Gobble Gobble 2006

Hey all. Hope everyone is sitting comatose from too much turkey! This year was very relaxed. It ended up just being my family, but Nathan came over after dinner and hung out with everyone for a few hours. I've really got to do something about my oven. My mom came over at 8:30a to put the 23lb turkey in. She said it should be at 325 deg. I checked it after almost two hours (when I woke up again) and the damn oven temp was actually 375 according to the thermometer inside. So, I put it down to 275, but that didn't do a damn thing. It just would not go below 375. So, it only took 4 hours to cook, when it should have taken over 5. Oh well. I think next year we're doing it at my sister's. Her husband wants to deep fry a turkey, which should be all kinds of incendiary fun.

Dear Reader....

Ok, Nathan made a comment about my last Italy post and I feel I should post a response. I don't mind if there are 1000 anonymous people reading my blog. I just don't want to KNOW that friends of friends are reading this. I feel I would be judged. It's different if you're a complete stranger. Hell, there's a couple of blogs that I read and I have no idea who they are, but their writing is funny and their lives are interesting. But, if co-workers of my friends are reading this, are they judging me and them by what I post? What if I post something stupid or something that makes someone angry? Will that reflect poorly on my friends? I think it just really flummoxed me when Mike said he had passed my blog address to coworkers. I just didn't expect it. Does that make sense?

Party Game Night

Tonight was my first time hosting an event for No Kidding. It was Party Game Night where people bring board games and we play those or play charades - whatever. There were 10 people total and we mostly played a new Cranium game that's all pop culture. It was really fun. My team won! We kicked ass. Luckily my dining room table had two leaves in it, so 10 people fit just fine. Sometimes when that many people show up we split into two groups, but we all fit ok in my dining room. Not much planned for this weekend - going into the shelter tomorrow and then I think Sunday I'll just laze around. The house is rather clean already from my prep for the party - I even mowed the lawn and swept up all the leaves. I can't let the house get too messy cause I'm hosting Thanksgiving here this year. It'll definitely be six people, and maybe Nathan and Tony, and maybe Rob and Kimber (who came last year). I can have four leaves in the table, so I can probably seat 20 with no problem. We'll see. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be making for Thanksgiving...gotta check with my mom. I think she's bringing the turkey and we'll cook it in my oven. It'll be good to have everyone over. I don't think my sister has been here in months. I just hope my nephew behaves. They are potty training him, and he's still having accidents. I don't want to deal with that while we're trying to eat.

Italy Wrapup

Here's a few random tidbits:

Three Lessons Learned in Italy:

1. Cross the street when the locals cross. They have no fear. They just step out and the traffic stops.
2. If you need a bathroom, find a McDonalds. I'm serious. They are always clean and are so busy you can walk in and just go to the bathroom. You can't do that at smaller restaurants.
3. God loves us....or at least one of us. Mike said the way you know God loves you is that it doesn't rain while you're on vacation. Well, it did rain two days, but both were travel days. So, in general, I guess God does loves one of us. We had some discussions on which one it was. I think I got crossed off the list fairly early. Oh well.

Handy things to bring when traveling internationally:
-small flashlight (we actually used it a few times)
-hand wipes
-bug-off wipes
-baseball hat
-toilet paper!!!!
-notebook and pen (more on that later)
-the vault.

What is the vault you ask? Well, it's a fanny pack..excuse me.. waistpack that Mike bought at a sporting good store. The strap is lined with steel and the front pouch has steel mesh so nothing can be sliced through. It also locks up and has a couple of zipper pouches. It wasn't that expensive and gave really good peace of mind for locking up tickets and passports, etc. I would definitely recommend one for international travel. Although it did look a little geeky...just kidding!

This is the accountant in me speaking....one thing I do on all my international trips is I take a small spiral notebook and pen (or several different colored pens...) and write down everything I spend money on. It's a little anal, but I actually think it's fun to look back on them and kind of 're-live the day'. I can see where I went, what I ate, or where I stayed. The notebook also comes in handy for writing down directions or train times, whatever.



Ok, that's it! I'm done with my Italy posts. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming....


Oh,....and for those strangers that I've never met but that Mike/Annette/Matt told you to come check this out to hear about Italy?.....please stop reading now. Thank you.

Italy 13.5: I Could've Been a Coke Drinker!

Ok, those of you know me know that I am a PEPSI drinker. My whole family is - that's how we were raised, dammit! I hate Coke and can definitely tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. Well, one thing I found out in Italy is that outside of America, Coke is made with real sugar. That's right - none of this high-fructose corn syrup crap. And, oh my god, does it taste good. It doesn't even taste like Coke! Man if Coke tasted like this in America I'd be a Coke drinker!

