farlands | traveling near and far

One of the best things about being on the road is discovering great spots for food.  Although we sometimes stay with the mainstays of the North American highway (McDonald's, Cracker Barrel, etc.), it is a blast to discover a new spot. In this case, both restaurants are finds because of my brother Jon.  While planning my first visit to his and his family's new home, I noticed on Google Maps that there a restaurant just around the corner from them called Sullivan's Diner .  When I saw it served a mind-boggling combination of "Thai food and Southern cooking" I almost skipped considering it altogether, until I saw the reviews.  And my family members said it was one of their favorite places to eat, so we made plans to meet for dinner there.  After the first visit, I couldn't wait to get back again.  It's in a cute little white house turned into a diner, complete with a red and white checked floor: King me. There are three people who run the place: the g...

One of the best things about travel via airplane is the time to read.  There's not enough room to do much on the computer in the cramped quarters, plus there is little privacy, which isn't conducive to my work either, so I either get to uncomfortably catch up on sleep, or more often, read my heart out. Certain books are now tied to past trips, including Tina Fey's "Bossy Pants" is inexorably linked to Maui, and Susan Ee's "Penryn and the End of Days" is now tied to San Francisco, which was especially exciting because it turned out that is a primary setting for the trilogy.  Note to self: try reading more books set in the places I am traveling to. So, now Palm Beach and tidy, decluttering thoughts are all mixed together.  As apparently one of the last people in the country to pick up Marie Kondo's  "the life-changing magic of tidying up" I read, and re-read the book during this work trip.  I love it when a book hits and resonates, a...

In honor of the New Year, and thinking back on the bowl games that the Wisconsin Badgers have participated in, I thought this would be a fitting time to look back at when the Badgers played in the 2013 Rose Bowl . This was a work-related trip, and I wasn't sure what to expect going to a bowl game.  It was a unique and quite fun experience that really made me want to take my family on one of these trips.  I was part of a group that went with the Alumni Association, which included a charter flight, which I really, really like, but learned some quirks about charters that I'll share at the end of this post. I recall how incredibly vast LA is. And how you hear that people don't walk in LA. My experience: I went out for a workout walk around our hotel neighborhood one afternoon and encountered only two other people walking - one person taking their little dog out, and a dad teaching his kids to ride their bike outside their giant condo building.  That was IT. I also recal...