I've always thought the hockey term "hat trick" to mean a player scored three goals is a neat term, and I feel as if I get to do the happy dance for scoring one this week.
The first one was yesterday in class, when I casually asked my students before class started what they thought about the assignment that was due. (For the record, I had asked them to take a careful look at the way the introductions were written in papers they had chosen on their own to read.) I had rather expected them to grimace; historically, most of the papers students have critiqued have had pretty miserable introductions, so the students feel as if they are the ones who have failed.
Instead, one of them said, essentially, that he hadn't really thought much before about how the papers he's read are written, but thinking in terms of my guidelines made him see how much sense my thinking makes. Another student (whose experience with the assignment turned out to be much more frustrating than the first's) agreed: my thinking that papers need to be "designed," not just "written" really seemed to make sense to her, too.
The second happened shortly after I reached the office today. I have been trying—unsuccessfully—for several years now to convince our professional organization to streamline their guidelines for formatting references for papers in their publications; their excuses for not changing it are as frustrating to me as their confusing, inconsistent format.
When the university started making EndNote, a reference manager software, available a couple of years ago, I redoubled my efforts to make the changes in the format because the existing one simply couldn't be tamed enough to function with the software. To exacerbate the issue, the professional organization started using an online library that costs more than its previous system, but it has the advantage that it automatically dumps all the pertinent information from the website into EndNote.
If you're following this, the professional organization makes its publications available to members and schools through a website that dumps information into EndNote, which the university makes available to students for free, but the students can't use the software because the organization's format is too complex to translate. Boggles my mind.
However, I started around the beginning of the semester to see whether our campus thesis clerks would accept a streamlined version of the format for our students to use in their theses and dissertations—which would enable them to use the power of the online library and the bibliographic software to manage the references in their academic works. You've guessed by now: I met with a couple of them for over an hour this afternoon, and they were not only willing to listen to me but enthusiastic about the possibility of making this happen.
I pretty much bounced from the library (where I met with the thesis clerks) back to my office, and I was pretty cheerful about dispensing with my job tasks for the rest of the afternoon.
Then as I grabbed my goods to leave, one of the professors waved at me from outside our outer office doors, which had already gone into automagic lock mode. I teased her at first, then opened the door since I was headed out anyway. She said she had tried to catch me earlier in the day to show me a homework assignment she had returned earlier in the afternoon.
Since a fairly large number of our senior students had also attended the conference in Italy, the professor's "make up" assignment had required them to attend at least one professional presentation and write a summary and commentary on it. (I don't know whether they all had to attend the same session or not.) She said some of the students happily commented that they found the presentation interesting and helpful, although several considered it long, boring, and not well-developed.
The one that Ding had wanted me to see: "I'll bet if this guy had to take DJ's class, he'd be able to write a better paper!"
Hat trick!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Home again, home again
Okay, I'll admit it: I've been off the net for a couple of days. That's largely because I don't sleep well on airplanes; on the entire trip from Rome to Houston, I maybe got in 30 minutes of catnapping. I tried several times, and I even thought a couple of times I'd actually go out, but no such luck.
Mostly, if I got settled into something that seemed like I might be able to relax enough to sleep, my eyeballs flew open and I'd snap out of the drowsy state that had gotten me there. Fortunately, I'd grabbed some light reading before I left and I still had a handful of crossword puzzles for backup, so the trip wasn't entirely a loss. Besides, it turns out netbooks really do have long battery life, so I played games and got some work done, too.
I figured out before I got home what the problem was: in spite of all the airlines' efforts to make their seats comfortable, the backs are too high for me, so they throw my head forward and make me uncomfortable. I know this because the seats on the little squirrel-powered plane that hops between Houston and College Station have somewhat lower backs—and I slept almost the whole way. For a 30-minute flight.
I had confused my travel plans enough before I left that Number One Son wasn't too sure what day I'd get back, but he had planned my favorite kind of surprise: he and Shrek, the current temporary roomer, would give the house a good once-over so I'd come home to clean digs. They were planning for me to get home Friday, but the only reason to think that was that my flight was due in about midnight, and I had fudged toward the Friday side of that.
When I texted from Newark to say I was stateside, the guys decided to get into gear and do what they could. Sure enough, when I walked into the dim entryway, the first thing I noticed was a bit of reflection off the sofa table that has sat there for years; the message there is that someone had dusted off a fairly thick layer of accumulated sand and beast hairs.
I didn't slide across the den floor, so I was pretty sure they also had swept: that floor usually reminds me of the old country dance halls where the owners intentionally put sand or sawdust down to facilitate slides; clearly they didn't understand how much simpler that would have been if they'd just killed the grass in the back yard and acquired a couple of dogs.
The kitchen had been attacked, too, at least enough to move dirty dishes into the drain side, presumably clean. NOS was disappointed, though, when my first words there were, "Hey, Tank, welcome home to you, too!"—especially since Tank was still in the den. NOS's face fell when he reached the kitchen door: half the floor was covered in kibble.
"Oh, no," NOS groaned. "He hasn't done that all week!"
Which means, of course, that this was by no means the first time. When Tank first started living with me, I tried keeping a dish of kibble in his kennel so he could eat if he got hungry while I was at the office; one afternoon I walked by the kennel to find him using his favorite stuffed tiger as a sweeper to brush all of the food out of his dish and out of his kennel. And I had thought the difference between humans and dogs had something to do with using tools. So much for that.
Soldier Son and I had discovered that keeping a bucketful of food in the kitchen floor seemed to make him much happier, and that worked for us for a couple of years. But a few weeks ago, I walked into the kitchen to find the bucket knocked over and food all over the floor.
I had caught a sale at WallyWorld where I bought a wider-based bucket more for its color theme than for its design, but it seemed like a less-tipsy alternative to the bucket we'd been using for years. Within a day or two, Tank had that on its side, too.
The next step up was to an old dishpan I have used intermittently for dish washing, plant potting, and kitty litter. I scrubbed and disinfected it and filled it with food. A couple of days later, it was on its side.
NOS said it had stayed upright the whole time I was gone, assisted partly by becoming wedged under the bottom step of a kitchen stool that made it harder to tip. Since the guys had cleaned up the dishes and swept the floor, they were pretty pleased with the kitchen effort—until Tank had stepped in.
Shrek beamed at the fact that I had noticed his effort to clean the table, and he urged me to logon to my laptop to see the work he had done to set up a website for me. I had asked him to do this weeks ago, since he's supposed to be a computer whiz and I thought it would be a good way to help him pay for his living space while he's out of work.
I wanted to check out the laptop, anyway; NOS had told me on the way home that one of Shrek's friends had gotten onto it while I was gone, initiated a rude conversation with a friend of mine who was looking for me on an instant messenger, and caused something of a hullabaloo among several of my online friends and some of my coworkers. He had also managed to rearrange the furniture in my usual seating area to plug the laptop in, although I have a convenient power strip right under my side table. I was not a happy camper.
I had sent Shrek a copy of my company letterhead to give him an idea of what I wanted on the website. The letterhead uses a standard Roman font and a common script to spell out my company name in kelly green on a white background; that model for my website follows the specifications I demand of my students for light backgrounds with dark text, a policy that makes sense physiologically for computer screens and presentations. (Those of us old enough to remember computers that ran on DOS with dark backgrounds and amber or green text also remember the plethora of headaches and other complaints by users whose eyes just weren't designed for that inverted combination.)
The site I saw was so bad I don't even remember if it included my business name. Instead of a light ground with dark text, it had a dark gray ground with orange highlights and white text. Shrek stood proudly by as I entered the URL, then deflated when I knee-jerked immediately, "That's horrible!" As a matter of fact, if he had been one of my students, he'd have gotten almost exactly the same reaction—and he'd have been sent back to the drawing board to do it over again. Aside from my green and white company logo, I was raised in the land of maroon and white; I have no interest at all in having an orange website. Fortunately, I have a friend at work who probably has the skills to fix it for me.
I didn't get to sleep until sometime around 2 Friday morning, and I woke up with sinus drainage bad enough that I just downed diphenhydramine and rolled back over. I woke up in the wee hours of Saturday morning and piddled around the house, sorting out the goods I brought back from Italy and catching up on email and reading.
When I dragged by the entryway on the way to the den, I realized that the dusting job hadn't so much been the treat I had thought it was; I'm pretty sure Shrek has never held a dust cloth before, because the only places that were "clean" were along the front edge of the table where he could reach without moving a thing.
NOS and I are contemplating gluing the dog food dish to the floor, and Shrek tells me family business may mean that he'll be moving out soon. I've stocked the larder, run the laundry, and played fetch with the puppies.
Rome was amazing, but it's good to be home.
Mostly, if I got settled into something that seemed like I might be able to relax enough to sleep, my eyeballs flew open and I'd snap out of the drowsy state that had gotten me there. Fortunately, I'd grabbed some light reading before I left and I still had a handful of crossword puzzles for backup, so the trip wasn't entirely a loss. Besides, it turns out netbooks really do have long battery life, so I played games and got some work done, too.
I figured out before I got home what the problem was: in spite of all the airlines' efforts to make their seats comfortable, the backs are too high for me, so they throw my head forward and make me uncomfortable. I know this because the seats on the little squirrel-powered plane that hops between Houston and College Station have somewhat lower backs—and I slept almost the whole way. For a 30-minute flight.
