The second chapter...

… of a very busy month. It seems that, over the month of September, none of the planned trips ended up being scheduled and instead, they got stacked up in October. Given that the semester break also falls this month, it may well turn out that we end up spending more time out of Italy than in it. It’s kind of cool in a stupefying sort of way—we end up getting three days between trips to get work done and do laundry, and then we’re off again. But hey—far be it for me to complain. This is still the opportunity of a lifetime. The next stop: Spain—a day or so in Barcelona, and I’ll also take a one-day side trip to Madrid to meet some of my airplane-geek friends and hopefully, do some photography at the airport. Can’t wait.

Meanwhile, though, I’m trying to get some website work out for a couple of clients, and wishing I had time to edit all the pictures I’ve been taking. I just looked, and it seems that they’re really beginning to stack up. Might take me longer than the duration of this trip to get them all posted.

What else is happening… oh yeah, it’s my birthday. Whoopee… I’m screaming down that awful hill toward forty. It’s kind of weird to be celebrating it six thousand miles from home, but then again, it could be worse—a few years ago, I spent a birthday doing a press check in Greenfield, Ohio, which is this tiny town hidden in the cornfields, somewhere between Dayton and hell. I remember, like it was yesterday, going to Bob Evans for dinner that night (it made Denny’s look like the Ritz Carlton) and sleeping on a couch at the printing plant for about an hour and a half at a time before they’d wake me again to check something. And the worst part about that entire trip? The plant STILL managed to screw up our job when they trimmed it. What a wasted birthday.

On other fronts, it seems the vermin wars down on the Arno have taken a sinister turn. This afternoon we were walking across the bridge toward home when we noticed that one of the rats had made a kill and was dragging the spoils away toward its lair. I didn’t see the event, but a couple of British gents had and confirmed that the rat had scrambled up the wall pigeons sit on to grab its prey. Yikes! I don’t think I could have possibly influenced this behavior (any rat that’s snatching pigeons off a wall knows what it’s doing), but it’s creepy nonetheless. Could I be contributing to a race of super-rats? Ew.

That’s all for the moment… got to get back to work. I’m putting electric fencing around the apartment building. Just in case.

Cheers,
Leanne