Global Wandering

A Rare Rainbow

I stop at the eye drop aisle in Wal-mart. A white-haired woman in her seventies is studying an eye drop box. I pick up my favorite brand. She still examines the side of the box.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m looking for the expiration date,” she says.

“Eye drops have expiration dates?”

“Yes, they don’t work as well if they expire.” She points at the box. “2004. That’s not good.”

“I think that’s the copyright date for the packaging.”

She doesn’t believe me, and picks up another box. I look at my eye drops and find the expiration date on the bottom of the box. November 2008.

She looks at hers. “2003. This one’s expired too.”

“The expiration date is on the bottom.” I point to it. March 2009, although it is written March 09.

“March 9th,” she says. “That’s good.”

I let her be. I’m sure she will use them up before next March.

Posted by jd at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Flyfishing on the Warm River

A perfect Saturday is a morning bike ride, taking pictures in the early afternoon, followed by a long nap.

The Warm River is one of the numerous waterways that flows from the Yellowstone Plateau. I've not fished this river, but I've floated it on an innertube. It is anything but warm.

Abandoned Cabin on the Warm River

It's harvest time in Idaho for hay and grain. Between the smoke from wildfires and the dust from harvesting, the sky is not as blue as usual nor are the mountains on the horizon as crisp.

Hay Bale Rustling

Posted by jd at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I’ve been trying to sell my old Windows Mobile cell phone that I replaced with the iPhone on Ebay for over a month now. My first buyer was a new Ebay user from Baltimore who didn’t pay. Ebay doesn’t make it easy to get a credit for selling fees so it took several weeks to work through that process. Plus, I didn’t want to relist the phone, because I held out hope after speaking to the buyer and receiving an email where he promised to pay that he actually might. Alas he didn’t, so I relisted the phone 10 days ago. This time I decided to broaden the audience so I agreed to ship internationally thinking there might be a market in Europe. Bad mistake. Now my buyer is from Nigeria. After winning the auction, he has sent several fake Ebay and Paypal emails stating he has paid, but Paypal won’t release payment until I ship him the phone.

A search of his UserID shows positive feedback for purchasing a number of 15 cent Star Trek badges. The search also showed that in addition to my cell phone, he won over $30,000 worth of Ebay auctions for other electronics just yesterday. Hmm. When I insisted via email that I wouldn’t send him the phone until the money was in my account, he responded as follows:

“i have made the payment and the money has been deducted from my account.. ok?.. so i will want you to send the item ASAP and send the shipment tracking number to paypal for verification and you can also contact their customers help at paypalcustomershelp@streamingmoney.com for the payment confirmation .. ok.. thanks i wait to hear from you .. “

I responded to him that streamingmoney.com was not a valid Paypal URL and given he had won so many auctions yesterday, he must be a wealthy man so I would patiently await payment.

With such shenanigans plus the other spam I receive posing as questions for products I've listed, Ebay is becoming a real bear to use.

Posted by jd at 3:35 PM | Permalink

Our vegan dog Maggie is addicted to cherry tomatoes. Numerous times a day she sneaks out to the plants, jumps and snags a tomato. Then she cradles it in her mouth until she can lie comfortably, bite down and relish the juicy burst.

Posted by jd at 8:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Monday I was eating alone (as I usually do on business trips) at Asia Nora, a wonderful organic restaurant in Washington D.C. My first course was a beet, avocado, grapefruit and arugula salad.

I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never bothered to learn to eat with chopsticks. I know this is culturally insensitive of me but up until now every Asian restaurant I’ve eaten at has had forks on the table, even the places I ate at in Korea a few years ago. So with a choice between a fork or chopsticks, I’ve always taken the easy way out and chosen a fork.

Except at Asia Nora there was no choice. The table was set with only my delightful salad, a pair of chopsticks and a black stone ⎯which I believe is to rest the chopsticks on when taking a break, but again I’m ignorant on the matter. I slowly picked up the chopsticks and realized I’d never even paid attention to how others eat with them. Fortunately, the first floor of the restaurant was full of diners so I’d been seated alone on the balcony. This allowed me to freely experiment with different chopstick techniques⎯none of which was particularly successful⎯without being embarrassed. I was as graceful as a knitting walrus, but I managed to finish the salad without using my fingers nor gripping each chopstick in a different hand.

When my wild salmon entrée arrived, the waiter was kind enough to ease my misery and offered me some silverware. This weekend I promise I will learn to use chopsticks properly.

Posted by jd at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My friend, who is serving a life without parole sentence, commented in a letter this week that he’d been thinking about life’s simple pleasures he misses after twenty-five years in prison. His lives in the sweltering mugginess of Alabama. At the top of his list was ice. What he wouldn’t give for a tall glass of ice water, he wrote. In prison, they spend their days drinking tepid water.

My list of simple pleasures includes:

1. Sitting on our front porch on summer evenings and feeling the air cool.
2. The sweetness of a freshly picked tomato.
3. Afternoon naps.
4. Gladiolas, roses and poppies.
5. A well written sentence.

I am blessed with a simple life. LaPriel and I went to Sam’s Club yesterday and walked among the towering shelves of merchandise. So many things called out to be purchased, but I found nothing interested me⎯except for a box of blueberries, which I bought and happily consumed.

LaPriel and I often dream of the day when I quit work and we can travel as much as we want. As I contemplate that, I look at my belongings and mentally begin giving them away, winnowing them down to the essentials. Here are the seven things, excluding clothes, I think I could keep and live a perfectly contented life.

1. Apple Powerbook
2. Panerai watch
3. iPhone
4. Trek road bike
5. Nikon D50 digital camera
6. Moleskine notebook
7. Pen

What are your seven?

Posted by jd at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I’m sitting in the lobby of the Portland airport and there is a guy dressed in a tuxedo singing Frank Sinatra tunes and other big band favorites to the soundtrack of a full orchestra.

He is talented. In fact, he sounds remarkably like Frank Sinatra. No one applauds. Live music in the airport seems so out of place I suspect travelers think clapping violates some TCA mandate.

Posted by jd at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)