Once again, it’s that time of year when I find myself busy with any variety of tasks. For 2023, these tasks include holiday shopping, job searching, calendar making, book publishing, novel writing, and the usual year-end self-reflecting.
2023 was an interesting year, neither my best nor my worst. In some ways, I treaded water, but in others, I achieved important goals. Here is a summary:
Continue reading “My Year in Review”
When last we spoke, I was going on six weeks of having lost my job and was ~500 pages deep into writing my first novel. I wrote about visiting family in Memphis, TN, about road trips to Savannah, GA and Hilton Head Island, SC, and about hikes taken along the Blue Ridge National Parkway, NC. Though less than a year has passed since that post, it seems like yesterday and ages ago at the same time.
Continue reading “A Rare Gringo Sighting”¡Felices fiestas! Happy Holidays! It has nine months since my last blog post, and while I don’t exactly get a surplus of messages asking for more content, I figured those of you who consider yourself Loyal Readers may wonder what the heck I’ve been up to. The answer – that I’ve been up to quite a lot but also not much at all – may seem contradictory, so bear with me as I explain.
Continue reading “Where the Heck Has the Gringo Been?!?!”It is early September as I write this, more than 19 months into a pandemic that, in its earliest days, I had written off as something overhyped, much like SARs and Bird Flu were two decades prior. Of course, there is no such thing as overhyping a global catastrophe that has taken over 4.5 million lives so far (source as of 9/3/21: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/).
Now, I am, if anything, more concerned than the average American that the numbers aren’t stabilizing quickly enough; the Delta variant is spreading at an alarming rate, and we have only just reached 70% of Americans with at least one dose of the vaccine. I predict that we’ll keep theme parks and campgrounds open until Fall Break and that afterwards, restaurants, museums, and other attractions will slowly re-shutter and mask mandates will slowly re-appear. I hope I’m wrong once again, but this time I think I will be right.
Despite lingering coronavirus concerns, I did manage to take one vacation this year; it was one that had gotten postponed 12 months for obvious reasons, and that fell into near-perfect weather.
Last April, I visited Savannah, Georgia!
Each November or December, since this blog was created in 2012, I have waxed nostalgic about fond holiday season travel memories from years past. Some entries were about end-of-year trips to places far (Singapore and Malaysia, 2006), others about places not so far (Puebla, Mexico, 2003). Some entries were about time spent in cold places (Québec City and Montréal, 2008), others about places more tropical in nature (León, Nicaragua, 2016-17).
This year’s entry finds me thinking back to six years ago, during what would turn out to be my final trip back to the states for the holidays while a resident of Mexico City. While en route to Knoxville for a Smoky Mountain Christmas, I found myself “in transit” for four great days in Chicago, the city of my childhood. I grew up outside the Windy City, and have fond memories of school field trips and family car rides to the city’s museums, lakefront, ball parks, and shopping districts. Although I don’t regret my decision, circa 2000, to leave Chicago and move to Los Angeles (pre-Mexico and pre-pre-Tennessee), I find myself missing Chicago at times, and with fewer friends and relatives living in the city now than in 2000, I simply don’t get to return as often as I’d like.
Time passes and people move in and out of an individual’s life. It happens – and often without fanfare. I haven’t been to Chicago in what seems like ages, so this post is, in some ways, just the nostalgia trip that I need. In other ways, however, it is an exercise in catharsis. While the trip itself was great, one of the players who had a bit part in the story is no longer with us, and a second is in failing health. I hope you enjoy the tale…but as you read through to the end, know that it was written with a heavy heart.
Chicago (2013)
Well, shit.
Last month, my WordPress.com hosting fee auto-renewed for another 12 months. I wasn’t sure why my credit card statement was as high as it was, but when I reviewed my transaction history, there it was: $125.00. Chump change for many, and a cost that I can certainly absorb, but that I would rather have declined had I paid better attention to the auto-renewal reminders that had indeed been sent to my inbox. So, I have no one to blame but myself.
But here we are. It has been five months since my last post, and while I will skip the play-by-play of what I’ve been up during that time <SPOILER ALERT: not much>, I did take a mini-vacation this past summer that I feel is worth writing about.
I went to Charleston, South Carolina!
It was six months ago this month when I announced my intentions to more or less hang up my blog hat, so to speak. The post had a “goodbye-but-hopefully-not-forever” tone about it, and I did hint at the end that I may pop up every now and again with the occasional update. Aside from today’s entry, and from my February 18th Oscar predictions post – an annual rite of passage that began in 2012, all has otherwise been silent on the blogging front.
I still send the occasional Tweet courtesy of my @gringopotpourri feed, although ceasing production on the blog while simultaneously suspending my Facebook account all but derailed any substantial Twittersphere engagement.
All of that having been said, I thought I’d pop up from the void to let you know that I am still alive and well.
2018 is coming to a close as I write this. I thought I would conclude the year – and this series – with a post that circles back to where it all began. This blog was created not long after I moved to Mexico City in 2012, a two-year experiment with numerous highs and lows, though certainly more of the former than the latter. My first photo locale feature, three years later, featured the city’s Chapultepec Castle. Twelve months after that, a follow-up post highlighted the visual wonders of the city’s Centro Histórico.
But there is much to be seen in a city this size that doesn’t fit easily into any single category. Like this blog, there is a veritable potpourri of eye candy throughout CDMX, ranging from dilapidated buildings to elegant roofcombs to market foodstuffs to haphazard graffiti to the Chilangos themselves, 22 million living, breathing human beings who give Mexico City its heart and soul. Enjoy this random Mexico City potpourri, Loyal Reader…and thanks!
Continue reading “Photo Locale of the Month – December 2018”
One of my annual, late-year blog traditions finds me posting a bit of fond nostalgia about holiday season travel memories from years past. I am snowed in from work as I write this, but my absence merely kicks off a mid-December “stay-cation” that is long overdue; I shopped for holiday airfares to both New York City and Chicago, and while I ultimately had just enough frequent flier miles for a free round-trip ticket, I passed at the last minute, knowing that I would still spend mad money not only seeing the sights but also buying food and drink for whichever friend/friends would end up putting me up for a few days. Okay, had I been able to score “Hamilton” tickets ahead of time I may have pounced – resulting credit card debt be damned – but as things stand currently, return trips to both the Big Apple and the Second City will have to wait.
As for the annual holiday travel posts, I neglected to make such a post in November or December of last year, which seems odd considering I rang in New Year’s Day of that very year in warm, wonderful Nicaragua! It was my first trip to Latin America since moving back to the States from Mexico with my tail between my legs. Likewise, it was my first trip to Nicaragua, and my first time meeting longtime online friend José, whose family hosted me at their seasonal home in Nicaragua’s former capital, León.
León, Nicaragua (2016-17)
For today’s post, the penultimate monthly photo feature, I wanted to “go big or go home,” to use a popular saying. My posts in this four-year series have covered such disparate places as Chicago, Iguassu Falls, Yellowstone, the Okavango Delta, China’s Great Wall, and – twice – my beloved Mexico City.
Some of those places merit a spot on my top ten travel wonders of the world list – a list that I started many years ago, as part of a bigger (top 100? top 1000?) project that I never finished. I wasn’t sure what place to feature that truly measured up. As I perused last month’s photo entry – Trier, Germany – it hit me: India’s most entrancing city, visited on the same round-the-world trip that brought me to Trier. I am talking about the Hindu holy city of Varanasi.
Continue reading “Photo Locale of the Month – November 2018”
GringoPotpourri 