How Many Shoes Do you Travel With?
As you already know, I never check my bags. I even go to great lengths to outfox baggage Nazis. Because I refuse to check my luggage, I pack light, very light. In fact, I only pack a carry on bag, no matter the length of the trip.
My view is that after a week’s worth of clothes, which is essentially three full outfits that can be mixed and matched to make seven, you can always wash it all and start the next week fresh. So there is no need to pack more if you’re on a longer trip.
But I am not a woman, and more importantly, I am not my co-worker Sue.
Read MoreMacedonia: A Russian Waltz Down Memory Lane
Stepping off the plane in Skopje, Macedonia, I get a feeling o déjà vu. A feeling I’ve been here before, though I know I haven’t. My parents came through here in the time of Tito, but that was years before my birth.
Still, I could not shake the feeling of déjà vu. It was so strong, I felt I was having an out-of-body experience, until I realized what was happening. I was time-warping and place-shifting myself back to Russia, circa 1999.
The signs in Cyrillic that I could read like they were in English. The language, which spoken slowly sounds way close to Russian. The people, they even look and act Russian. And of course they do, they are Slavs, just like the Russians.
But this is not Russia. This is Macedonia.
Read MoreSee Way More Wayan on Flickr Photos
One oft-heard complaint about my amazing, cutting-edge Belly Button Window is the dearth of photographs on my posts. With an average of one or two photos per entry, readers are always asking for more visual context for my writing content.
In the past, I was hesitant to put all the extra images online, partly due to the bandwidth costs and partly due to the lack of an easy, yet visually pleasing user interface. Now, with the advent of Flickr, both problems are solved.
Flickr allows me to host hundreds of photos at original size, with scaled down versions that can load quickly on slower bandwidths. And I’ve taken advantage of this service to the tune of almost a thousand images so far in a variety of photo pools.
Read MoreBuilding Garden Boxes in the Afternoon
Heading back to Florida from Puerto Rico, Mom and I get to discussing her new back yard. She spent the summer adding in fill, sod, and plants to give her a new green space. She also demarked the back yard with a nice wooden fence.
Left over from the fence were a hundred plus pieces of wood where the builder cut each fence plank down to size. Looking at the pile of wood, Mom wondered if there was a way to make them into a raised garden. A garden a foot or two above the grade of the back yard, so Mom could work on the plants without hurting her back.
Read MoreA Geekcorps Vacation
I work in international development, specifically in creating economic prosperity, using information and communication technologies. I spend my work days spreading the Internet, and to a lesser extent, cellular phones, far and wide.
The noble goal comes back to bite me on the ass every so often, usually when I am on vacation. As it’s my job to be online, to create accessibility, to expand the connectivity of the world’s people, I have no excuse to be offline. To get off-grid and be absolutely inaccessible for a day or a week.
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