ecco qui

Well, here I am, footloose and fancy-free in the Eternal City. Getting to Rome turned out to be a breeze; way easier than I had any possible right to expect. A 118-knot tailwind sped across the Atlantic in record time; meanwhile, I filled mah belly with half a pastrami sandwich (left over from lunch), popped a couple of Benadryl like the Burroughsesque renegade that y'all know I am and dozed my way to an Italian sunrise.

I was, of course, eager to get my feet on the ground and wander around the city (not to mention keep busy and stave off jet lag), so I walked down the Gianicolo, through Trastevere, over the bridge across Tiber Island, through the ghetto (cue the Elvis song, inappropriately), a half-loop around the Theater of Marcellus, up the Capitoline, and down the other side into the Forum where I realized that, hey, it's about a billion degrees out! and I left my hat in the US. ditto sunscreen. At that point, Lobster-Boy walked baaaaack the same way he came, stopped in Trastevere for lunch at an ostaria (penne con fiori di zucco: kinda disappointing. The penne were served in a blush cream sauce, and while there were flowers in the sauce, they were just sort of lying there like so many soggy napkin fragments. If I'd been smart, I'd have ordered pizza con fiori; that's how they can really shine) and back to the Centro for nappin' and emailin' and bloggin' before dinner. Whee!

The other Centristi swear that the local gelateria, "Miami", is the best they've had. I can hardly believe to the idea that the best gelato in the city is to be found within rolling distance (seriously; it's like fifty feet away); some things are just too much to hope for. Clearly, research will have to be done.

in bocca al lupo!

Only five days left, and it's time to face the fact that I never got around to stripping the layers of rust encrusted around my mad Italian skillz. Which isn't to say that I haven't gotten any practice, just that I've tended to emphasize less useful aspects of Italian. The details of the future tense or the definite article? Not so much. But I do know how to say
stanno appiccionati uno a l'altro: "they're all over each other", and
Ci vedo poco chiaro: "There's something fishy here."

Which might be more useful for The Real World: Rome than for the Centro...

Pack King

Yeah, packing stinks; there's just no way around it. Even when it's a relatively soft pack (to coin an unwieldy phrase), in which I don't have to put everything away, just enough to get stuff out of the way, it still stinks. There's something about going through all your stuff and realizing that, gosh, maybe you really ought to use that kitchen torch and pasta roller and juicer every once in a while, rather than just let it sit in a box. It's almost enough to make me actually organize my house.

Almost.

i am zee count, and I love to count!

The countdown begins: T minus two weeks: yow! So much left to do, to say, to defile... I'm in the phase of thinking less about all the cool stuff that's going to happen over the next year, and more about all the stuff I'm going to miss. Ah, well: time to post a picture!

This is from the dinner I had last weekend at the Herbfarm in Woodinville, WA. They have two Vietnamese potbellied pigs which were very sociable and photogenic (though I really ought to edit out the redeye...) The owner referred to them as the "recycling system", but then got all snippy when I asked about whether they'd end up on the menu. Which is weird: if she'd meant that they were pets, she should have said that: "recycling system", to me, implies that they'll be, like, reused for something, right?