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Myth of the Sniper’s Bullet
In honor of the 101th Anniversary of the Armistice, I’m posting this story that I wrote after visiting my great-grandfather’s grave at the Somme in…
Why I Broke Up With NaNoWriMo
I love NaNoWriMo, which is why this year I’m not doing it. First posted in 2018; revised on October 31, 2019 because I’m still not…
Enjoying Portugal
We spend the last week of our six-week trip to Europe exploring northern Portugal, spending time in Figuera da Foz, Porto, and finally Lisbon. These…
Exploring the Algarve
Driving to the Algarve A scenic and virtually traffic-free, two-hour drive takes us from Seville to the little town of Luz in the western Algarve.…
Sweating Through Southern Spain
Holy Toledo The drive to Toledo from Zaragoza is long and tedious through mostly flat lands that give way to urban sprawl around Madrid which…
Over the Pyrenees into Spain
Climbing Over the Pyrenees We leave Albi and drive west toward the Pyrenees. Today is the first day of our entire trip (actually, the only…
Heading into Western France
Dropping Off the Paintings Before we can properly start the vacation part of our vacation (as opposed to the exhibition part), we need to drop…
Surviving the Canicule in Style
The Heat Wave Hits It’s all over the news—even back home. We get emails and Facebook messages about the French heatwave—the canicule. How are we…
Exhibiting in the South of France
We Arrive At Our New Home for Two Weeks By the time we pull into the driveway of our new home away from home, we’ve…
Arriving in the South of France
Onwards to Colle-sur-Loup We have a short day of driving from Lyon to the tiny town of Colle-sur-Loup on the road leading north from Cagnes-sur-Mer…
Heading South to France
Getting On the Road–Picking Up Our Leased Car Our two days in Amsterdam are a relaxing prequel to Phase 1 of the trip—a four-day, three-night…
Jetting Off to Amsterdam
It’s June of 2019 and time for another trip. Gregg and I have decided to make the most of our current health and the relative…
Chasing the Middle Ages
Following is a piece that is included in Pastel and Pen: Two Ways of Seeing, a collection of my writing paired with selected pastel…
Top Memories in Europe – 2017
Our five-week trip to Europe in 2017 was a whirl of professional development and business activities sprinkled liberally with many, many great travel experiences. Sometimes…
Bella Roma
We are spending nine nights in Rome in April of 2017 during an exhibition of Gregg Simpson’s paintings at the Arte Borgo gallery just around…