I had confused my travel plans enough before I left that Number One Son wasn't too sure what day I'd get back, but he had planned my favorite kind of surprise: he and Shrek, the current temporary roomer, would give the house a good once-over so I'd come home to clean digs. They were planning for me to get home Friday, but the only reason to think that was that my flight was due in about midnight, and I had fudged toward the Friday side of that.
When I texted from Newark to say I was stateside, the guys decided to get into gear and do what they could. Sure enough, when I walked into the dim entryway, the first thing I noticed was a bit of reflection off the sofa table that has sat there for years; the message there is that someone had dusted off a fairly thick layer of accumulated sand and beast hairs.
I didn't slide across the den floor, so I was pretty sure they also had swept: that floor usually reminds me of the old country dance halls where the owners intentionally put sand or sawdust down to facilitate slides; clearly they didn't understand how much simpler that would have been if they'd just killed the grass in the back yard and acquired a couple of dogs.
The kitchen had been attacked, too, at least enough to move dirty dishes into the drain side, presumably clean. NOS was disappointed, though, when my first words there were, "Hey, Tank, welcome home to you, too!"—especially since Tank was still in the den. NOS's face fell when he reached the kitchen door: half the floor was covered in kibble.
"Oh, no," NOS groaned. "He hasn't done that all week!"
Which means, of course, that this was by no means the first time. When Tank first started living with me, I tried keeping a dish of kibble in his kennel so he could eat if he got hungry while I was at the office; one afternoon I walked by the kennel to find him using his favorite stuffed tiger as a sweeper to brush all of the food out of his dish and out of his kennel. And I had thought the difference between humans and dogs had something to do with using tools. So much for that.
Soldier Son and I had discovered that keeping a bucketful of food in the kitchen floor seemed to make him much happier, and that worked for us for a couple of years. But a few weeks ago, I walked into the kitchen to find the bucket knocked over and food all over the floor.
I had caught a sale at WallyWorld where I bought a wider-based bucket more for its color theme than for its design, but it seemed like a less-tipsy alternative to the bucket we'd been using for years. Within a day or two, Tank had that on its side, too.
The next step up was to an old dishpan I have used intermittently for dish washing, plant potting, and kitty litter. I scrubbed and disinfected it and filled it with food. A couple of days later, it was on its side.
NOS said it had stayed upright the whole time I was gone, assisted partly by becoming wedged under the bottom step of a kitchen stool that made it harder to tip. Since the guys had cleaned up the dishes and swept the floor, they were pretty pleased with the kitchen effort—until Tank had stepped in.
Shrek beamed at the fact that I had noticed his effort to clean the table, and he urged me to logon to my laptop to see the work he had done to set up a website for me. I had asked him to do this weeks ago, since he's supposed to be a computer whiz and I thought it would be a good way to help him pay for his living space while he's out of work.
I wanted to check out the laptop, anyway; NOS had told me on the way home that one of Shrek's friends had gotten onto it while I was gone, initiated a rude conversation with a friend of mine who was looking for me on an instant messenger, and caused something of a hullabaloo among several of my online friends and some of my coworkers. He had also managed to rearrange the furniture in my usual seating area to plug the laptop in, although I have a convenient power strip right under my side table. I was not a happy camper.
I had sent Shrek a copy of my company letterhead to give him an idea of what I wanted on the website. The letterhead uses a standard Roman font and a common script to spell out my company name in kelly green on a white background; that model for my website follows the specifications I demand of my students for light backgrounds with dark text, a policy that makes sense physiologically for computer screens and presentations. (Those of us old enough to remember computers that ran on DOS with dark backgrounds and amber or green text also remember the plethora of headaches and other complaints by users whose eyes just weren't designed for that inverted combination.)
The site I saw was so bad I don't even remember if it included my business name. Instead of a light ground with dark text, it had a dark gray ground with orange highlights and white text. Shrek stood proudly by as I entered the URL, then deflated when I knee-jerked immediately, "That's horrible!" As a matter of fact, if he had been one of my students, he'd have gotten almost exactly the same reaction—and he'd have been sent back to the drawing board to do it over again. Aside from my green and white company logo, I was raised in the land of maroon and white; I have no interest at all in having an orange website. Fortunately, I have a friend at work who probably has the skills to fix it for me.
I didn't get to sleep until sometime around 2 Friday morning, and I woke up with sinus drainage bad enough that I just downed diphenhydramine and rolled back over. I woke up in the wee hours of Saturday morning and piddled around the house, sorting out the goods I brought back from Italy and catching up on email and reading.
When I dragged by the entryway on the way to the den, I realized that the dusting job hadn't so much been the treat I had thought it was; I'm pretty sure Shrek has never held a dust cloth before, because the only places that were "clean" were along the front edge of the table where he could reach without moving a thing.
NOS and I are contemplating gluing the dog food dish to the floor, and Shrek tells me family business may mean that he'll be moving out soon. I've stocked the larder, run the laundry, and played fetch with the puppies.
Rome was amazing, but it's good to be home.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Roman adventure
When I got up yesterday morning, I thought I had my travel plans all set, and except for my usual nerves about whether I would actually get to where I needed to be on time, I looked forward to a smooth trip home. But this is my life, so nothing can be that simple.
My initial plan was to go to the educational sessions at the conference, which I had assumed would all end by 5, get to the train station in time for my trains to the Rome airport, hop a cab to my hotel “near the airport” (about 4 km away), and get a decent night’s rest before my flight out early this morning.
I can make anything into a Gordian knot.
When I got to the conference, the first speaker up was a young professor who had been on our campus for a couple of years before he moved back to Clausthall, Germany, where his girlfriend had a job already. (Economics on our campus meant that she couldn’t get one with us.) Catalin is still with us as an adjunct faculty member and teaches a course almost every semester through our distance learning program. Since we really need professors in drilling, we’re glad to have him on board.
I told him that I had made my plans a little differently from what my Roman friend Gioia had suggested, and I was hoping that the proximity of the hotel to the airport would mean that I could get back and forth to the airport on the 50 euros or so I had left in my wallet. Catalin frowned and said he didn’t think that would be enough, which sent me into a tailspin over how I was going to pay for things. “Keep calm,” I kept telling myself. “Somehow you’ll work this out.”
I felt better after the lunch break when my boss showed up for the afternoon sessions. He had already determined that we’d be on the same train back to the airport, and he was a little jealous that I had gotten tickets all the way through to the airport from Florence by spending a few minutes in a line when his travel agent had told him it couldn’t be done. Around 3:30, he slipped out of the session, telling me he was going to go see if he could get his and his wife’s tickets. She was supposed to meet him at the conference center around 5 so they could reclaim their bags from the “coat room” and we could walk back to the train station together. I was hugely relieved; John is a terrific person, and just being around him calms my nerves.
I couldn’t follow up on his suggestion exactly because my bags here back at my hotel (just a few doors down from the train station; the little hotel I had booked on my own had turned out to be better in several ways than the “recommended” one his wife had found), but I promised to meet him about an hour before the train was supposed to leave.
Our train ran a few minutes late, but we boarded it safely and trudged together through the Roma termine station to the train to the airport, John assuring me all the while that if my hotel was near the airport, it was bound to have a shuttle that would get me to the hotel and back cheap or free; worst-case scenario, surely someone at the hotel could help me get a ride. To say John is a world traveler would be gross understatement; I felt certain that if anybody would know what would happen, John would.
Once we got to the airport, John led us down several long passageways that didn’t seem to be getting us to the exits, so when I spotted an elevator, I pushed a button and got on. That got us down to the taxi/shuttle area, where all the electronic help services seemed to have already gone to bed for the night. I found a man with a “shuttle” sign in his hands and asked how I could get to the address I had from Expedia. He told me I could go in his shuttle for 35 euros (45 if all three of us were going to the same place), but when John said he was going to a different hotel, the man left me with a driver and led John and Phyllis off to their hotel shuttle.
I was a little surprised when the shuttle driver loaded five other people into the minivan, but I figured my nearby hotel would be first on his list, and I’d be in a cozy room soon. Not so much; he had headed off down a very modern freeway for several kilometers before he said to me, “It will be the same price, but I will take these others first. But I will takeyou to the Pantheon.”
The Pantheon? The ancient-part-of-Rome Pantheon? Back closer to where I had changed trains than to the airport? “Yes, but I will charge you the same price.” Yeah, right, but I’ll starve and I’m already thirsty and I need to go to sleep. The Pantheon?
For several miles, Rome looked an awfully lot like Houston to me—all big freeways and fast cars rather than an ancient city. We turned off at an exit marked “Vatican city,” and I expected it to start looking different. After several miles of boxy-looking structures that looked more rural than urban, we turned down a street that reminded me a lot of Darling Daughter’s neighborhood in Los Angeles, winding up at a hotel tucked into the corner of noplace that seemed meaningful to me. I just wanted to go to sleep.
We wound our way out of that neighborhood and onto a street that looked like downtown Anywhere for a few blocks, then suddenly I realized that the streets seemed wider and more pleasant, but the structures reminded me an awfully lot of Florence. After a couple of blocks, the driver said, “When we go around this curve, look to your left and you will see St. Peter’s dome.” Sure enough, as we rounded the curve, the dome shone like a sun under the bright lights and was absolutely breathtaking. Suddenly, I wasn’t so sleepy anymore. I had already been blue about missing the statue of David in Florence, and I was sorry I hadn’t built in time for Rome. But St. Peter’s Basilica? Just because I didn’t take a taxi? I could deal with this!
