GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

Avoiding banana lounge butt (except when typing this blog) and stingy things like these ... Story on the Wayback machine here .

I'm still waiting for i-Pearl Inc to say "I got it" and refund my $29.95 for the damaged laptop case. Or at least tell me to go to hell. The year has begun well. My best friend Julie from waaaaaaaaaay back in kindergarten, had the top of her lung removed a couple of days ago and has been given the all-clear. This, despite a very informed friend (head of a pulmonary critical care unit) telling me lung cancer is a tough one. I'd sent her a hamper of goodies but the internet hamper company didn't acknowledge right away for some reason. During that gap I had ample time to start wondering if my money had disappeared off to Nicaragua (a country I love, but you can disappear - voluntarily - pretty easily there). When I finally got an acknowledgement, it still left a lingering mistrust. I asked my friend to tell me what was in the hamper - just to see if the stated goods matched the actual. I thus declare 2010 to be the year of "I Got It". I assert

Today I went shoe shopping  (no I didn't buy the above boots, despite turning Japanese )

I got an interesting letter from someone today: Hi, Seeing that the Cubans are so poor and that dear old man has worked so hard everyday did you, will you or have you given him any money for using his picture?I was back to Cuba this past March and gave him a picture I took of HIM!!! I wonder what he would do if he saw himself on your book? I'm thinking there is something wrong with this ... Sandra It's a reasonable question: should I give the man on the cover of my book money? More to the point - just how much? This reader feels I am somehow taking advantage of this man - profiting from by having his face on my book. Here's my reply: Thanks for writing. I appreciate your thinking on this - though you're making a baseline assumption that he is poorer than me. In many ways, he's probably better off. He charges $1 for 2 little photos he processes in that bucket in a prime tourist location. He makes more money in a day than many Cubans do in a month. He'

New York never fails to redeem itself. A clinically certified New Yorker keeps quoting "either  E.B. White , ('Here is New York') or Joan Didion ('Goodbye to all that'). Actually, he now claims can't locate that passage anywhere in the above two writings, and I suspect in his rabidity about his domicile of 25 years, he made it up himself. No matter - how this blow in from Downunder spent New Year's Eve upover in 2009, is a testament to it. And I was nowhere near the mirrored ball in Times Square. Instead, I spent most of the day sheltering from the snow, working on a newsletter for Bike Friday. At 4pm I  wrapped myself up in everything Smartwool I own , pulled rubber rainboots, unfolded the Speeding tikit and pedaled uptown. The snow and ice were thick, with mirror-slick patches requiring careful negotiation in the icy bike lane. First, I arrived at Caroline Fu's office to take delivery of more Traffic Cone Bags to fulfil the orders th

Occasionally it's nice to get an unsolicited gift in the mail - even if only snailspam. In this case, a rather cool cardboard "Eiffel Tower party hat" from  St Germain , maker of the classy elderflower liqueur of the same name. I stumbled across this addictive concoction at a Dr Ruth Westheimer book launch at BottleRocket  and must have tipsily given them the GPS coordinate of my bunker. The enclosed classy instruction sheet, resembling a menu from one of these places , asks recipients to take a shot of themselves with it - presumeably expecting overexposed snaps of the tower teetering atop boozy, high-fiving party animals @ some velvet roped club or midwestern garage BBQ or other predictable composition. No such luck from the Galfromdownunder, who, with no such luck of a St Germain-fueled party invite, came up with this: a  David Weekes Hanno climbing the St Germain Eiffel Tower with Manhattan's London Terrace in the background! Now setting up such a sho

6 years after my Cuba book was published, I still get nice emails from people who've found it in a library, on a shelf in a backpacker's hostel in Nepal (thanks Sarad),  or got it for 99 cent plus $10 shipping on Amazon. It's technically only published in the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and now Germany, but has found its way around the globe. It's even in Iraq ... Here's are some from this week: Hi Lynette, We've never met; I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your Cuba book!I finished it last eve, in preparation for a 3-month trip there next month, & I could barely put it down!  I loved your great honesty, modesty, insights, philosophy, humor, descriptions, etc (& this was the first book I've finished in 10-20+yrs)! If you're ever in the Phoenix area you're welcome to stay in my guest bedroom. Best wishes! Dave Foster, AZ Lynette, I have to agree with Peter Sutherland about the reviews of your book. I did have to put it down whe