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On Halloween day, I headed to the Tribeca firestation made famous in Ghostbusters. That night, I channeled Margot Tennenbaum on the streets of midtown, eating stick after stick of candy cigarettes.

The next day, I realized I wasn’t yet done paying pilgrimage to movie locations or obsessing over Wes Anderson.

And so, on the first day of November, which was bright and clear and curiously warm, I left our hotel with a specific goal in mind: I was going to see the house on Archer Ave that Royal Tenenbaum bought in the winter of his thirty-fifth year.

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Guess where I am. Go ahead. Guess.

It’s rare that I have direction when I travel, in any sense of the word. I usually roam around the city, using my blessedly-large nose to seek out and follow the smell of baked goods, often to a happy end.

But during my trip to New York last October, I had, for one of the few times in my life, direction (and one that was not influenced by baked goods).

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It's official: The Clink is not now, nor has it ever been, a good place to visit.

I am easily scared.

The first time I saw The Sixth Sense, even though I knew the twist thanks to a big-mouthed teacher of mine, I nearly peed my pants. Thankfully, as far as you know, I did not.  And once, years ago, Rand and I spent the night at a hotel near the Oregon Caves that was supposedly haunted. I literally spent the night with one eye open, convinced that if I closed it, I’d wake up dead (in the early morning hours, this logic made sense).

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My husband occasionally has moments of brilliance. He has moments of utmost stupidity, too, but since I love him more than Seattle on a sunny day (a rare phenomenon that I can see outside my office window as I type this) I’d like to focus on the brilliance.

At the end of our trip to Peru, we were talking about our experiences in the country. I noted that Peru was much cheaper than Italy, yet seemed to be just as culturally rich. Even though we got ripped off a few times, it wasn’t nearly to the degree that we might have in Rome or Naples. It was far less costly to see Peru.

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The great pyramid of Huaca Pucllana.

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Heading down from the top of the great pyramid.

We did not know what Huaca Pucllana was before we got there.

That was one of the nice parts about Peru – on many days wandered aimlessly, and without fail, we found something to see. It turned out that Huaca Pucllana is a large collection of ruins in the posh Miraflores district of Lima. Admission was about $3, and includes a guided tour (which is the only way you can see the ruins).

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Note: Since my posts are generally too wordy, I decided to see what happened when I made something a little too photo-y. Enjoy.

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One hot summer’s day, seemingly a lifetime ago, when I was in Kansas, we drove and drove.

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We drove through a part of the country most people only fly over. We drove until there was nothing but sky and grass. It didn’t take us long.

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History is not always kid-friendly. It lacks happy endings, victorious protagonists and punished villains. It’s not really something we have the grounds to complain about. History wasn’t created by a bunch of underpaid writers in the basement of a Hollywood studio. We can’t threaten to boycott Disney until they get the story right. We’re the ones who contributed to the narrative. It’s our history. And sometimes, the facts are just downright dark and, for lack of a better phrase, effed up.

Actually, let’s stick with that phrase. “Effed-up” works really well. It came to mind more than once when I visited the the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Museum in Hutchinson. I’d stare blankly at an exhibit and think, “Man. That’s effed up.” (Only, you know, I actually said the word.)

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