We drove on through the neighborhood that reminded me of Florence until he finally turned down a small street where I could see a throng of people crowded into a large plaza, all looking with amazement back toward the building to our left and all amazingly quiet. “This is the Pantheon,” the driver said. To the two women in the back of the van, he said, “I can’t get you closer than this. Your hotel is down on the plaza. When you get down there [a few yards away], you’ll see the McDonald’s—of course; everywhere there’s a McDonald’s—and your hotel is on the right.” “Okay,” they said, and piled out to collect their luggage.
After he had taken care of the other two, he came to my door. “Come here,” he said. “This isn’t the best way to see this. Come over here.” I’m sure I must have been gaping as much as the folks in the plaza if I wasn’t grinning like Carroll’s Cheshire cat (or both), but I did have the presence of mind to realize that I had my camera in my pocket and pulled it out to snap a couple of pictures. I turned around to ask him if he would shoot one with me in it and panicked briefly when I realized he was no longer beside me. I swallowed my heart and checked back in the area where I had left the van and saw him fiddling with some paperwork.
After we left the Pantheon, I asked if we could stop long enough to get me something cold to drink, and the driver said he know a place nearby. I told him I could hardly wait to get home where I could get cokes or tea with a whole cupful of ice; as far as I could tell, people in Italy didn’t understand the concept of “cold.”
He pulled up to a little “bar” that looked to me like the kind of place where cokes would cost twice what I had available, so I asked if he knew of anyplace cheaper. He said he did and pulled back into the road. At the next spot, he asked me what I wanted and told me he’d get it for me. If I was going to stay awake all the way back out to the airport and the hotel, I needed caffeine, so I asked for Diet Coke. “We have something new here called ‘Coke Zero,’” he said. “Have you seen that?” Yeah, Coke Zero, Diet Coke, whatever—as long as it doesn’t have sugar.
He popped into the little dive and came out a minute later with one of each, obviously icy cold because they were sweating in the cool evening air. In his other hand, he had a small cup of ice. “Do you know the phrase ‘hit the spot’?” I asked him. “It means, ‘just what I needed’; and this really hit the spot!”
He smiled and pointed to the right. “We are now going right through the Roman forum,” he said. “And up ahead there is the Coliseum.” We circled the Coliseum like a dervish, and in quick succession he pointed out the old city wall, an ancient pyramid, the mansion that was the home of the first Italian president, the dome of St. Paul’s cathedral….none of which I would have seen if I hadn’t blindly climbed into this van.
He took a back road back to the hotel that reminded me a lot of driving along Hwy 105 between Navasota and Conroe, eventually pulling down a small street toward the hotel. When we arrived, he said, “This is the site of an old Roman castle.” My hotel?
The front doors were looked and the reception area dimmed, but two signs on the door advised me and another guest to call a number to get the manager to come let us in. My driver whipped out his cell phone and placed the call, then waited with me until I was safe in the manager’s hands. The manager settled into his desk and rifled through my paperwork. “Oh, this isn’t where you are supposed to be,” he said. “You saw the prices on Expedia. You were supposed to be in the country. This isn’t the country; this is the resort. The rooms here are much more expensive. You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “This is the address I got from Expedia, and you had a sign on your door that said this is where I am supposed to be, and I don’t know what you mean by ‘the country.’”
“Oh, the country is over there,” he said, waving his arms farther down the street. “Where are you from? America? You would use acres. We have 600 acres. Your room is there, in the country.” He must have seen the blank look on my face. “But you have such a big suitcase and you will be here for only one night. I think I can find a room for you.” After glancing at his computer, he said, “Ah, yes, I have an apartment you can have. It is near the castle. You can see the castle from your room.” Castle? I can see the castle?
He juggled numbers for a few minutes, then I asked him about getting to the airport in the morning. “I only have 15 euros left,” I said. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay for a taxi. What should it cost?”
“Ah, 28 euros, maybe 30 euros. How much did he charge you?”
“35 euros.”
“Ah, too much. He should have charged you only 30. But don’t worry; the taxi can take your card. I will get you a taxi. What flight?”
Yeah; I could have gone straight to the hotel for 28 euros. Or for 35, I could get in a trip to the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Roman wall....I gave the hotel manager my flight number and he checked an airport website to determine the time I needed to be there. “You should leave at 7:15,” he said. “I will get you the taxi.”
He dialed two numbers on different cell phones and let them ring several times, then hung them both up. “Let me take you to your apartment. It’s too bad you have to leave so early; you should stay and see it all. We have the castle and a whole Roman town; you should see it. You should see the country. But you can see the castle from your apartment.” Castle?
He swooped out from behind the desk, picked up a wonderful set of keys (two of which looked like shiny new versions of old-fashioned skeleton keys), and grabbed my suitcase. We trudged across the cobblestone parking area and then over a hard clay surface to a door that looked like a miniature version of the large, wooden doors on the front of the hotel that, frankly, looked as if they, too, belonged on a castle.
Inside another door was my “apartment.” Sure enough, it was pretty much what I’d have called a “studio” back home: living area and tiny kitchen downstairs, bedroom and bath with a wonderful European tub, sink, toilet and bidet upstairs.
And, sure enough: outside the window was a castle. I haven’t had internet connections nor time to read the hotel brochure, so I don’t know the history, but I’m definitely going to have to explore this. While I sorted out my stuff to be sure I’d be under the weight limit for baggage, a black cat hopped up on my window sill and made me feel at home. Except just beyond that window was, you know, a castle.
When I left home, the one instruction I got from Number One Son was, “Take lots of pictures.” My eyes flew open at 5:30 this morning, so I bathed (nice hot water in that wonderful, deep European tub) and dressed and grabbed my camera. It still wasn’t daylight, so I did the best I could with and without flash to capture everything I could see: the castle, the old Roman street that looked so much like Florence (only with clumping of potplants outside every “apartment”), a church. As the sun began to rise, I just kept snapping; after all, the taxi wasn’t due yet and the front desk wasn’t open yet, so what else was there to do?
I slipped out across the street to try to find out what “the country” was, but a spot that looked interesting (maybe a stream?) was too well shielded for me to tell. A white van that looked too much like day laborers back home had pulled up in front of the hotel, and I didn’t want to go too far from my baggage with them around, so I mostly hung around in the courtyard. After a bit, the manager’s wife showed up and let me in. She promised to watch my luggage so I could run across the street long enough to snap a couple of pictures of the other side of the castle and what I think must surely be the area her husband had referred to as “the country.”
Back inside, the manager’s wife told me breakfast was served from 7:30 to 10 or so, which really didn’t apply to me, but she fixed me a cup of steaming hot tea and let me grab a packet of melba toast and a cup of yogurt. I had barely opened the yogurt when my taxi arrived.
From there on, the trip was easy. I had plenty of time in Rome to grab a snack before boarding, in Newark to get through customs, and in Houston to grab a drink with John and Phyllis, who had come in on a United flight just a little ahead of me.
John's room at the Hilton had never been confirmed, and we had arrived at the airport too late for him to catch their usual shuttle; once he got to his hotel by taxi, he found out that it was full and didn't have room for him and Phyllis. Their alternative was a room at another Hilton that was billed at over 400 euros; he was grateful that they let him have it for 290. Best I can figure, they got settled into their room at the airport Hilton about the same time I got settled into mine.
But they hadn't seen the Basilica, the Pantheon, the Coliseum, or the pyramid.
And they didn't have a castle in their back yard.
My initial plan was to go to the educational sessions at the conference, which I had assumed would all end by 5, get to the train station in time for my trains to the Rome airport, hop a cab to my hotel “near the airport” (about 4 km away), and get a decent night’s rest before my flight out early this morning.
I can make anything into a Gordian knot.
When I got to the conference, the first speaker up was a young professor who had been on our campus for a couple of years before he moved back to Clausthall, Germany, where his girlfriend had a job already. (Economics on our campus meant that she couldn’t get one with us.) Catalin is still with us as an adjunct faculty member and teaches a course almost every semester through our distance learning program. Since we really need professors in drilling, we’re glad to have him on board.
I told him that I had made my plans a little differently from what my Roman friend Gioia had suggested, and I was hoping that the proximity of the hotel to the airport would mean that I could get back and forth to the airport on the 50 euros or so I had left in my wallet. Catalin frowned and said he didn’t think that would be enough, which sent me into a tailspin over how I was going to pay for things. “Keep calm,” I kept telling myself. “Somehow you’ll work this out.”
I felt better after the lunch break when my boss showed up for the afternoon sessions. He had already determined that we’d be on the same train back to the airport, and he was a little jealous that I had gotten tickets all the way through to the airport from Florence by spending a few minutes in a line when his travel agent had told him it couldn’t be done. Around 3:30, he slipped out of the session, telling me he was going to go see if he could get his and his wife’s tickets. She was supposed to meet him at the conference center around 5 so they could reclaim their bags from the “coat room” and we could walk back to the train station together. I was hugely relieved; John is a terrific person, and just being around him calms my nerves.
