Starry Wisdom

I’ve been meaning to post for a couple of weeks about strawberries. Really, I have. But I’ve been too busy (more on that in a later date), and also, I had to go on my first work trip in over 7 years this past weekend, on something like 7 hours notice.

The nice part about the trip was that it was to Chicago, so I was able to see some family and friends. This, of course, included my nephew Milo, who is super great, and I can’t wait to see again next month for his first birthday!

And, even though I had to extend my stay by an extra night, I was able to accomplish what we needed to accomplish on the customer visit.

I hope to have the time to post something more interesting (well, at least less useless, but probably also less cute) soon, as I have a couple of things backlogged.

I’ve taken two trips by air in the past few weeks. Because they were so close together, I didn’t have time to post about the first one before going on the second. So, I’ll be posting in reverse order.

I went to Kansas City, MO for my friend Katie’s wedding. This was a short trip – my flight out of Kansas City was scheduled to take off 49 hours after my flight from San Francisco. I say schedule, because the latter was late – which made my trip out pretty annoying. We left about an hour late, which was bad because I had a connection to make in Denver, and only about 45 minutes to make it. The reason for the delay was mechanical – evidently a bird strike earlier required them to need to do extra maintenance. Anyway, once I got to Denver I had to go to the Frontier customer service desk to get a new flight. The guy who was working there must be the most patient man alive, because there were a lot of irate people in the line. Me included, but I kept my ire to myself. It wasn’t his fault. I got standy on a flight out 2 hours later, and confirmed on the flight 4 hours later. Either way, I was going to get in to Missouri a while after my friends, who I was supposed to meet up with and drive back to our hotel, and then on to the BBQ the night before at Katie’s Mom’s house. The BBQ was the reason that I woke up at 4:30Am, so I could drive down to Park ‘N Fly and make my 6:15 flight. SFO to MCI is not a very well serviced route – the only direct flight I could find was in the middle of the afternoon on Midwest, which would have gotten me in at 8:30 or so – too late for the BBQ!

Well, I made it on the earlier of the two flights, but it was delayed so we didn’t actually end up taking off until about 15 minutes before the second flight was scheduled to. I have no idea if that flight was delayed or not, but based on my track record with Frontier, I have to assume so. So far they are 100% (2 for 2) for me. Anyway, I got in to MCI around 5:30, and after walking around pretty much the whole circular terminal, I walked outside to find out every door had a rental shuttle stop. Soon enough I was on the bus and over to Hertz, and and from there, it was a quick drive to Katie’s Mom’s house, and a beer! Luckily for my friends, Katie herself was able to pick them up from the hotel and take them to the BBQ, so it worked out well for everyone.

The BBQ was fun, but man it was hot outside! At around 10:00 or so, we drove back to the hotel (The Q hotel and Spa in the Westport district). I checked in, and got one last drink in the hotel bar with Scott and Andrea before crashing hard at about midnight, and sleeping soundly until 8:30AM.

Saturday, I just bummed about in the morning, getting an english muffin at the hotel breakfast, and then around 11:30 or so, I got in touch with Scott. I had decided to go to Okalahoma Joe’s BBQ in Kansas Ciy, Kansas, as an excuse to check that state off of my list of states. It’s also supposed to be about the best BBQ place around the area, as well as one of Anthony Bourdain’s 13 places to eat before you die (a fact which I didn’t learn until Sunday morning). The Hotel was only about half a mile from the state line, as is the Gas Station restaurant where scott and I ate lunch. We got there at a good time, because the line to order was only slightly long when we got there, but it was snaking outside into the parking lot by time we left [insert picture here]. It was pretty good but also mighty filling. We stopped off by the state line on the way back so I could take some goofy pictures XXX, before heading back to the hotel.

