http://www.wonderasiwander.com travel notes for intellectual nomads Sat, 21 Aug 2010 23:05:10 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Beyond the jungle of damp, suspended laundry lies one of the great hidden treasures of this house. We call it the studio because it is destined to be a workshop for the ceramicist in the family. But for much of the time it serves as a storage room, filled with ... http://www.wonderasiwander.com/?p=188 For those who dare to leap over the hole in the floor – executing a sharp left turn in mid-air – the next stop is the downstairs bathroom. Unlike most of the other rooms in the house, it actually has a door which is pale green on one side, off-white ... http://www.wonderasiwander.com/?p=187 A large window in the ceiling connects the kitchen to the sky. Whenever it rains, which happens a lot, the window leaks and we bring out a special collection of bowls, pots and buckets to collect the water. They create obstacles when running through the house, and are more often ... http://www.wonderasiwander.com/?p=186 One of the best things about the downstairs is that it’s endless. A left turn at the bottom of the stairs leads to the living room, which opens onto the dining room, which is adjacent to the kitchen, which abuts the parental bedchamber which returns traffic – cleverly – ... http://www.wonderasiwander.com/?p=185 Tonight I discovered, quite by accident, that three identical-sounding French words actually translate into the English phrase: “Howard, the award-winning lobster…” http://www.wonderasiwander.com/?p=184 Hanging out at the Salt Lake City airport the other night, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. My airline, like many, had assigned all passengers a “boarding group” number; in our case, we were all in groups numbering from one to four with the ones – all seated at the ... http://www.wonderasiwander.com/?p=183 The pantry and the back pantry are located underneath the stairs, tucked away just off the edge of the kitchen. The pantry is a fairly self-evident kind of space; long, narrow, lined with shelves from floor to ceiling. The shelves themselves hold a variety of mysteries, from hand-ground ... http://www.wonderasiwander.com/?p=182 The dining room is the second most treacherous room to navigate when running in a circle around the first floor. (The most treacherous is the parental bedchamber, but the obstacles there have to do with complicated permissions, rather than physical hurdles.) The sheetrock ceiling and narrow strips of wood on ... http://www.wonderasiwander.com/?p=181 Overheard while standing in line at a coffee shop: "It was crazy. CRAZY. I mean, I was running around like a head with my chicken cut off." http://www.wonderasiwander.com/?p=180 So here I am, standing in my bathroom, gargling whiskey. It’s hard – trying to scream and gargle at the same time. Kind of, I’d imagine, like contracting a case of the hiccups while circular-breathing into your didgeridoo. It all started a couple of Christmases ago. Sam and ... http://www.wonderasiwander.com/?p=179