Starry Wisdom

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.

I, like many guys around my age, spent countless hours as a youth in front of the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES). On the NES there are three games that strike me as iconic:

1. Super Mario Bros
2. The Legend of Zelda
3. Castlevania

I owned all three of these, and of them, I finished the first multiple times (but I admit I was more amused by the turtle trick than actually finishing the game)

Zelda was a fairly easy game to finish, in that you had save games, and infinite continues to accomplish it. I will admit the first play through probably took me a couple of weeks, but mostly because of time spent trying to figure out puzzles, not dying randomly.

The final of the three, Castlevania, that was the tricky one. I never personally finished the game, and it was a good game where I made it to the penultimate boss, the Grim Reaper. I don’t think I ever made it past him, or if I did it was only a single time. I saw a friend of mine cower before and die to the mighty Count Dracula on a single occasion, but that was it as far as the end of the game goes.

Now, imagine my surprise when I find this pair of videos this morning:

Not only is the game finishable within 15 minutes, but the damn Grim Reaper is as easy as any of the rest of the bosses, thanks to the mighty holy water secondary weapon. If only i had known this then…

The past week has proved to me without a doubt the old saying “time is an illusion.” With the jet lag coming back from Italy (which pretty much took me a literal week to get over) and the return to daylight savings time this weekend, I have come to realize that we really should abandon walltime, and just proceed on our lives as the sun tells us to.

I slept the wrong 6 hours last night. Basically from 7:30pm until 1:30am. I watched some tv until 3, then tried to sleep again, and at 4:45 decided it wasn’t going to happen, so I showered and went in to the office. An hour or so late, I’ve finished going through my email from the past week, and I am ready to start doing work. Stupid Jetlag!

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!