Monday was just going to be an easy prep day of shopping and perhaps a little pre-packing for our short Tuesday and Wednesday trip to Crystal Cove, a scenic state park of 1930’s era cottages along Laguna Beach’s oceanfront. Monday morning, however, my phone buzzed the calendar notice, “Crystal Cove.” “Hey, I thought you said […]

While Carol has proven to me that companion travel is superior to solo, nothing has changed about my attitude to group tours. I have the one direct experience to look to for proof. When the door to Cuba had opened up back in 2016, Carolyn and I had booked a Roads Scholar tour of that […]

There are two ways to travel internationally. The one is to stand out like a sore thumb in dress, be loud and obnoxious, condescending to local customs, steadfastly refuse to try to communicate in the native tongue, complain of every inconvenience and disparagingly compare every experience to how it’d be better back home. In other […]

The idea of seeing Europe the way Europeans live there has been a strong organizing principle in my travels, both solo and with Carol. It’s an odd choice, but among my many of choices in life, it doesn’t surprise me. It actually cozily fits my natural incuriosity concerning life. But observing Parisians as they scramble […]

I initially saw Carol walking across the parking lot. It was my first live sight of her, but I recognized her immediately. Then her gaze met mine, and I was at that moment of truth only matadors and people taking that first sip of milk that has turned know.

With this, I will slide into another of my hiatuses. Unlike the last one, which was fake (I merely shoveled in old, recycled material from decades earlier), this one is a real interruption, serving an actual professional purpose.

WhaI did not want a photoshoot. The fact that it was my idea is beside the point. That dang cabbage patch kid diet, or whatever it was called, was also my brilliant idea, but that doesn’t mean I had to like it, and I didn’t.

For those of you keeping tabs, this will be the last blog that refuses to talk about my diet experience. It’s not because it was a dismal failure. It wasn’t. It wasn’t a rousing success either. What it was was that if I’d kept on it for a very long time, it would eventually put me at the weight I desired.

As I’ve written, the worst people are the ones who can’t stop talking about how much weight they’ve lost with the latest diet fad. In a way, it’s like bragging about your body-mass index or your “good” cholesterol. Really, when did the subject of normal health maintenance become a “thing”?

Dieting is like suffering any other kind of loss. It’s just to a much different degree. But make no mistake; there is grieving. And just like all grief, there are stages.