I couldn’t follow up on his suggestion exactly because my bags here back at my hotel (just a few doors down from the train station; the little hotel I had booked on my own had turned out to be better in several ways than the “recommended” one his wife had found), but I promised to meet him about an hour before the train was supposed to leave.
Our train ran a few minutes late, but we boarded it safely and trudged together through the Roma termine station to the train to the airport, John assuring me all the while that if my hotel was near the airport, it was bound to have a shuttle that would get me to the hotel and back cheap or free; worst-case scenario, surely someone at the hotel could help me get a ride. To say John is a world traveler would be gross understatement; I felt certain that if anybody would know what would happen, John would.
Once we got to the airport, John led us down several long passageways that didn’t seem to be getting us to the exits, so when I spotted an elevator, I pushed a button and got on. That got us down to the taxi/shuttle area, where all the electronic help services seemed to have already gone to bed for the night. I found a man with a “shuttle” sign in his hands and asked how I could get to the address I had from Expedia. He told me I could go in his shuttle for 35 euros (45 if all three of us were going to the same place), but when John said he was going to a different hotel, the man left me with a driver and led John and Phyllis off to their hotel shuttle.
I was a little surprised when the shuttle driver loaded five other people into the minivan, but I figured my nearby hotel would be first on his list, and I’d be in a cozy room soon. Not so much; he had headed off down a very modern freeway for several kilometers before he said to me, “It will be the same price, but I will take these others first. But I will takeyou to the Pantheon.”
The Pantheon? The ancient-part-of-Rome Pantheon? Back closer to where I had changed trains than to the airport? “Yes, but I will charge you the same price.” Yeah, right, but I’ll starve and I’m already thirsty and I need to go to sleep. The Pantheon?
For several miles, Rome looked an awfully lot like Houston to me—all big freeways and fast cars rather than an ancient city. We turned off at an exit marked “Vatican city,” and I expected it to start looking different. After several miles of boxy-looking structures that looked more rural than urban, we turned down a street that reminded me a lot of Darling Daughter’s neighborhood in Los Angeles, winding up at a hotel tucked into the corner of noplace that seemed meaningful to me. I just wanted to go to sleep.
We wound our way out of that neighborhood and onto a street that looked like downtown Anywhere for a few blocks, then suddenly I realized that the streets seemed wider and more pleasant, but the structures reminded me an awfully lot of Florence. After a couple of blocks, the driver said, “When we go around this curve, look to your left and you will see St. Peter’s dome.” Sure enough, as we rounded the curve, the dome shone like a sun under the bright lights and was absolutely breathtaking. Suddenly, I wasn’t so sleepy anymore. I had already been blue about missing the statue of David in Florence, and I was sorry I hadn’t built in time for Rome. But St. Peter’s Basilica? Just because I didn’t take a taxi? I could deal with this!
We drove on through the neighborhood that reminded me of Florence until he finally turned down a small street where I could see a throng of people crowded into a large plaza, all looking with amazement back toward the building to our left and all amazingly quiet. “This is the Pantheon,” the driver said. To the two women in the back of the van, he said, “I can’t get you closer than this. Your hotel is down on the plaza. When you get down there [a few yards away], you’ll see the McDonald’s—of course; everywhere there’s a McDonald’s—and your hotel is on the right.” “Okay,” they said, and piled out to collect their luggage.
After he had taken care of the other two, he came to my door. “Come here,” he said. “This isn’t the best way to see this. Come over here.” I’m sure I must have been gaping as much as the folks in the plaza if I wasn’t grinning like Carroll’s Cheshire cat (or both), but I did have the presence of mind to realize that I had my camera in my pocket and pulled it out to snap a couple of pictures. I turned around to ask him if he would shoot one with me in it and panicked briefly when I realized he was no longer beside me. I swallowed my heart and checked back in the area where I had left the van and saw him fiddling with some paperwork.
After we left the Pantheon, I asked if we could stop long enough to get me something cold to drink, and the driver said he know a place nearby. I told him I could hardly wait to get home where I could get cokes or tea with a whole cupful of ice; as far as I could tell, people in Italy didn’t understand the concept of “cold.”
He pulled up to a little “bar” that looked to me like the kind of place where cokes would cost twice what I had available, so I asked if he knew of anyplace cheaper. He said he did and pulled back into the road. At the next spot, he asked me what I wanted and told me he’d get it for me. If I was going to stay awake all the way back out to the airport and the hotel, I needed caffeine, so I asked for Diet Coke. “We have something new here called ‘Coke Zero,’” he said. “Have you seen that?” Yeah, Coke Zero, Diet Coke, whatever—as long as it doesn’t have sugar.
He popped into the little dive and came out a minute later with one of each, obviously icy cold because they were sweating in the cool evening air. In his other hand, he had a small cup of ice. “Do you know the phrase ‘hit the spot’?” I asked him. “It means, ‘just what I needed’; and this really hit the spot!”
He smiled and pointed to the right. “We are now going right through the Roman forum,” he said. “And up ahead there is the Coliseum.” We circled the Coliseum like a dervish, and in quick succession he pointed out the old city wall, an ancient pyramid, the mansion that was the home of the first Italian president, the dome of St. Paul’s cathedral….none of which I would have seen if I hadn’t blindly climbed into this van.
He took a back road back to the hotel that reminded me a lot of driving along Hwy 105 between Navasota and Conroe, eventually pulling down a small street toward the hotel. When we arrived, he said, “This is the site of an old Roman castle.” My hotel?
The front doors were looked and the reception area dimmed, but two signs on the door advised me and another guest to call a number to get the manager to come let us in. My driver whipped out his cell phone and placed the call, then waited with me until I was safe in the manager’s hands. The manager settled into his desk and rifled through my paperwork. “Oh, this isn’t where you are supposed to be,” he said. “You saw the prices on Expedia. You were supposed to be in the country. This isn’t the country; this is the resort. The rooms here are much more expensive. You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “This is the address I got from Expedia, and you had a sign on your door that said this is where I am supposed to be, and I don’t know what you mean by ‘the country.’”
“Oh, the country is over there,” he said, waving his arms farther down the street. “Where are you from? America? You would use acres. We have 600 acres. Your room is there, in the country.” He must have seen the blank look on my face. “But you have such a big suitcase and you will be here for only one night. I think I can find a room for you.” After glancing at his computer, he said, “Ah, yes, I have an apartment you can have. It is near the castle. You can see the castle from your room.” Castle? I can see the castle?
He juggled numbers for a few minutes, then I asked him about getting to the airport in the morning. “I only have 15 euros left,” I said. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay for a taxi. What should it cost?”
“Ah, 28 euros, maybe 30 euros. How much did he charge you?”
“35 euros.”
“Ah, too much. He should have charged you only 30. But don’t worry; the taxi can take your card. I will get you a taxi. What flight?”
Yeah; I could have gone straight to the hotel for 28 euros. Or for 35, I could get in a trip to the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Roman wall....I gave the hotel manager my flight number and he checked an airport website to determine the time I needed to be there. “You should leave at 7:15,” he said. “I will get you the taxi.”
He dialed two numbers on different cell phones and let them ring several times, then hung them both up. “Let me take you to your apartment. It’s too bad you have to leave so early; you should stay and see it all. We have the castle and a whole Roman town; you should see it. You should see the country. But you can see the castle from your apartment.” Castle?
He swooped out from behind the desk, picked up a wonderful set of keys (two of which looked like shiny new versions of old-fashioned skeleton keys), and grabbed my suitcase. We trudged across the cobblestone parking area and then over a hard clay surface to a door that looked like a miniature version of the large, wooden doors on the front of the hotel that, frankly, looked as if they, too, belonged on a castle.
Inside another door was my “apartment.” Sure enough, it was pretty much what I’d have called a “studio” back home: living area and tiny kitchen downstairs, bedroom and bath with a wonderful European tub, sink, toilet and bidet upstairs.
And, sure enough: outside the window was a castle. I haven’t had internet connections nor time to read the hotel brochure, so I don’t know the history, but I’m definitely going to have to explore this. While I sorted out my stuff to be sure I’d be under the weight limit for baggage, a black cat hopped up on my window sill and made me feel at home. Except just beyond that window was, you know, a castle.
When I left home, the one instruction I got from Number One Son was, “Take lots of pictures.” My eyes flew open at 5:30 this morning, so I bathed (nice hot water in that wonderful, deep European tub) and dressed and grabbed my camera. It still wasn’t daylight, so I did the best I could with and without flash to capture everything I could see: the castle, the old Roman street that looked so much like Florence (only with clumping of potplants outside every “apartment”), a church. As the sun began to rise, I just kept snapping; after all, the taxi wasn’t due yet and the front desk wasn’t open yet, so what else was there to do?
I slipped out across the street to try to find out what “the country” was, but a spot that looked interesting (maybe a stream?) was too well shielded for me to tell. A white van that looked too much like day laborers back home had pulled up in front of the hotel, and I didn’t want to go too far from my baggage with them around, so I mostly hung around in the courtyard. After a bit, the manager’s wife showed up and let me in. She promised to watch my luggage so I could run across the street long enough to snap a couple of pictures of the other side of the castle and what I think must surely be the area her husband had referred to as “the country.”
