Change In Plans

On December 20, 1999, India and I got up just before 5am. We drove to the base of Lion’s Head Mountain, in Cape Town, and hiked up for about 30 minutes. The weather was surprisingly cool and cloudy for early summer in Cape Town. We didn’t make it quite to the top, but it was an impressive effort for a 41-week pregnant woman. We took a picture of India’s exposed belly, with the Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop, and headed back down to the car.

By 7am, we were at the hospital, inducing labor. Our Ob/Gyn, Sheana, was a strapping, utterly confident, six foot two Scottish woman. She told India’s and my mother, “Don’t worry about a thing, ladies. Before nightfall, there will be a baby.”

India was in labor for about 10 hours. At mid-day we went for a walk in the sunshine. A security guard started walking with us. I asked him, in Afrikaans, whether he was afraid that we were going to steal something. He said, “No. I’m afraid the lady will step on a snake and hurt the baby.”

Despite the labor and the hot tub and lots of encouragement, it became clear that the baby was not coming on his own. At 7pm, Sheana said, “We’re doing a C-section. I’ve gotten my team together.” She told me to change and wash my hands.

If I had spent a few minutes more in the washroom, I would have missed the birth. Zola was pulled out by his armpits at 7:19 pm. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Ten years has passed. Zola is so much a part of our daily lives and consciousness, it is difficult to remember what life was like before him. He is a sweet, intelligent, funny, and curious little boy. We have shared great adventures and many happy times. We feel anormously blessed to have him in our lives.

Ten years!

Our short, happy, not-entirely-sustainable time in New York is coming to an end.

It is hard to believe that our round-the-world trip ended in late April, and that eight months have passed since the “ragged re-entry.”  The last four months, in particular, have been so pleasant and stable and fun, that the time flew past us.  Now, suddenly, we are in the midst of several “lasts” before we move to South Africa at the end of the month.

Zola had his last soccer game a few weekends ago, not long after I had my last day of work.  The weekend after Thanksgiving was our last trip to the Beaverkill.  Last Saturday night we had a chance to say goodbye to many of our Beaverkill friends at a party in the city.

Last Saturday, we all attended Tallulah’s last dance class at Alvin Ailey.  On Wednesday of this past week, Tallulah had her last “Flip and Twirl” class at Chelsea Piers.  On the same day, Zola had his last “Stunts and Skills” class. 

We have been seeing many friends for “the last time”.  Because w have moved to Cape Town twice before, and this is the fourth time we have lived in New York, these encounters generally feel more like “au revoir” than “goodbye”.  That said, I have been meeting people so frequently for drinks at the Minetta Tavern that the bartenders laugh when I walk in.

On Thursday, Tallulah had her last day at the Blue School.  It has been a truly and deeply wonderful first school experience for Tallulah, filling her with joy, and confidence, and love for learning.  The Blue School is doing many things right.  Her class had a little party for her, and we had a chance to say goodbye to her teachers and classmates and their parents. 

Friday was Zola’s last day at PS 3.  In the morning he had his last performance in front of the school (a concert), after two earlier dance performances.  PS 3 has been great for encouraging Zola to take joy in performing.  India and I arranged for the class to have a skating field trip to Bryant Park after the concert.  It was nice to see how happy and comfortable Zola has become with his PS 3 classmates.  We can only hope that he adapts to school in South Africa as readily.

This weekend, we are hosting our last houseguests.  India’s sister, and our brother-in-law, and our two nieces have come up from Nashville.  Cousin love abounds for Zola and Tallulah.  Tomorrow night I will have my last hockey game.

Finally, this evening I shoveled off of the walk in front of the house for the (first and) last time.  We are getting buried here.  South Africa looks better by the minute.

It has been a fun eight months in New York City.  We are ready to move on to our more permanent life in Cape Town.

Happy Halloween from Greenwich Village!

A year ago, we were wandering around in Tokyo, our kids lamenting that they were trick-or-treating far from home. Halloween is not a big holiday in Japan, but it is very well organized. Households register on the internet if they are accepting visits from trick or treaters. Our friends printed a color-coded map, which we followed to find candy.

This year, we are in the white-hot, freaky epicenter of the American Halloween celebration. The Greenwich Village parade passes 25 feet from our front door. There are tens of thousands of spectators and participants, and hundreds of police officers on the street.

It should be an interesting evening. Lu is a cat, Zola is a hobo. He has fake rotten teeth, and a great cardboard sign that reads “Will work for candy! God bless U”.

