Back from Venezia, as of late last night...

Okayyyyy, we're back and mostly unpacked, and the litterboxes are clean and some windows are open to air the place out. The kitties ("gatti" in Italian) are so excited to have us back! I have to stop what I'm doing every few minutes to play with or pet S, which is only fair after making her miss me for so long.

First things first--I owe rumgirl some emphatic thanks for making me enter that poetry contest a while ago. I came home to find a letter from them saying I'm a semifinalist in the March contest and they want to publish me in an actual book. (They also want me to pay $50 for a copy of said book, and I think they might put out a book per month, but the odds of getting this far are still pretty small, so it's still a compliment). So that's that; I'm going to be published, and we can all stay tuned to see if I win any prizes. Grazie, rumgirl. :D

Venice and Germany were both fabulous, the first more for visiting an old friend and the second more for blowing a lot of money on beautiful things and walking across canals on charming little bridges. I'm gonna type up a travelogue and put it on my website, maybe tomorrow night... but suffice it to say I had a great time. I loved seeing everything... and buying half of everything, including a necklace I think I'm gonna wear at my wedding and a pair of Mephistos for 65 euros, which is a whole lot less than they sell for over here... but the best part may actually have been the intellectual stimulation of learning/reviewing the foreign languages. I was really happy with how well I did. German was easy because I studied it for four years in high school, mostly a matter of review, and Italian, well, I know a few words now and found it wasn't that hard to pick up. Had a blast just giving it a shot, anyway. You can get a long way on goodwill and just making it clear that you're trying. I didn't have to resort to English too often. And seeing M and G was so nice--there's some good chance of them being able to come home within about two months, which would be earlier than expected and would be wonderful. They wouldn't come here here, but they'd be an easy train/bus ride away for a month or so until M has the baby... so I could probably see it within 24 hours of its birth if properly notified. :) By the way, they seem really truly happy. The whole raising a family idea seems to give them both a lot of peace/happiness, and they love each other and have all these plans to have a house built in the suburbs later this year and they're just, well, all set. It's really almost scary. I knew G back when he was such an a**hole and it wasn't that long ago, either.... now being a good husband and daddy is like the whole aim of his life, as long as he can write code on the side. Weirrrrrd but good. Now don't get me wrong here, I would never make the same choices they're making; I gave this some careful thought and decided that I would in fact be in hell right now if I were preggers and planning on moving to a big house in suburbia. But I was still impressed at how well they seem to have their shit together. :b Anyway, we tore ourselves away from that vision of domesticity and proceeded to walk all over Venice; not only did we walk quite a few miles a day every day, I saw no cars at all between Monday night and Friday morning. Just boats and pedestrians, and lots and lots of gorgeous glassware, masks, shoes... it was so cool. And in case you're wondering, yes, we made it to the big museum of modern art, and a couple of churches too. There were more museums and cultural things we could have gone to, but in the end Venice itself was the main attraction, just as the travel book said. Parts were kitschy but we did our best to get off the beaten path (not that all paths aren't beaten in that city, but we did get away from the tourist traps), and I think we saw some of the real Venice.

I'm gonna stop babbling now in favor of babbling more later on my real website, but to answer a couple questions I know people might have: no, we encountered no explicit anti-Americanism, though there were rainbow "PACE" (PEACE) signs hanging all over Venice, and there was a little graffiti along similar lines; and no, I didn't gain any weight despite the German pastries I consumed, not to mention the heavenly calzones, pizza and gelato later on. Ha... travel is not broadening. I do feel like a blob though, having not worked out in what, nine days now? I'm heading off to the gym as soon as my laundry is done, I think.