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.
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.
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.
08 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
A red letter day! We put the first boxes in storage. This gave Tom a chance to rent his preferred method of transportation, a pickup truck. (Tom and truck pictured above.) It was a black Nissan Zipcar named Florencia the Frontier. (If you don’t have Zipcars in your ‘hood, it’s an hourly vehicle rental service with cars parked conveniently around the city, and they all have names that go with their species, such as Harry Hundai and Felicia Ford. It’s adorable.)
18 Monday Feb 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
Tags
At last I have something in common with the great novelist Ann Beattie: an insatiable need for free boxes. She too is moving, and writes in the February 17th New York Times: “Boxes are much on the itinerant person’s mind. I brood about lost boxes, boxes I received via UPS — those Zappos boots! — that I stupidly took to the recycling center.”
11 Monday Feb 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
Tags
I mentioned, in my delirious tag sale entry, that we will spend our last ten days in Portland at a friend’s apartment….a crucial piece of the departure puzzle.
30 Wednesday Jan 2013
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
Sixty days to liftoff!
Yes, it’s exciting, but I’ll admit I have had more nightmares about liquidation than I have had happy dreams about Europe. In my head, the issues involved in getting rid of stuff looked like…you know when your earbuds get all tangled up in your pocket and they won’t unknot?…like that.
13 Sunday Jan 2013
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
(We’re gonna hear from the bloggers about this…)
Hooray!!! We bought the plane tickets to Barcelona yesterday. They are one way! That is SO exciting!
31 Monday Dec 2012
Posted in Travel
Tags
We had a chance to go to a Rick Steves lecture the other night, though lecture is way too stuffy a word for it. The celebrated travel journalist, broadcaster, and entrepreneur actually has a bit of a stand-up routine that he brings around: part advice, part humor, and part low-pressure sales pitch for his tours and travel products. Rick was in jeans and a sport coat, standing taller than we expected, blondish hair going silvery, and much funnier than one would imagine.
06 Tuesday Nov 2012
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
I was chatting with my son Ted about our adventure, and admitted I was a little scared. (Don’t worry—I have run all the cognitive therapy questions and I know intellectually that leaving home is no scarier than staying home. But I will allow myself to be scared anyway, because it’s a normal reaction to a big forthcoming change.)
The Expat Almanac 