India is some kind of leather-clad Superheroine for Peace. Think Emma Peel from ‘The Avengers.’

‘m dressed as a grumpy old Halloween humbug. It’s a stretch role for me.

All around us are sexy French maids, sexy Mario Brothers, sexy skeletons, and sexy Pilgrims (???). Transvestism abounds. These are only the spectators. Because the marathon is tomorrow, there are many European and Latin American visitors standing on the parade route, wondering what to make of it all.

Start flying the freak flag, America. Magic is afoot, and the goddesses are wearing leather chaps on 6th Avenue.

PostScript- much later. We stood on 6th Avenue for over an hour, waiting for the parade to start. Zola sat on the curb with his sign, and an abject look on his face. A few people gave him money. Lu sat on my shoulders. More people packed in, until the spectators were at least ten deep behind the barricades on both sides of the street. I’m glad I’m tall.

Finally, the parade started. Unfortunately, the rain started at about the same time. It’s a very democratic parade: anyone can march, costumed or not. We saw some incredibly elaborate group costumes, some giant skeletons, many people in no costumes at all, and scores of ’sexy policewomen.’. There were several elaborate Michael Jackson group tributes (think Thriller video).

Despite what I had thought, the whole experience was surprisingly wholesome. Despite the masses, everyone was very polite and calm. It was a pleasant, only modestly chaotic environment. You get the sense that the NYPD has things under control.

After watching for over an hour, we walked to a party at the townhouse home of one Zola’s classmates. The nearly mile-long walk in the pouring rain and with the crowds took about 45 minutes. We were happy when we got there.

When it stopped raining, we walked back. The crowds had doubled at least, and at times we could not move at all, hemmed in by people. I’m glad Lu was on my shoulders. Still, everyone was polite and calm.

Lying in bed, I can hear the crowds roaring outside. The actual parade ended a few minutes ago, after three hours of continuous marchers. I’m not so sure it stays entirely wholesome as the night deepens.

We had fun, and are all exhausted. Lu fell asleep on my shoulders, and Zola asked me to stop reading after only two pages of ‘Red Badge of Courage.’ Happy Halloween!

Greetings from Bernardsville, New Jersey.

It is a rainy and cold Sunday. We made the long trek out to New Jersey from the city, visiting our old neighborhood and our storage space for the first time in a year.

It seems strange that we lived out here for nearly four years. As we drove, I recognized sights, and they resonated intellectually. Emotionally, though, they did not raise much of a response, except, “Did we really live here?” It seems like a long time ago.

Everywhere else we have lived, even for a short while, made a lasting impression, and evokes emotion around specific sounds, sights, smells. Not sure yet why this place does not.

Seeing all of our stuff - three storage units full of furniture, clothes, toys - evoked more emotion.

I was glad to find a pair of boots that I was looking for. It saved me from buying a new pair.

I laughed as India pulled another ten pairs of her shoes from boxes. She doesn’t like when I refer to her as Mrs. Marcos.

She was happy to find a photo exhibit she had been holding for a South African friend. Apparently, the exhibit is being displayed in Washington on November 1st, so if we hadn’t been able to find it, India’s life would have gotten a little complicated.

Mostly, though, I re-experienced the great feeling of liberation we had when we started our travels. Shedding all of our possessions, even temporarily, for the (relatively) unencumbered life on the open road was just great. I remember how excited and eager we were to get going. We locked the units, drove to the airport, and forgot about 95% of our possessions.

Now we are in rented-house limbo, so we don’t really need our furniture or most of our other stuff. When we move back to Cape Town in December, we will have to figure out what to ship, what to continue storing, and what to give away. My emotional response is “give it all away.”

At some point, though, we will own another house, and need things. In the meantime, I’m happy to know they are safe, dry, and there if we want them.

I hve been reading Bruce Chatwin’s book, “The Songlines”.  In part it is a travelogue of his time in the Australian Outback, trying to understand the role of Aboriginal culture in Australian society.  A big part of the book, though, is Chatwin’s debate with himself on the role of travel in human civilization.  From his own experiences, plus excerpts from anthropology, philosophy, and paleontology, he concludes (basically) on balance that mobility is the source of humanity’s ennobling characteristics.  When societies settle, they become warlike to their neighbors and repressive to their weaker elements.

