My blog has migrated to a new host and is being painstakingly reconstructed here. Please bear with me as I iron out wrinkles, hammer out the dents, and apply enough spit and duct tape to hold it all together.— Karen
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Yogi Berra My sister-in-law’s new rescue dog — whose previous life was pretty grim — arrived with an ingrained habit of eating so fast it made her ill. Now Sophie gets her kibble in a slow feeder bowl designed with special ridges and…
“Travel is no longer just about ‘going somewhere.’ Coming out of such a long period of constraints and limitations, 2022 will be the year we wring every bit of richness and meaning out of our experiences.” Christie Hudson, Expedia I’ve been getting lots of emails from readers with questions about making the most of…
It’s not often you get to introduce someone to America for the very first time, and in the beginning I thought it all went rather well. Our teenaged goddaughter Ana arrived from Europe after an East Coast stopover, and she seemed gobsmacked to discover the West Coast is so . . . Western. We took…
“What a week!” a neighbor once told me. “Yesterday I pulled up at the curb by my favorite restaurant and hit the brake. Only it wasn’t the brake, it was the accelerator, and I shot forward — right through the wall of the kitchen. The owner, who’s a friend of mine, stuck his head out…
It’s official: fully driverless taxis, with no human on board as backup, are hitting the streets. Self-driving fleets have been approved in China and are under consideration in San Francisco and other US cities. So we have to ask ourselves: did the world just get better or worse? Don’t get me wrong, I love the…
A dog and a man walk into a bar. Bartender says, “You can’t bring animals in here.” The man says, “But he’s no ordinary dog. He talks.” The man turns to his dog and says, “What’s on top of a house?” The dog says, “Roof!” The man says, “What’s on the outside of a tree?”…
Just when I though travel couldn’t get any weirder, I learned the Japanese built a train platform in the middle of nowhere with no entrance or exit , no amenities, and no grand vistas. Obviously, you’ll be asking “Why?” And, “No really, why?” And finally, “Is this a joke or some kind of esoteric performance…
“Have you seen the ads for Toad Jam?” Rich asked excitedly. “It looks great!” For one hideous moment I thought he was talking about some sort of marmalade made with mashed-up amphibious creatures, and I felt I had to draw the line. Oh sure, I’d eaten frogs legs a few times, and once fried flies…
“Am I hallucinating,” Rich asked, “or is that man vacuuming his lawn?” I looked over and, yes, there was a guy standing on the live grass using a shop vacuum, the kind Rich keeps by his workbench to clean up wood shavings and such. Later, an online search revealed you can now buy dozens of…
Just before leaving Seville, I awoke to find the sky yellow and the city coated with muddy sand blowing up from the Sahara desert. Spain was in the grip of a sirocco, the gritty wind that can last weeks and is said to make everyone irritable and drive some to madness and mayhem. In olden…
CELEBRATING GOOD NEIGHBORS These days I’m writing about Good Neighbors, exploring how the people around me are working to help each other get through these challenging times. My weekly posts appear on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on my travel and research schedule.
THIS BLOG IS A PROMOTION-FREE ZONE. As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things I find interesting and/or useful.