Where did I have a chance to drink so much Coke you ask? Well, certainly not at restaurants where soda was over 3 euro! No indeed! When we got to the Hilton Mike had upgraded us to the Executive level. And on that very special level was the Executive Lounge which had free food, free booze, free liquids, everything! So, we had quite a fun time drinking all the liquids that we wanted.

Italy 13: A Not So Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Our last day in Rome, we checked out and dropped our bags off at the train station storage. We took the metro back to the Colesseum, which has a stop right in front of it - very handy. Outside the Colesseum is a lot of people offering tours. Since we really liked the one at St. Peters, we thought one for the Colesseum might be helpful. One group was offering for 10 euro, and we talked them down to 9. So, there were about 20 people and the guy walked us around the perimeter for about an hour talking about the history and progression of rulers, etc. He also mentioned that the movie Gladiator has a bunch of inaccuracies...it sounded like historians were really pissed off about it. Very interesting stuff. He then gave us tickets to enter the Colesseum but did not go in with us. He said that in a couple hours another tour guide would be available to give us a tour of Palatine Hill, which would be free. Palatine Hill is next to the Forum and was once the ritzy area to live in..it's got some cool ruin structures. Anyways, they've opened a lot of the inside of the Colesseum, so you can walk around and get a sense of the scale. They've also built a fake floor over part of it so you can understand how the bottom passageways worked and what the spectators would have seen. After that we went to lunch (and had our worst meal in Italy....on our last day too! sigh....) and went back to meet the tour guide for Palatine Hill. We ran into some of the other people from our earlier tour, and about 18 people showed up. Then, this scrawny kid with a bad So California accent came and said since he didn't have a ticket for Palatine Hill, he was just going to do a tour of the Forum, which is free. Everyone got pretty pissed at that cause Palatine Hill didn't have an audio guide or something to tell you what was what, and the Forum did. Then he said that some people had been given invalid tickets and they wouldn't work at Palatine Hill. It was all very shady. So, we just wandered around Palatine Hill by ourselves and it was quite pretty. Then we headed back to the train station, picked up our luggage, and took the airport shuttle to the Hilton at the Rome Airport. Mike booked us rooms with his Hilton points so it would be easy for us to catch our flight in the morning. More on that in the next post.

WILL ADD PICTURES ONCE BLOGGER STOPS ANNOYING ME.

11/11/06 - don't know why, but it really doesn't want to post my pics of the colesseum. Sorry!

Italy 12: I Think We Were Just Blessed By the Dali Lama!

Can I just say that Rome is a cesspool? It's loud, dirty, tons of traffic, and not very pretty. Go to Florence instead!!!

We first went to the Vatican. It was a two hour wait and at that point we were museumed out, so we skipped it. Instead we went to St. Peter's Cathedral. That is by far the most beautiful church I've ever seen. While we were in line a girl came around saying they had free English speaking tours. We said why the hell not. It ended up being a really good tour, and we got to skip about 30 minutes of waiting. Their ploy was they were trying to drum up business for their Vatican tour. But, hey, at least St. Peter's was free.


Where you see that bronze thingee in the middle????....the Statue of Liberty can stand there and still have room to spare under the dome. The proportions of everything is exact, so letters that you think are one foot high on the walls are actually 6 feet high. It's just amazing.

This is the Trevi Fountain. Can you tell how massive it is? We saw it in the daytime and then passed it at night too. Love it.


Walking around we saw a couple of these shops. At lunch we sat next to a priest from America. He said the robes and stuff in America are five times more expensive than Italy, so a lot of priests go on 'shopping trips' to Italy. heh.


Ok, getting back to the blog title....as we were walking around Rome, we were standing at a street corner when we saw a motorcade coming by. There were two cars in front with flashing lights, and a big white van in the back. Mike said to look in the car that didn't have any lights cause that's where the important person would be. So, when it passed by, we all looked in and there was this old asian/indian guy with red and gold robes on...and he raised his arm at us! We just stood there and said 'Was that the Dali Lama??' The Parliament building was down the street and there were tons of guards and some photographers. When we got back to America, Matt checked it out online, and the Dali Lama was indeed in Rome during that time. So, hey, I think we were blessed by the Dali Lama in Rome! Cool.

Italy 11: Hangin at the Duomo

We left Pordenone to head back down to Rome. On the way we stopped at Orvieto. It's a town built on the ruins of previous developments. There was also a really cool church there. There's a tour you can take of the underground passageways and structures, but since my knee would not have handled that, I hung out at the Duomo, watched our luggage, and read a book. It was some nice alone time, and it was a beautiful piazza to hang out in.



The Duomo and historic center of Orvieto is at the top of the hill, and there were some amazing shots from here.