I remember how to write these, I think.

The other night as I tried to get to sleep I wondered: how many hotels have I slept in? I came up with twenty-five and that's almost certainly missing a few. The exercise came with more than a few glimpses of privilege over the years and also some painful memories of ill-fated trips. One hotel stands out as particularly memorable: CitizenM next to the Amsterdam Schiphol airport. It may be the hotel I've spent the most nights at, or at least in my top 3. I first stayed there on my Christmas trip home in 2010, and through an infuriating mechanical delay, ended up there two nights in a row, the second on United's dime. Is it a particularly great hotel? No. It is, importantly to my needs at the time, a brief walk from the terminal proper and reasonably priced for a solo traveler, about 100 Euro a night back then. I created a habit to take a late evening train from Nijmegen to the airport, check into CitizenM, and reset & decompress before a sunrise AMS-IAD (or AMS-ORD, depending on the trip) journey. Somebody with a better sense of design could probably describe it beyond how I would which is: an attempt at futuristic, with curves and lights to match. The shower stall was a glass cylinder. The toilet was also in such an enclosure. It turns out for traveling pairs that glass is a little too see-through for most couples' tastes. The bed took up half the room, touching three walls. A shade set did a fantastic job of blocking light and the windows blocked airport noise remarkably well. It would be easy to oversleep there in the space age cocoon of hotel jazz and LED colors drawn from your web-based preferences.

So much else throughout the hotel felt like what I wanted my travel life to be, frictionless, sleek, and cosmopolitan without a particular place or time. Staff merely observed, never serving much function beyond “there to answer any questions.” Check-in was at a computer terminal of sorts. Food and drink were more like a convenience store. The chain curated an online magazine that recommended chic shops and places to dine near their worldwide locations. I spent hours browsing those pages and occasionally taking notes on where to next hit when I was visiting Amsterdam for a day, not an overnight. I sometimes thought I should spend time at the cafe in the lobby, but you know, it turns out some things can feel too lonely. With no nighttime cafetender and everybody else in transit to their pod-rooms, who's there to people-watch or chat with? (I occasionally opted to take a beer up to my room, which I would then drink on the bed, unsure where to rest the bottle. The TV options were better than at home but otherwise unremarkable.) 

I liked it when I got the same room two visits in a row, months apart. Even if it wasn't the same room, it felt so. The beauty of a hotel!

The last night I spent in the Netherlands, I was dog tired and carrying far too much. I arrived at the CitizenM Schiphol nearly at midnight. I tried to check in through their kiosks. “We have no record of your reservation.” I'd made it one of the last days at my office desk... I checked my email. No. I had booked the downtown location, not the airport one. I had just come from downtown. I shouted “GOD FUCKING DAMMIT” at the mostly empty lobby and dragged my half dozen bags outside to get a taxi.. so that I could get a taxi back to the airport in a few hours. There was no mechanism to change my booking from one branch to the other, short of simply making a new booking on the spot, the employees shrugged.

That was 2013. Six years later, I had a few hours to kill in New York City and I was able to reconnect with the chain in an odd way. I had always liked the body washes provided in the shower cylinders. One was “AM” and one was “PM” and the copy on each bottle was charming. I never bought it in Amsterdam because I wasn't going to buy a liter of gel and then fly it several thousand miles back and forth, and no, it never seemed worth it to run such an errand minutes after landing on a red-eye flight. So in New York, I made my way over to the hotel's Bowery location and bought myself a treat. I felt compelled to explain the backstory to the staff member who sold it to me. "Well, thank you for visiting CitizenM today." 

A second round of my attempt to count hotels got me closer to 75 or 80. Impressive? 

Reading: Yes, I'm trying to list October, November, and December! I'll try to keep it smooth and quick. I learned about how the GBBO bubble happened, what the British laws are around ancient coins, and what the deal is/was with a seeming shortage of bucatini. I also read a lot of tweets, I imagine, none of which are worth linking to here. 

Eating: I'll break this up into establishments and recipes, how about that? We had a lovely meal outside at Zahav when the weather was nice. It turns out my neighborhood's Lil Nicks Deli makes a killer sandwich called the DAG, maybe the best new-to-me sandwich I've had in memory. (See below.) I've picked up a scrapple egg and cheese from Brunic's, a gorgeous pork roll egg and cheese from Penrose Diner, a “rock 'n' pork roll” from Milkcrate Cafe, and a satisfactory sausage egg and cheese from Sunrise Thai. My one attempt at a Diwali celebration was the Malai Diwali Ice Cream Celebration pack. 

My last restaurant recommendation is one that I've alluded to before, a Korean pop-up spot called Soul + Busan my friend Jenn is running some weekends around Philly. (Disclosure, I'm her PR person!) 

We've been continuing to cook lots. Some things have recipes and others are merely thrown together with the best of intentions. On Thanksgiving Day, I did an Alison Roman lamb leg recipe that turned out... fine. A better winner for the house was a tofu & brussel sprouts combo with hot honey. The holiday season brought homemade coquito (triple that rum!), world peace cookies from Kris, cardamom buns Christmas morning by Kelsey, and personal pizzas for Christmas dinner. Oh and we made garbage plates (not these recipes but whatever) one night. 

Beating: I remember listening to Neil Cicierega's Mouth Dreams in October. Kelsey & I continued our "listen to a new artist a week" project with Jason Isbell. My friend Ross Currie created a very 1995 playlist you can stream. And thanks to 50th anniversary celebrations and the guidance of the Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast, I listened to American Beauty & Workingman's Dead for the first time in a very long time. Another full album I listened to, this time for a Listening Club selection, was Fang Island's self-titled. XPN aired the 2020 countdown of allegedly greatest songs ever, and I tuned into that whenever possible. My friend Dan released an ambient album on Bandcamp that provided comfort. 

Deleting: We pared down our totebags, did a huge cleanup of the basement storage zone, and reorganized our pantry/stockpile. 

Retreating: Kelsey, our friend Ji Sun, and I volunteered at John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge for an October Saturday morning and subsequently became Friends of JHNWR. On another weekend jaunt, Kelsey & I explored Amico Island Park over in Jersey. (I can't remember how I found out about it, so thank you if it was you.) We also had a few trips to Wawa Preserve in Delaware County. Other Natural Lands spots we enjoyed were Saunders Woods Preserve (so smol!) and Crow's Nest Preserve. Closer to home, I kept digging into my Write Kit from Katie Dalebout and started homebrewing beer which is a form of meditation. Through a collaboration with Martha Cooney, I have been writing more than ever and that's very exciting.

Meeting: Ryan T. Barlow and I continue our dinner party livestreams with Ngoc Bui (date TBD) and Kae Lani Palmisano (2/21). The N Crowd has upcoming shows and I might be in them! There's also a whole set of public-facing activities I've got going on with First Person Arts, as part of our Anthology this month. I'm telling a story this Thursday evening in our EMOC series which is free. Then I'm a scorekeeper at the Ex Files StorySlam on 2/13 and the host for our Penn Nursing StorySlam on 2/17.

It's time to drink some water and start writing about January,
Neil