Wow. It’s been a while. Lots of things have happened, not the least of which was a whole-ass global pandemic. It seemed like it would never end, and now here we are far on the other side of it — so far, in fact, that people hardly react when they hear someone has COVID. For what it’s worth, I’ve somehow managed to go unscathed despite virtually everyone in my Norwegian family having been infected at least once. Espen has contracted it at least twice. How I didn’t manage to catch it from him given our close quarters is kinda a miracle.

So. Hi! I don’t have a proper excuse for not writing. I said before that it was hard to write following the death of my mom since I essentially started this blog so she could see our travel photos. She was big into having photos, and I used to actually print photos for her brag book. Since then? Meh. Not to mention I’ve hit some kind of languishment pothole. Just having this blog hanging over my head reminded me of how lazy* I was being by not writing, compounding the feelings. (*I actually don’t like the word lazy. It has some troubling connotations that I won’t delve into here. And this is why I felt worse about not writing—not only not here, but not anywhere.)

And then some random person reached out and asked if I would be willing to give up my domain name. Not sell it. Forfeit it. Since I hadn’t written in a while, I guess it was deemed fair game. It was a fair ask. No offense, but no. I picked this domain name and got lucky that it was available. I’m not giving it away. Now, if there’s someone out there with deep pockets who wants to buy it, we can talk Otherwise, as my friend Ian said: You know … you could start writing again.

So here we are. When I last wrote, we were still living in Bergen. E has had a whole new career shift since then that has taken us to another city — ahem, town — on the other side of the country. We’ve been in Kongsberg (population: 26,406) almost two years, and believe it or not, we’re about to move back to Bergen. The new career that brought us here is about to send us back to our old stomping grounds. Nothing against Kongsberg, which has its charms (I mean, the river is cool, I guess …?), but I’ll be glad to put this place in our rear view. I thought Bergen was small after living in the D.C. metro area. Hah! Now it seems positively cosmopolitan! It’s amazing what a little perspective can do. (Don’t get me wrong, though: I’d kill to wander through a Target. Or a Wegman’s. Or … well, almost any American store.)

Maybe I’ll try to catch up on some past travels. We had a couple of in-country trips during the pandemic, when traveling beyond borders was deemed unwise; a few trips to Spain; and last summer there was a fun trip to the U.S. — our first time since before the pandemic! — for my goddaughter’s naming ceremony. Coming soon is a trip to Bruges, which I’m really looking forward to.

And I suppose there could be more to write about than travel.

Anyway, let’s see where this — ahem — road takes us. Zing!