The trip to the storage space goes directly to the root of the tension that Chatwin describes.  The act of putting our possessions in storage represents freedom and mobility.  The existence, and importance to us, of these things represents stability.  “Mobility vs. Stability” is the perpetual and unresolved conflict in India’s and my life together.  It is no wonder that we have been arguing nastily from the moment we arrived here. 

We have to hurry back to see They Might Be Giants in a family concert at NYU. The drummer’s daughter is in Lu’s class at the Blue School. I think we have swapped experiences for possessions for the last 16 months. Not a bad trade, but also possibly not sustainable.  More to come.

Greetings from New York!

Zola and Tallulah both started school last week.  Zola is in fourth grade at P.S. 3, the John Melser Charrette school in the West Village.  Tallulah is in “4s” at the Blue Man School on Houston and Avenue B.

For Zola, it was a shock being dropped into a big public school after three years of small-class coddling at the Willow School out in New Jersey and 15 months of no school at all.  India had to work pretty hard to get him accepted to P.S. 3.  In the late summer, she started trekking over to the school every day, usually taking Zola and Tallulah, to plead her case to the administrators.

I had not seen the school, but had heard Zola’s wide-eyed commentary from his summer visits: “It is a huge place.”  ”It has cages over the windows, “There is no grass or sand in the playground.” “It smells like barf.”  The last comment was probably just from the fresh paint.

Through India’s sheer relentlessness, Zola was finally accepted into Beth B.’s fourth-grade class. We all went to school together on his first day.  Zola walked slowly, and with his eyes wide, like man condemned.  The closer we got to the school building, the more slowly he walked.

All of Zola’s late-summer impressions were overwhelmed by the sheer number of kids that poured into the gymnasium to wait with us before school opened on the first day.  Hundreds and hundreds of kids: tall, short, black, white, Asian, Latino, long-haired, funny-haired, short-haired, bespectacled, loud, quiet.  On the morning of the first day, packed into the gymnasium, they were mostly loud.  He clung to me physically as we climbed four flights of stairs to his classroom.

There is definitely a lot more diversity at P.S. 3 than we had at Willow.  I feel woefully uncool surrounded by tattooed parents, talking about film production and lesbian activism. I became aware (again) of how the last year has been a bubble.  Our kids have had no fixed schedules, no real demands put on them, and loads of 1:1 adult attention.  Public school is not exactly like that.

After the first day, Zola said, “Do you want to hear about the worst school in the whole world?  Well, you came to the right place, Dad!”  From that point, it seems to have gotten better with each passing day.  

Zola is making friends, getting used to being out the door by 8:05 every morning, and doing homework.  He was disappointed that “no one seems very interested in my trip around the world,” but that is OK.  If nothing else, he (and we) appreciate how special our time together has been.  He us enrolled in after-school activities ranging from ping-pong (with the world’s former #11-ranked player) to fencing to “stunts and skills.”  He nurtures a dream of becoming a break dancer.

The school is about a 10-minute walk from our rented house.  I am enjoying the morning walk with Zola each day.  We have had a few tough mornings, when we couldn’t get him out of the house, and we were worried about being late.  Mostly, though, we have nice conversations about video games, movies, and the weapons and planes used in World War II.  At least it is not Pokemon.

Our long re-entry to the U.S. after our trip feels somewhat less ragged now.

Greetings from Queens, New York!

We are speeding toward JFK Airport, three hours early for the 11:35 flight to Johannesburg. This time tomorrow, we will be at Chiawa Lodge, on the Zambezi River, in Zambia. старинная порнография фото

The last few months have been a blur. All of us were packed into a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan for about three weeks in June (after the adventure on the Redneck Riviera).

During July and early August, India and the kids were up in the Catskills. They had another pretty idyllic summer of day camp, long runs, and intense social activity. Zola got kissed by an 11-year-old girl named Olivia Barnett, which may be the highlight of his entire year. Tallulah became the youngest camper in history to get a bike patch, for riding more than 50 miles over the summer.

I was with the family at the Beaverkill every weekend, and took a few Fridays off to be with them. It was nowhere near as much fun as last summer, when I was around all of the time. Instead of riding 1,000 miles on my bicycle, I rode about 100. At least I didn’t finish last in the tennis tournament this year.

We are off for the next 11 days: Zambia and then South Africa. We are also moving apartments in New York as soon as we get back. We are all craving a little stability and certainty.

At this moment, though, it is exciting to be leaving on a big trip. The adventure continues.

Greetings from New York, New York.

