post cards from the edge

Just back from a gorgeous sabbatical, I plan to start posting again here, though I will dearly miss documenting my travels with H. Perhaps we should keep up with the journal-makers and start our little domestic blog or some such thing. During the long trip home, I was reminded just how sweet a place home is, and also how much fun it was to retrace an old beat with someone else. I might consider going back to all my old haunts. Ostensibly, travel is also seeing if something is worth the while to see again, though one rarely does that. Really. One should keep true to those rituals, like kissing a statue's foot or tossing a coin in a foutain that promise a return trip.

cessation

Since arriving in the States and especially after touring my pristine and smoke-free campus of my alma mater, I feel like an alien for smoking--like it is something as antiquated as belladonna or opium dens. One is generally shamed into not smoking in public areas, even for a lack of signage. I am sure people look at me and shake their heads, feeling sorry for the poor alchemist who has still not learned to give up the habit.

wanderlust

H, wanting to better document our adventures, has begun a second blog--Our Little Travel blog. Originally, PfRC (there's a climate control technician down the street whose developed their own corporate logo and initialism BHT, Berenger Haus Technik, as if it were some well-known consortium and I wonder if the Family Berenger refers to the business as 'BHT' around the house--you know, BHT) was started as a little travel blog when we trawled around France together. I like that it is our little travel blog now. Next on to Atlantis, Pangaea and Gonwanaland.

stay just the way you are...never change...wildcats 4ever

In anticipation of attending my 10 year college reunion, there is quite a clever little application that some people have been having quite a lot of fun with--yearbookyourself (sadly no more). Here is the Bundeskanzlerin Merkel had she attended an American high school. Before digital photography and the throw away chances to get things just right, this site exploits that rhetorical what-if.