I was hoping to be in Vienna for a day and a half last week, but that didn’t work out, so I had just four hours (awake) there.

I didn’t get to any museums, galleries, or cathedrals.

I did have fresh pistachio ice cream.

I did not go to CATS.

I got myself off the main tourist lane, discovering a great city just a few blocks away.

I did not buy souvenirs.

I did wander into an independent jewelry store and bought a ring from the very woman who made it.

I didn’t know whether a waiter was teasing me when I asked him for cutlery and a napkin to eat my snack; he sounded surprised by my request. Do the Viennese eat sausages with their hands? (The confusion is because he winked every single time he spoke to me.)

I did have a lovely pasta caprese in a small Italian restaurant a block from my hotel. The husband cooked for me; the wife served me.

I did not feel lonely when I was the only person in the restaurant when they opened; I was eating ridiculously early since I had to be up at 3 a.m. to head to the airport.

I did make time to take a bubble bath in the luxurious tub in my hotel room and a glass of mini bar wine.

I did not have enough time there.

Full days in Dublin: 4

Museums: 7 (The Little Museum of Dublin; The EPIC Immigration Museum; The Irish Whiskey Museum; Kilmainham Gaol; The Irish Famine Exhibition; Dublin Castle; Trinity College–the Library)

Visits to the excellent Dingle Whiskey Bar: 3

Trips to Nando’s: 2

Whiskeys I tried that I remembered to write down: 22 (Green Spot; Gold Spot; Dingle Whiskey; Teeling Small Batch; Writer’s Tears; The Temple Bar 12; Fercullen 14; Tullamore Dew; Powers; Bushmill’s Red Bush; Whistler Blue Note; Connemara Original; Teeling Brabarzon; Irishman; Knappogue Castle 14; Poit Dhubh 21; Dubliner; Teeling Small Batch; Benrioch 10; Liberties Oak Devil; Jameson Caskamates; Grace O’Malley)

(Best: Gold Spot. Worst: Temple Bar)

Bartenders who put so much ice in my whiskey that it just tasted like cold: 1

Whiskey shop workers who must have thought I didn’t like whiskey since they kept trying to recommend liquors and “mixing” whiskey: 1

Bartenders at the Dakota who made my night by recommending good whiskey, providing great conversations, and being concerned enough about me getting dinner to look up my hotel on his phone to see if they would still be serving by the time I got back: 1

Awful meads tried: 1 (Kinsale Atlantic Dry Mead)

Decent gins tried: 1 (Chinnery Dublin Dry Gin)

Vegetables tried: many

Quality, tasty vegetables consumed: 0

Overheard conversations in which a woman referred to eating raw red bell peppers with the same sort of disgust usually reserved for hearing about someone else’s illegal kinks: 1

Posh Hotels: 1

Awesome conferences presented at: 1

Old poems about Anubis found: 1

Terrible colds: 1

Seasons of Star Trek Discovery binged once I realized that it is accessible on Netflix when I’m overseas, when I was trying not to have a cold: 1.5

Terrible days of diarrhea: 1

Cabbies taking me to the airport who expressed a desire for my nails to rip open their shirts and rake their back during sex who totally went for a hug when helping me with the bags: 1

Even though I was sad to leave Oxford and everything and everyone I love there, I was excited about finally going to Ireland.

There were several misadventures, though.

I have to use Uber in the UK, since they don’t have Lyft. I had a ride scheduled to pick me up at 8:30 a.m. for a 9:01 train. Uber didn’t actually schedule it. At 8:42, they were still thinking about it, and there was an incredible wait for customer service. And I couldn’t schedule a different ride while they were thinking about it.

Finally, I called a cab.

When I got to the train station, there was an enormous line–the entry doors into the station weren’t working.

I got through at 9.

And then the train came.

A man offered to help me with my bags, though he was carrying four coffee cups in a cardboard container.

My heaviest bag fell backwards, and the coffee fell onto him.

(He wouldn’t let me give him money for a new shirt.)

I made my way to my seat, which was a window seat. The main in the aisle seat said to the stranger across the aisle (not to me): “there’s no assigned seating on this train.”

“I can sit somewhere else if you like, but my ticket has a seat number.”

I showed him the ticket.

He let me sit down, but explained that I was wrong because the reservation lights weren’t lit.

So I offered to move.

“No, no. It’s no bother.”

So I was stuck with him.

All of that made the traffic jam I hit taking a cab from the train station to the London City Airport seem much less stressful.

However, at one point in the cab, a guy tried to hail my cab when we were stopped. The driver told him he had a passenger.

The man walked to my window and said, “And what do you think you’re doing here?”

“Ummm . . . sitting in a taxi?”

The man mumbled things about us as he walked away.

My driver said that although he’d been a London cabbie for years, he had never had something like that happen before.

