Sleepless in Seattle (caffeine overload)

Huffing and puffing my way up the last flight of steps out of one hundred flights of steps from Alaskan Way to the public market, the view at the top felt. That. Much more. Beautiful.

Seattle's Elliott Bay was dotted with sailboats. It sparkled as far as the eye could see before clouds the color of dirty laundry took over. Somewhere underneath, the sun tried to rise.

Behind me the city was waking up. I turned around to a market abuzz with pallets of red and yellow organic apples, flowers and tourists. Already vendors were hawking fruit, Haida jewelry and the ubiquitous fish.

"Get yer monkfish here!" The famous fishmonger cried. He had long straggly hair and looked not unlike Eddie Vedder. He tossed a salmon to a tattooed Asian man in a skullcap, who skillfully sliced it apart.

I walked past the ice mound chilling a sea's worth of fish and rather felt like this one:

I needed coffee - and fast.

My companion suggested some hot fried doughnuts, which helped with the chill, but not the hollow, uncaffeinated feeling in my heart.

Then, not twenty yards away, I saw her. The beautiful brown mermaid with the saggy boobs: It was the sign below the very first Starbucks, and she cried out for me to enter.

The loft-styled space was decorated with coffee beans. The furniture was coffee brown. Danish tourists were giggling over paper cups of delicious nectar, and the barista goddess suggested I try a cup from the Clover® Crafted Small Batch Roasting system.

The rectangular machine was a mix between a french press and a vaccuum pot. Grounds go in, then are squeezed thru, washcloth-like, into a silver cylinder. Then, inedible coffee cake rises up, and out spews a thin, mahogany stream.

It was the purest, most velvety coffee these lips have ever tasted. Almost sugary - no sweetener needed. And the buzz that accompanied was like crack. Ohmigod.

We spent the rest of the day walking thru Japantown and Chihuly-style glass studios, then ate salmon sushi for dinner.

A short memorable day in Vancouver, BC

I learned in Vancouver how hard it is to get out of the States with a non-American.

My companion was a Brit with a record of visa troubles (govt's fault), so at the US/Canadian border, we were asked by the Mounties to get out of the car. For more than two hours we waited inside a Mountie hut while they searched the trunk for child pornography and explosives.

They asked us all sorts of questions, like where did we work, and what type of work was that? I had nothing to hide but still stuttered.

Plus, we would only be in Canada for 36 hours, another problem. Why? They asked politely.

Because I'm on a shoestring budget out West, but I've always wanted to see Vancouver.

Finally, they let us in.

We saw all sorts of lovely sights -
Northern Exposure country

Those wonderful doughnut shops.

Then the forests made way for suburbs, which emptied into the most beautiful glass city.


Oh, it was cold in Vancouver - upper 30s at night. But that didn't stop the ladies from wearing strapless dresses. "Because it's spring!" they shouted to me over the Canucks game.

Vancouver is British Columbia's largest city, as well as Canada's largest heroin den. Amidst shield-your-eyes-they're-almost-too beautiful sights, we passed strung-out junkies with vacant eyes. One grandmother-aged woman approached us in Gastown.

"Need any bud, eh?" She asked as she walked beside us.

We're all set, hoser, we replied, then made our way to the nearest taxicab.

After spending approxmiately CAN$1.83 (US 95 cents) on fare, and putting it on my credit card to boot (poor cabbie), we arrived at our destination: Chambar. There we dined on oven roasted figs drenched in ice cold gin. And foie gras terrine with port reduction.

Like any "developed" country, Canada's full of contrasts.

The Lady in White (St. Petersburg, FL)

Guests of the Vinoy Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida often remark how the central 5th story window swings open at night. There's no one in the room to open it, but out it swings and sways in the breeze, creaking louder than the crickets.

In the summer of 1922, Catherine Vinoy stood before that very window. Torn between her love for the young carriage house worker and her family's chilly disapproval, Catherine made up her mind. Wearing only her nightgown, she stepped out into the balmy night.

There was no mattress, not even the dull padding of grass, to cushion her fall. The pool sparkled a few feet away from the concrete patio where Catherine landed.

