is one of the new coaches: plugs, internet, and no dirt on the seats. What happened to Champagne cocktaisl cheap white wine on the shuttle? What happend to Amtrak? Priced itself to irrelevance sadly: 5 times the price as the bus and no internet. I'll take it on a snow day, but otherwise, unlikely.

P.S. Could someone who is wiser in such matters please explain the Beatles song "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)" to me? I think I get it, but it requires explanation. Today I'm listening to Bach (Well-Tempered Clavier) and the Beatles, a pretty much old-school combination I must admit, but BB has more than a thread of old school in the spine...

Back to things

Dear all,

Just got back yesterday, and today find myself immersed in that least-favorite sport, the quick-catch-up... Already on my way to Boston after a quick stop in NYC...

Will soon post on the Italian adventure... But in brief it was wonderful!

xoxo

BB

An ice-cream Rorschach test

I was just out at the local ice cream store where I confronted a few annoyances, much bliss, and some random musings. So taking these in order...

A few annoyances: It's one of the gelaterias that is a heavy-weight foreign import, and makes much of this. A few years ago when they opened there were lines down the block. This I accepted with resignation (by just not going -- no ice cream is worth queuing that much for). But it must be said that they achieve something which seems so simple (because so many gelaterias in Italy manage to do it - and in other European countries as well, all to varying degrees of skill of course), but remains elusive at almost all the places I've been to in the US or Canada: the ice cream actually tastes like the substance for which it is named. So the dark chocolate has more intense chocolate flavor than biting into a bar (along with the icy creminess of course). The pistachio tastes like the nut, even more so than it looks like it (no need for pistachio ice cream to look especially green...)

(While I'm on this point, do you mind if I digress? No? Many thanks... There are two other things that seem so, so, so (!) simple yet are almost impossible to find outside Italy: a well drawn espresso and properly cooked pasta. Now I'm not going to get into the North-South debate in Italy -- whether you like your coffee in Naples or prefer it Turin is up to you, but there are at most a few places in NYC where you can get that kind of coffee. And no, I don't mean one of those obsessive Berkeley/SF style coffees, where the coffee roster mutters a dozen prayers over the roasting machine, and where the barista is hunched over the machine with the concentration of a scientist attempting cold fusion... Of this type there are now perhaps a dozen in New York. They'll make you a cappuccino with a 12-leafed frond on it, and even the macchiato has has at least a four-leafed frond on it. No, I want to pull up to the bar, order my coffee, get it a minute later, drink it in peace for a minute or two, pay, and then leave... And preferably in that order...

The other mystery is why it is so hard to get properly cooked pasta outside Italy. Not saying you can't get it, but it is sufficiently elusive that this alone can be the acid test of an Italian restaurant's quality. But I won't rave any longer....)

So getting back to that annoyance, they won't let you combine more than two flavors in the the smallest size take-away container. For that you must order the large. Why? There's room enough. And if you ask for two flavors on a cone, they put one scoop on top of the other (horror!) rather than the two flavors side by side, in harmony, where they belong...

Much bliss: As you've gathered, the stuff is good. Really good. Great, I'm not sure (bear in mind, great for me is truly the ultimate standard -- great food stays in my mind for days if not weeks, not unlike a great work of art or unfortunately the latest pop-tart tune I heard on the soundtrack at the gym), but good certainly...

And the musings: Let it be in the form of a question: Suppose you had two flavors, side by side, in a cup. Assume also you know exactly how each tastes (if necessary, then with a quick pre-taste). Then how would you go about eating the ice cream? I can think of 3 distinct ways, but I'm sure there are more... And I believe each one reveals something essential about your personality. Leave your reply in the comments, where I'll post my answer in a few days...

From all of this digressional ranting, you have gathered that I'm in need of a holiday. But succor is at hand in the form of an airplane ticket to Italy... South here I come! And North, you won't have to wait long either...

Have a great tail end of the summer everyone... More soon!

xoxo

BB

You'll cringe. You'll love it.

(Be sure to watch at least around 3'48" in the second clip....)

So much to love about the Eameses. Though you'll cringe every time the interviewer emphasizes Charles and puts Ray in the position of being the "woman standing behind the man", you have to love that wonderful 1950's formal diction and elocution. I would love to learn to speak that way, if only to deploy it for the course of an evening....

(I know I got this clip from some blog I read regularly, but can't remember which. If it's you, or if you know, please remind me so I can appropriately credit the source...)

BB

It's August. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it...

Ah, the month is marching along, left -right, left-right (or do I mean left-left-left-right-left... there must be some official military way of doing these things, no?) so quickly, so quickly. If I can continue my usual habit of mixing metaphors here, the sand has reach that point when suddenly it all falls through the hour glass. Hmmm, while my tan has been improving, my writing not...

Since words aren't quite working, here's a few snippets of the last few weeks:

* How BB tans in the summer. Normally, I don't, endowed as I am with the benefits of a naturally tinted skin. But did pick up quite a tan while earning my motorcycle license, 6 hours a day on the "range" (a road range, sandwiched between an incineration plan and low-security prison). This probably deserves further comment. See next point.

* Mid-life crisis not in progress: really, I am planning much better things for a mid-life crisis. Just thought it would be a good thing to know. After all, who knows when you might have to ride on the back of someone's chopper?

* Road trip: Up to Beacon, NY, which all of you who will be in NYC but who haven't don't it must do, to see Dia:Beacon. A wonderful museum of conceptual art focusing just on a few artists...

