My company apparently tracks our top travelers, a rolling report looking at the past year and ranking those who've logged the most trips. I'm a person who typically does travel for work, but not at a level that would ever normally earn a spot on this list. Amusing then, that I'm currently showing as the company's #1 top traveler because the business trip I just returned from was the first one that got approved since the pandemic shut everything down. It was just a one-hour flight to Phoenix, which makes this pretty hilarious, but I suppose it's also a strange sort of badge of honor, as if I'm helping to usher in a return to business normalcy.

Considering I've lived just a few blocks from the ocean for the past several years, it is perhaps a bit disgraceful that I've spent so little time at the beach. It's safe to say the novelty wore off relatively quickly, and equally quickly my life became full with new friends and pursuits that cut into my beach time. (I also write books. Have I mentioned that?) I can think of other reasons, too. My fair skin that burns easily, the incessant and annoying tourists that crowd this little beach town between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and, of course, COVID-19. But it's there, the ocean. And every time I see it, I have to remind myself that it's real. That I live here.

This picture was taken in Palm Springs in the middle of a windstorm that came out of nowhere, which was weird and also weirdly liberating. I had just gotten my hair cut and felt like it captured me as I don't usually see myself. Which is to say that everything about it, even the angle, seemed to offer a different perspective.

When I went to Scotland a few years ago, I had this little shortbread shop on my list of places to go while in Edinburgh. It's certainly not what I would call a tourist destination, and in a city full of museums and castles (and Arthur's Seat, for crying out loud), it may seem strange that this was such a must-see.