Papers given: 1

Excellent papers heard: 5

Panelists on my animation panel who seemed genuinely surprised that adult cartoons are not just stupid shows for children (and who thus didn’t seem to understand the rhetorical situation of their own presentation): 2

Friends from grad school seen: 5

Times I’ve gotten to see Vanessa this year: 3

Amazing blueberry steak at Acqua al 2: 1

Unnecessary and dangerous staircases in the airbnb: 2

Times I fell: 1

Places on my body I hit when I fell: 4

Giant dark bruises that are bigger and purple-r every day, so dark I’ve googled “when do I see a doctor about a bruise”: 1

Best crabcakes ever (The Old Ebbitt Grill): 1

Glasses of a dry rose while eating the best crabcake ever: 3

Glasses of dry rose I was charged for after eating the best crabcake ever: 1

Best fried yucca ever (at the same restaurant, on two different nights): 2

Times Melissa, Margaret, and I were called “gentlemen” while having the best fried yucca ever: 11

Adorable Peruvian waiters who took great pleasure in serving us gentlemen the best yucca ever and pisco sours he made himself: 1

Grouper servings: 3!

(for context, average grouper servings per year: sadly, 0)

Barry episodes watched with Melissa: 5

Lesbian bars that wouldn’t let Melissa’s bag in and thus that we didn’t go to: 1

Lesbian bars that didn’t have ridiculous bag rules: 1

Games of knock-off Jenga that I didn’t lose: 1

Monuments visited: 2

Museums visited: 3

Museums visited just for the sake of having a great lunch (bison!), though: 1

Grammar problems I saw in Smith-fucking-sonian museum placards: 4

“Stellar” Sea Cow skeletons observed: 1

By definition, unstellar sea cow skeletons observed: 1

Exhibits that accidentally look like threesomes: 1

Restaurants/bars where we were the only white people: 2

Books the McFarland table at the conference had by me: 1 (of 2)

References to Bill Cosby and Michael Jackson at the National Museum of African American History and Culture that made me uncomfortable: 3

Exhibits that downplayed Clarence Thomas’s assholery: 1

Exhibits of Emmett Till’s coffin, which made me cry: 1

Placards explaining that the turpentine camps of Florida were awful: 1

Discussions in which I had to explain to Margaret that Florbama has so much of the coastline that Alabama probably wants because the Spanish weren’t gonna give up those white sand beaches: 1

Maps at the museum proving my point: 1

Months until Melissa’s baby is born: 1.5

Conferences that Karlissa gets to attend this year: 1

Conferences in our future: many, many more

A little while ago, I wrote about a particularly embarrassing moment in Santa Barbara in 2012, involving Alan Parsons and my cleavage.

But that wasn’t the weirdest thing that happened that day.

Melissa and I had just finished a conference–I had given a presentation on a writing assignment I’d invented.

We had a day to play before we headed home, so we went to a mission and then on to wine tasting.

(The mission was where Juana Maria was buried–she is the real person The Island of the Blue Dolphins was based on.)

In the chapel of the mission, we came upon a statue of Mary Magdalen (the women misidentified as a prostitute in most contemporary churches).

Melissa said I would make a good Mary Magdalen. So I started singing “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar.

And we went about our day.

At one point, my mother called, but I let it go to voicemail, since we were out and about.

When we finally made it back to the hotel room after our long day, I checked the message she left.

She didn’t say anything.

Instead, the entire message was her singing the beginning of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.”

“Oh, no!” I exclaimed to Melissa. “Can she read my mind? That’s dangerous.”

PS–This event remains unexplained. Mulder and Scully should get on it.

I love The Alan Parsons Project.

Unabashedly.

And so I’m excited to see a live concert tonight at the Crest in Sacramento–last time, I had to go all the way to Napa to see them.

If you’re saying to yourself, that band’s name sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place it, let me assure you that you’ve heard the music–I don’t watch sports, but I still know the first song off the Eye in the Sky album, Sirius, is played all the time when stars take the court.

You may also remember that Dr. Evil’s plan, in Austin Powers 2, to turn the moon into a death star is the “Alan Parsons Project.” “The Dr. Evil Edit” then appeared on The Time Machine album.

The Alan Parsons Project isn’t like other bands–various musicians cycle in and out–the constant is musician/producer Alan Parsons, most famous for his work on a couple of Beatles’ albums and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, which got him his first Grammy nomination.

The albums the Project puts out are loosely themed. One of my favorites is Gaudi, inspired by the work and life of Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan architect, whose Sagrada Familia is still under construction (it started in 1882). It started my quest, now fulfilled, to visit Barcelona.

Other albums also appeal to the queen of the geeks side of me, with themes ranging from Keats to Poe to Freud to Egyptology.

It was probably the Eye in the Sky album I heard first–I went through all of my stepfather’s albums, looking for new friends. It was love at first listen, and I demanded that the family collection house the complete works.

One song that means a lot to me is “Prime Time,” from Ammonia Avenue. When I was a terrified 17 year old, I listened to it on repeat on the way to the hospital to have my son. “Even the longest night won’t last forever [. . .] Something in the air / Maybe for the only time in my life / Turning me around and guiding me right.]” Now, having had him in my life for 25 years, I can say it did all work out, surprisingly, amazingly, even if it wasn’t at all according to plan.

(That night did last forever, though–and by two days later, the theme song should have been the next song on the album: “Let me go home / I had a bad night / Leave me alone.”)

