Room to Think

So...this post is about awesome friends. Mostly because I got the content from this post from an awesome, awesome friend of mine, who also happens to enjoy daydreaming about Italy. Except that he wants to go back to live there...I think I only want an extended stay. He sent me this link the other day. 100 Things to Know if You're Going to Italy click on it. It's gigantic for a reason. You know you want to. I haven't gotten through the whole list yet, but #84 has pretty much established that I'm not going to be marrying an Italian man. I'm also probably not going to get married in Italy. "#84: Purple being the color of Lent, it is considered a color that brings bad luck. Avoid the darker purple hues for evenings at the theatre, and it's definitely a forbidden color at weddings!" Evidently, I need to brush up on my Catholic "What Not To Wear". A few of my awesome friends over here would be stunned  if I didn't have purple ...

Manarola, third of the Five Lands Another Friday is here, and I'm ready! Today's Florence Friday is a follow-up on the Amalfi Coast.  We're going to learn a little more about it's cousin to the north, Cinque Terre. Also, I have an embarrassing admission to make. The first picture in my Amalfi Coast Blog , is actually a picture of Manarola. >.< See how confusing this is??? Cinque Terre is probably the coastline I laid eyes on first in my google searches, as it is much closer to Florence than the Amalfi Coast is. This map is particularly helpful to me...what with my need to learn basic Italian geography before I head over there. >.< **also, Milan isn't on there, but from my hotdog pizza post, I know it's more north than Venice is! =) Like the Amalfi Coast, Cinque Terre is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Cinque Terre National Park), and it literally means "The Five Lands".  These five lands are the five villages along the co...

exactly.   It's 1am, and I ought to be sleeping, but for some odd reason my brain is going a million miles an hour.  Maybe that's the remnants of my coffee this morning, and my chai tea in the afternoon.  I bet it's the chai. It doesn't keep much caffeine to keep me going.  Since I typically only drink water--very rarely will I drink juice, even...the once-a-month chai concoction is enough to keep me WIDE awake at night. Anyhoooo.  Hoo!  >.<   or rather: O_O Let me stress that it is late.  But I wanted to show you all how Easter went! I had a whirlwind weekend that started off with me dropping off my boss in Lynwood on Saturday(egad, 1.5 hrs in a car with my boss!) and then, based on a text from my mom en route, continued my southern migration from there for an Easter weekend at home. Here are the results! Easter Chick, Ninja Turtle 'stache, Hipster egg, Panicked egg, Dead egg, Volleyball, Blue eyes, Bunny, Naruto nin...

Happy Tuesday everyone! The 2012 Bi-annual TED conference started today! My facebook news feed and blogger reel have exploded with updates from TED, and it's great.  It also means I've spent close to three hours watching TEDtalks today.  It was wonderful and awful at the same time, because I know how much homework I'm putting off right now.  It's even worse that I can write off watching so many TED videos as "doing homework" for this blog. Most of the TEDtalks I've watched tonight pertained to dance, or music, or the arts.  They were brilliant, interesting, and captivating.  I even found that if there was a speaker involved with the dancing, or with the music-making, I was more prone to remembering what they were saying, even if the talks themselves were over 30min long. I guess there's an element of hybridity that's encouraged in TEDtalks.  We've moved beyond that phase of Orator + Powerpoint = presentation.  (thank god) TED en...

Roman Amphitheatre in Volterra Good morning!  It's a beautiful Florence Friday and I'm cheery not because of the weather, but because I just skipped an interview with a potential employer...on purpose.  (but that is a post for another time) In truth, I'm still in my bed, so I can't see what Bellingham looks like today, but it's certainly not sunny. And I just checked the weather in Florence... It's not so cheery there, either.  30degrees Fahrenheit and it's drizzling. (shouldn't it be snowing then?) Regardless of the weather, I'm still terribly excited about Italy.  I haven't made much progress in planning my Italy trip since last Friday, and blogging has made me acutely aware of how quickly the weeks go by.  I'm still a little disgruntled about Mr. Franco's email to me. But one of the reasons I've always been drawn to Italy (and Greece) is the ancient history built into the cities. I'm a huge fan of Gre...