Thursday, July 30, 2009

photo alert

B Posted some photos of our trip to Rome over at his blog, go look over there cause I'm waay too lazy to sort through/post my pictures...like...ever.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Jury Duty

I have it.

What the crap is with this "meet at the courthouse at 8:15" crap anyways?

*sigh*

Monday, July 27, 2009

Lovely

A commenter calling themselves SatmarWhore had this to say about my husband getting in a car accident: "Too bad the fuck didn't die!"

I hope for the sake of satmar people that this self identified satmer whore is not indeed part of their religion, although sadly it would not surprise me if she was.

You know, my best friend in high school was Satmer (a Hassidic sect for those of you not down on the lingo). In my MO high school, we got along well becuase we were both outcasts in the school - her for being too religious (although she had been kicked out of more religious schools for her outspokenness), me for not being religious enough. It was an odd pairing, and we disagreed on many things, but she was the only person from my school that I kept in touch with after high school, and I know she would never wish death on another human being, no matter what their religious preferences.

At times, it helps me to remind myself that there are people like her, and that not all religious people are represented by the cuntloafs who hang out on the internets wishing death on random people's husbands. Because there are way too many religious people out there, and if they all were like this particular one, we would all be sunk.

As for you, satmar whore, I have this old yiddish curse my grandfather taught me:
May you grow like an onion, with your head in the ground and your feet in the air!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Homemade Pizza!

We made pizza last night- my half had caramelized red onions and fresh basil from my herb garden (I sauteed the onions while the dough was rising), B's half had regular pepperoni and turkey pepperoni (yes, 2 kinds of pepperoni!). It was pretty easy and not very messy, except for the flour I got everywhere- next time I definitely need to use less flour to flour the pan :). We liked it so much we're making it again tomorrow! I think I'm going to try feta cheese and raw red onions and sliced kalamata olives as toppings on my half next time. Or maybe I'll find something intriguing at the farmer's market.

Meanwhile, I'm a little sad I'm not at the Gathering of the Vibes festival right now- but not too sad. I had been on the fence about it, especially as it's pretty expensive ($200 for a ticket + gas + food), but since I can't drive the new rental car, I can't go. But we're going to have an awesome weekend nonetheless- tomorrow we're going to the farmer's market and we're going to make more pizza tomorrow night, and we'll probably go see the new Harry Potter movie at some point. Plus it'll nice to be home for a few non-work days, since I haven't been in nearly a month!

-----------------
Pizza Dough:
1.5 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup WARM water
1.25 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1.5 tbs olive oil

Dissolve yeast in warm water (let sit for a few minutes). Add salt and oil and mix. Add flour, and knead dough for a couple of minutes until it looks like dough and isn't crumbly. Let the dough rise for 30-40 minutes.

Roll dough out on a floured surface until it's about the size of a 12 inch pizza. Remember to make a crust (using your fingers).

Using a spatula (or two), put the rolled-out dough onto a floured pizza pan or floured regular pan- we used the back of a cookie sheet and made the pizza a kind of oblong shape. Important: Move the pizza dough to the pan BEFORE adding any sauce or toppings onto it!

Add tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese on top, try to spread the sauce and cheese evenly.
Add whatever toppings you want
sprinkle 1/2 tsp rosemary and 1.5 tsp oregano on top

bake at 425 for 15-20 minutes until crust is brown and crisp
LET COOL for a few minutes before eating or you will burn your mouth!

Recipe from Barbara Kingsolver. It's around 2-3 servings per pizza if you aren't eating any side dishes with it- we cut ours into 8 pieces and had 3 pieces each and 2 leftover. 2 pizza's would definitely feed 5 people.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Car accident

On Tuesday morning I got a call from my father in law at around 9am "B was in a car accident, the police called me cause he couldn't remember your number, he has a head injury and they're taking him to the hospital but I don't know which one, he said to tell you to go home and crate the dog." (Barkley had been out of his crate because B was only dropping me off at work and was only supposed to be gone for around 15 minutes- which is also why he didn't have his cell phone on him).

