12 Friday Dec 2014
Posted in Silly stuff
We went to the Columbia outlet store the other day. Columbia makes outdoor apparel and Louise wanted a pair of boots—mud-certified, tromp-around-the-back-forty, muck-up-to-your-knees boots. She is convinced that our upcoming three months in France will be essentially an immersion in ooze, punctuated by emancipating forays to the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Parisian shoes she has plenty of. Mud boots, not so many.
05 Friday Dec 2014
Posted in Accommodations
1908 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost Shooting Brake
“We have a thirteen-year-old Peugeot shooting brake, which you’re welcome to use.” That was John, of Jackie and John, the people in France with the homestead we’re looking after starting next month.
I didn’t want to appear too dense (especially when the man was offering the use of what seemed to be his car), so I responded, “That’s great! We’ll take good care of it!”
Whatever it is.
04 Thursday Sep 2014
Posted in Travel
07 Thursday Aug 2014
Posted in Sentiments
Tags
Buzz pauses on the trail to the zoo.
Sometime after my second heart attack I decided to sell my beloved red bike and buy Buzz, the bike I ride today. Unlike my red bike, Buzz is electric. He monitors the effort that I put into pedaling and, when he decides I’m working too hard, offers to help out. Riding Buzz is like being twelve years old again.
01 Friday Aug 2014
Before we begin, some items to consider:
Okay. Now we can talk about the cocktail hour that Louise and I share almost every evening.
30 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
St. Mark’s Square in Venice by Jan Ciągliński. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Without judgment and certainly without malice, I consider Louise to be an obsessive traveler. Consider this quote from the blog: “I live in fear that somebody back home will ask: ‘You were in Barcelona? Didn’t you love La Sagrada Familia?’ No, we actually never got there. And it would be my fault, wouldn’t it?”
13 Tuesday May 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Gallery
Tags
Living room and guard sheep
A bed. Two bedside tables. A pot rack. Two dressers (man am I sick of making drawers!). A dining-room table. Four chairs for the dining-room table. Two stools for the kitchen counter. A metal rack that we call “the appliance garage.” A monolithic wardrobe. Two office chairs. Two office desks (and more chairs—man am I sick of assembling chairs). A TV stand and a tall shelf. Six lamps and a convertible couch.
That’s what we built during the past two weeks. Yesterday the living-room furniture arrived. Blissfully, it was assembled. (That’s it above.)
02 Wednesday Apr 2014
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
Tags
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The therapist’s mantra: “How do you feel about…”
Lord help me. I’m a guy. We talk about horsepower and RBIs; we don’t talk about feelings. How do I feel about leaving the expat lifestyle? How do I feel about moving back to Portland? How do I feel about having a home again?
Could I just have a list of feeling words and I’ll pick a few?
28 Friday Mar 2014
Posted in Travel
Long-term readers will recall my medical event almost a year ago in Spain. Three posts addressed the event, here, here, and here. Medical insurance was mentioned, but a financial resolution was not. I paid twenty thousand dollars to a Spanish hospital; was I ever reimbursed? The answer was not to be found in this blog until now.
21 Friday Mar 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Gallery, Travel
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The Angel of Independence — Mexico City’s iconic centennial monument — was just four blocks down the street from our hotel. I was astonished to find that the twenty-three stairs surrounding the base were added long after the statue was built. It seemed that El Ángel had actually risen from the earth some fifteen feet since she was built. She hasn’t. Mexico City has sunk around her.
The Expat Almanac 