You may well wonder what’s been happening for the past 6 months or so since I finished up in Pamplona at the end of May.  I took the train to Barcelona and met Carroll there, where we had a wonderful reunion, walking along one of the ramblas that lead to the beach, lounging around in an open-air bar on the beach and watching the world go by. Then we caught a flight to Zadar in Croatia, where we spent a couple of weeks, first resting at my sister’s summer home on a tiny island in the Adriatic just off Zadar, then on an interesting car trip up the Dalmatian coast as far as Trieste in Italy.

Our Croatian rental car died there, so we left it and rented another in Trieste to get my sister and brother-in-law back to Croatia, then had to return the car to Trieste and get a bus and ferry back to Zadar.  Once back, we caught a flight that eventually got us back to Ottawa on 22 June. I was glad to be home, kind of. I really want to stay in touch with the people I met during my walk. Two of them, Marcel and Mireille from Strasbourg, visited us here in Ottawa in September. They were the people, you will recall, who told me that I had to have a gite stamp for them when they arrived … and I did! And here it is. You will note that the turtle has a beard and a Tilley hat. This image is because of the Lauzerte bench incident.

As soon as we returned home, I started work on a new book which will expand on the blog and include the many lessons that I learned while in France and Spain. The manuscript has just gone to the editor for the first stage of review, to be followed – I hope – by detailed editing and publication next summer or early fall.

The other big news is that Carroll made a beautiful five-foot-square quilted wall hanging from T-shirts from a dozen IFMA (International Facility Management Association) conferences from 1990 to 2002. Carroll’s motto: if you are going to go, go big! She had lots of support from me (I did a LOT of cutting) and our daughter Meredith. In late October we hand-carried it to the annual conference held this year in San Antonio, where the wall hanging was donated to the IFMA Foundation for their auction. It raised $1300 for the Foundation. Then the winning bidder donated it to the new IFMA headquarters, so it was a perfect event for us. After the conference Carroll and I rented a car and explored south Texas, new for us, as far as Laredo and Brownsville, visiting friends in San Antonio, Houston and Bastrop, near Austin. Next time, north Texas.

Now we are getting ready for Christmas. We will have most of the family here over Christmas, two daughters, one son, two grandchildren, and some extended family as well. It looks as if I will be doing a lot of cooking, because Carroll is busy in her sewing studio making Christmas presents for folks. I can’t tell you what she’s making because some of them might read this, but I can tell you that I am doing a lot of fabric cutting again.

I was really pleased a couple of weeks ago when we determined that we have sold over 4000 copies of A Journey of Days, 2800 paper copies and 1200 eBooks.

I will keep this blog going, more frequently than every six months. Bye for now and have a great Christmas season. Love each other.