So I ran outside and started randomly wandering up the street towards my house. Got about half way there before I found a cab I could take the rest of the way. Finally heard from the police once they figured out how to contact me (he was having problems remembering how to spell my last name) and they told me what hospital he was at. I rushed to the ER and apparently I got there right before he did.

It's a minor injury, a cut around an inch long, but he bled all over his face and his car is undrivable. He didn't even need stitches, they just cleaned his wound and glued his head back together and gave him a tetanus shot, which takes 5 hours in the ER apparently. Hopefully this won't cost us a bajillion dollars...he doesn't have health insurance, but they said his car insurance should cover the cost since it was a car accident. So here's hoping. I'm just glad he's ok and everyone in the car he hit was ok (he skidded on the wet trolley tracks while stopping at a red light and t-boned a car).

After getting out of the ER B started calling all the insurance company people. They didn't want to have his car fixed at the place it was towed to, so B called the towing people to release his car to the insurance company..at which point the towing people called back THREE times right in a row to try to convince him to get it repaired there. B was arguing with them on the phone about how he couldn't have it fixed there because his insurance wouldn't cover it, and they kept trying to strongarm him into getting it done there and he was all "you gave me something to sign while my head was bleeding and I had just been in an accident!".

Totally sketchy, and I only heard half of the phone calls of course...but the third time they called back while listening to his side of the conversation I had a panic attack for the first time in over 3 years (I used to have them on a semi-regular basis). I just cannot deal with confrontation and pushy people who are holding our car hostage. So that was fun. Finally he got them to release it though. I'm really proud of how B has been handling all this, because I would have been a total mess dealing with these people. In fact, I didn't even have to deal with them and I'm STILL a total mess!

You know what the worse part of this whole thing was? Well, one of the bad parts?

After I got the call from my father in law saying B had been in an accident and was on his way to the hospital with a head wound but he didn't know any more details and I was in a blind panic....I had absolutely no one to call. No friends to call and freak out to, and no parents to call either. I could have called my brother, but I don't think he would have known what to do either. Eventually I ended up calling a long time friend, but that was after thinking really hard about who I could call for like 10 minutes. And he didn't even pick up the phone!

Like...I want a grownup to call who I can count on and freak out to and who can calm me down and tell me what to do! It just hit me that I don't have anyone like that other than B, so when B is out of commission I don't have anyone else. I always used to have my parents on top of that, but I can't talk to them now, especially about anything having to do with B. I can call B's parents, but although his dad was very helpful and I called him several times as this was all going down, he's not someone I can freak out to. I guess I have to be my own grownup now...

you can read about B's side of the story on his blog

Monday, July 20, 2009

Turkey, Athens, Sicily, and home

I'm back home and at work, so I figure instead of working I should write a new update on the end of our trip.

Last week Tuesday we went to Turkey. We docked in Kusadasi, and visited the 'virgin mary's house" and ephesus. The tour guide had a phd in art history and was really great, although the first part of the tour was basically "why you should buy a vacation home in turkey and why we are better than other Islamic countries and should be able to join the EU." The guide seemed to have quite a chip on his shoulder about it, which I guess is understandable. He told us about how his wife is more religious than him, but she doesn't cover her hair, and how his brother married a jewish girl from America and they live in Istanbul together.

The virgin mary's house was kinda stupid in a hilarious way; apparently some nun in the 1850s had a dream about how the virgin mary had a house near ephesus on the top of a mountain, and supposedly woke up with stigmata. She sent a letter about it to the pope, and the stigmata was not independently verified. Archeologists then looked at several mountains around ephesus, found the foundation of some old house on the top of one of them, and then declared this the virgin mary's house! So now people come to make a pilgrimage there and write letters and tie them to a wall near this house (kinda like the Kotel), and it was probably the house of some recluse shepherd dude or something.

