Or stay here and learn more about why things look so different now.
Among all the calamities of 2026, the one that came closest to making my head explode began three months ago with the announcement that my website is being booted out of the home it’s enjoyed since 2011.
My web host has decided to abandon that side of its business, so all the work I’ve ever posted — 600+ blog posts and thousands of words of advice about visiting Seville, surviving these turbulent times, packing light, and finding cozy dive bars wherever you go — had to find a new home or disappear forever.
To be fair, there were warning signs and I’d ignored them. Years ago, the signup form became so unreliable I finally asked new subscribers simply to email me directly. Lately the search function began sporadically pretending it had never heard of words like Seville or beer. Boldface type was suddenly no longer an option. Occasionally my readers couldn’t post comments on the blog. A total shutdown shouldn’t have felt like a thunderbolt from the blue.
And yet it did.
I still don’t know when my old website will disappear forever, so I’ve been scrambling to get this new site up and running. A gifted local techie helped me transfer key text and photos (whew!), but the formatting was a bit random, with pictures clustered at the top of each blog post like worried sheep and sporadic line breaks disrupting the text in much the same manner as a drunk falling down a flight of stairs. I’ve untangled the text and graphics on all my recent posts and will continue to go back through and fix as many as I can.
For now, I ask you to bear with me as I continue to sort out technical side of my blog and website. Thanks for your patience.