I love, love, love that it is raining on the seventh day in August. You can barely hear it; it's something like white noise. Looking out the window you see it fall in minuscule drops, a constant outflow like static. The smell mingles with the familiar scent of peppermint brewing in my tea--but today it is all the more befitting. I spend my grey afternoon planning a trip-for-one to the United Kingdom. Rail pass, notebook, prospectus, and guidebooks strewn about as I scribble down names of places that will soon become stories with photographs and journal entries and conversations; it's quite unreal.

Photo, Andy Monaghan