Then we went to ephesus, a major city in ancient roman times that's only been partially excavated. It was pretty neat and the main road has been pretty well restored- kind of reminded me of Pompeii, except everything was in marble, while in Pompeii there was less marble (that I could see) and more stone.

After Ephesus we went back to Kusadasi, where we visited a Turkish carpet co-op and they showed us a bunch of really neat carpets, and then tried to sell them to us. We walked around a Turkish bazaar for a bit, and I got a neat little ceramic jar thing in this great deep blue color. The bazaar was disappointingly clean and sanitized- I was expecting something out of Aladdin, or even something like Israel, but it was more like an outdoor mall in the states, except they sold a lot of hookahs and pipes and carpets.

The next day we went to Athens, where B and I did a solo "all day athens" tour. We visited the Acropolis, and sneakily took pictures of John Boltan in front of the Parthenon, since we saw him there. Also shared an elevator with him the day we went to Turkey. In Athens we also visited the Archeological museum where we got to see some famous statues, and wandered around the Plaka (marketplace) for a bit. Had an amazing Greek lunch as part of the tour, and had a great discussion about American politics with an Australian couple sitting across from us. Athens has a lot of graffiti all over it- more than any other city I've been to (including NYC in the 80s). According to our tour guide most of it is political slogans, and a lot of it was put up during a 3 day riot last year after an Athens police officer killed a 15 year old. We saw the anarchy symbol everywhere.

Last Thursday was a day at sea, and we mostly spend it reading on our balcony. We also saw revolutionary road at the movie theater, and went to the grill place on board for both meals, since we managed to get 2 free meals there somehow (normally you have to pay extra to eat there). Best two meals of the trip- I had blue cheese steak and antipasto for lunch and lobster mac and cheese and fancy french onion soup for dinner, with 3 kinda of creme brulee for dessert.

Friday we went to Sicily, which was definitely the worst of all our trips. We went with the in-laws, and we took a long bus ride to Mount Etna, and got to see some lava flows that had ended right near a house. Cool, I guess, except we had already seen 3 other Volcano's on this trip (Mt. Vesuvius, Stromboli, and Nea Kameni in Santorini), and after hiking up Nea Kameni, just seeing some lava flows wasn't that exciting. We also visited a jewelry factory, which I guess was B's mom idea, but wasn't super exciting to me. On the way home we watched some movie about Mt. Etna which I slept through. Most of the trip was just driving to Mt. Etna and then back. When we got back we had no time to do anything, since our boat left at 1pm, and Sicily was the only stop I wasn't able to find a shot glass at for my shot glass collection, which was also dissapointing.

Saturday we got up at 6am to have breakfast, and then disembarked in Civitavecchia at around 7am. We were picked up by a driver who had a sign with B's last name- but it turned out he was supposed to pick up someone else with the same last name (his last name is pretty common). We learned this about 40 minutes into the drive, after he had driven us to Rome and asked what hotel we were staying at...when we were supposed to go to the airport. Then he pulled over at the side of the highway and started arguing with B's dad about how he was going to get paid. It was pretty scary, and I started thinking about getting dumped on the side of the highway somewhere with all our stuff. Finally they stopped arguing and he drove us to the airport.

The airport was a nightmare, we had to stay on at least 5 long lines and they checked our passport approximately 30 million times. There was a line for initial security, another line to check our bags, another line for security (with metal detectors this time), another line for passport control, and then we had to have our passports checked twice when we got to the plane- once at the gate and AGAIN halfway down the gangway.

The plane was equally a nightmare, as there was a baby/toddler next to us who cried for the entire 9 and a half hour trip on the way there, and his parents didn't even do anything- they just sat there with their headphones in and didn't try to comfort him or walk him around or anything. I guess he must cry all the time, and they just gave up, but Jebus! I watched 3 movies on the way home (Benjamin Button, Sunshine Cleaning, Milk) and all were great. We got to Detroit, had a 3 hour layover, took another plane, and got home around 11:30pm (our time) after about 21 hours of traveling.