She was just 19.

The gardener heard the sickening thud and leapt from his chair to investigate. He was the only one who heard her fall, but he couldn't say he was surprised. He knew Edward, the dark haired boy Catherine had fallen for. He had seen them together, laughing and smoking cigarettes outside of the cinema.

But Catherine, born to the proud Vinoy family, was heir to their high-backed fortune. She had attended the best finishing school in England and was being groomed to marry a count. Catherine's greatest worry, her father told a table of smug investors, should be whether her dining room porcelain is blue or green.

Obedient to the core, Catherine followed the path laid out for her. Nonetheless, she had a headstrong streak. As a child, she often snuck out alone to ride the family horses at night. It was the gardener who'd find her horse the next morning, his knot too easy to loosen, nibbling in the vegetable garden.

It was the gardener who'd walk the horse back to his stall. He'd give him a few pats as he thought about the curious child. And it was the gardener's door Catherine knocked on, late one night, when she confessed to him that she was pregnant.

The worst that could happen would be to live in the burning shame of that word her mother had called her when she announced she was in love. So out the window she stepped, along with her child, who had no choice but to follow.

It's said that her ghost still haunts the 5th floor of the opulent Vinoy Hotel.

Notes From Iceland II

Did I mention that it's FREEZING in Iceland?

I learned that offroading.

The mountains were no match for us. And we rolled past Geothermal steam huts like they were in the suburbs.



Bjork played here once, our guide said, pointing into a crater.

Then he parked the Hummer on a sheet of ice. Gently balancing a plastic stepstool on the surface, he motioned us down from our perch.

Somehow, no one slipped.



The sun outside was bright, but oh so very distant. The tundra unfolded in all directions. We inhaled pure O2, then felt the sting as the cold travelled down our lungs.

It was just us and the mountains. And they beckoned us. The warm packs we were holding started to cool. So there was only one thing we could do: run to the very top of the next massive hill.

We laughed and plunged and fell our way through the knee-deep snow. The summit looked deceptively close. I went on for several minutes but felt as though I hadn't moved.

Slowing down, sweating; the top seemed unreachable. But I gritted my teeth, lowered my gaze and focused on each footfall.



Boot by boot, I made my way through the untrodden snow. Each step rang like jingling change. And before I knew it, I had made it.

The air was even thinner. And even colder. God, what a high.

Notes From Iceland

Reykavik is the world´s most northern capital city.


Everyone is incredibly nice. And they prefer using credit cards over cash.


Plus,


they´re all obsessed with hot dogs.

(Dennis seriously had some for breakfast.)


This is my kinda town!!!

I Love London

London was everything I dreamt it would be: old, cold and damp.

It was a living Dickens novel. Even the cockney African man asking for change in the underground could've recited poetry. When I opened my mouth to respond, my words fell out, flaaaaaaaht, in a boring straight line.


But everyone loved me because I was American. (God bless Obama!)


The old buildings were nice, and the dead people even nicer. They're packed like sardines in Westminster Abbey.

Another curious fact: All the bathrooms I visited were in the basement.

"That way they're closer to the sewer" my handsome tour guide explained. I hoped they were haunted.

We walked across the Tower Bridge, held hands through the throngs at Oxford Circus, had tea near St. Paul's and Valentine's dinner here. Huddled together in the back of an old-time cab, we whispered lovely secrets to each other.

A few glasses of wine later, in Notting Hill, the conversation faded and his strong arms wrapped around me. It was then I let myself go.



And it felt delicious.

The Great Gatsby

It wasn't until half-past three that I thought about leaving. The party was still going; Al Jolson songs played while women danced and spilled champagne from their glasses. Not two hours before Tom got the idea to take Jake's car for a drive. Blowing the horn (and probably waking up the rest of West Egg), he zoomed out of the stables, kicking up rocks and puddles as he went. His supporters, all drunk, followed him, their laughter fading into the night.

I put down my empty glass and entered the library to bid Gatsby goodbye. He was in the corner, his back to the door. Daisy was there, half hidden by Gatsby's shoulders.

