The first post where I answer questions

I've gotten a couple of questions in comments and via email lately, so today I will begin the process of answering them, starting with questions asked re this post.

In the comments, Meg asked how long I lived in Connecticut. I lived in Connecticut until I turned 11 (Stamford until I was 2, New Canaan after that). At that point, we moved to Rhode Island, where I went to middle school and high school. When people ask where I grew up, I usually say Connecticut. When people ask where I'm from, I usually say Rhode Island. My childhood friends are people I knew in Fairfield County and nearby New York. My friends from home are my friends from Rhode Island. It's weird how one comes to think about such things.

By email, someone asked when I went to Moorea, Jerusalem, and Hawaii.

• Hawaii was P and my honeymoon in 2005. We spent a week in Maui (in a hotel) and a week in Kauai (in a house we rented on a private beach).
  
• Moorea was March 2000. A good friend from college was doing research loosely connected with his PhD there, and I went to visit him. I really enjoy traveling with/to see him -- they mark some of the best vacations I've had. Over the years, amonf other adventures, we have hiked a volcanic ridge, driven from San Diego to San Francisco in a convertible, gone off-roading in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park more than once (and gotten the undercarriage of a truck stuck over a large rock), surfed in Mexico, and seen the sun set over the Pacific from at least three different countries. The airfare to Moorea from Boston was obscene, but well worth it (and was the primary expense associated with the trip).
• Jerusalem was the summer of 1999. I maxed out my then-very-low-limit credit card and bought myself a plane ticket to Istanbul, where I spent 10 days. I then took a 24-hour bus (with no bathroom) to Athens, where I spent another ten days (well, I also took the ferry to Santorini for several days). Finally, with much difficulty involving canceled flights whose existence El Al denied despite my possession of a physical ticket, I flew to Tel Aviv and took a bus to Jerusalem for ten more days, where I slept on a mattress on the roof of a hostel in the Old City and narrowly avoided being sold for 2 camels. The whole trip was one of those life-altering, world-view-changing types of trips. Well-worth the money spent.