Yesterday morning we picked up Barkley from the dog sitter- apparently he ran away from them THREE TIMES! They said they found him almost right away each time, but man...I'm glad we have 4 doors between us and the front door in our apartment, and we're definitely going to have to keep this in mind when we eventually buy a house.

All in all, this was the best trip I've ever taken in my life- the only possible rival was birthrite in 2001, but this was even better cause I went with my husband and saw a lot more countries! I saw tons of things I've always wanted to see and B and I got to spend over 2 weeks together for pretty much every minute. And with no dissertation work or housework to think about too! I only gained about 4 pounds on this trip- which is pretty good considering that we had unlimited free food for the cruise, and I ate dessert and appetizers at every meal. I guess the tons of exercise we did (walking everywhere, kayaking, hiking up that volcano, walking up all those stairs to the acropolis) counteracted most of that.

Now it's back to reality I guess. I'm in work already today, and I got called for Jury duty next week, boo. In about 3 weeks is the American Sociological Association conference, and I'm doing the employment service there. I'm also giving a presentation, so I have to work on that (haven't looked at it since around January). I was thinking of going to the gathering of the vibes music festival this coming weekend, but I think with the jury duty, I really can't afford to miss more days of work, which kinda makes me sad (although not paying $200 for a ticket makes me less sad). Gotta book my tickets to California, revise a dissertation chapter and finish my presentation for ASA, set up interviews for ASA, do approximately 10 tons of laundry...back to the real world!

Monday, July 13, 2009

Greece- Corfu, Olympia and Santorini

7/13/2009 7:44 (Greece Time)

The past three days we've been in Greece. Saturday we went to Corfu, an island in northern Greece that is shaped like a sickle (and has a myth to go along with it- that of Persephone and the pomegranate seeds, and how the seasons were created). We went on an excursion where we visited two palaces- one was built by Princess Elizabeth who was married to the emperor of Austria I believe in the 1800s, and which was later owned by Kaiser Whilem. That palace had a bunch of really great statues, including a 25 foot statue of Achilles, another statue of Achilles with an arrow in his foot, and statues of the seven muses. It also had a great view of the island. I don't remember who built the second palace, but they had a great museum in it of all the artifacts they had found on the palace grounds (which covered something like 250 acres), including a whole bunch of ancient greek pottery and some artifacts from a roman bath that we also saw the ruins of.

Sunday we visited Olympia, the site of the original Olympics. It's mostly ruins now, but we saw some neat columns, the bases of a bunch of statues that had been brought there in antiquity as offering to the gods at the temple of Zeus and Hera, as well as the original Olympic stadium. We learned that the temple of Hera is much older than the temple of Zeus, and some archeologists believe that the Olympics started out as women's games based on the age of the temples. We also stopped at a restaurant afterwards and watched greek zorba dancing and had some amazing greek food, including these cheesy pastry things (that I have named “cheesy poofs” and I ate about 1000 of them), lamb meatballs, and of course ouzo.

Today we were in Santorini. In the morning B and I took a solo trip to the volcano in the center of santorini, and hiked up to the peak. Again, a trip that pushed me to my physical limits...I'm just not good at climbing steep inclines. It was pretty farkin awesome though, we saw 5 or 6 old craters, including a crater that is still active- we saw sulfer steam coming out of the ground, and the guide dug a small hole in the ground so we could feel how hot the ground was a few inches down (it was hot). I also collected a few cool volcanic rocks.

All of Santorini used to be a big volcano, that around 3600 years ago exploded in the biggest volcanic explosion in recorded human history. The entire island collapsed and the volcanic explosion triggered a giant tsunami that may have been the origin of the flood myths of that time period in the Mediterranean area. Some people think that the island was the origin of Atlantis myth as well. Instead of a giant island, now there is small islands in a circle with a huge crater lake in the middle....which is open to the sea, so it's not really a lake, just the sea. In the very middle the volcano is building up again, and rose above water about 500 years ago. That's the volcano we climbed.

