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.
05 Tuesday Mar 2013
“Shambles” is much too nice of a word to describe our apartment — or our lives, for that matter — as we remove our worldly goods from closets and shelves and box them up for sale and storage. In a two-minute video, Louise conducts a tour of our Portland apartment — or what’s left of it — 25 days before we begin the expat life.
27 Wednesday Feb 2013
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
“Won’t you get tired of good weather all the time?” That was my friend Doyle, an Oregon native like me – and like me, a man of webbed feet and hooded raincoats.
22 Friday Feb 2013
Every evening Louise puts her loose change in the bank pictured above, a gift from her son Ted when they were going through a “Pinky and the Brain” phase in 1993. Along with my loose change (I use a classy a wicker basket), we had amassed what we called the “Round the World Fund.” Today, 36 days from departure and after a combined ten years of collecting pocket change, it was time to cash in. We anticipated thousands. What a great way to hit the road!
14 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in Sidebar
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Louise and I do have day jobs. She’s a writer and I’m a publisher, and today — as if we have nothing else to do a month before we depart — we published our first collaborative book.
06 Wednesday Feb 2013
While Louise and I dance on the rim of sanity, impatiently contemplating our departure 52 days from now, a brief diversion…
29 Tuesday Jan 2013
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
If you could see me now, you’d know that I’m staring at my feet as they draw bashful circles in the dust, basking in the flattery that is The Versatile Blogger Award. We were nominated for it yesterday by those maharishis of travel blogging (36 years!), James and Terri Vance of gallivance.net (who have also received the award). Thank you James and Terri!
01 Tuesday Jan 2013
Posted in Sentiments
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20 Thursday Dec 2012
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
We’ve just returned from a spontaneous visit to Puerto Vallarta. The rates in Mexico in early December — both airline and hotel — are almost a gift. The town is just lively enough to keep everything simmering, but the Christmas-week throngs have yet to arrive. And the weather? Well, the weather is a gift, especially if you’re coming from the Northwest where the rain is like a toothache that won’t go away.
05 Monday Nov 2012
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
It was 2002, I believe. Ten years ago. Traveling alone in Italy with five days to spare, I pointed the rental car north and discovered, unwittingly, Lake Como. George Clooney hadn’t purchased Villa Oleandra yet (that came a few months later). They say the lake changed after Clooney’s arrival. I hope it hasn’t changed much, because we’ve just rented an August apartment there.
The Expat Almanac 