2004 was such a busy year that I find I have to divide it into three, rather than two, posts just to fit in all the highlights. Here’s the first installment, recalling adventures at home and abroad. [From now on, if any of the posts take place at our house near Amelia, Italy, I’ll no …

The last six months of 2003 were filled with trips (Budapest, Venice and Sri Lanka), plus back-home challenges with hunters and a landslide almost hitting our propane tank. Here are edited excerpts from letters home to family and friends. (As always, you can click on photos to enlarge them.) Source: Nations Online Project July Stepsister …

During our first year of running two households — Russell in Sri Lanka, me in Italy — we began to learn how to make separation work, staying in touch via emails and getting together every quarter. Meanwhile, my life went on — marketing my book, overseeing another renovation, organizing a sorority reunion and contemplating war …

As Russell was finishing his first, four-month consulting assignment in Sri Lanka and about to start a two-year-long extension to help implement the recommendations from the initial project, we thought it would be a good idea for me to come out for a couple weeks to get a feeling for what the life of a …

The last half of 2002 took us on lots of trips — to the States for medical checkups at Johns Hopkins and visiting family and friends, Russell back and forth to Sri Lanka, we two celebrating our 30th anniversary at Lake Como. Then we learned that Russell was going to be in Sri Lanka for …

While traveling here, there and everywhere during the first half of 2002, we also managed to make it through being snowed in, the “second wave” of foreigners buying up local property, Africa’s scirocco coating everything in red dust, another interior renovation, plus lots more. Here are excerpts from monthly letters to family. As always, you …

Early in 2001, we were both accepted as participants in July’s Iowa Summer Writing Festival, Russell for workshops on memoir, me for the novel. We were honored to be invited to march in Amelia’s August Corteo, feeling we were now really Amerini. September brought 9/11; October, a Zack attack; November, the challenges of olive harvest …

The first half of 2001 found us starting the new millennium with lots of outdoor projects — a fence, a pond and terraced flower gardens. In between, we managed to continue writing while fighting off serious respiratory infections, entertaining guests and touring Sicily with old friends. Here are excerpts from letters to family and friends. …

The previous post chronicled our year-long effort to renovate the south side of our old farmhouse. But that wasn’t all that happened in 2000. When we weren’t working with the artisans making our renovation dream come true, we were dealing with the bureaucracy, I was participating in a writer’s workshop at UCLA, R was crafting …

The best laid plans… We’d hoped to start renovations on the south side of our Italian house in the autumn of 1999, but various trials accumulated until it was too late in the year for such a project. (See post #44 for details.) Our design got approved by the authorities, but the actual work didn’t …