31 Sunday Mar 2013
Posted in Travel
When we purchased our airline tickets we figured we were in trouble. After all, they were hundreds of dollars less than the closest competition. But hundreds of dollars will buy “tons of tapas in Spain,” we said. So we gritted our teeth and went with the cheap seats. It’s only a ten-hour flight, we thought. We can do it.
30 Saturday Mar 2013
Posted in Uncategorized
…off to see the world. (at the Portland airport)
29 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
This is the hamburger I ordered at the Slow Bar in Portland, Oregon today. I wanted this for my last American meal because it is big and juicy and has great beef and two onion rings, which is exactly as many as any mature human can or should eat at once. I know there are probably great burgers in Europe somewhere, but I don’t know how long it will be until I find one.
27 Wednesday Mar 2013
Posted in Travel
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Robin paid in cash. Wads of bills and pocket change. All told: $1,969.47. I carried it to the bank – surreptitiously looking around me as I walked – and dumped it on an unsuspecting teller as if it was contraband. Which in a way, is what it was.
26 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
Nuri Kilani, ca. 2010
A friend of mine died a couple of weeks ago. His death brought his friends – very good friends – together. We cooked together. Drank some beer. Laughed at memories. Exchanged hugs and tears and backslaps and fistbumps. And at one o’clock last Friday night we buried him. Threw his ashes in the air and watched them sparkle in the moonlight.
24 Sunday Mar 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
Tags
We have moved across town to our friend’s flat while she is in Hawaii so that the estate-sale people could organize and tag and display the things we left behind. Robin Caton, our sale maven, suggested I visit the sale at the opening minute – 9 AM – when the most…er, colorful…people push their way in after standing in a chilly early morning queue.
20 Wednesday Mar 2013
Posted in Travel
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OMG! I didn’t mean to sell that! It happens. It happened to us today when we visited the just-posted estate-sale website of our stuff. It’s an exercise in folly. And fate. And, well, surrender.
18 Monday Mar 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
With a sigh of relief, everything destined for our storage unit is now there – and there’s room left over. It’s kismet. However, two disparate storage strategies have emerged, vindicating the Venus-and-Mars interpretation of the gender binary.
17 Sunday Mar 2013
Posted in Travel
We glance around to see what time it is, and the clocks are gone. We go out to sit on the balcony, and the chairs are gone. We look for clothes in the drawers, and the clothes are gone. We sit down to watch Jeopardy, and the television is Just. Not. There.
12 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted in Travel
We’ve collected numerous bars of elegant soap over the years, all destined for future use. You know how it is: you spend a night in a chic hotel, you take home the soap. We’ve visited a few chic hotels in our days; we’ve snitched some pretty elegant soap.
The Expat Almanac 