Yeah, the helicopter ride was pretty epic. But what else did I get up to for more than eight days of visiting my dad in LA? Plenty! But with no guests to entertain and no new residents to settle in, it was a very low key one — one almost like a local might live. We…

When you travel or live abroad long term, it’s inevitable that you’re going to miss a lot of the important little holidays and events that you don’t really realize are so special until you don’t have the choice to be around for them. Like Father’s Day, for example. Ever since I started spending more of them away…

When I decided to spend Halloween in Los Angeles over New York, I had one major motivation. Yes, memories of cold, rainy nights in a damp costume certainly dissuaded me from my East Coast option. But Los Angeles? Los Angeles had Tucker. Game over. Tucker has always been pretty down for dress up time — or…

Jumping ahead to bring you some close-to-real-time coverage of my favorite holidays, since apparently some people don’t like reading about Christmas in July. When I was messing around with my fall calendar, trying to figure out when to be where, one date stuck out to me as important: October 31st. As one of my favorite annual…

Oh, my monthly roundups. They are so ridiculously out of sync with real time now that I’ve considered axing the entire series, as I did recently with Photo of the Week. Yet I know this series has some loyal fans — and I’m one of them! Apologies for the delay, but I suppose better is late…

It’s no secret that Los Angeles and I haven’t exactly been fast friends. I had only ever spent a brief few days in the city en route to a friend’s Palm Springs wedding when my dad announced his plan to move to the west coast around this time last year. My trip to visit over Father’s…