I’m listening to The Alan Parsons Project as I write this–my computer tells me I have 18.7 hours total.

I often listen to The Alan Parsons Project while I’m writing, which annoyed my son greatly in the Fall of 2012, when I was finishing an intensive project.

On the way to a Writing Program conference in Santa Barbara with Melissa in 2012, I relayed a conversation the boy and I had just had:

The Boy: Why are you always listening to this?

Me: I binge it when I’m writing.

The Boy: But you’re always writing!

A few days later, Karlissa spent the last day in Santa Barbara touring and wine tasting.

Near the end of the day, we were at Cottonwood Canyon tasting room. Just as our host was handing us a chocolate to have with the dessert wine pour, he mentioned his friend, Alan Parsons.

And I fell off my stool.

Literally.

I got myself up, fished the chocolate out of my cleavage, where it had fallen, and said, “The classy thing would be for everyone to pretend that didn’t happen.”

When Melissa explained why I’d been so overcome, our host insisted that the embarrassing story would be told.

“Well, when you do, tell him there’s a whole book out there written to his music.”

 

 

shortest amount of sleep in one night: 3 hrs

longest amount of sleep in one night: 15 hours

Michelin restaurants: 1 (but twice)

Nandos: 1

museums: 8

plays: 4

books read: 2

New Yorkers read: 2

London wineries (Renegade) visited: 1

tapas style dinners: 6 (2 Indian places, 1 Malaysian, 1 Spanish, 1 Greek)

ideas for a British porno: 1 (“Alas, Poor Fanny”)

times Karlissa decided it was easier and safer to take a cab instead of trying to find the nearest tube stop, due to lateness of night and amount of wine consumed: 1

drinks in ancient church crypts: 1

detailed descriptions of ripping urethras: 2

Indian desserts made from carrots and peanuts: 1

Lebanese wines: 1

Lebanese beers: 1

Servings of duck: 4

Summer blackberries consumed: 0

Sadness about lack of summer blackberries: endless

Toffee yogurts: 2

Songs played by the St. Martin’s in the field orchestra for the few moments we popped in before a show: 3

Times we should not have trusted the waitress when she said the portions were small: 1

Times an asshole cut in line in a cafe after saying he was late for yoga, but then asking that his croissant be toasted: 1

Indian-spiced fried okra servings: 2

one of the best plays of our lives: 1

one of the worst plays of our lives: 1

bottles of wine at the first wine bar in London: 2

dresses observed made from pineapple leaves: 2

music videos I made people watch by Ninja Sex Party: 2

times we almost fell in the bathroom due to a weird, poorly located step: 7

The Boy and I left Oxford today.

We are knackered.

In addition all the colleges we visited and the Harry Potter Studio Tour, we enjoyed the following pubs:

Bear Inn; Old Tom; The Trout; The Mitre; The Eagle and Child; The Cow and the Creek; The Head of the River; The Oxford Retreat; Turf Tavern; White Rabbit; The Crown; Chequers; The Oxford Democrats Club (where we played Aunt Sally) (I may be forgetting a few, but I got to try some nice gins and the boy got to try some nice ginger beers). 

We at at many cafes and restaurants, notably these: Oxford Grill (fresh Turkish food); Kazba (Spanish); Shanghai 30s (a Michelin rated Chinese place near where we were staying); Nandos (a longtime favorite, although the Oxford one we visited wasn’t great); The Opium Den; The Old Tom (really great Thai food); Shezan (wonderful Indian); Chutneys (they did our closing feast–and it was great); and Cafe Loco.

We spent a lot of time in book stores, including Waterstones, opened by Phillip Pullman, checked out The Oxford Museum, did a sunset river cruise, peeked around the Modern Art Gallery, were overwhelmed at the Pitts River Museum,

watched an orchestra rehearsal at Saint Mary’s Church (and had scones in the cafe there–in basically the oldest college building in all of Oxford),

had a Sunday Roast, toured Blenheim Palace (the ancestral home of Winston Churchill),

found our way into the Picture Gallery at Christ Church, got a fun and informative guided tour of Oxford Castle, took the students on a guided literary tour of Oxford, including the walkway that influenced CS Lewis and the Divinity Room, where many Harry Potter scenes were filmed,

spent an hour an a half at the Rollright Stones (though our bus driver anticipated we’d only need fifteen minutes),

gaped at The Ashmolian,

adored The Botanical Gardens,

took a bus up to the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock, saw scientific instruments galore at the History of Science Museum, failed repeatedly to stop a global pandemic in a board game cafe, experienced Alice Day

. . .

Oh, and we read.

Lots and lots of books.

Each.

In London, I got to tour the Beefeater Gin factory, see The Philanthropist, Queen Anne, and Our Ladies of Perpetual Succor (meh–this is the first thing from The National Theatre of Scotland I haven’t loved), visit the Charles Dickens House, and check out the Gay Life in London exhibit at the British Library.

An amazing class–with wonderful, smart, invested students–got taught too.

Oxford–we’ll miss you.

And we’ll be back.