Back inside, the manager’s wife told me breakfast was served from 7:30 to 10 or so, which really didn’t apply to me, but she fixed me a cup of steaming hot tea and let me grab a packet of melba toast and a cup of yogurt. I had barely opened the yogurt when my taxi arrived.
From there on, the trip was easy. I had plenty of time in Rome to grab a snack before boarding, in Newark to get through customs, and in Houston to grab a drink with John and Phyllis, who had come in on a United flight just a little ahead of me.
John's room at the Hilton had never been confirmed, and we had arrived at the airport too late for him to catch their usual shuttle; once he got to his hotel by taxi, he found out that it was full and didn't have room for him and Phyllis. Their alternative was a room at another Hilton that was billed at over 400 euros; he was grateful that they let him have it for 290. Best I can figure, they got settled into their room at the airport Hilton about the same time I got settled into mine.
But they hadn't seen the Basilica, the Pantheon, the Coliseum, or the pyramid.
And they didn't have a castle in their back yard.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Hooky, Italian style
Since I've been pretty much "on duty" every day until today (meeting Saturday afternoon, student events Sunday afternoon, more student events all day Monday), I declared today a day of rest and played hooky from the convention.
I had stayed up too late last night playing on the computer (I haven't caught up with my reading in days!) and reading a book, so I allowed myself to sleep in a bit this morning. That didn't last very long, though, so I was up and out in plenty of time to grab breakfast before I left the building.
I had been fretting for some time about my early-morning flight out of Rome, and I somewhat frantically emailed a friend whose family is from Italy for advice. I got her answer this morning (she's traveling, too), but I sort of just scanned it before I set out to arrange my train travel for tomorrow night back to Rome. As it turns out, she advised me to do as I had suggested to her: take a train to Rome's city center, find a hotel nearby, and then take either a train or a taxi to the airport.
Since I didn't read the message too carefully, I had arranged train travel all the way to the airport, so I went online for rooms nearby. I found one about 3 miles away for a decent price, and I feel certain I can get to the airport from there in the wee hours of the morning. I won't promise that I'll sleep well, but at least I'll have a bed.
I pulled most of my clothes out of the closet and started trying to juggle getting the original junk I brought along with a collection of souvenirs and a new backpack into the suitcase I brought and potentially only one carry-on piece. My bigger concern is that the trains all have two steps up from the platform that I have to maneuver four times with the weight of the suitcase(s); these are the times I wish I had an extra pair of arms.
But this didn't seem to "count" as playing hooky, so I locked up my room and headed downstairs to see which direction the hotel manager thought I should go to start. She had a flyer for a place that advertised Leonardo da Vinci's machines, with a small additional charge for lunch, and it was right on the way to the "academy" where the statue of David stands. I was on my way!
I made it to the da Vinci museum and was pleased to find that about half the machines were interactive; it was fun to play with them and see how they really worked. Students at a local art school had built models from his sketches of human anatomy, and television monitors provided commentary and history.
When I had seen all I thought I wanted to see, I went to the desk to collect my lunch, but my ticket had fallen out of my hands. I asked if I could possibly get lunch without the ticket, but the manager just sort of growled, "Find the ticket." I cruised back through all the smallish rooms to check for a single slip of paper, but to no avail.
The difference between the cost of admission and the cost of admission plus lunch was only one euro, so I asked whether I could just pay an extra euro and get the meal. "Find the ticket."
A young man was mopping the floor near her desk, so I asked him if he'd seen my ticket. He shook his head slowly, then started to dig through bits of paper in a small plastic bag. I hated seeing him do that, so I pitched in, and in a couple of minutes, we had it. "This way," the manager said, as she led me into a small room with a few tables and some assorted books. "What do you want to drink?" she asked. Iced tea was an option; she pretty obviously didn't quite get the "iced" part. "The pizza today is ham," she said. "Do you want it?" I sort of thought that might have been a good question to ask before she took my extra euro and certainly before she sent me dumpster diving for my ticket, but I haven't had much ham here, so it was fine.
I stopped by a "supermarket" (where I bought a diet coke but mostly learned that euros really do go all the way to 1-cent pieces; I don't know what they call them) and found the "academy" easily enough, but the line stretched out the door, down the block, around the corner, and just kept going. I saw a young woman sort of monitoring the line and asked her how long the wait was; she assured me it was about 2 hours from where I was, and it wouldn't let up all day: the exhibit is closed on Monday, and on Tuesdays it's nearly impossible to get in. I was really disappointed because I understand the work is beautiful, but I didn't really feel like spending two of my precious hours in Florence standing in a line.
I grabbed a map I'd picked up somewhere of "stuff to see" and saw that the next stop was only a couple of blocks farther away, so I set off for the "piazza." The church on one side (they almost all seem to have a church on one side) had a carving that looked like somebody was up to mischief, and I saw a couple of nuns dressed in gray habits reading something on a door. The sign said it was a museum, it cost only 4 euros, and I had about enough time to see what the Italians called a "convent" but I'd have called a monastery before it closed.
The first room was a little disappointing—I probably should have had greater appreciation for the paintings, but I'm not that much into religious art to begin with, and the lack of realism (flat faces, Baby Jesus looking like a miniature 4-year-old) didn't appeal to me at all. I was sort of wondering if I'd blown my 4 euros.
The walk along the side of the garden area was much more interesting; generally, it was lined with tributes to monks who had passed that way in the 13- and 1400s. I cut across the chapel-like room that houses the gift shop and found myself in a hallway crammed full of architectural embellishments from the outside of another building; it turns out that building had begun to crumble some years ago, and the museum had "adopted" as much as it could for caretaking. The building I was in was built in about the 1300s; those parts I was seeing were older still.
Upstairs a long room held displays of music prayer books from at least that long ago. Some of the music books were as tall as my arm is long, and the artwork to "illuminate" the pages was amazingly detailed. A couple of volumes looked like well-worn Bibles (except that the pages had been inked by hand), and I enjoyed imagining the monk (monks?) who must have pored over it every day.
One end of the long room was over the garden area, and it was filled with the monk's cells. I'd always thought of the cells as little more than closets with room only for the monks to pray and sleep, but these were the size of small bedrooms, all with windows, and some sort of "split" into two areas; in one case, the second area was up a small flight of stairs. I don't know whether the artwork in them was original or not (hard to imagine that it could be), but the paintings were bright and clean and cheery—a pretty far cry from my childhood images of monks in their small, dark, loney cells.
From there, I headed up the street to the next spot on my map to find a building marked MDCI on the portico; I'm pretty sure that's not its address. Before I reached it, I saw a couple of young men in Italian military gear standing in the open door to a Military Geogragy display; turns out they were drumming up recruits for the mapmakers.
On the far side of the plaza, I discovered the Museum of Natural History, so I ducked in to take a look. The museum is under construction for a planned redesign in October or so, but once I wound my way into the "old" parts, it, too, was amazing. Much of it, of course, was artifacts from Italy; I found myself sort of racing through the ancient Egyptian displays because, fascinating as mummies and the lore around them is, I was there to see Italy. Seeing relics of the country while I was in the country was pretty cool.
The next "hot spot" on the map appeared to be just a couple of long blocks farther, but when I got to the right intersection, it didn't seem to be there at all. I strolled through the park across the street (one of a very few places here where I've actually seen plants), then started down the block in search of the "missing" church. When I got there, I had to do a double-take: the phrase I had been unable to figure out on the map has to have meant "Hebrew"; the building was a synagogue.
The synagogue had a museum (again, for a 4-euro price), but as appealing as the description was, I was getting ready to head back home. I used my trusty map to navigate to a corner that should turn me in the right direction, picked one of the five streets that intersected there, and was relieved to find a likely-looking street name a few yards down the way.
I had walked a long way out from my hotel on the way out, and I walked a pretty long way back before I began to feel certain I was headed the right way, but I had noticed on the way out that even after I had left the last museum, I could still see the Duomo. On the way back, somehow the configuration of streets gave me another glimpse of it, and I knew I was on my way back home.
Since I was getting thirsty again, I stopped into a market that really did look and feel like and old-fashioned American grocery store in hopes for another coke for less than a euro. They didn't have any diet drinks cold, so I bought—and loved—a nice cool liter of milk.
I managed to lose my sense of where the Duomo was after a while, but the trusty map said I was moving the right way, and I plowed on. I was down to my last mission: I needed a watch. The one I've been wearing for a couple of years has been losing time here and there, and lately it's just plain stopped running with uncomfortable frequency, so I wanted a new one to wear home. I think I spent 20 bucks on the last one, and I've probably worn it for 4 or 5 years. You can pick up a cheap watch nearly anywhere in America; not so Florence.
I had been to or by a bunch of the street vendors over the last several days, but I couldn't really remember seeing any watches. I found a Swatch store near the Duomo, but at those prices, it wasn't going to help me. I headed back toward the market area where I bought souvenirs yesterday, but nothing seemed to pop up there. I found a small jewelry shop where I found a ring I like on sale, and the store manager and her friend knew of a shop if I would "turn left, then turn left again, and then it's right up there on your right." Which it was, but it's watches either cost as much as Swatch or looked really, really awful. I saw a Timex sign in a shop across the street, but they didn't even have the ugly cheap watches. It was back to street vendors.
I noticed after a block or two that the vendors I was seeing all seemed to have shops behind them, and on one corner was a little watch shop. I wasn't crazy about the price I had to pay, but the watch is decent, it's a Casio, and was generally in my price range. I could go home at last.
