Once, many years ago, I told someone I was going to do a sugar fast, and they thought I meant I was only going to eat sugar. So no, when I say “internet detox,” I do not mean that I’m trying to spend all of my time on the internet. I’ve known for years that, since computers became part of my life (pretty late – age 13 – even if I’m old, it was late for my era) they’ve steadily… Read more »
Posts By: Claire
I saw the sign
If I have a (very) limited time in a city, I favor three things: grocery stores, signage, and cobblestone streets. Amsterdam is no Prague or Lisbon when it comes to magical alleyways, but the signs and the supermarket did not disappoint. A seven-hour layover equates to as much walking + as much eating as possible. Pictures below – click through for more signage:
Space
September starts and many people ask, “Where does the time go?” I ask that question too, of course, but I’ve also been asking lately, “Where does MY time go?” (so self-centered) I suspect that most of it gets sucked into the computer, which functions much like a high-powered vortex fan. I don’t know if vortex really works as an adjective in this case, or if I’m conflating natural phenomena and the fan brand name vornado. When I think about how… Read more »
Overheard on Vacation
“Mum, when you’re the queen, are you able to get broke?” “Asymptotically, the lost landscape doesn’t look glassy at all.” (upon checking for accuracy – of speech, not physics – it was actually the LOSS landscape) I wish I could say I overheard these in the same place, but they were collected from different countries and demographics, i.e. England vs. France and small child vs. physicist. I’m at this physics conference next to a Corsican beach and while all of… Read more »
London Calling
I stayed in a very comfortable hotel for seven nights (er…it was supposed to be seven nights, but ended up being more like five and a half, since I arrived 24 hours late and on my final night there I left at 3:15 am) while I taught SAT/ACT boot camp and I think I gave them some odd impressions on which to build a character sketch of me while I was there. First, I arrived so tired – not even… Read more »
Planes…
So…maybe humans are evolving away from traveling huge distances. As much as I would mourn that, I sometimes think it makes sense. Long-haul flights for short-term vacations are terrible for the environment. I’m as guilty as anyone and, while I don’t know that it’s necessary to give up travel completely, I wonder if it would make sense for flights to cost even more than they do now. I say this as I remember back to 2004, when I flew round-trip… Read more »
Gym-fasting
I have exactly one person in my life with whom I can talk gymnastics (well, I have three if you count Jessica and Spencer of the Gymcastic podcast and Balance Beam Situation; I wrote them some fan mail once in which I stated that I wanted a Greek chorus to follow me around and narrate my life and that I wanted it to be entirely made up of SPENCER clones, and they wrote back, so…friends! They also once retweeted a… Read more »
Booklist Part 2
Sunburn, by Laura Lippman: I’m nearly positive I’ve read everything Laura Lippman has ever written, which is rare for me to be able to claim for anyone with more than five books (Murakami–I think I’m missing one or two; Tana French–I think she just has five or six so far.) I would expect to have her mysteries figured out by now, but I never do, and they’re always great. The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller: I think I prefer my… Read more »
Book Shelf
The only places I’ve ever heard the names Deirdre and Daphne are in middle-grade fiction (at least until Frasier was on TV every day). As such, I never knew how to pronounce them and spent my childhood thinking it was “DEE-dree” and “dah-FEEN.” (The other word that I remember most prominently mispronouncing was “diabetes,” which I assumed was “DIE-uh-bates.”) I don’t know what my trouble with multisyllabic d-words was. And there were SO many girls and women in my middle… Read more »
Overheard part one million
On Amtrak (regrettably, not in the quiet car): One side of a conversation: Hiiiii. Where are you? I wanted to see you guys and say hi. There’s something in your butt? Yeah, we went shopping and she tried on a bunch of dresses but she really liked the third one. Stop scratching! Do you have lice? Anyway, the dress is really beautiful. (She got off the phone and said to her seatmate: You’re so cute that you don’t need exact… Read more »
