Travel

Tough Choices: Selling Heirlooms to Travel

April 1, 2011

With 27 days to go, I think we’re in pretty good shape. Back in February I couldn’t imagine how we were going to get rid of everything in time to leave at the end of April. Remember, we’re fully committed to storing practically nothing. A small box of documents, a little kitchenware. That’s it. Sure, [...]

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Roadschooling: Should we bring all the books?

March 23, 2011

What should I do about Scout’s books? I just found out that shipping them to Amsterdam will cost much more than I was expecting. MUCH more. $150 more. That’s more than I was expecting. I had been planning on mailing an extra box of them, craftily saving on airline baggage fees, but after getting off [...]

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Pre-travel Freakout

March 19, 2011

Only six weeks until we board our flight for Amsterdam, and there’s still a lot to do. Looking around me, I’m still seeing a disturbing amount of stuff. Books, furniture, souvenirs from past travels, debris from past hobbies, art supplies, notebooks, camping gear, clothes. God, it’s endless. We’ve unloaded some, but much more remains. In [...]

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Juicy Developments

March 15, 2011

Five weeks since my last post, yet my blog-traffic graph is surging (relatively speaking) upward. Higher highs and higher lows. If I owned this stock, I’d be rich. What the heck? I checked it this morning, the first time in ages, anticipating a flat line. How peculiar. Apparently shutting up increases my popularity. Anyway, I [...]

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And Then There Was Less

January 29, 2011

Recently I described my family’s desire to travel, our decision to purge most of our belongings, and my bizarre attachment to a Thai-language cookbook I will probably never learn to read. Well, after a month, of selling, giving and recycling, we’re making good progress. Empty corners now peek out in the basement. Bare patches dot [...]

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Map That Mounty!

January 28, 2011

Right. It’s been a busy week. I’m working on another post, but here’s something for you in the meantime. Can you label all the parts of Canadian Mounty? They won’t let you become a Canadian citizen unless you can. (OK, I made up that last part.)

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Totems, Tools & Everything Else: The UBC Museum of Anthropology

December 28, 2010

My family has lived in Vancouver for about seven years now (God, really?) and inexplicably we’ve never been to UBC’s Museum of Anthropology. I have no excuse. It’s famous. It’s beautiful. It’s close by. Frankly, this is pretty typical. I’ve moved around a lot in my life, and I always forget to explore my own [...]

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Minimalism Required

December 13, 2010

I need your help. Scout’s dad and I are designing a wonderful adventure for our little family. Though I’m not ready to discuss the details of our ever-evolving plan, it boils down to one thing: We need to get rid of our stuff. We can’t bring it with us, and neither one of us wants [...]

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Tectonic Tour: Mount St. Helens

November 22, 2010

Scout (above, in front of Mount St. Helens) is an earth-sciences junkie who enjoys reading about volcanoes and earthquakes. She loves to share facts about pyroclastic flows. She’s thrilled to live on the “Ring of Fire.” She gets a kick out of scrutinizing plate-tectonics maps of the world and pointing out that Vancouver is, in [...]

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Ouch, False Start

September 23, 2010

I don’t understand what happened. After enjoying a long and mindless summer break, we hit the books in earnest a couple weeks ago. Scout had become bored and grumpy, which was a good thing, because it meant she would appreciate getting back to work. I was extremely sensible about it. First I scheduled a nice [...]

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