I'd definitely gotten myself out of sight of the Duomo, but I figured out from my map which way I'd have to go to get back, and soon I started recognizing landmarks along my way.
Now if I can figure out how to pack everything for tomorrow morning in storage while I'm at the conference, I think this is all going to come out okay!
I had stayed up too late last night playing on the computer (I haven't caught up with my reading in days!) and reading a book, so I allowed myself to sleep in a bit this morning. That didn't last very long, though, so I was up and out in plenty of time to grab breakfast before I left the building.
I had been fretting for some time about my early-morning flight out of Rome, and I somewhat frantically emailed a friend whose family is from Italy for advice. I got her answer this morning (she's traveling, too), but I sort of just scanned it before I set out to arrange my train travel for tomorrow night back to Rome. As it turns out, she advised me to do as I had suggested to her: take a train to Rome's city center, find a hotel nearby, and then take either a train or a taxi to the airport.
Since I didn't read the message too carefully, I had arranged train travel all the way to the airport, so I went online for rooms nearby. I found one about 3 miles away for a decent price, and I feel certain I can get to the airport from there in the wee hours of the morning. I won't promise that I'll sleep well, but at least I'll have a bed.
I pulled most of my clothes out of the closet and started trying to juggle getting the original junk I brought along with a collection of souvenirs and a new backpack into the suitcase I brought and potentially only one carry-on piece. My bigger concern is that the trains all have two steps up from the platform that I have to maneuver four times with the weight of the suitcase(s); these are the times I wish I had an extra pair of arms.
But this didn't seem to "count" as playing hooky, so I locked up my room and headed downstairs to see which direction the hotel manager thought I should go to start. She had a flyer for a place that advertised Leonardo da Vinci's machines, with a small additional charge for lunch, and it was right on the way to the "academy" where the statue of David stands. I was on my way!
I made it to the da Vinci museum and was pleased to find that about half the machines were interactive; it was fun to play with them and see how they really worked. Students at a local art school had built models from his sketches of human anatomy, and television monitors provided commentary and history.
When I had seen all I thought I wanted to see, I went to the desk to collect my lunch, but my ticket had fallen out of my hands. I asked if I could possibly get lunch without the ticket, but the manager just sort of growled, "Find the ticket." I cruised back through all the smallish rooms to check for a single slip of paper, but to no avail.
The difference between the cost of admission and the cost of admission plus lunch was only one euro, so I asked whether I could just pay an extra euro and get the meal. "Find the ticket."
A young man was mopping the floor near her desk, so I asked him if he'd seen my ticket. He shook his head slowly, then started to dig through bits of paper in a small plastic bag. I hated seeing him do that, so I pitched in, and in a couple of minutes, we had it. "This way," the manager said, as she led me into a small room with a few tables and some assorted books. "What do you want to drink?" she asked. Iced tea was an option; she pretty obviously didn't quite get the "iced" part. "The pizza today is ham," she said. "Do you want it?" I sort of thought that might have been a good question to ask before she took my extra euro and certainly before she sent me dumpster diving for my ticket, but I haven't had much ham here, so it was fine.
I stopped by a "supermarket" (where I bought a diet coke but mostly learned that euros really do go all the way to 1-cent pieces; I don't know what they call them) and found the "academy" easily enough, but the line stretched out the door, down the block, around the corner, and just kept going. I saw a young woman sort of monitoring the line and asked her how long the wait was; she assured me it was about 2 hours from where I was, and it wouldn't let up all day: the exhibit is closed on Monday, and on Tuesdays it's nearly impossible to get in. I was really disappointed because I understand the work is beautiful, but I didn't really feel like spending two of my precious hours in Florence standing in a line.
I grabbed a map I'd picked up somewhere of "stuff to see" and saw that the next stop was only a couple of blocks farther away, so I set off for the "piazza." The church on one side (they almost all seem to have a church on one side) had a carving that looked like somebody was up to mischief, and I saw a couple of nuns dressed in gray habits reading something on a door. The sign said it was a museum, it cost only 4 euros, and I had about enough time to see what the Italians called a "convent" but I'd have called a monastery before it closed.
The first room was a little disappointing—I probably should have had greater appreciation for the paintings, but I'm not that much into religious art to begin with, and the lack of realism (flat faces, Baby Jesus looking like a miniature 4-year-old) didn't appeal to me at all. I was sort of wondering if I'd blown my 4 euros.
The walk along the side of the garden area was much more interesting; generally, it was lined with tributes to monks who had passed that way in the 13- and 1400s. I cut across the chapel-like room that houses the gift shop and found myself in a hallway crammed full of architectural embellishments from the outside of another building; it turns out that building had begun to crumble some years ago, and the museum had "adopted" as much as it could for caretaking. The building I was in was built in about the 1300s; those parts I was seeing were older still.
Upstairs a long room held displays of music prayer books from at least that long ago. Some of the music books were as tall as my arm is long, and the artwork to "illuminate" the pages was amazingly detailed. A couple of volumes looked like well-worn Bibles (except that the pages had been inked by hand), and I enjoyed imagining the monk (monks?) who must have pored over it every day.
One end of the long room was over the garden area, and it was filled with the monk's cells. I'd always thought of the cells as little more than closets with room only for the monks to pray and sleep, but these were the size of small bedrooms, all with windows, and some sort of "split" into two areas; in one case, the second area was up a small flight of stairs. I don't know whether the artwork in them was original or not (hard to imagine that it could be), but the paintings were bright and clean and cheery—a pretty far cry from my childhood images of monks in their small, dark, loney cells.
From there, I headed up the street to the next spot on my map to find a building marked MDCI on the portico; I'm pretty sure that's not its address. Before I reached it, I saw a couple of young men in Italian military gear standing in the open door to a Military Geogragy display; turns out they were drumming up recruits for the mapmakers.
On the far side of the plaza, I discovered the Museum of Natural History, so I ducked in to take a look. The museum is under construction for a planned redesign in October or so, but once I wound my way into the "old" parts, it, too, was amazing. Much of it, of course, was artifacts from Italy; I found myself sort of racing through the ancient Egyptian displays because, fascinating as mummies and the lore around them is, I was there to see Italy. Seeing relics of the country while I was in the country was pretty cool.
The next "hot spot" on the map appeared to be just a couple of long blocks farther, but when I got to the right intersection, it didn't seem to be there at all. I strolled through the park across the street (one of a very few places here where I've actually seen plants), then started down the block in search of the "missing" church. When I got there, I had to do a double-take: the phrase I had been unable to figure out on the map has to have meant "Hebrew"; the building was a synagogue.
The synagogue had a museum (again, for a 4-euro price), but as appealing as the description was, I was getting ready to head back home. I used my trusty map to navigate to a corner that should turn me in the right direction, picked one of the five streets that intersected there, and was relieved to find a likely-looking street name a few yards down the way.
I had walked a long way out from my hotel on the way out, and I walked a pretty long way back before I began to feel certain I was headed the right way, but I had noticed on the way out that even after I had left the last museum, I could still see the Duomo. On the way back, somehow the configuration of streets gave me another glimpse of it, and I knew I was on my way back home.
Since I was getting thirsty again, I stopped into a market that really did look and feel like and old-fashioned American grocery store in hopes for another coke for less than a euro. They didn't have any diet drinks cold, so I bought—and loved—a nice cool liter of milk.
I managed to lose my sense of where the Duomo was after a while, but the trusty map said I was moving the right way, and I plowed on. I was down to my last mission: I needed a watch. The one I've been wearing for a couple of years has been losing time here and there, and lately it's just plain stopped running with uncomfortable frequency, so I wanted a new one to wear home. I think I spent 20 bucks on the last one, and I've probably worn it for 4 or 5 years. You can pick up a cheap watch nearly anywhere in America; not so Florence.
I had been to or by a bunch of the street vendors over the last several days, but I couldn't really remember seeing any watches. I found a Swatch store near the Duomo, but at those prices, it wasn't going to help me. I headed back toward the market area where I bought souvenirs yesterday, but nothing seemed to pop up there. I found a small jewelry shop where I found a ring I like on sale, and the store manager and her friend knew of a shop if I would "turn left, then turn left again, and then it's right up there on your right." Which it was, but it's watches either cost as much as Swatch or looked really, really awful. I saw a Timex sign in a shop across the street, but they didn't even have the ugly cheap watches. It was back to street vendors.
I noticed after a block or two that the vendors I was seeing all seemed to have shops behind them, and on one corner was a little watch shop. I wasn't crazy about the price I had to pay, but the watch is decent, it's a Casio, and was generally in my price range. I could go home at last.
I'd definitely gotten myself out of sight of the Duomo, but I figured out from my map which way I'd have to go to get back, and soon I started recognizing landmarks along my way.
Now if I can figure out how to pack everything for tomorrow morning in storage while I'm at the conference, I think this is all going to come out okay!
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Who moved my cheese?
When Darling Daughter got to go to New York when she was 16, I insisted on spending a weekend with her (sleeping on her floor for lack of other space) just so I could say I'd been there. I know a trip to New York is supposed to include the theaters and the shopping and the museums; I was fascinated enough with just seeing how old it is. DD had planned our weekend beautifully: we did the subways, we looked across the harbor toward the Statue of Liberty and then made our way to the Empire State Building to see her from there. We walked through Central Park and Times Square and rode the escalators to the top of Macy's—because DD had discovered that the higher you go, the older and creakier they are, and she and I are both fascinated by escalators. We did New York on maybe $5 a day and loved it.
