1. Museli bar from my favorite bread lady | 2. Post sleepover snuggle | 3. Birthday cake | 4. Found treasure | 5. Treasured time | 6. Local wildlife at low tide | 7. Unexpected delight | 8. Cheater pasta salad (recipe this week) | 9. Treasure from d… — 1. Museli bar from my favorite bread lady | 2. Post sleepover snuggle | 3. Birthday cake | 4. Found treasure | 5. Treasured time | 6. Local wildlife at low tide | 7. Unexpected delight | 8. Cheater pasta salad (recipe this week) | 9. Treasure from dear friends | 10. The cocktail (still) to be named later | 11. Cooking for the week | 12. Little Violet | 13. Busy day | 14. Refreshing water | 15. Sunday dinner

Poor Neel worked all weekend. How sad is that? Picture his saddest face. He's in the middle of reviewing grants for the NIH and has a Tuesday deadline, so Saturday and Sunday felt like normal weekdays around here.

Un-fun.

Cal and I managed to rally.

Cake and pool and homemade lemonade and salads and doggie walks and birds' nests and steamed clams. We managed well enough without Neel, I suppose.

I spent good part of Saturday sitting around the pool talking about blogging. Why I do it. What it means to me. What I think is important about it (I should have all my blogging classes around the pool!). It's a subject that's dear to my heart, and I never tire of chatting with people about it. If you were sitting around the pool talking about blogging, what would you say?

After that, I spent most of Sunday watching a creativeLIVE Food Photography Workshop taught by Andrew Scrivani who is a food photographer for the New York Times. Have you ever done anything with creativeLive? Their workshops are amazing. You can stream them for free when they are live (which is what I did) or you can purchase them after the fact. I've seen a few (all photography related, but they do other stuff too) and they're phenomenal. It was a three day workshop and I only caught the third day, and I was inspired. Read: I need to get my butt in gear. (Seriously there was so much information in that third day alone, I think if I'd done all three I'd be on total sensory overload. Instead of writing this blog post, you'd find me in a puddle of mush.)

All the while, in the background was the final stage of Le Tour de France, coming into Paris at twilight for the first time ever (to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the tour). Such stunning images of that pretty city. You know, those guys started biking in that race the day we got to Paris. Good Lord. No wonder they dope. And then, this morning as I type this, all eyes on London! It's great fun to see the two cities we were just in and the places we so recently walked so much in the news.

It's time for a new week. Still hot. Still some work, still class. Still some fun. And I finish this post thinking about blogging and photography and wondering, what's next?