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Musty and Wonderful

On June 29, 2011

Back when Wonder Boy and I went to Ghana my sister-in-law was nice enough to lend me her Kindle to take with me. It was fully loaded with books, many of the vampire variety, and weighed almost nothing. For a girl who travels with little more than a backpack or two, going electronic for books is a great thing.

All that said, I’m not an e-reader convert. (Still grateful for the loan though!) Do you know what I love best about books? The smell. I love a new book and how it smells of its packaging and the printer. I love when you open an old book and it smells musty. I also like how with a book you can see physical progress as you make your way through pages. Sure, there’s a page count with an e-reader, but it’s not the same.

People in my book club are falling fast to e-readers, an apparently so is everyone else. A Pew Internet study shows that e-read ownership has doubled between November 2010 to May 2011, a period of only 6 months. And I get it. E-readers give you the ability to carry around your entire library in your handbag.

I’m holding out though. This doesn’t mean I won’t cave someday. After all, after years of stalling I did finally get a cell phone. But maybe if I wait long enough e-readers will come with a built in smell of freshly printed paper and must. (Or, and this plays a big role in my avoidance, maybe someday I won’t be working in a profession where I look at a computer all day, which only makes me want to avoid all other screens. After all, that lottery dream could come true, right?)

Until then, I’m hitting up the library and staying on good terms with all of my e-reader connections.

Heat

By Kate

On June 9, 2011

In family / friends, house, travel

When I travel I tend to target warm countries. (Ghana, Costa Rica, Australia and New Zealand since it was the summer there, Ecuador, Vietnam, Cambodia, Spain in the summer) I like heat. Winter is like a houseguest that overstays its welcome and when summer comes I rejoice. There is, however, one significant downside to summertime.

I like hot in the daytime but find sweltering heat during the nighttime to be miserable. I can’t sleep and I just lay there at night, slick with sweat. Wonder Boy and I don’t have air conditioning. We’ve made lots of improvements on our house (kitchen, bathrooms, water heat, windows) and making the investment into AC is just financially stupid. So we make do and are pretty good about it. Every year we hold out well past what most people would consider unbearable before we put in our window units. We dress light. We have all of our windows and transoms open and run ceiling fans. Our old house was made to take advantage of a cross-breeze.

This summer got hot so fast and we, very unfortunately, have a digital room thermometer. I don’t look at it. Ever. But Wonder Boy? He gives me regular updates. Last night one of our rooms measured at 89 degrees. The ceiling fan in our master bedroom, in addition to being a little on the ugly side, is broken.

We had a window unit running in our bedroom and got the room down to a frigid 86 degrees. It also makes an aggravating clicking noise. I tried to make light of it. I laid there on top of the bed sheets and played WordFeud on my phone. Wonder Boy was couldn’t take the heat.

First he suggested turning off the AC and running a fan. This might have actually been a decent idea but seemed like a waste of the electricity we had used to cool down the room over several hours. (That 3 degrees we cooled the room down by took 5 hours.)

Then he decided to go get the heavier duty window unit and run that instead. He carried it down from the attic and put it on the bed while he took out the smaller AC unit. I helped him pick up the bigger unit to put it in the window and we heard this loud noise. It was the noise of a huge hole being ripped into our bed sheets. We persisted and got the AC unit into the window only to find out wood braces we have to keep the window shut when the AC is in were the wrong size.

In the end we put the smaller AC unit back into the window. I went back to playing WordFeud. And for what it’s worth, sometime in the middle of the night I got cold enough I had to cover up with my blanket. All of this also resulted in a plan of action: Wonder Boy is buying a new AC unit tonight and I am buying new bed sheets.

Next plan of action? Hiding that room thermometer.

Travel Day Number 3

By Kate

On May 5, 2011

In travel

Warning: This is a rambling post, and while I write a lot of rambling posts, this one might take the cake. It’s what happens when you blog while bored.

I have five days of travel this week and 3 or 4 next week. I work with people who travel all of the time. When I grew up my dad travelled all of the time. I couldn’t do it.

I think some people are born to travel. Despite a love of traveling for pleasure, traveling for work is a whole other ball game. For my first overnight I packed my thing into a small duffle bag. I was proud. Then I met up with my co-worker who had luggage the size of a laptop bag. What??? For this trip I didn’t screw around. I still have my things in a smaller suitcase but I am ready for all types of scenarios.

What’s ironic is that I can travel around the world, quite literally, with nothing more than a backpack. I remember when Wonder Boy and I once visited my friend Delicious in DC he saw my luggage and started laughing. Delicious and I spent three weeks traveling around Europe with only a few days worth of clothes on us. We washed underwear in sinks, visited laundromats. We weren’t above wearing dirty clothes. And then I rolled into DC for a long weekend with enough luggage to last about 3 weeks.

As I jammed my suitcase full of stuff last night I tried to reconcile the differences in my packing styles. I decided it all came down to one thing: flip-flops. Initially I thought it had to do with if I wanted to impress people or not. Because if you want to impress people who pack different things for all sorts of occasions, right? But really, the things I packed for this trip? Neither impressive or the type of clothing I’d like to be associated with. Business dress… blech. (As I type this I am in my conference outfit of company polo and dress slacks but also sporting Chucks, so there is still some room for creative expression.) Now DC was a trip where I wanted to look cute so maybe it’s sometimes about wanting to impress people.

The trips I like, the trips I can pack well for, are ones where flip-flips are appropriate for all occasions. Flip flops are fabulous. They let your toes enjoy the warm weather, they don’t make your feet sweat, they can look great with a dress outfit and just as good with a T-shirt and shorts. I used to use flip flops as part of my tag-line when I did freelance writing for Time Warner (see the bottom of the story).

Floating Away

By Kate

On May 4, 2011

In travel

After weeks of rain and an incredibly rainy trip to Tennessee, I spot this very appropriate statue in downtown Knoxville.

Travel … Not Always Fun

By Kate

On May 2, 2011

In gardening, travel

I love travel. I pride my role as a cheerleader for travel. But travel for work? Blech. I am traveling for five days over the next week. And then four the week following. And the places I’m going? Not glamourous. At all.

I’m sad of what I will miss over the next few days. Life is starting to happen in our front yard and it is beautiful.