Around 2:30 we met down in the lobby, dressed in our fancy wedding attire, and also ran into Phil and Michelle, who were also staying at the hotel. We all drove over to Screenland, the movie theater where the wedding was taking place. I was sort of surprised that Phil was still at the hotel, as he was the officiant for the wedding! It was a good thing I rented the car (I mean, I’m sure people would have figured an alternate out – the hotel had a car service, plus there are cabs somewhere in Kansas City, I’d reckon), and even though 5 people in a Yaris is not super comfortable, none of the drives were particularly long. It was also nice that I brought my GPS on the trip – sure, it confused me a couple of times, and I had to alter routes a bit, but it did a pretty good job of getting us where we needed to be, and in particular we got to the theater in plenty of time.

The wedding itself was pretty neat – movie trailers, then a simple ceremony, featuring an infamous story about Lynard Skynnard as the “sermon”. Soon enough the bride and groom were kissing, and we retired to a decent sized room elsewhere in the building for the reception. The food was all vegan, and decent to delicious. For dessert there were cupcakes that Katie herself baked, which is pretty hardcore!

Because I was transportation for Phil, and he was needed for some official pictures, we ended up staying to almost the bitter end (I have to admit I was pretty bored for a while at the end, because I only had a few drinks – I was driving after all). We made plans to go to this ludicrous bar right across from the hotel – America’s Pub, but well, we never actually made it there. After going to the hotel, we headed over to McCoy’s pub for dinner, and a couple more drinks, and met up with a couple more friends who were staying at a nearby hotel. Dinner was pretty good (they have excellent Macaroni and Cheese), and after that and some weird conversation (sorry), we headed back to our hotels and ended the night 11PM or so.

Today, I was up at 6:30, and slowly got packed and checked out of the hotel. I was driving Phil and Michelle to the airport, as their flight was (so we thought) 9:30, and mine was 9:45. It was about a 30 minute drive to the airport, where we learned that their flight was 9:10 – they still should have had enough time to make it to the terminal from the rental car return, and the airport wasn’t very busy – and since it has security checkpoints for every 5 gates or so, I am pretty confident they made it on time.

Anyway, I got a snack at starbuck’s before entering the secure area and boarding my flight on Midwest Airlines. The plane is a Boeing 717 – a model I’ve not been on before. I seem to have lucked out with a seat near the front of the plane, which is only 2 x 2 instead of 2 x 3, and as such has a wider seats. So far this airline seems to be pretty nice. Not very useful to me for most of the flights I take, but something nice to know.

Here is a highlight of my Seattle photos:

And also, the entire gallery.

I went to Seattle this weekend to visit my friend Steve and his family. Last time I was there, in september, his daughter Holly was 16 months old and barely talking. Now she has a pretty good vocabular but not much in the grammar departmen :). She really is an adorable kid, though, even if she is a bit ADD – yeah I guess little ones tend to be that way but Steve and Jum both say she’s a bit more so than her peers.

The famous Seattle weather was in full form so we didn’t get to do as many outside things as last time. But we did go take pictures at the Japanese garden, which was the place for holly to look at ducks, and validated taking the SLR along on the trip. I also got to hang out with just Steve a fair bit – we saw the Cinematic Titanic Live show Saturday night (I laughed so hard I hurt) and saw Watchmen yesterday afternoon during naptime. I liked the movie ok, and I think it was just about as good of an adaptation of the source material as possible, but that still only makes an above average movie.

I’m writing this on my phone at the airport, so I am unable to add any pics – they are still on my camera – but I’ll post again later to highlight some.

34006 feet over the Atlantic – It’s time to put in to words what took place yesterday, and finish up some of today.

We drove down to Rome to see the Colosseum and such. We got in to Rome before noon, but we ran in to traffic. We ended up parking at a subway station – one of the ends of B line, which means we we had a thirty minute or so train ride, including a swap to A line. It was interesting to see the difference on the two lines – the B line trains were new, clean (on the outside) and had TVs showing 5 minute commercial loops. The A line trains each had more graffiti on them than you can find in most US cities. We got to the Colosseum around 1PM. Luckily for us, by taking an English language tour for 4 Euro extra per person, we were able to bypass the line and get in quickly – We had to be out of Rome by 5PM. The most important parts of the Colosseum were the pidgeons having sex, and the cat who lived down near the bottom.

