I’m in a strange mood.  I have this knot in my stomach, a haunted visage in the mirror, and a general sense that something is amiss.  Part of it stems from the email notifications of the bills piling up back in the US as I traipse through Europe.  It’s all covered – auto-pay is on […]

Picking up my bib was very easy.  It was kinda tucked away in the first floor of this non-descript building with a very important sounding name – Europe House (or House Europe depending on which GPS map program you’re using).   I’m not entirely sure if my name is spelled correctly in the Zagreb system. […]

I’m waiting for the Zagreb Marathon expo to open and thus google-mapping/planning out a sightseeing trip this morning.  I also checked zagreb-marathon.com. Good news!  I knew there were English details on the website!  I just needed to click on the Union Jack!   So a few interesting things to note for this race: It starts at […]

Some stray notes from Bruges before I go… Gruut is an herb mixture that ages before hop was used to flavor beer; Question: for Guardians of the Galaxy, can we translate Groot’s phrases into “I Am Beer?” Louis of Gruuthuse commanded the army of Charles the Bold, was the personal bodyguard of Mary of Burgundy, and […]

7:44 AM: It’s a blustery day. It had been a blustery night. The wind whipped past my attic skylight window, rattling the bones of the house… and me to a certain degree. I had just watched “A Ghost Story,” a meditation on grief, loss, and the paranormal set within a house that creaked and spoke […]

The alcoves in the Koningin Astrid Park aren’t really how I imagined them. There’s strolling paths through this park but there aren’t the nooks and crannies I’d have expected as a recommended place to assassinate someone in Bruges (as discussed in In Bruges [2008]). It’s a lovely park but it’s certainly not in my top […]

Sigh. So this morning, after a pygmy “shower” I looked into my airbnb’s mirror and saw what I had suspected the past few weeks to be true. I had gotten older. There’s this new wrinkle on my face, a continuation of one that now can only be described as “Joker-ish.” It traces my mouth in […]

I’m in Bruges! I had gotten to Brussels Central early as I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what I was doing… though do I ever? The trains apparently run a little late here in Belgium… but your ticket is good on any train all day.  As a result, I caught an earlier train that after […]

I purposefully left a few things for my last day in Brussels. There was the big museum in Grand Place.  Closed on Mondays. There was this meatball place near Fritland.  Closed on October 1st and 2nd. I stumbled upon what might have been my photo mecca – “Moof” or the Museum of Original Figurines that […]

I realized before I left my hotel this morning that this would be my 365th marathon. So every day for a year of my life I’ve gotten up and walked to a marathon’s start line. This weighed heavily on me throughout the race, both as an unearned privilege and a crazy hobby.     Some […]