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I didn’t have any government work in October, so it felt like a slow month. But when it comes to content marketing and features writing, I’ve been working like a beast.

Here are my published stories from the last month. I hope you find something you enjoy.

 

I spilled my cheap travel secrets in How I became an airfare ninja for ParentMap. If I missed any tricks, I’d love for you to let me know so I can afford to travel more.

I blog about opera fairly often, so I was thrilled when ParentMap let me review Hansel and Gretel this fall and make the case for Why you should take your kids to the opera.

And of course, I used my obsessive love of research to bone up on a bunch of everyday legal issues for AvvoStories (formerly more colorfully known as NakedLaw).

How to help a teen get emancipated

The right to protest our national anthem

What police need to learn about mental illness

Do immigrants really have an easy time getting into the U.S.?

What’s so bad about a starter marriage?

Reefer Madness

I don’t look at my page stats much anymore. I’m just too busy with paying work and can barely justify the little amount of time I still spend blogging, without noticing how much traffic has dropped since I wrote long, wordy posts on the regular. But I took a peek and thought I’d share what activity I did find.

In October, besides my home page and the About Me page, the most popular posts were:

Graveyards Well, of course if you post about graveyards on Halloween weekend, someone is going to look.

Opportunity  How positive. I will try not to imagine that people were actually looking for inspirational office posters.

Desiree’s Dolls One of the first posts I ever wrote on the blog. When I first started, I thought that I might make an I Heart Reykjavik sort of blog about Seattle. I know I don’t have the time to do it right, but the perennial popularity of this post about a local artisan who makes rag dolls by hand is proof that it’s a good idea.

Referrals to the blog have shifted. Once it was mostly Facebook and Google searches. Now it’s Twitter and AvvoStories. Perhaps that is evidence that I should start focusing more on my professional side?

Finally, the search terms that led people here. I might not be writing much on this blog, but I think searches like these prove I’m doing something interesting.

eistnaflug nearest airport

Skalmold Airwaves

brakarsund iceland

himalayan yogi cave

 

 

 

 

 

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What Egil Saw

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This is the view from the hill above the house that is built on the sight of the farm where Egil Skallagrimsson lived a thousand years ago. The view hasn’t changed much in all that time.

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Weather Diaries

weatherdiariesI went to Iceland again this year, and there was so much I wanted to write about it and never got around to. Likewise, there were a lot of things I wanted to do when I was in Iceland that I didn’t get to. Determined to maximize my experience, I usually run myself into the ground when I’m there – I’ve gotten sick on every trip so far, and this time I decided to try a more moderate approach. One of the things I missed was the Weather Diaries exhibit at Nordic House. Read More

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Graveyards

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My mom is really into genealogy, and when I was a kid, we always had to stop at old graveyards to look for our ancestors. Even when we were traveling in places where our family had never lived, she liked to stop and take a look. Something about the old fashioned names and the words people choose to carve in stone, I guess. It’s a wonder I didn’t grow up more Goth than I did, but I do seem to have inherited her penchant for graveyards.

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Egil’s House

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Obviously, this house and its attendant church are much more recent constructions than the house that Egil Skallagrimsson built. But this is Egil’s Farm. I can’t quite imagine what it would be like to grow up in a place with so much history.