Away from home

and for the eagle eyed among you, yes, last week's should have read the fifty-third…

I’ve been traveling, spending time with people I love that I haven’t seen in years, visiting places that—in once instance—I hadn’t been to in decades. It’s been both exhausting and wonderful.

And small things are always there, both reminding me of home and making me feel more at home wherever I am—small, narrow alleys beckoning me down them to explore, and, surprisingly to me, parakeets. I have heard their their cries, now so familiar from their morning-and-evening commutes past my Kathmandu balcony, and looking up, seen their flashes of green in cities where I had never noticed them before, not known that they lived.

It never fails to make me smile, and remind me that next week I’ll be home. Regular programming will resume then; today, the outdoors beckons.