Tilting her head up at Gatsby, she said something to him. I couldn't make out the words, just the lovely timbre, which rose and fell as in song.

Thinking they'd wished to be alone, I turned around to go, but not before noticing the scarf Daisy was wearing around her neck. It had red and purple stripes, with fringe at the bottom, and seemed vaguely familiar.

Then the realization came that I had given her that scarf, long ago, in a pathetic display of boyish love. Now Gatsby was twisting it around his fingers.

Reddening with embarrassment, I realized I would never be that broad-shouldered figure. No matter what I did I'd never have his power, or his captivating charm. I wanted to punch Gatsby in his great, British face. But they had forgotten me. Daisy held out her hand; Gatsby pressed it to his heart. I looked once more at them and they only looked at each other, possessed by intense life. Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together.

The Odyssey

Seven miles off the coast of Massachusetts, a ship sliced through the sea. No one heard the waves crash against its hull, or watched the ice form from the spray; there was no wise captain to steer this ship, and no crew to guide it

Just one man, alone, trying his best to get home.

O sing to me of that man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
Driven time and again off course

Many cities he saw
many pains he encountered, heartsick on the open sea

He suffered much to get back to his wife and son, after venturing out for coffee.

But what coffee it was! Fair trade from Colombia, slow roasted in batches every 2 hours in the artsy end of Providence. If you'd taste it, you'd know why he did it. Flushed with warmth after his very first sip, he lingered in the dark-panelled cafe. Days turned into months while a steady stream of coeds filled the seats around him, pecking away on their laptops. Do what he might he could not escape the fragrant bean's allure, so did it prevent them from reaching home.

It was there, he met Calypso,
the bewitching nymph, the lustrous barista goddess, who sang to him in her pretty voice
And lured him deep into her arching caverns, craving him for her own, brewing him pot after delicious pot

Holding him prisoner in her wood-shingled Shaker home, where she fed him cannolis between sips.

'Til, stomach reeling, he could take no more, and prayed to Zeus for deliverance.

Then one sleepless night, emboldened by the caffeine, he stole a tiny schooner from the Jamaican man's wharf and pushed out into the darkness...

She cried for days.

Eating Cake

I live for business trips. Unlike my father, whose flights connect twice and must eat on $40 a day, we travel in Luxury's lap.

Even while Wall Street's walls were crumbling, we whiled away four days in Miami... listening to details of the credit crisis as Habano smoke circled 'round the wood-paneled room.

The horror! I exclaimed, lifting another forkful of bloody filet mignon into my mouth.

Afterwards, we rode down Ocean Drive with the convertible top down. The air felt warm, like bathwater.

I stayed an extra few days to reconnect with old friends, and get to know a new one. Esta muy caliente, amigos. He's tall and handsome and shares my penchant for mischief.

He seranaded me on the guitar, then gave me a scarf he brought back from Paris.

Later, he took took his shirt off as he ran down the moonlit beach. Flashing a smile, he suggested I join him.

One only lives once.

Fells Point Pup Walk

Meet my roommate George.



He farts, but I still love him.

George is my little buddy in Baltimore. We do everything together, and we have a lot in common: we could eat the same thing every night, for instance. And we'd be happy spending the whole day in bed.

But our favorite activity has got to be our morning walk.

Outside our building, we walk past the pier (ah, fresh salty air!), then turn onto the cobblestone street, where the old man from Henderson's Wharf likes to sweep the sidewalk. He stops and gives George a pat.



Often my Hopkins friends drive by & honk hello. Then there's the Italian man painting the old red house at the end of our street. "Thatsa nice looking dog!" he shouts down from his ladder.



The bakers at Bonaparte know George, too; they wave at him from their window. It always smells like almond croissants around there, making George excited.

We meet lots of other dogs…Clipper, Molly, Taco, Elvis, Sarge, Pippin…tho I can never remember their owner’s names.

And there’s one spot right next to a beautiful naked mermaid statue where George likes to poop.

After that, we turn around.