On my very first guidebook assignment in 2006, I was sent to Spain for six weeks for research. While I had many regions to cover, including Basque Country, Navarra and the Pyrenees, I made my base in the heart of Aragon, starting first with Jaca, the almost site of the 2010 Olympics. (Damn you, Vancouver!)(I [...]
The Story of You and Me
May 27, 2009 By 76 Comments
When Moose and I saw He’s Just Not That Into You a couple months ago, she turned to me and said, “You’re the exception. What you guys have been through, doesn’t usually work out for the rest of us.” (For those of you who didn’t see the movie, in a nutshell (from Film.com): Those stories [...]
Photo Friday: Sierraville, California
May 22, 2009 By 88 Comments
Way back last fall, SVV told me he wanted to take me to some bad ass natural hot springs way up in the Sierra Nevadas for my birthday. There would be camping involved. I’m kind of a snob with my hotels these days—go figure—but I said sure nonetheless. February rolled around. There was never another [...]
Tour de USA
May 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment
The second my last deadline for guidebook number three this year rolled around on May 1, I was on an eastbound plane for NYC. In fact, in a two-week period, my big toe stepped foot in five states—California, New York, Tennessee, Alabama and Florida—and for once, not a bit of it was work-related. So it’s [...]
Because I’m Not Hard Core Enough to Attempt Burning Man
May 18, 2009 By 12 Comments
For the first time ever, I participated in San Francisco’s rite of passage, the annual seven-mile Bay to Breakers party-race-extravaganza. And, well, um, I think this meager video speaks more loudly than any incoherent parsing on my end. Bay to Breakers 2009 from krysleigh on Vimeo. That hottie in the orange cheerleading skirt spinning fire [...]
Photo Friday: Algarve, Portugal
May 15, 2009 By 28 Comments
After our year living in Europe together was up, SVV and I took what I thought would be our final trip as a pair in 2006 (we had no plans to “go steady” as my mom might say upon returning to the US; funny, three years minus one month from returning Stateside, and here we [...]
Let's Hope No One from Child Protection Services Reads This Blog
May 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment
When it was discovered the Littlest Angel gets more glee out of getting hit in the head with pillows than almost anything else, you can bet this was the point of much amusement both on my part and the part of the parents (who famously knocked her over with a snowball during her first snow [...]
A Day Late and a Dollar Short
May 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment
I had no overwhelming desire to write an ooshy-gushy post about my mom yesterday, because a) she knows how much I love her without it, b) I did that last year and, well, my feelings still hold true! and c) for the first time in years we’re actually in the same geographical locale to celebrate [...]
Photo Friday: Mojave Desert, California
May 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment
On a bright and breezy Sunday I slammed into the whooptie* and shattered the silence of the canyon. A whole-hearted expletive was crushed short by the sound of a 1988 Honda impacting the desert landscape, rider akimbo. Sound is such a tenuous thing, and died a quick death against the powdered talc and rotten slate [...]
Signs I’m Back in the South
May 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment
—Instead of good-bye at—where else?—Nashville’s Pancake Pantry, my favorite place to eat in the whole state, our waitress bid adieu with a “be blessed,” just dripping with sugary sweet Southern goodness. —There’s American cheese on my omelet. (As Lemon would say, Not. Real. Cheese.) —Everything else on the table is processed and dispensed from a [...]