The rest of my scheduled time in Destin, Florida (i.e., Sunday) was fun but uneventful.  We spent a lot of time on the beach, went on the water on stand-up paddle boards, had a classic fish-shack dinner.  The kids went from swimming in the pool to swimming in the ocean to swimming in the pool to going back in the ocean.  It was fun for me to see so many Southerners at play: wearing lots of gear with SEC football team logos, drinking Lite beer on the beach, driving huge pickup trucks.

India and I went for a late-morning run, keeping up my long-standing birthday tradition of pushing some type of workout to the point of great discomfort.  It was brutally hot and humid by 9am, truly mad dogs and Englishman weather.  It was a wonderful birthday, and a blessing to be with my family.

Everyone else was staying for the whole week, but I had to go back to work.  On Sunday night, Zola got very upset with me, saying, “Uncle JJ and Uncle D are staying all week and missing work.  I hate your job, I wish we could have traveled forever.  I hope you miss your flight.”  He was tired and sunburnt, and that probably made his reaction more extreme.  Still, it is hard to say goodbye to your kid when he is crying.

On Monday morning, I left the house long before sunrise, to catch a 6:05 flight back to New York.  The “Fort Walton - Destin Airport” was only about ten minutes from our rented house, so I arrived there in plenty of time to check in and board.  The only problem was that I had gone to the wrong airport.  The “Fort Walton Airport” was about 25 miles further west and inland.  Who knew?

Driving our rented convertible fast in the pre-dawn darkness, I thought I had a shot at making the flight.  When I arrived at the second airport, I ran through the terminal.  The Hertz desk was not staffed so early in the morning, so I clipped the car keys to the rental contract, and tossed them behind the counter and out of sight.  Then I ran to the USAir check in.

I had missed the check-in deadline by only a few minutes, but there was no one behind the counter any longer.  They were probably down at the gate.  Delta had three flights that morning, but all were sold out, and they couldn’t help me.  Defeated, I decided to stay an extra day in Florida, and take the same USAir flight on Tuesday morning.  The next problem became how to get back to the beach house in Destin.

At this hour, the airport had very few staff (no one at Hertz, Avis, USAir, the help desk, etc.) but it did have a lot of armed police officers walking around.  I thought about asking one of them for help in retrieving the car keys from behind the counter at Hertz, but realized that was probably a bad idea.

Instead, I stood at the Hertz counter, and watched one of the officers walk down the hall towards me from about 50 meters away.  He turned around to walk the other way.  Hoping that there was no video surveillance, I leaped over the counter, and dropped to the floor behind the desk.  I picked up the keys and the rental contract, and peeked down the hallway again.  The officer was facing me again, so I waited.  When he turned away, I stepped on the desk (thank goodness it did not break), and leaped back over the counter and into the terminal.

Five minutes later I was back in the convertible (which I had technically never returned), and driving back toward Destin with the top down.  I called Hertz and explained that I would be returning the car a day later than planned. 

I got back to the house at about 7am, and surprised everyone in the living room.  Zola said, “I can’t believe it!  We all prayed that you would miss your flight, and it happened.  Our prayers were answered.” 

In the end, of course, it was fine to miss another day.  We did the same things we had done on Sunday: played on the beach, swam, went for a run, went out on the stand-up paddle boards.  It was like a snow day, but with sunscreen and lots of Southern accents.  I somehow got sunburn on top of my sunburn.

On Tuesday morning I got up much earlier.  When he heard me get up, Zola sneaked downstairs and sat in the car.  He refused to move until it got so late that I missed my flight again.  It was very sweet of him, and made me feel terrible. Eventually, I got him back to bed, and left for the (correct) airport.

About two miles from my destination, a police car pulled me over.  I was very scared that somehow my key-retrieval antics of the previous day would lead to an arrest for grand theft auto.  The officer started with the classic leading question, “Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?”

Thankfully I did not say, “Because Hertz reported this rental car stolen?”  He told me that I was driving 48 in a 30 zone.  I explained that I was late for a flight, I didn’t know the area, hadn’t seen the sign.  After he ran my license, and assured himself that I was sober, he let me go with a friendly warning.

Too much drama for a simple trip.  Still, I made the flight, got stuck for several hours in Charlotte, and got back to New York by mid-afternoon.

Greetings from Destin, the beautiful, white-sand heart of Florida’s Gulf Coast!

