I’m afraid of many things. I blame my mother. She was utterly convinced, from the time I was born, that the entire world was out to get me (it didn’t help that I was named after a relative who had died tragically young). She concluded that the best way to keep me alive would…
On our second day in Phnom Penh, down one necklace, and sufficiently emotionally drained after the one-two punch of the Killing Fields and Choeung Ek, we went to the Royal Palace.
I’ve realized something: I can only write for so many hours a week. This has been a tough thing to come to terms with. I figured there are 40 hours in a standard work week, so I can write for 40 hours, right? This isn’t the case. My brain, it seems, only allows for…
“Wait, what kind of car do you drive?” She is my cousin’s little girl. Blond, California-born and raised, nearly as tall as I am, and presently obsessed with cars. We are walking through downtown Seattle together. I’ve been back from Cambodia for less than a week. “A 2002 KIA Spectra,” I reply, “with power locks.”…
Rand always tells me he envies my palate, which cracks me up because it’s such an unlikely compliment. But it comes up time and again, whenever I identify a spice in a dish that he’s unable to, or I catch a whiff of a bakery blocks before he does. Others who’ve noticed it have…
