All posts tagged: Escape

7 Tips for the Perfect Trip to Kauai

Our summer home is on the north shore of Kauai. Ok, that’s not true. My husband and I don’t own a beach house. We don’t have plans to buy a beach house, Mega Millions windfall notwithstanding. We’ve never even stayed in Kauai for more than two consecutive weeks. But, through 5 visits in 10 years, Kauai has become our favorite place. Travel nirvana. We have mastered the art of “power decompressing” on this lush little dot in the Pacific and, truly, sometimes achingly, feel it’s a home away from home. If you’ve been to Kauai (probably on your honeymoon) you very likely: Stayed at the St. Regis Princeville resort, drank Green Flash cocktails on the Makana Terrace, got a couples massage. Spent at least one full day driving all over the island ticking off the requisite Must Do’s, including standing in the hour-long Ono-Char Burger line and sampling each of the island’s 15 most pristine beaches for approximately 10 minutes apiece. Went to a luau. Took lots of pictures with pretty scenery in the background. …

Late-Blooming Bride: Globetrotter Finds Love Right Under Her Nose

By Kim ODonnel

(Graphic: Kat Borosky/TueNight.com) He: A white high school quiz show champ from Kentucky, separated from his wife, wearing a shiny new cancer survivor medallion on his lapel. Me: A serial man-eater with a preference for dark-skinned men from various corners of the globe, and trips out of Dodge always in the works. Embroiled in an on-again, off-again, decade-long love affair with the son of an erstwhile political revolutionary from South Africa, where I was planning to relocate and become a first lady of sorts. Mr. Kentucky and I sat a few hundred feet away from each other in the newsroom at washingtonpost.com, where he ran business and technology news and I wrote food and travel stories. He may as well have worked on the other side of the world. If it weren’t for his shiny bald head, the result of chemotherapy, I may not have noticed him from my cubicle. And yet, as John Lennon sang, and many other famous people have publicly observed: Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other …

On the Event of My “Canniversary”

By Margit Detweiler

My boss slid two manila folders across her desk. “Well, you’re probably not shocked about what I’m going to say.” I had an inkling about what she was going to say, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t shocked. One week after returning from my 10-day honeymoon, I was getting the axe. ** As we celebrate (ok, we don’t celebrate) the 5th anniversary of the 2008 economic collapse, I celebrate (and yes, I celebrate) the moment I was laid off from my final full-time job — my  ”Canniversary.” The credit for that term goes to my friend Maura  Johnston, who announced, on Twitter, her one-year Canniversary of being  ”shit-canned.” (Note: if you look up canniversary in urban dictionary, it  has a whole different meaning) In my case, this was the first time I’d been let go from a job. Ever. I’d always been that sit-in-the-front-row, hardworking, sleeves rolled, do whatever it takes kind of worker. I’d been promoted at every job I’d ever had.  But in this particular digital editor gig, I had a personality conflict with my boss and a few other members of the …

Why Intervention Was the Worst Show for This Alcoholic

By Susan Linney

(Photo Credit: Andy Kropa) For this former active alcoholic, Intervention (which ended its 13-season run in 2013) was the best show ever. Not because I identified with or cared about any of the fellow addicts I saw on the screen. Rather, it served as a wonderfully effective way to justify my drinking. I could point to those live-action bottom-hitters and say “Look, ma! They’re WAY worse than I am!“ This trick worked well, especially on my husband, who didn’t understand the disease and fell victim to every manipulative trick a drunk can play on a loved one. Once he even noted that I wasn’t nearly as bad as these people were and that my sister was going overboard when she insisted that my problem was serious. A sly grin spread across the face of the scheming, sauced-up Susan inside me. I had him. Tighten my grip. Essentially, the reality show helped me legitimize my status as a “functioning alcoholic,” and when I purposely decided to become outwardly “dysfunctional” (my dad died, my intake doubled and …

The Next Magic Mike, Coming to Your Computer (Yes, We Went There)

By Twanna Hines

Clip from the movie Hard Times (Courtesy Tahir Jetter) Television is over. According to the 2013 US Digital Future In Focus report, Americans watch nearly 40 billion videos each month. If big-budget streaming series like Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black or House of Cards whet your appetite, be sure to check out lesser-known hits like The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks, Husbands, and F to 7th. Now, Brooklyn-based filmmaker Tahir Jetter brings us Hard Times, a new webisode project chronicling a broke personal trainer’s experiences as a male exotic dancer. The New York University Tisch School of the Arts graduate’s short film Close. premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and he expects to release Hard Times online in November 2013. While stories about men who pay female sex workers are as old as an expired condom, stories about men selling their schtick are less prevalent. Nothing short of courageous, such storylines include oft-ignored women who pay men to strip and much more. If there was any question about the audience for this film, strip …

Why FOMO Made Me Move to New Jersey

By Rachel Kramer Bussel

(Graphic: Kat Borosky/TueNight.com) Fear of missing out — aka FOMO* — made me move to New Jersey, that is. FOMO is a term coined by Dan Herman, to characterize the sense that, and to paragraph Mindy Kaling’s memoir title, everyone is hanging out without you. You’d think someone with FOMO would want to stay in the city that never sleeps, rather than leave it for a far sleeper milieu, right? Let me explain. When I first moved to New York City at age 20 to go to law school, I fell in love. Not with a person, but with the city itself. Having moved from the Bay Area, where BART stops running around midnight, I marveled at the 24/7 subway service, art galleries right down the block from my Mercer Street dorm, and being in proximity to clubs like Tramps, Brownies, The Bottom Line (RIP, all) and Mercury Lounge. I loved the Big Apple’s cultural offerings so much that I threw myself headlong into anything and everything that could occupy my time — except studying. …

The Picture At My Desk: Mom and Dad

By Stacy Morrison

(Photo Credit: Stacy Morrison) I have a lot of little photos at my desk, all around me. Actually, they’re Stickygrams, those awesome mini-magnets of your Instagram photos. But the most important photo at my desk isn’t a Stickygram. Because I don’t have an Instagram photo of my parents. They died before Stickygram was invented. Before Instagram, even. They died four weeks apart in June and July of 2010, both of sudden, unexpected illnesses that punched a huge hole in my life, never to be mended again. But the photo doesn’t make me sad. The photo makes me think how made-of-awesome I am. That love that parents give their children makes me think about how much my parents meant to me, that I, as an unnecessarily independent person, didn’t even realize until they were gone. Turns out, you don’t feel the floor under your feet until you’re falling. One day a few months ago, I was sitting at my desk, doing that funny daydreaming thing that leads to writing, and I was once again feeling that …