Our plan was pretty simple: fly from New York to Atlanta on Saturday morning, drive to Destin, meet up with India’s family on Saturday afternoon, enjoy my birthday on the beach together on Sunday. I would fly back early on Monday morning.

After a year of traveling the world, this should have been straightforward. Instead it became a comedy of small errors. No harm done, a lot of cultural learnings for me, and some quality family time for us all.

There are mixed opinions, by the way, about whether the term ‘redneck’ is acceptable. Every person I’ve asked in the South has said its OK, so I will go with that. I don’t mean it in any pejorative sense, and if anyone posts a comment suggesting a different word, I will change the title of this post. The ‘Redneck Riviera’ alliteration is irresistible, though. Given how sunburnt we all are, it is factually accurate as well.

India had assured me that the drive from Atlanta to Destin was three hours. When I got around to checking on Google maps, while waiting in line at Hertz in the Atlanta airport, it turned out to be 320 miles. Estimated drive time: 6-7 hours. Ouch!

At India’s suggestion, we upgraded our rental to a convertible, and got everyone excited about a proper roadtrip to the beach.

When Tallulah and Zola saw the dark-blue Mustang, they both got wildly excited. Zola started saying “Yeah, baby!” over and over again in his Austin Powers accent. Wisely, Tallulah also dug her hairbrush out of her backpack.

Pretty quickly, we realized that the cobertible was an impractical choice. Our luggage overflowed the tiny trunk, and we had to stack it in the back seat between the kids. Each of them was wedged in tightly by bags. The top-down cruising was also a lot windier than I think they expected. As stylin’ as Zola felt (”Yeah, baby!”), ten minutes south of the airport he and Tallulah were pleading for us to put the roof up.

With the roof up, however, the crowding from the luggage was claustrophobically unbearable. We had to put the roof back down. Tallulah hid under a blanket for the first couple of hours, and Zola huddled low and out of the wind. A good time was had by all, or at least by India and me.

As we drove, I heard lots of stories from India about college and law-school road trips to Destin, and about family vacations on the beach. I heard about her friend picking up the rocker, Tommy Two Tone, and bringing him back to India’s motel room. I hadn’t really appreciated how important this place was to her in the years before we knew each other.

The trip south had many highlights. I saw a billboard that read “God, Guns and Guts Made America Great!” The New York equivalent would probably read “Money, Chutzpah, and Take-Out Chinese Food”. We saw another billboard advertising “Concealed Weapons Permit Classes.” I’m not sure what exactly they teach in that one.

Somewhere near Dothan, Alabama, we passed a commercial yeast factory. The smell was overwhelming and bad. Having been silent for over an hour, Tallulah popped up from under her wind shelter and yelled, “Someone pooped!”

Stranger still, after a similar period of silence, Zola informed us gravely that he “hadn’t picked a booger in over a year.” Maybe the sun was cooking his head.

Far to the north, the three-vehicle Nashville convoy with the rest of India’s family had somehow missed their planned departure time of 7 am. They actually rolled out at 12:30 pm, which put them on track for a 9 pm arrival. Somehow this made us feel a little better about our own travel challenges.

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After a wind-swept eternity, we pulled into Destin at 6:30 pm, picked up the keys to the rental house, and found the place, across the street from the beach. Excitedly, we hauled our bags inside, and found … a disgusting mess.

Somehow the house had not been cleaned after its last occupants had checked out. The previous occupants had not been a college fraternity, or a traveling rock band, but the place was pretty gross.

The challenge was to get the house cleaned before my cleanliness-valuing (some night say germphobic) mother-in-law arrived a few hours later.

To the rental agency’s great credit, they got on it right away. Within two minutes of calling to report the problem, Todd, the manager had called back, apologized profusely, and dispatched his best cleaner, Esmeralda, and a large team. He even offered to pay for dinner so we could get out of the cleaning team’s way.

We went to the beach for a while, and swam in the warm Gulf water. The sand is white, so the water looks beautiful and blue. The kids dug and built castles until sunset, and then we went off to “Captain Dave’s” for a fish dinner (thanks, Todd).
Eventually, the Nashville convoy rolled in, Zola and Tallulah were reunited joyously with their cousins, and all was well.

It was a long, funny, interesting and complicated last day before turning 43. This was a fitting ending to our long, funny, interesting and complicated year.

Lyme, New Hampshire

Greetings from New York!

The days and weeks are flying by.  India and the kids returned from Nashville just before Memorial Day, and we have been sort of jammed into this small one-bedroom in SoHo together.  