After the tour and taking a bunch of pictures, we had lunch at an Einstein “themed” trattoria, then we piddled around the Forum for half an hour.

We took a few group pics, and then took the subway back to Anagnina an the car, so we could make it back to the villa by 7PM to meet with Miss Teodora and check out, since we had to leave at 6AM the next morning. The checkout went smoothly, and we spent less on heat than we had budgeted. Then we changed clothes to go out to dinner to a town on Lake Trasimeno, one of the biggest lakes in Italy, and conveniently close to Perguia, to try some Italian sea/lake food. Well, the place we THOUGHT we had made a reservation for the night before was closed – very mysterious, but we found another restaurant on the lakefront. It was a very nice dinner – the food was different than we had been eating, and we had white wine with the meal, along with shrimp. We spent several hours eating and talking about the Constipootional Convention, finally leaving at about 11:15 to go home and pack, and sleep and such.

I woke up at 5AM to shower. We were out of the place by about 6:10AM, and Fred and I were dropped off at the Terminal by 8:30AM. Joan and Chris, who’s flight was several hours later than ours, then went on to drop off the car – and ended up being at the airport too early to check in.

Terminal 5 at FCO is just a security shell for flights to the US. In the outer area there are catwalks manned by policemen with submachine guns – not exactly what I am used to. After you check in, you are taken by bus to a proper terminal. The flight left about on time, so we should be OK for our connecting flight at Dulles. I can’t wait to get home, even though the vacation was fantastic.

Galleries:
Rome
Misc

Italy was great! There will be much more later in text and pics. Layover at Dulles for another hour or so.

In the Car between Perugia and Rome –

Poo Braille!
Take the fifth!

So, yesterday we went to Montefalco, a tiny hill town known for its vineyards. We pulled in to the town’s parking lot blasting the Numa Numa song, in order to obey local customs. We then wandered in to the 100mx100m or so walled city. We found the town square and a wine and oil shop. Joan’s French jacked us in to the proprietor and we got a tasting of local wines at the attached bar. It was some genuinely good stuff and we all ended up buying some wine, on the assurance that the town post office would help us ship it.

Oops, the post office was closed!

We ate a lunch of paninis that we bought at the small grocer on the square, and rested of the wine before heading back down to Spoleto. We reckoned the post office im Spoleto would be opened and would help us get our goods shipped – but nope. One was closed and the other had no boxes. We looked up Mailboxes Etc via the power of Chris’ Blackberry and found there was one in Perugia, figuring we would go later.

But I get ahead of myself. On the way out of town we stopped at a place advertising THIS YEAR’S OLIVE OIL. The proprietor was glad to practice his English with us, as he was currently transitioning form the oil business to an oil and wine business, and was building a tasting room near the current building. The oil itself was very good, and we had a good time talking to him about the area, and his plans for the tasting room. We all bought some oil, Chris and Joan investing in a 5 liter can!

In Spoleto, our main activity was to visit the town fortress/prison – Rocca Albornoziana – a genuin castle. This afforded as a good view of the Ponte delle Torri aqueduct, and a lot of other COOL STUFF – an echoey well, pot cubbies, daily life frescoes, just good stuff. They were also closing the castle down as we were walking through, dropping the portcullis as soon as we left the courtyard!

On the way to the car we saw a town dog who was friendly and funny. We also ran in to a very friendly cat, whos owner called her, justly, a Prima Donna.

We then headed back north, intent on Iper Coop for some port and smores materials. We noticed more and more fires as we were driving, more fires than any of the other days. We decided that Thursday must be “burn your Garbage” day in Umbria. According to Chris, the air quality level rivaled India on a good day. It bugged us all, giving Fred a headache.

At Iper we found reasonable facsimiles of marshmallows and graham crackers, as well as some Valrhona chocolate. The marshmallows were in the kid’s candy section, and we got some dolce-salato crackers, but more on that later. We also got some port and some passitos, as well as some jarred truffles to bring home. In the checkout lane we were behind some woman who had 1/3 too much stuff, and had to put her excess in to our empty basket before paying with her Italian equivalent of EBT. It was pretty weird. But we made it out of the store with our goods.

