I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately, and it’s starting to show.  I feel like my to-do list has taken over my life, and I don’t like it.  I have taken on too many obligations, and I can’t give adequate attention to any of them, resulting in me running around like a headless chicken.  I’m doing a lot, but only accomplishing a little, and I’ve been feeling lately like my brain is full.  Here’s a few of the things that have been on my mind lately, in no particular order:

Finishing …

On Sunday I met Marc down in DC after he got off work. The weather was really great and I knew there would be a lot of folks down on the mall, and the light in late afternoon/early evening is exceptional for photography. We wandered around from about 3:30 to 5:30. Here’s some of what I got:

I took this photo while on a ferry from Thun, Switzerland, back to Interlaken, Switzerland, where I would then take a train to Lauterbrunnen, a bus to Stechelberg, and then a cable car to get back to my hostel in Gimmelwald (all for free, thanks to my expensive-but-well-worth-it Swiss Pass).  It was a gorgeous day, and the first sunny one we had had in a few weeks, so I had made the trek from my base in Gimmelwald down to Thun early in the morning to catch a parade of …

I have a busy month ahead of me for reenacting!  I have a reenactment every weekend for the next month, starting with a WWII private event this weekend up in Newville, Pennsylvania.
I am really, really looking forward to this event.  Why?  Because it’s at, to my knowledge, the only recreated WWI trench site in North America.  Reenactors have built almost three miles of trenches on a 500 acre patch of farmland in rural Pennsylvania over the years.  It has bunkers, machine gun ports, and even a shell hole pocked no-man’s …

A Mongolian family rides in a motorcyle and sidecar in the village of Moron in Mongolia. Photo by Michel Setboun.

Now that I have completed my first set of Mongol clothes, I have to get to work on the “accessories”.  My first project is going to be making a snuff bottle pouch, which I will use to hold my keys, wallet, and anything else important.  The bag itself is of very simple design, but they are almost universally very highly decorated with embroidery, which is not so simple.  I bought some wonderful silk embroidery thread in the very gaudy (but very accurately Mongol) colors of burnt umber, magenta, lime green, …

Last night was my second attendance at the DC Travel TweetUp.  Held in a different location every month, this time it was at The Big Hunt in Dupont Circle.  The event organizers, Stephanie of Twenty-Something Travel and Dave of GoBackpacking asked me to be the official photographer this time.  I’m still working on learning how to use my new flash, but I think they came out decently.  Enjoy!

Now that I have my computer back, I am finally catching up on all the work I missed during its absence.  One of the things I’ve had a chance to do is start going through the 681 photos I took at Washington DC’s Chinese New Year celebration.  There will be many more in a post later this weekend, but here’s one, taken post-festival, for now:

I also have a guest post (or guest-photo) up over at Twenty-Something Travel.  Go take a look.

I envy those of you whose backpacks can consist solely of a bathing suit, a couple t-shirts, a pair of shorts, and some flip flops.  Why?  Because my backpack usually has at least one heavy coat, sweaters, gloves, scarves, and often heavy, fur-lined boots.  This is because, for some masochistic reason, I prefer to travel in colder countries.
When I look at a globe, I feel strangely drawn to countries that happen to be in colder climates.  Switzerland, Russia, Mongolia, the Patagonia region of Argentina, Finland, Nepal, Canada.  I’ve never quite …

Okay folks, it’s blogroll trimming time!
I have decided that my blogroll sidebar widget is *way* too long, and that it’s time to do some trimming.  I’m going to have a “links” page that will have a more comprehensive list of links, but the blogroll you see in my sidebar will be considerably shorter, and will hopefully more accurately reflect the direction I want to go with this blog.
Unfortunately, this means that whole segments of my blogroll are going to disappear.  Expats, Education, Foreign Service Officers, Spirituality, and DC Area will …

I’ve decided to start a new feature here, which I will be calling the “Travel Tuesday Photo”, after the Twitter theme of similar name.  Every Tuesday I’ll be posting a photograph from my travels, with a short note about the photo and the story behind it.  My photography blog has been successful in its own right, but I want to make sure that photography is still a part of this blog as well.  I hope folks enjoy this, so here’s the first edition of Travel Tuesday Photos:

Me & The Jindo
When …

I’d like to announce that for the first time since I left Korea, my blog has garnered 10,000 hits in a month!
In the month of February, which is already the shortest month of the year, my blog got 10,538 hits.  Back when I was in Korea (and thus being regularly linked to by other Korean expat blogs), I was regularly getting those numbers (my peak was almost 12k in a month), but after I returned to the USA, my blog took a major hit, losing almost 50% of its traffic …

Two women on a Chang Jiang motorcycle, a Chinese derivation of the BMW R-71.  Photo by Simon Marcus.

Note: This post was inspired by a question from Stephanie of 20-Something Travel. To ask your own question about the way I travel, please do so on the original post.

It seems that within the travel blogosphere, there are two types of travelers: those who are single and travel solo, and those who are romantically involved and travel as a couple.  There aren’t too many folks out there like me, who have a significant other (in my case, my boyfriend Marc) but who still choose to travel solo.
I am …

Well, my computer is back.  It has a new logic board and a new optical drive, but it also came back missing all of my applications.  Nobody at the Apple store informed me that when you pay them to back up your stuff (since Time Machine backups don’t work when you switch logic boards), they don’t back up your applications.  So, I’m now going through the extremely tedious process of re-downloading, re-installing, and re-registering my 100+ programs.  It’s annoying, but at least it’s possible, and since my library files were …

Note: This post was inspired by a question from Bob of Vagabond3. To ask your own question, please do so on the original post.

Traveling as a photographer adds a whole extra layer of complexity to travel. We have to worry about security, access to amenities, luggage weight management, and cultural sensitivity a lot more than your average traveler. As such, I have found that photographers, both professional and amateur, tend to travel a bit differently than most folks. This post is about how I travel as a photographer.
First I …

Over the last few weeks I have found myself really wanting to write a post about the way I travel.  All travelers are unique in the way they travel, and I always enjoy reading about other travelers’ styles, tactics, motivations, etc.  What stopped me from writing the post was that it seemed like a gigantic topic, and I wanted to avoid having a really extensive post on the subject.  So, what did I decide to do?
A post series.
I’ll be writing a series of posts about the way I travel, with …

I may be fired today.  Personally, I think it’s a good thing.
I was scheduled to visit someone’s house last night at 6pm to take their dog for an evening walk.  Usually this isn’t a problem, but since my laptop has been in the shop since Monday, I’ve been operating without my scheduling program, which makes my life considerably more confusing and disorganized.  My calendar is set up to give me warnings about anything different from “the usual” 3 hours ahead of time (so I don’t plan something in its time …

So, this morning my Macbook Pro suffered something of a catastrophic logic board (that’s motherboard for you PC folks) failure, though no fault of my own (I literally just woke it from sleep and it went *poof*).
Good News:  As it turns out, my computer was part of a batch that shipped with faulty logic boards which have since been recalled, so the repair is free.  This is particularly good considering that the logic board is pretty much the most expensive thing to replace.
Bad News:  It won’t be back from the …

A decrepit-looking Ural motorcycle at the edge of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. Photo by Matthieu Paley.