In which I share some ups and downs of my forays from home this year, if you'd like to see ...

London is a city of endless delights, and my travel map still holds hundreds of points unseen. We checked off one or two extras when an electrical failure canceled most flights on our way out this year. The airport was a madhouse, the airline phone help shut down. Goodenough College lodgings were an oasis of calm for our unexpected extra nights, a gem we would never have found outside these circumstances.

We breakfasted with the students and peaked in at a Great Hall straight out of Hogwarts before taking the tube up to Walthamstow to enjoy the William Morris Gallery.

mural in Walthamstow

On our way, we popped into an Islamic charity thrift shop, and the little blue teacup I got there is one of my favorite souvenirs ever. We rounded out our gifted day at the Horseguards, devoid of horses but for this:

My library job had me hopping around the country this year. I walked arm-in-arm with a beloved friend in Boston.

delicious Persian food in Boston

I feasted on visual delights at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and, in Salem, What the Birds Know sculpture garden. Repeated cancelations of my flight on to DC deprived me of the amazing insiders' sightseeing and treat-eating day my DC friend had planned for me. And it was 320° outside. My consolation prize was regular medicinal injections of Dolcezza sorbetto. Every ten blocks walked in the furnace brought on an unholy animal need for more sorbetto, which I indulged.

Later in the year, days after coming home from Nice, France, I was sent on an unexpected work trip to Chandler, Arizona. Jetlagged and down with a cold, I wasn't overly enthusiastic about this travel opportunity. But finding a paleta shop and a bar that doubles as a house for tropical rescue birds, and most especially, an amazing Korean grocery store cheered me up.

In the Fall, I visited Nice. In Nice, I felt cramped in the warren of buildings, everything was closed, and day-to-day logistics were challenging. The beach was deserted, and there was dog shit on every block. Every 20th dog owner would put the shit in a plastic bag. And leave the bag on the sidewalk.

Sometimes the sun came out and made photogenic scenes, but, try as I might to muster, I never clicked into a sustained magical experience in Nice. It was fun to use my half-decent French, but perhaps not an advantageous trade-off -- in places where I know none of the language, I'm relieved of the responsibility to exercise a lot self-agency, and have no choice but to go with the flow, with half or no understanding of what I'm about to eat or what this procession is coming around the corner. That's magic. Having some language, I noticed my mind fairly constantly working on it, anticipating what I'd need to say ("Do you sell umbrellas?" "This SIM card isn't working") and tinkering over the vocab and grammar I wouldn't need for another hour.

Turns out I prefer feeling like a feather being blown by a mysterious wind down a secret street. More of that in the year to come!