I was home for a grand total of 4 1/2 days last month. I had a great time, but I admit my own bed was welcome on September 30th. First up, two weeks at the cottage. Fabulous weather for walking, swimming (we only missed 3 days), lounging, eating, visiting, reading…. all the usual cottage things. […]
Entries Tagged as 'Travel'
It’s September – where am I?
October 6th, 2024 · No Comments
Tags: Travel
Italy 2024
August 4th, 2024 · No Comments
Flash! August 4th! BLOOD & CHRYSANTHEMUMS is on sale for $1.99, wherever you get ebooks. Now that’s out of the way … As a change from book promotion, here are some vacation pictures instead. We went to Italy for two weeks in May. This was our first real travel since 2019 and our third trip […]
Too busy to work …
September 18th, 2023 · No Comments
As usual, I dove into the annual cottage getaway with plans for writing, editing, flamenco practice, etc. But the weather was fabulous, the mornings misty, the afternoons glorious, and so I mostly dove into the the lake (ok, I went down the later), went for walks, and read books. Je ne regrette rien.
Down East
June 24th, 2023 · No Comments
With the husband no longer required to spend most of his days face down in a special “retina recovery” chair (for which he was extremely grateful), I was cleared to go off to Nova Scotia with various family members to see the new great-grandson (again, not mine, I must point out). We had a lovely […]
Tags: Travel · Uncategorized
Good news, bad news
June 11th, 2022 · No Comments
Bad news: husband went to get out of bed one morning and couldn’t stand up. He’s now three weeks into serious pain in his back and leg, lousy sleep, multiple ineffective prescriptions, and physiotherapy, Things are slowly getting better. Good news: I’ve had to take over the grocery shopping and basic food prep and we […]
Tags: Flamenco · Travel · Uncategorized
What I read at the Cottage, 2020 COVID edition
September 23rd, 2020 · No Comments
The annual two weeks up north was the usual balm for the soul, despite rainy weather the first week. I went swimming twice (given that the second time was on September 15th, I thought that was pretty good. It was … not warm). I did my one annual ride on the rail trail. I got […]
Tags: Books · Travel · Uncategorized
Wrecking the Museum: Damien Hirst’s Wreck of the Unbelievable
July 15th, 2017 · No Comments
I am not an art critic. These days, I feel barely able to throw together a coherent thought about anything. But I had a lot of thoughts, coherent or otherwise, while viewing the huge show by Damien Hirst (or Damien Fucking Hirst, as one of my friends calls him) in Venice. It spans two locations and includes […]
Tags: Art · Travel · Uncategorized
I ate, I drank, I looked at art, I went to Italy
June 16th, 2017 · No Comments
We spent two lovely weeks in Italy in May. This time it was one week in Venice for the Biennale plus a few days in Lucca and in Florence. Because we’d hit all the big sights last time, we were able to take things at a more leisurely pace, which involved a lot of long […]
California Dreaming
November 7th, 2016 · No Comments
Not very original, but hey, I’ve been sick. We spent 10 days in California and returned to fever, weird dreams about Escher bodies, architecture and Hillary Clinton. First stop: San Francisco. We went to a distillery in a old airplane hangar, to Alcatraz, to a free museum full of arcade games, to the Japanese Tea […]
Images to inspire
July 14th, 2016 · No Comments
I find visual inspirations very helpful when working on a book (see my earlier posts about the “mood boards” for the novels). I’m just starting on what might be the new novel, but I already have a couple of touchstones. This girl with the wary eyes is part of the painting The Coronation of the […]
Tags: Art · Influences · Travel · Writing