* Opening of the NYC showroom of the Tesla (the first electric car produced in the US).

* And a trip to Italy coming up soon!

Hope the congé is going wonderfully for all of you!

xoxo

BB

On the inside looking out, on the outside looking in...

On the way to Beacon, NY

The other B

Gentle reader,

You've been wondering where I am and what I've been up to. I've been wondering the same.

I'm still not sure, but I'll take a stab at it. I'm in the other B. Not the BB B, the other one, Boston. Growing a little weary of summer in the city, I decided it was time to visit my country home (also known as my little apartment in Boston). The same flight from summer had the beneficial byproduct of reminding my employers that I still exist. Of course, I've been working the whole summer long from New York, but in these days of automation an employer might begin to suspect that all the files I'm posting and reports I am producing might somehow be the byproduct of an automation scheme. A little face time with the boss, not a bad thing really...

On the plus side, I've got a little more space here in Boston than New York, so I've been cooking (yes, and being cooked for). I've got my car, so little half day trips out to the coast or the shore are all feasible. All in all it's been nice.

I'll have a few pictures and a more detailed update soon.

In the meanwhile, hope you're all having a summery summer.

xoxo

BB

Bad hair day

I'm having a bad hair day. I know it's a weak excuse for a blog post, but really for me it's quite an issue.

It's not that my hair looks terrible. It's just that I woke up today and no matter what I try my hair comes out looking like it did in 1985. I did consider the possibility that I was caught in some sort of time warp (and even more fleetingly consider that I might be getting younger rather than older), but no luck on either front.

And you know what's worse? No one noticed!

* * *

Perhaps they were being too polite to say anything? But didn't they notice this big wavy flip that has taken root on my scalp? Perhaps my new glasses were distracting them from noticing. It was one of those days when I said to myself, lucky I don't have to look nice today! But wait, don't I want to look nice every day like one of those creatures who inhabit the streets of Paris with an elegantly bored expression on their face? 

Speaking of that, I've actually gotten good at a related expression, that of looking on with interest as though I'm uninterested - you know, one of those I happen to be looking, but truly I could care less looks? The key here is that you shouldn't look bored and uninterested, but instead alert albeit disinterested. Noticing things without being curious, taking it all in with at most a slight flicker that any of it really matters. Not scowling, not pleasantly vacuous, but self-contained and neutral. It's the kind of look that is usually turned on me by someone who is too impossibly elegant to bothering looking at me. 

But even though I'm not too impossibly anything, I've been working up the look. And you know what? Sadly or happily it seems to work. I can make shop assistants come running with a glance and dismiss even the haughtiest of their species with the slightest quiver.

But of course only on a good hair day, not to mention a regular hair day, and not even to begin to think about a day like today, a bad hair day.

BB

Found: Summer

For those, like me, who have been looking for it high and how, I can confirm that it still exists: summer. It is mid-July, and he has been playing coy (why should it always be a she who plays coy? I know many a he that is an expert at this game...) but has finally decided that it's time to come out and play.

Friday was a nice enough day, but then there were the inevitable sprinkles of rain that we have become used to here in LondoNY. But Saturday and Sunday the skies opened, the sun shone through, and we were all very happy indeed.

True, I didn't make much of Saturday's sun. Went to the gym, went to the movies (saw the new Woody Allen film, which is not as bad as everyone says but not as good as one would hope), had some quiet dinner at home. I had been thinking to drag some some friends into the park to see the fireworks, which this year were in the Hudson River so the aforementioned park in this case would be Riverside Park. But living in that part of town, I saw police barricades forming, boys in blue streaming into and out of the park, and just about everyone else streaming in. I decided it wasn't quite for little old me and contented myself with listening to the booms in the distance.

Sunday was an equally glorious day, but this day I decided to grasp this summer by the...ah... hands (my metaphors are slipping badly here and veering into dangerous terrain...) and head into the park with friends for a picnic. It was warm but not hot, quite still. We found a shady little hill and listened to the mixing of music from Summer Stage and a nearby brass band. We sipped Alsation wine grape juice (wine is forbidden in the park -- didn't you know? And I'm not the kind of person to decant wine into water bottles, am I?), enjoyed the sun, wondered about the motives of a twenty something girl who was wandering around with a pet cheetah on a leash (ok - not exactly - it was one of those crosses between a wild cat and domestic cat that have become very popular lately), and enjoyed a leisurely afternoon.

And so summer has been found. And let's hope he's not letting go, just yet.

BB

I know... I do feel guilty

Gentle reader(s),

I know I should feel guilty about this situation, and all I can say in my defense is that I do. The situation is one you know. You commit; you make promises; you don't quite show. One party feels let down, the other guilty...

Of course I'm not talking about weddings, or business, or anything like that, but of course the little ol' blog, marching along after almost two years (wait, did I miss a birthday? are we 2 now?)...

It's a been a good summer, busy with good things. But while I've been redoubling at the gym, begun to cook more regularly (and to allow myself to be cooked for ;-) ), been working pretty hard, been drinking lots of rose and white even some lightly chilled reds, I've been letting the blog putter along without enough direction. But like a two year old, it's not quite ready to fend for itself.

But I'll be back soon with more fun and more reports on what's been up...

Hope you're all having a grand summer (which I think here has finally begun)...

xoxo

BB

Postcards from London

Sorry to keep up this lazy approach to blogging -- but promise to be back to my verbose self soon!

xoxo

BB

Postcards from Paris