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Painting badly (sort of) on purpose

Many years ago, I was visiting my family in San Francisco, and my nephew, then small enough to...

Fever Dreams, Painting Badly

Laying in bed in a feverish haze, thank you science, my overreactive immune system (and a 3rd...

6+ months post breakthrough COVID, and an idling motor

And on Day 111, she could smell. No, really smell. Smell that the honey-scented soap that she...

Quantifying the unquantifiable, Getting Better after Breakthrough Covid Infection

Of all the household tasks, perhaps the most vexing is the putting on of the duvet cover. For...

Breakthrough Covid Infection/Infección Irruptiva por Covid, post double vaccination with Sinovac

One of the many tasty things I ate that I could not taste. I could feel the lime though. Read on...

What I learned about photography from my dead father

In the slow and sometimes fast shift that is life, the remaining people in my family have moved, or are moving. I say remaining, because we at Smith family central have, at this point, buried more of us than there are still alive. I learned about death very young, and...

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The feria report, October means spring in Santiago, Chile

Seasonal produce at excellent prices brings me to the feria most weekends. I've been missing it since being back from first Argentina, and then Peru. But the stars aligned just right, and after a solid 48 hours of social time, beer, wine, whiskey (?!, just a taste,...

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The best souvenir, Arequipa, Peru

I don't know about you, but I don't need little ceramic busses cram-packed with figurines and chickens on the roof. And I've seen them in Ecuador, in Guatemala, in Bolivia. Certainly I don't need one that says Arequipa, Peru. I'm also all squared away on weavings,...

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Woes from the road, clinic review from Arequipa, Peru

In which our intrepid traveler, Bearshapedsphere, admits that it is not all rainbows and butterflies while on the road. This is where my mother and I spent a couple of hours this morning. Well, not specifically in this ambulance, as we were able to make it there by...

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The Prettiest Road (Santiago to Mendoza + back)

There are people who like the transit part of traveling. The bus, the plane, the boat ride. They say getting there is half the fun. I do not understand these people. For me, hyper (or amped, as I like to say) to a fault, sitting still in an enclosed space for a long...

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Celebrating la chilenidad, bearshapedsphere style.

It is September 18th, tikitiki ti, and I should be out drowning in chicha and heaving under a giant plate (or strangely, handfulls) of meat, but instead I am tidying the house, hanging laundry on the line (more decently dressed than in the past, as I have recently...

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