Time to Make the Donuts!

In keeping with our whirlwind summer of world cities, we're on the verge of traveling to the U.S. for my sister's wedding.

Technically speaking, I think it's fair to say that Fulton, New York is not a world city.

It does have two Dunkin' Donuts franchises, however, which might give it the highest donut shop density east of Cleveland.

If you could see me sitting on my couch right now, you would be able to see the extremely inventive faux-gang "East Side" / "West Side" hand signals I'm making to indicate that the two Dunkin' Donutses are judiciously located on either side of the Oswego River.

Leaving the donuts momentarily and returning to the wedding: my sister and her guy are having a small but fairly traditional ceremony.

I'm looking forward to celebrating the happy event with family and friends, but I'm sort of dreading the pageantry of it all.

Though in fairness to my sister, I consider pageantry to be any event in which I have to show up on time and wear an architecturally ambitious bra.

My lack of enthusiasm about rococo wedding outfits and my love/hate relationship with my Dunkin' Donuts-rich hometown aside, I'm really happy about having a chance to go home.

For one very shallow and materialistic thing, we're looking forward to trading in much of our net worth for two suitcases full of precious treasure.

In this case, precious treasure is Saran Wrap and Dramamine and brand-name panty hose.

(I wish I could say that we're planning to use those items all at the same time, but sadly, we are not Those Kind of People. )

I'm also just looking forward to being somewhere for a couple of weeks where things don't take nearly as much effort.

It's a nice luxury — and one I am just now beginning to appreciate fully — to be able to half-read or half-listen to something and still pretty much understand both the literal meaning and the nuance behind it.

It's also going to be a huge relief to open my mouth without being in grave danger of saying something stupid.

Note that I'm not claiming that the danger will be gone. It's just not quite as imminent.