I’m frozen in terror. Our kamikaze driver is writing, eyes down, one hand on the steering wheel. The car is drifting into the left lane . . .

Jet-lagged, I’m in a restaurant on another continent, sipping wine. No sleep in two days, a woozy vision of a semi-naked nymph . . . where am I?

Our phone number was very popular. Strangers called us all the time, but were irate when I answered. They didn’t want a peppy foreigner on the line. They wanted somebody else.

Cooking disasters, anyone? I was once faced with a culinary fiasco of mystifying proportions while living in an African village.

Bethlehem is a Biblical place. But I found it not quite as Biblical as I’d imagined when we got our car stuck in an alley.