We then drove off to find the Mailboxes Etc. They were just closing the gate as we pulled up, but Joan (WOOT!) asked them if they could help us, to which they cheerfully agreed. Fred and I got our stuff shipped to the US (via a slow boat evidently, but that’s OK), but they were not able to ship wine to Canada. They did sell Chris and Joan packing material so they could bring their goods on the plane, so it was good all around, save for Fred’s headache, which was only getting worse.

Instead of going out we decided to eat in, so Fred could rest. Also, we had to finish the rest of the half of pig we bought from the pigmonger the other day. We did make a reservation for Friday, however. We had a good dinner, and then dessert. Gelato and port, followed up by the passitos (dessert wine made from raisins) with ersatz smores. The Valrhona chocolate was a bit much, but the SALTY (duh) dolce-salato crackers were quite nice for smores, and the weird marshmallows were close enough to the real thing. The Nestle biting chocolate worked a little better.

We stayed up until 2AM, burning the rest of the wood, the right wing newspaper we had bought, and drinking the rest of the passitos. Chris unbent the iron andiron, making it look almost as good as new. If we would have made the potato bot, that would have been the time to assign him to cook himself, but alas, we did not.

Galleries:

Montefalco
Spoleto
Misc

Montefalco, Frederico II – Tasting Wine, Joan’s French FTW!

In the Villa – We got to Florence at 11AM yesterday. We parked and then walked over to the plaza near the Uffizi. We took some pictures before heading in to the Museum. We spent about 2 hours before we were arted out. I mean, it’s full of some really good art, but, especially the first series or rooms, are very skewed to early religious art… so you can get burned out on that.

Afterwards, we walked towards the Duomo, making a stop for lunch at a pizzeria. There was an unfortunately confused fellow American sitting near us, who I think really wanted to ask us for help but couldn’t quite screw up the courage. Oh well. After lunch we got gelato. Oh man, delicious! The tiramisu that Fred got might have been the winner, but they were all quite good.

The Duomo (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore) is a magnificently grand cathedral. The main hall is humongous and open, and pretty much like nothing I’d seen before. It was crazy to think of the generations it took to build it, and that it had been standing for over half a millennium. After we looked around the inside of the church, we headed back outside to go up to the top of the dome.

The climb up is quite interesting, with a series of spiral stair cases and switchback staircases. There is an interlude where you walk along a balcony just below the dome itself, and get to see the fresco up close.

And then you climb up a staircase leading over the the inner dome itself, and ascend through a hatch on to the roof of the dome, and are treated to 360 degrees of views around Florence.

After we descended to ground level, we went to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, which is filled with original artwork from the Duomo itself, which is either being restored, or under preservation. Included in their treasure are the actual panels of the doors of the Baptistry, in nitrogren class cases, and the Pieta del Duomo, one of Michaelangelo’s last works. The cashier at the museum was a particularly fantastic gentleman, so great in fact that he was immortalized with his own statue:

We then did some minor shopping. We crossed over the Ponte Vecchio, the only medieval bridge left spanning the Arno River in Florence (thanks Hitler). In our wandering, Joan and Chris found the honey grappa they’d been searching for.

After a while we took a break in the plaza in front of Santa Croce, where we discussed dinner. We weren’t quite hungry yet, but we knew our best bet for food was in Florence, plus it was our one chance for Tuscan food! We found a small restaurant not too far away from where our car was parked, with a handwritten menu out front. The food at this mom and pop place was delicious and inexpensive. We eschewed wine and went through 3 liters of aqua con gas, much to the consternation of the proprietor, but it was what we needed.

On the way back to our car we found the spoor of the poor dog JFK, a dog who can poo at either of two settings, and was stuck on both. He looks something like the Agip logo, with the proper number of legs, and the fire moved down and to the left:

We left the city around 9:20PM, arrived home at 11:30 and promptly were done for the day.

Galleries:

Florence