After the volcano, our little boat (which looked like a pirate ship, and B and I entertained each other with pirate jokes) sailed to some local hot springs, where we jumped from the ship into the water and swam to the hot springs. They were more like warm springs...definitely warmer than the ocean, but only hot in a few areas. You could see the bubbles coming up from the water, and the entire area was brown with sulfer. After hanging around there for a bit we swam back to the pirate ship and climbed a ladder up into the boat, which took us back to our ship.

After taking a shower and eating some lunch, we went out again. We took a tender to shore and then a cable car up the cliff to the town (a tender is a small boat that takes you from the ship to the shore when the ship can't dock at the port and puts down an anchor off shore somewhere). We walked through the town – Fera, the largest town in Santorini- and then caught a local bus to the other side of the island, which was about a 15 minute ride. We passed a bunch of those famous white churches with the blue domes, and most houses on the island are all white with blue shutters and doors. On the other side of the island we visited a black sand beach called Kamari Beach- which was awesome, except it was less like sand and more like tiny sharp rocks which were painful to walk on. B hung out on shore reading under an umbrella, while I went swimming for a bit- that was probably the last time I'll be able to swim in the Mediterranean sea since the rest of our excursions don't leave much time for swimming.

We took the bus back to Fera, bought a few gifts for friends, and a small mosaic turtle for my turtle collection, and a shot class for my shot glass collection- I have a shot glass from every city I've visited for about the past 7 years, and have gotten one at every stop on this trip. We took the cable car back down the cliff, and managed to make it back to the ship just in time for dinner.

Speaking of the ship, there's a a republican convention being held on board our cruise by the National Review (If you go to their website you can probably find info on the convention). Supposedly Karl Rove is on board somewhere, but we haven't seen him. We HAVE seen John Bolten twice at the lunch buffet- he's the former ambassador to the UN under Bush, who famously said the UN was useless.

Well, our cruise is half over already! Tomorrow we go to Ephesus, Turkey, where we will be doing a tour with B's grandmother (his parents have decided to stay on board the ship tomorrow). Wednesday we're back in Greece, and B and I will be doing an eight and a half hour tour of Athens. Thursday we're at sea, and we have reservations for both lunch and dinner at the grill place on board which has very fancy food (and which you have to pay extra to use- but somehow we finagled ourselves into two free meals there). Friday we're at Sicily where we will visit Mt. Etna with all the in-laws, and then Saturday we disembark and spend the whole day flying back to the US.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Week 1 of Europe Trip: Rome/Cruise/Croatia

Saturday, July 4th 2009, 11:54pm (Rome Time)

Today we arrived in Rome. The airplane was mostly uneventful, although the girl sitting behind us fainted on the way to the bathroom and had to be given oxygen. While we were flying over France we were able to see the Alps, and some of the mountains were sticking up above the clouds. As we flew into Italy we could see the countryside...it mostly looked like the midwest, a bunch of farms, but huge- not broken up by small roads the way the farms in the midwest are.

When we got to the hotel B and I slept for about 5 hours until we were woken up by my MIL calling us about meeting them for dinner. Our hotel has a rooftop terrace restaurant with beautiful flowers and a great view of the rooftops of Rome.

After dinner B and I wandered around the neighborhood for a bit. We walked down to a public square where we saw a really old stone fountain with a fish-legged guy blowing a conch, and we passed the American embassy. We had some gelato at the gelateria across the street from our hotel.

Rome doesn't look as different as I thought it would be. If all the signs and graffiti weren't in Italian, we could be in Boston (especially given the narrow streets and cute restaurants everywhere). There are a few differences though- for one, everyone here drives either a really tiny car or a moped, which I think is great. I think if I lived in a place like this (where there are no scary SUVs bearing down on you on the highway) I would totally rock the moped. There are some unusual trees around that look like trees you would find in a Dr. Suess book, and the bathroom has a bidet in it. Other then that, the city is just old- there are ancient buildings and churches all over the place, and we passed a few ruins of old buildings. I wish I could read a bit of Italian, so I knew what I was looking at, but it's pretty cool nonetheless.

