Happy Peace Day, Chinese Person in Tent Number 59

 

My Amateur Photo

I traveled 8000 miles to see Mount Kilimanjaro, and I almost missed it. It’s true that I also came to see lions, elephants and zebra in the wild, and to have an adventure with my relatives, but Kilimanjaro was near the top of my list of reasons for making a daunting journey that took three plane flights, eighteen hours in the air, four vaccinations and sixteen days on malaria meds.

Unfortunately, the 19,341 foot former volcano that rises 15,000 feet up off the plains of Tanzania tends to be covered in clouds in August, which is something I didn’t know ahead of time. On the drive to our camp, we got to see the very top of the peak poking out above the clouds, impossibly high in the sky.

I hope his photo looks like this

At the very end of our stay, we would get to see much of the base of the mountain glowing in the sunrise. But my one chance for the best, the fullest view, happened when I was busy reading a guidebook to Kenya. I know, it’s ironic. And I should have read that book before I left home.

Read more at Happy Peace Day, Chinese Person in Tent Number 59.

(Read more about my trip to Kenya at Like Eating Crab, Still a Sunrise?, Replacing me with … and Smiling my way across Kenya)

Advertisement

The Magic of the Solstice

You probably can tell that I’m fascinated by the seasons, just as I’m fascinated by pretty much everything else about our amazing planet. If you find such things interesting, check out a wonderful site called Time and Date where you can get a wide variety of information about observing the heavens from various places here on earth. I used the website as I wrote d4, researching the movement of the sun in both Greenland and Iceland as it affected my characters and my story.

Read this entire post on my d4 blog at The Magic of the Solstice

Happiness fascinates me

My dad used to say “Work fascinates me. I can sit and watch someone do it all day.” Sometimes I think I have the same relationship with happiness.

Read the entire post on my y1 blog at Happiness fascinates me.

The Women of 2015: Beauty matters but so does so much more

We do like beautiful women. As a society, we buy products from them, watch movies staring them, and we lavish attention upon them. But I’m a glass half-full kind of lady, and I see some positive trends in all the various recently released lists of top women from 2015.

Read the full post on my c3 blog at The Women of 2015: Beauty matters but so does so much more.

Spurning spring?

At some point many years ago I decided that I was in the summer of my life. Natural enough. Life was full and I was as physically fit and attractive as I was ever going to be. Those are summer kinds of things to me.

Read the rest of this post at Spurning spring?

One person’s tourist destination is another person’s home …… (thoughts from Bucharest)

So here I am on a bus in Bucharest, watching twenty or so of my fellow tourists who are from China laugh when they discover that the big exhibit at the museum here features the famous Terracotta warriors from back home.

One person’s tourist destination is another person’s home …… (thoughts from Bucharest)

 

 

This year Oct. 10 didn’t come until Oct. 28

y1 is largely about finding joy in one’s life, and over the years I’ve learned that little harmless rituals can go a long way towards adding an extra pinch of happiness. One of my favorites stems from the only class I ever took in writing poetry. The class gave me two things.  1.  It firmly established that I am not a poet.  2. It gave me Oct. 10.

Read more at This year Oct. 10 didn’t come until Oct. 28

y1 free: you can do it tomorrow

I love the phrase “you can do it tomorrow.”

Find out more at y1 free: you can do it tomorrow