But New York doesn't know old; Florence knows old. I purposely booked a room off the list of fine places, and got one on sale cheap as a part of my continuing campaign not to spend because "luxury" is important; I've just reached a point where I want to be happy with "enough." Besides, I had no idea what the "luxury" hotels were like (except expensive), and I wanted to get on a level with the people of Florence. I'm glad I did; the young woman who is managing the hotel (with an option to buy it) is a delight, and she has been adorable about taking care of me.
On my first frustrating day here, she pointed out a couple of places to eat that were probably already closed by the time I had checked into my room, so I scouted around the block and found a little sandwich shop where I got a slice of pizza, a glass of wine, and a meringue cookie. (I had eaten a salad in Rome before leaving the airport; it wasn't great, but it satisfied my need for protein and vegetables, and the menu at the restaurant I found seemed to be limited to pizza and sandwiches; the pizza seemed the less damaging to my blood sugar.) After I ate, I hauled my butt back to the hotel, up the six flights of stairs to my room (Charlotte tells me the building may be too old to install an elevator), and dumped myself into bed.
I had a meeting the next afternoon, but I followed Charlotte's directions to a shop where I bought a converter for my laptop, then used her map to turn myself seven ways from Sunday in search of the little lunch spot she'd told me about. After two days here, I'm pretty sure M.C. Escher drew all the maps, because I'm pretty sure the streets don't fit together the way the maps suggest that they do, and I'm not sure some of what they do is even possible. I don't think I've been able to "around the block" yet and come out anywhere close to where I thought I started, and I know that if I come out of one street and turn around to go back down it, I wonder if I'm playing "lady or the tiger," since I'm not sure how to get back to where I came from.
I did manage to get from the electronics shop to the restaurant, where I was seated with a man from Florence who happily downed several plates of food, and a couple from Ohio who ate a couple of dishes and grinned when they got the check: the same meal that had cost them 60 euros at another shop the day before cost about 11 at Mario's. Something about Mario's made it seem perfectly natural to sit and strike up a conversation with strangers—no doubt a part of its charm. And I got from Mario's back to the drag where my hotel is, so I got easily to the convention center for the afternoon meeting.
After the meeting, I came back to the hotel to drop some things then ventured out, map in hand to find Charlotte's recommended pizza place for an early dinner before I came back to the room to work. I wound my way past the impressive cathedral they call the "Duomo" (no doubt because of the huge domes on each end of it) and down a series of narrow, cobbled streets toward the restaurant. At one point, the map showed the road widening a bit, so I turned just ahead of the wide space onto what appeared to be a narrow back alley and came up in a block or two to the restaurant. The door bore a sign that said something about 1630, so I assumed the place opened at 4:30, which was just a few minutes later. I picked a direction, held my breath, and took off in search of a Coke.
I found one a couple of blocks away, back at the wide spot in the road. I paid for my drink, looked around to get my bearings in case I needed to go there again, and turned back to the restaurant. This time the manager was there, but he told me the restaurant wouldn't open until 7. Would I like a reservation? Well, since I really wasn't too sure how far I was from my hotel but I was pretty sure I didn't want to walk there and back again, I said sure and promised to be back.
The wide spot in the road was filled with street vendors, so I stopped to look at a couple of items that interested me: some scarves I thought DD might like, some wallets and a small leather purse I thought Number One Son and I might like, beads and t-shirts and all sorts of souvenirs. One of the vendors was really animated and a great deal of fun, but I wound up buying only a snowglobe with the Duomo inside.
Back at the restaurant, I discovered that the main diner was open at 7, but the pizza place Charlotte recommended wouldn't open until 7:30. The manager let me sit until time for the pizza shop to open, then ushered me in. The pizza I got was okay; I did enjoy watching the chef stuff wood into his stove, and I was amazed at how quickly the pizzas cooked. But while the crust was quite delightful, the pizza itself seemed rather bland by comparison to the "garbage can" pizzas back home—especially while Soldier Son had been working as a delivery guy and bringing home pizzas topped with whatever happened to be left over in his store.
After I ate, I pulled out my map, oriented myself the best I could in the dark, and headed off down what seemed to be the logical street—just as a rainstorm hit. I ducked from overhang to overhang until I found a fairly dry place along a long, blank wall, where I hugged the wall to wait out most of the storm. As it began to let up, I found myself back at the wide spot in the road, so I turned more or less back toward the direction I thought was "home." I soon realized that I was at the opposite end of the Duomo from my hotel, so I stayed put and hugged the far side of the cathedral, still dodging occasional raindrops, until I came to a warm-looking shop with one of about a jillion displays of "gelato" inside. I'd been on my feet for most of the last 4 hours, so I treated myself to a lemon sherbet cone. It was to die for.
From the Duomo I knew my way home, and the trip back was easy enough that I think I may brave it again, this time to try the main restaurant.
Today was filled with meetings from noon until after 5, so I spent the morning on the jobs I should have done last night, visited some of the street vendors near my hotel, and took off for my meetings. By the time I made it back from the convention center in "5 o'clock traffic" (the pedestrians were thick as thieves, even though this is Sunday), I was ready to venture out in search of nonpizza supper. Charlotte was disappointed that I hadn't much liked her favorite pizza place, but she tenuously handed me a card for a little restaurant nearby that someone had said was good.
I struck off bravely again, following my poor, slightly soggy map the best I could, and fascinated by streets that seemed narrower and more twisty than even the ones I had trekked yesterday. I wound my way to the right place fairly directly, again to discover that dinner time was not until 7—by now only a half-hour or so away. I promised to be back "if I don't get lost" and took off with my trusty map again.
This time I headed up the street to the Sta. Maria Novella church, which almost backs up to my hotel, cut across the side closest to the restaurant, and took the first left turn. By that time, of course, I was already lost but just didn't know it; I have no idea whether I actually turned down a street (it sort of looked like one, so I'm thinking it was), much less what street it might have been. Some of the larger streets have signs that often start with pointers to points of interest (but not, as far as I can tell, to tourists) and sometimes the street name below that. Some of the smaller streets have cornerstones of sorts mounted 30 or 40 feet up on a wall that tell the street name at that point; they have a way of changing names randomly in the middle of a block without warning, the best I can tell. Even smaller streets and streets that deadend into other streets don't necessarily appear to have any signage at all, so the names on the map appear to be sort of wishful thinking.
My plan had been to take a left, walk two blocks, take a right, and see the "Borgo Ognissanti" in about the middle of the block. I saw something with a name sort of like that across what looked like a parking lot (but may have been a "plaza"), but I didn't recognize a church like the one drawn on my map. That's not to say it wasn't there; I didn't hike across the plaza and look back in the right direction. Instead, I just had a sinking feeling that I didn't have a clue where I was.
Using my Texas logic, I figured that an about-face should put me on a parallel to the street where I had more or less started, and another left would take me back to the Novella, which was just steps away from the restaurant. I struck off almost as bravely as stupidly toward whatever direction that was.
The next "intersection" was a wide spot in the road that appeared to hook up to a bridge over the local river (which turns out to be the Arno. Go figure). What appeared to be a major thoroughfare (wide enough for maybe two lanes but running maybe four) ran alongside the river; when I turned to look back at where I'd come, I could see the ends of four different streets and the name of a plaza, which I'm pretty sure is the wide spot in the road.
Since I couldn't find any street names, I struck off down one to see where it would go. I had no idea where it would take me, except since the river seemed to be behind me, it pretty much had to be headed toward Sta. Maria Novella. A few yards from the river, I spotted a friend from work and his wife, who invited me to join them for dinner, but I felt as if I should at least try to find the right neighborhood. I couldn't possibly be very far away; I just wasn't at all sure which way.
A few feet farther I found a little "kink" of a street that connected the street I was on to a sort of parallel one that had a name I could find on my map, which led me more or less to believe that I was on the right street. But if the chevron shape of the cross street was right on the map, I was going the wrong way. I felt as if somebody must have blindfolded me and turned me around: I have to have reached that crossroad by walking away from the river, but the angle of the cross street made it appear as if I were walking toward it. By this time, I was pretty sure this maze had cheese in it somewhere, but I was not at all sure where.
A few minutes later, I heard American voices (well, one accent was laced with Canadian, but I found out that he's a transplant), and they were delighted to point me in the right direction. I trusted their judgment, trudged on a few more yards, and found myself at the intersection with the street I was hunting. I could see the Novella from there, so I turned right and walked the few yards to the restaurant.
This time, the meal was well worth it: perfectly grilled steak, sliced thin and topped with spinach. I think it was supposed to have mushrooms, but I wasn't sure what the waiter was describing, so I rejected them. I ordered broccoli because I didn't think to order the cheese and tomato dish they often serve here, but that would have been even better.
Better yet, as I left the manager pointed me back to the Novella, where I circled one side of the plaza and made two turns to get myself home.
