The Italy Dream Continues

So I'm talking to one of our corporate lawyers today about random things (he's in charge of our document retention program, so 90% of our conversation by necessity has to morph into other things just to Retain Our Sanity)... and he has family in Italy, so we naturally started talking about restaurants in Rome that I *must* try. I'm totally game.
My dream.. my goal is to live in Italy some day. I love Italy -and I will live in Rome. I want a little flat close to the Spanish Steps and I want to lead English-speaking tours of the antiquity sites. I want to make enough money for food - I hope to save and invest enough money now to buy the flat and maybe fly home once a year.
Anyway... the working-in-Italy sites are pretty serious. It's not so easy just landing in Rome and getting a job. Whatever. I will do it. Unless I get a better offer, of course. But this year I will learn Italian. Getting the lawyer from Doc Retention to teach me the right pronunciation of Trastevere. (I used to say TRAS TEV ER E but it's really TRAS TE VER E - significant diff!)

I love walking the streets of Rome and getting lost in the maze and finding a store-front restaurant where you can have a 3 course meal for $25. With a caraffe of wine, too.
And I love the wine. You can order "vino rosa" by the glass at an outdoor table by the Piazza Navona for $4 and sit forever, watching the drama of life and, if you're lucky, chatting about it with someone next to you that doesn't need the backstory of what you're talking about (i.e. "Check it out - she is so Kelly." or "Did you know that the fountain has only one drain? It's in the fish's mouth - at the foot of Poisedan... oh wait, I already told you that."

So I'm thinking that I need to go back to Rome for a little visit. Just a week. Or so. Maybe 10 days.

But before Dad moves back to the Philippines (where he spent 2.25 years as a Peace Corps Volunteer), maybe I should visit Isreal with him. I've never been - he's never been - so maybe we should go and be agnostic together. I would love to see the sites from the Bible... I think anyone with a religious background and appreciation for the cultural history would like that.

I know I would.

So two weeks in Isreal in the fall! Yay! Travel plans resolved. For now. Before I move to Rome.

6-6-06

Quote from CNN's "American Morning" today, on the hype that wasn't 6-6-06:
"Some people bet the world would end. It didn't!"
...
That's what I call "reporting the news."
...
How would you collect on that bet, anyway? And why can't I find the guy who would bet everything he owns that the world would end on 6-6-06? Damn.

Just what you need when you're having a low job satisfaction day...

I wrote my friend Russ today about my Low Job Satisfaction (a temporary condition). I want to throw in the towel and go hitch-hiking in Europe. He's a genius. Here's what he wrote back:

I understand the job satisfaction issues. Look at it this way, let's suppose you went hitchhiking in Europe. At some point, you would sit down on some bench in France and look around you. And it would all hit you at once...
"Wait a minute. Everywhere I go, there's nothing but old buildings made out of old gray stone. Old gray stone here...old gray stone there. Old fountains not able to shoot water 100 feet in the air synchronized to music. Old churches not tolerant of Betsy (friend #1) and Lindsay's (friend #1's former girlfriend) lifestyle. Old art that's not even painted on bridge overpasses for everyone to see. Old people talking old languages that don't get your hip urban slang. Old gray cobblestone streets too narrow for shiny new SUVs. F Europe! And another thing...why the hell am I lugging all my crap around on my back to see all this old gray stuff? There are perfectly good car services at home to drive me and my crap wherever I want. And where are the Puerto Rican parades? I can't even get a damn hot dog or a hot pretzel from a cart around here! All this stinky European cheese has me constipated, and there's no Thai restaurant on every corner to help get things moving again. Where the hell are the knock-off handbags and sunglasses? I'm not paying four hundred Euros for a real Prada bag! What are you looking at Frenchie? I can talk out loud all I want! Go take a shower! And tell your girlfriend to shave her legs! She looks like a damn man. What? She is a man? If you're a man, why are you wearing a thong in a public park? Ohhhhh, because 'zat's perfectly naturale.' Of course! Where I come from you'd get your ass beat for that...and I'd laugh!" It's at this point the policia would ask you to take it easy. You would take a certain amount of pride in knowing you could whip that cop's ass though, him being such a Euro Nancy Boy. And then your eyes would glaze over as you smiled and thought about that time you saw a cop whip the shit out of those three homeless guys in Central Park with a Maglight just because they were sleeping too close to the restaurant's patio. And you'd be searching that backpack for that friggin' Eurorail pass to get you back to the airport so you could get back where you belong.
Aaaaaaaaand, scene.
Thank you.