As I’ve mentioned a few times previously, taking pictures is one of my very favorite things to do when I’m traveling. I was fortunate enough to have a bunch of hours during our trip to Merida, Mexico last week to walk around and do just that. Like most people, I’m attracted to bright colors. That’s one of the things I liked most about this trip: there is no shortage of color in Mexico! The bold hues that are used on so many of the buildings there are refreshing and incredibly fun to discover. I often found myself in a state of wonder at the beauty and the resulting happiness I…
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Roxie: Keeping Things Unpredictable Since 2004
Last weekend my sister and I drove down to our parents’ house in Tennessee on a trip that was planned with less than twelve hours’ notice. For various reasons, I decided to bring Roxie along rather than board her as I normally would, and I was not looking forward to that part of the trip in the slightest. Roxie hasn’t been on a road trip since she was a puppy and, at ten and a half years old, she is set in her ways. She barks for the duration of every ride to the vet and every ride to Petsmart, both of which are less than ten minutes from my…
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A Little Like Stopping To Smell The Flowers
I’ve written a few times about how I don’t look too hard for souvenirs when I travel, because the photographs I bring home on my camera card or in my phone are the best takeaways, in my opinion. The very best thing about traveling is the potential for experiencing people, places, and things that you can’t find in your own neighborhood. One day while in Costa Rica last spring, we were on a bus and traveling up a mountain to look at a dormant volcano up close. The bus trip seemed to take forever and the weather was terrible. It was a rainy day and visibility grew worse as we…
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Balancing Act. (Or, Bringing This Full House Home With Me. Sort Of.)
For the past three and a half weeks, I’ve been attempting to make some minor tweaks in how I operate during the day around here. It all started when I was in New Jersey with Liz last month. I did a lot of thinking about how relaxed and happy I am when I’m there, even though it was part vacation/part work week. Obviously a lot of the major endorphin spike I experience in New Jersey is purely caused just by being there with her and her family, who I positively adore, but there’s something else. Routine. I mean, you can’t expect a family of six (ahem, SEVEN when I’m there)…
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Better Than Sea Glass
When I visited Liz in New Jersey last November, I was tremendously excited to find a bunch of sea glass (and a couple of other treasures) on a little side trip to Seaside Heights. I thought Liz was just pulling my leg when she told me that in her entire life of living there, she had not found as much sea glass on the beach as I had on that one day. “Ha ha, Liz. Very funny.” I was all ready to go back to Seaside during my visit a couple of weeks ago and just, you know, grab another handful of it. As you do. Um. Best laid plans?…
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BlogHer Food: I Want To Go Back To There.
It hardly seems possible that BlogHer Food 2014 in Miami was nearly two weeks ago. Time flies when you’re having fun! Truth be told, I wish I could step into a time machine and go back to do it all over again. Don’t get me wrong: it was HARD WORK. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: the amount of work involved in putting on these conferences doesn’t seem possible when you consider the size of the team that’s doing it all. (I also submit that everyone who attends a major event like this should have to produce one, just once, so they can see what goes into…
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Tap Tap Tap…Is This Thing Still On?
Oh, hi! Nice to see you again. Did I mention how busy May would be for me? BUSIEST EVER. It’s a blogger’s dream, really, to have all kinds of super fun things going on because blog fodder is like gold around these here parts. It’s a blogger’s nightmare to have no time to write about it while it’s happening. OR IS IT? I guess “living life” really does need to take precedence over social media sometimes. I’ve learned a lot about that in the past couple of weeks and I can’t wait to tell you about it. My return to “normalcy” (or my own version of it), at least for…
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Tracey And I Were Out Finding New Roads On Sunday.
Tracey and I had an epic adventure on Sunday, driving a Chevrolet Volt up to Milwaukee for their LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER show. CLICK HERE to read all about that and find out the story behind this, one of my favorite tweets ever:
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Giving St. Louis Another Chance
I used to have extended family in the St. Louis area and when I was a kid we made the drive to visit them every now and then, but one trip to The Lou has stood out in my mind for almost forty years. That one particular trip was supposed to be fun: my family went to St. Louis for a weekend getaway with another family, great friends, and what we kids looked forward to the most was our day at Six Flags St. Louis, known back then as “Six Flags Over Mid-America”. And I’m sure it WAS fun, mostly. All except for the moment when… when… I can still…
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Musings From The Road
Hello from Momo‘s house in Columbus, Ohio! I was on the road for six hours yesterday: it was heavenly. I am borrowing a Buick Regal (review to come next week) which is equipped with XM Radio, and my five favorite stations—80’s on 8, 90’s on 9, Pop2K, KIIS-Los Angeles, and Z100/NY—kept me singing at the top of my lungs for the duration and made the trip fly by. Unfortunately for the blogger in me, I do some of my best thinking in the car (and in the shower, but that’s another post) when I can’t write anything down. That’s why I made a stop at the halfway point, so I…