After we walked around for a couple of hours we went back to our room, where B promptly fell asleep again and I read for a couple of hours. The restaurant under our window had an accordion player, and at one point he started playing that song from the godfather, which was hilarious.

Tomorrow we do a tour of Ancient Rome (Colosseum, the Forum, etc) with a private guide, and we start off by going to Mass at a church that Michelangelo designed. I've never been to a mass before (or even inside a church) so it should be an interesting experience, even though I won't understand anything they say (B says he will explain it to me).

Friday, July 10th, 1:32pm (Croatia Time)

Well it's been almost a week since I've written, so I guess I have a lot to talk about. On Sunday we did a tour of ancient rome starting with Mass in a church. The mass we went to was actually in english. There was a lot of songs and singing and the priest gave a speech...honestly, I don't really see what people get out of going to church, it was mostly boring and singing along with songs about god. There was also some kneeling involved, but I just sat in my chair. The church was pretty awesome, and had great paintings all over the inside which I looked at while my mind was wandering.

Then we had an awesome tour of most of Rome with my in-laws, and a private car and tour guide. I can't even remember all we saw, so I guess i'll have to wait for the pictures to get everything...but we definitely saw the colosseum, the forum, circus maximus, the Trevi fountain, a bunch of other fountains, some churches, a bunch of Egyptian obelisks- I didn't know this, but something like 15 out of the 18 surviving Egyptian obelisks are in Rome, and I think we saw at least 8 of them while we were there. After napping for a few hours we went to dinner at a great italian restaurant and B and I split linguini with a veal sauce and another pasta dish with pesto. We had the most amazing Italian food throughout Italy...although I guess they would just call it “food.”

After dinner Sunday B and I decided to walk to all the tourist attractions that we deemed within walking distance of our hotel (which was the Marcella on Via Flavia). We walked for about 3 hours in total, and saw a Bernini fountain of Tritan, the Spanish steps, a big carved column that depicted the victory of some ancient roman emperor over some other place, the Trevi fountain again (This time at night so it was all lit up), the four seasons fountain and another big fountain.

Monday we did a Vatican tour with the in-laws. We saw one of the museums that had depictions of jesus from many different eras of art, a bunch of status that the church stole from Rome and Greece, and the Sistine chapel and st. peter's basilica. At St. Peter's they have a door that they only open every 25 years and then they seal up for the next 25 years, because if you walk through it you are supposedly washed clean of all your sins (kinda like in Dogma). I guess they wouldn't want people to be cleaned of their sins more often then that.... The Sistine chapel was awesome to see in person, but insanely crowded. The hallway there had a bunch of ancient roman maps of different areas of Italy and the rest of the roman empire, which were pretty neat. Our tour guide at the Vatican kinda sucked- my father in law is on oxygen and can't walk really fast, so I kept hanging back to make sure he didn't get lost in the crowd, but the tour guide would just talk to whomever could keep up with him, so I missed about half of what he said.

On the way to the Vatican we stopped at a church that supposedly has st. peter's chains, and also Michelangelo's famous status of Moses! The one that used to have rays of light coming out of the head, but then the rays broke off and were filed down to horns..this status is probably the reason a whole bunch of people think jews have horns. I was really excited to see that statue, since I didn't even know it was in Rome and it's one of my favorite statues (yes, I have favorite statues, what of it!). I got a little replica of it outside at a souvenir cart. All over Rome, the souvenir carts have little replicas of statues in some kind of stone, which are pretty cool.

