(Part 1 is here) Imagine a world… a world in which you get to finish a thought. Several thoughts. A world in which your day doesn’t start out with a bombardment of finding out who wants what via email, doesn’t have multiple people during the day asking you, “Can I ask you a question?”, and [...]

I have this list of 50 Things I want to do in my lifetime (that’s a whole other post) and things on it include everything to running a marathon (did it), jumping out of an airplane (did it), to taking an Ikebana class while I was in Japan (did that, too). I want to take [...]

When my sister and I were kids, I remember sitting at the dinner table watching my parents quiz her on geography. I don’t know why I escaped this (I can only assume that, at the age of 7 or 8, she must have demonstrated some grossly obvious lack of knowledge) so my parents took it [...]

So last week, some lunatic decided to make us all just a little more paranoid by trying to blow up a plane landing in Detroit. Just like the Shoe Bomber back in 2001, what we’re left with is the experience of more and more indignities, inconveniences and outright annoyances imposed on travelers so that we’ll [...]

I know I was supposed to write about the amazing food we ate in Japan, but first I have to write about some of the crazy things you don’t hear about. Like the Japanese toilets. I am CONVINCED that if people knew how great the Japanese toilet seats were, the Japanese wouldn’t be able to [...]

We’ve just gotten back from an 18-day trip in Japan and probably the best way for me to be able to describe it is to say this: remember back when you were 4? And everything was new and unfamiliar and exciting? Japan was kind of like that. I walked around like a 4-year old, saying [...]

As we pack to go to Japan, the first thing that happens is that I think of a bunch of things that will make the trip go better, and then Will negates all most of them, saying we don’t need them. Well, yes, technically that’s true and we could be CAMPING instead and making fire [...]

I’m fulfilling a lifelong dream this weekend of going to Japan. Actually, it might be longer than a lifelong dream — I think I was Japanese in a past life ;-) But seriously, this is a trip of a lifetime that involves lots of soaking in hot tubs and hot springs in rural Japan, rides [...]

Will and I just got back from a long weekend trip to Santa Fe and it was a bit of a stick-and-carrot kind of trip. The stick part was because we flew to New Mexico to take their practical test to get licensed in that state.  But boy, they sure make you suffer a bit [...]