On Memorial Day weekend we were up in the Catskills, which was great.  The kids spent hours catching (and releasing) frogs at our pond, and at the little pond by the Inn.  They had camp on Saturday and Sunday, and Zola had a sleepover with his friends Wyatt and Charlie.  We saw lots of our summer friends, and regaled them with stories from our trip around the world.  The average enquirer probably got a lot more detail than he or she wanted.  Summer will be fun.

Last Thursday, India and the kids drove up to my Mom’s and stepfather’s house in New Hampshire.  I flew and drove up on Friday evening, and we had a very nice weekend together.  Mom and Steve organized a family reunion on Saturday evening.  We had had a similar gathering in New Hampshire just before we left, so the events seemed sort of like bookends on the trip.  India and I had a chance to talk to Mom and Steve for a long time on Sunday, and they asked a lot of second-order and third-order questions about the trip that we had never really thought about before.  The trip was a rich experience, and it was fun for us to think about it and discuss it.

While they are in New York, India is trying hard to organize one major event each day.  If she didn’t do this, I think all of them would really feel aimless and out of sorts.

On Monday, they went to the war museum on the aircraft carrier Intrepid.  None of us had been since the boat/museum was totally renovated a few years ago.  Zola came back with stories of kamikaze attacks, flight simulators, and radar invisibility.  He continues to be enthralled by war and all of its trappings.  He and Tallulah bought a small collection of metal fighter planes, which have been underfoot constantly since they brought them home.

On Tuesday they all went to the Statue of Liberty.  Tallulah thought this was just fantastic.  Tuesday night she told me in  detail about the statue’s flip-flops, about the boat ride, and about the museum.  She insisted on calling the statue “Lady Liberty.”  Zola was mostly interested in the amount of security they had on the island, including a bomb sniffing machine.

This evening we went to see the play Mary Poppins онлайн смотреть фильмы порно бесплатно on Broadway.  As you would expect, the singing and dancing and the sets were spectacular.  It is a thoroughly professional production, and fun for all of us.  India and I appreciated intellectually how difficult it is to sing and dance so well.  For Zola and Tallulah (particularly), it was all just magic.  At the very end, when Mary Poppins flies out over the audience and into the balcony, I thought Lu might jump out of my lap and try to catch the actress’s skirt as she went by.  Lu was bursting with joy and wonder.

I had forgotten that the core plot line is the story of a repressed, workaholic father, who rediscovers his inner child through the interventions of Mary Poppins.  Sounds also like the plot of Pretty Woman онлайн жестокое порно , actually.  At one point, as the father was acting gruff and telling the children he was too busy to say goodnight to them, Zola leaned over and said, “That was like you before we went on the trip, Dad.”  

We have talked a lot about this theme of how I used to be, and how I changed during our year away.  It was interesting to see Zola make that connection and tell me about it.  I’m not sure whether I am slipping back into that way of being.  The fact that I made it to dinner and a play with the family at 7pm on a Wednesday night is a positive leading indicator.

Mostly what we need at the moment is clarity and stability.  This is a difficult time, frankly, but we are doing our best to work through it.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Greetings from New York!

This afternoon I was desperate to get a haircut.  The last time I got a trim was in Cape Town in January.  The last proper hair cut was from the traditional Turkish barber, outdoors on a ledge at the Cave Hotel, high above the rock formations of Cappadoccia.  That must have been September.

I went to a place across the street from the McKinsey office, where I have gone probably 25 times before.  It has faded from its former near glamour, and is now a little sad and run down.  They even took out the televisions that used to run continuous loops of fashion-show videos. много спермы

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The woman who cut my hair was Eastern European.  She grimaced and pursed her lips as she did a slow examination of my head. 

She ran her fingers through my hair and said, “So you want  more highlights?  Highlights again?”

I explained, “Actually, I don’t have highlights.  My hair got a little blond on top because I was outside in the sun a lot for the last year.”

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She didn’t say anything, but in any language, her expression said, “Yeah, right!  ‘Fess up, bottle boy!”

Regardless, she cut off most of the blond.  I felt a little nostalgic as I watched the hair fall to the floor.  I thought of sunny days in Australia, and in South Africa, and in Namibia.  I thought about skiing hatless in Switzerland, and surfing in New Zealand.  Blondes really do have more fun, I guess.

There will be more sunny days, more surfing, more skiing hatless.  In the meantime, back to brown, and back to work.