Tuesday B and I took a solo trip to Naples and Pompeii. In Naples we drove around and saw some old castles and fortresses (and our cruise ship which was docked there). Then we stopped at a cameo factory where we saw a demonstration of how cameos are made and an artisan working on a cameo. The area by Naples and Pompeii is known for making cameos. I didn't get any of the jewelry cameos because they were all like $60 euro minimum, but we got a seashell that had a turtle carved into it that was less expensive (and I also collect turtles, so yay)

Pompeii was great. I knew it was a city but I guess I didn't expect it to look as much as a city as it did- all the buildings were attached to each other in long rows down the street, and very well preserved. We saw a temple of isis, the place where the gladiators trained, an auditorium, some shops, a few well preserved houses, a laundry, a whorehouse, the big public square, a public bathhouse, and the “Cave Canum” (beware of dog) mosaic. Speaking of dogs, there were stray dogs all over pompeii which were really cute, and a lot of them were just hanging out inside of the old buildings. We also saw a few of those petrified plaster bodies of course, including the dog one.

The trip was great but exhausting, and it was hot as balls outside for the 3 hours we were walking around. I kept refilling my water bottle from all the old fountains they have there that they have restored into working order, so that was cool- I drank from the same fountains as the citizens of pompeii did!

Wednesday we boarded our cruise, and yesterday we were at sea all day. Our balcony is farkin awesome. We are on the back of the boat, so we have a great view of all the stuff we pass, and we've spent several hours sitting out there and reading- so much that i've already gone through all my books, but awesomely there's a library on board with some good stuff. The food is also amazing. Last night was one of the formal nights, so they had extra fancy food- and I got to try Quail (with apricot stuffing, yum), and prawns (eh).

Yesterday morning we also passed a volcano- Stromboli- which has about 300 people living on it, which we found out when we went up to the observatory where there was a tour guide guy talking about it. We also passed through the straights of messina yesterday. We spent the day hanging around the ship- we went to a cooking class where they showed us how to make tomato sauce and mushroom sauce, and how to make homemade pasta, and we spent some time in the hottub, and ended up renting a movie at night (Finding Nemo). Our first night here we saw the movie Doubt in the movie theater on board, which we both really liked.

This morning we arrived in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where B and I went on another one of our solo trips- a kayaking tour around the edge of the city. We “tendered” to the pier, which means we anchored out at sea and took these little boats to the pier. When we were kyaking out in the sea,we saw some old fortresses and stopped at a cave with a beach, where I totally failed at my first attempt at snorkeling- the waves kept going over my snorkel and I kept breathing seawater. The two times I actually was down there for a bit I saw a couple of fish, which was awesome...I think the mouth piece was too big for my mouth which didn't help. But the kayaking was great, even though I was bumping up against my physical limits. I think we were some of the least in-shape people on that tour- we kept ending up near the back of the group with the young kids, and my arms were killing me by the end, even though we took frequent stops. We saw some people jumping off the cliffs, but did not attempt to do so.

Anyway, now we're back on the boat and we're about to go up to the front of the boat to take some pictures of Dubrovnik since we didn't take our cameras with us on shore. Tomorrow we will be in Corfu, Greece and Saturday we visit Olympia. I'll try to update more often now that we have internet access, since I don't think ya'll want to read long-ass entries like this one. :)

Thursday, July 2, 2009

I am a master packer!

We will be gone from July 3rd-July 18th; 16 days in total. Clothes for the two of us for the entire trip assuming we will not be able to do laundry, including a suit for B and my wedding dress (and fancy shoes) for the formal nights on the boat, polo shirts and fancy pants for both of us for regular dinner nights on the boat, sandals and walking shoes for both of us, bathing suits, 3 cameras (2 photo 1 video), binoculars, 8 books, toiletries, a jacket, my laptop:

1 medium sized suitcase
1 carry-on sized suitcase
1 backpack (regular backpack not a crazy camping backpack)

plus we packed another backpack sized bag folded up into the backpack in case we need another bag to bring back gifts in. Packing Skills FTW!

We drop off Barkley at a friend's place at 9:30am. We leave for the airport at 9pm. We arrive in Rome on Saturday at 10am, their time.

I probably won't have internet until at least Wednesday when we board the cruise. Also, we got an upgrade to a room with a balcony!! On the back of the boat! So we can sit on our private balcony and watch the wake and all the countries floating by!

So excited! This time tomorrow I'll be on a plane!