But New York doesn't know old; Florence knows old. I purposely booked a room off the list of fine places, and got one on sale cheap as a part of my continuing campaign not to spend because "luxury" is important; I've just reached a point where I want to be happy with "enough." Besides, I had no idea what the "luxury" hotels were like (except expensive), and I wanted to get on a level with the people of Florence. I'm glad I did; the young woman who is managing the hotel (with an option to buy it) is a delight, and she has been adorable about taking care of me.
On my first frustrating day here, she pointed out a couple of places to eat that were probably already closed by the time I had checked into my room, so I scouted around the block and found a little sandwich shop where I got a slice of pizza, a glass of wine, and a meringue cookie. (I had eaten a salad in Rome before leaving the airport; it wasn't great, but it satisfied my need for protein and vegetables, and the menu at the restaurant I found seemed to be limited to pizza and sandwiches; the pizza seemed the less damaging to my blood sugar.) After I ate, I hauled my butt back to the hotel, up the six flights of stairs to my room (Charlotte tells me the building may be too old to install an elevator), and dumped myself into bed.
I had a meeting the next afternoon, but I followed Charlotte's directions to a shop where I bought a converter for my laptop, then used her map to turn myself seven ways from Sunday in search of the little lunch spot she'd told me about. After two days here, I'm pretty sure M.C. Escher drew all the maps, because I'm pretty sure the streets don't fit together the way the maps suggest that they do, and I'm not sure some of what they do is even possible. I don't think I've been able to "around the block" yet and come out anywhere close to where I thought I started, and I know that if I come out of one street and turn around to go back down it, I wonder if I'm playing "lady or the tiger," since I'm not sure how to get back to where I came from.
I did manage to get from the electronics shop to the restaurant, where I was seated with a man from Florence who happily downed several plates of food, and a couple from Ohio who ate a couple of dishes and grinned when they got the check: the same meal that had cost them 60 euros at another shop the day before cost about 11 at Mario's. Something about Mario's made it seem perfectly natural to sit and strike up a conversation with strangers—no doubt a part of its charm. And I got from Mario's back to the drag where my hotel is, so I got easily to the convention center for the afternoon meeting.
After the meeting, I came back to the hotel to drop some things then ventured out, map in hand to find Charlotte's recommended pizza place for an early dinner before I came back to the room to work. I wound my way past the impressive cathedral they call the "Duomo" (no doubt because of the huge domes on each end of it) and down a series of narrow, cobbled streets toward the restaurant. At one point, the map showed the road widening a bit, so I turned just ahead of the wide space onto what appeared to be a narrow back alley and came up in a block or two to the restaurant. The door bore a sign that said something about 1630, so I assumed the place opened at 4:30, which was just a few minutes later. I picked a direction, held my breath, and took off in search of a Coke.
I found one a couple of blocks away, back at the wide spot in the road. I paid for my drink, looked around to get my bearings in case I needed to go there again, and turned back to the restaurant. This time the manager was there, but he told me the restaurant wouldn't open until 7. Would I like a reservation? Well, since I really wasn't too sure how far I was from my hotel but I was pretty sure I didn't want to walk there and back again, I said sure and promised to be back.
The wide spot in the road was filled with street vendors, so I stopped to look at a couple of items that interested me: some scarves I thought DD might like, some wallets and a small leather purse I thought Number One Son and I might like, beads and t-shirts and all sorts of souvenirs. One of the vendors was really animated and a great deal of fun, but I wound up buying only a snowglobe with the Duomo inside.
Back at the restaurant, I discovered that the main diner was open at 7, but the pizza place Charlotte recommended wouldn't open until 7:30. The manager let me sit until time for the pizza shop to open, then ushered me in. The pizza I got was okay; I did enjoy watching the chef stuff wood into his stove, and I was amazed at how quickly the pizzas cooked. But while the crust was quite delightful, the pizza itself seemed rather bland by comparison to the "garbage can" pizzas back home—especially while Soldier Son had been working as a delivery guy and bringing home pizzas topped with whatever happened to be left over in his store.
After I ate, I pulled out my map, oriented myself the best I could in the dark, and headed off down what seemed to be the logical street—just as a rainstorm hit. I ducked from overhang to overhang until I found a fairly dry place along a long, blank wall, where I hugged the wall to wait out most of the storm. As it began to let up, I found myself back at the wide spot in the road, so I turned more or less back toward the direction I thought was "home." I soon realized that I was at the opposite end of the Duomo from my hotel, so I stayed put and hugged the far side of the cathedral, still dodging occasional raindrops, until I came to a warm-looking shop with one of about a jillion displays of "gelato" inside. I'd been on my feet for most of the last 4 hours, so I treated myself to a lemon sherbet cone. It was to die for.
From the Duomo I knew my way home, and the trip back was easy enough that I think I may brave it again, this time to try the main restaurant.
Today was filled with meetings from noon until after 5, so I spent the morning on the jobs I should have done last night, visited some of the street vendors near my hotel, and took off for my meetings. By the time I made it back from the convention center in "5 o'clock traffic" (the pedestrians were thick as thieves, even though this is Sunday), I was ready to venture out in search of nonpizza supper. Charlotte was disappointed that I hadn't much liked her favorite pizza place, but she tenuously handed me a card for a little restaurant nearby that someone had said was good.
I struck off bravely again, following my poor, slightly soggy map the best I could, and fascinated by streets that seemed narrower and more twisty than even the ones I had trekked yesterday. I wound my way to the right place fairly directly, again to discover that dinner time was not until 7—by now only a half-hour or so away. I promised to be back "if I don't get lost" and took off with my trusty map again.
This time I headed up the street to the Sta. Maria Novella church, which almost backs up to my hotel, cut across the side closest to the restaurant, and took the first left turn. By that time, of course, I was already lost but just didn't know it; I have no idea whether I actually turned down a street (it sort of looked like one, so I'm thinking it was), much less what street it might have been. Some of the larger streets have signs that often start with pointers to points of interest (but not, as far as I can tell, to tourists) and sometimes the street name below that. Some of the smaller streets have cornerstones of sorts mounted 30 or 40 feet up on a wall that tell the street name at that point; they have a way of changing names randomly in the middle of a block without warning, the best I can tell. Even smaller streets and streets that deadend into other streets don't necessarily appear to have any signage at all, so the names on the map appear to be sort of wishful thinking.
My plan had been to take a left, walk two blocks, take a right, and see the "Borgo Ognissanti" in about the middle of the block. I saw something with a name sort of like that across what looked like a parking lot (but may have been a "plaza"), but I didn't recognize a church like the one drawn on my map. That's not to say it wasn't there; I didn't hike across the plaza and look back in the right direction. Instead, I just had a sinking feeling that I didn't have a clue where I was.
Using my Texas logic, I figured that an about-face should put me on a parallel to the street where I had more or less started, and another left would take me back to the Novella, which was just steps away from the restaurant. I struck off almost as bravely as stupidly toward whatever direction that was.
The next "intersection" was a wide spot in the road that appeared to hook up to a bridge over the local river (which turns out to be the Arno. Go figure). What appeared to be a major thoroughfare (wide enough for maybe two lanes but running maybe four) ran alongside the river; when I turned to look back at where I'd come, I could see the ends of four different streets and the name of a plaza, which I'm pretty sure is the wide spot in the road.
Since I couldn't find any street names, I struck off down one to see where it would go. I had no idea where it would take me, except since the river seemed to be behind me, it pretty much had to be headed toward Sta. Maria Novella. A few yards from the river, I spotted a friend from work and his wife, who invited me to join them for dinner, but I felt as if I should at least try to find the right neighborhood. I couldn't possibly be very far away; I just wasn't at all sure which way.
A few feet farther I found a little "kink" of a street that connected the street I was on to a sort of parallel one that had a name I could find on my map, which led me more or less to believe that I was on the right street. But if the chevron shape of the cross street was right on the map, I was going the wrong way. I felt as if somebody must have blindfolded me and turned me around: I have to have reached that crossroad by walking away from the river, but the angle of the cross street made it appear as if I were walking toward it. By this time, I was pretty sure this maze had cheese in it somewhere, but I was not at all sure where.
A few minutes later, I heard American voices (well, one accent was laced with Canadian, but I found out that he's a transplant), and they were delighted to point me in the right direction. I trusted their judgment, trudged on a few more yards, and found myself at the intersection with the street I was hunting. I could see the Novella from there, so I turned right and walked the few yards to the restaurant.
This time, the meal was well worth it: perfectly grilled steak, sliced thin and topped with spinach. I think it was supposed to have mushrooms, but I wasn't sure what the waiter was describing, so I rejected them. I ordered broccoli because I didn't think to order the cheese and tomato dish they often serve here, but that would have been even better.
Better yet, as I left the manager pointed me back to the Novella, where I circled one side of the plaza and made two turns to get myself home.
It's Italian!
When I booked a trip to Italy for our professional society's annual meeting this week, I forgot to do things like add a day or so for sightseeing or make sure I could get from my hotel to the airport on a schedule that might also include sleep. Now that I've been here a couple of days, I'm *really* resenting the former, although I've sort of become resigned to the latter.
I left Texas early Thursday morning so I could make Florence by Friday and my committee meeting Saturday. I've make enough flights now not to have my stomach flip-flop on take-off and landing, and most of my flights have been pretty good. My first international flight was on a freezing plane to Holland, where the woman behind me seemed to complain the entire flight because I leaned my seat back (although I carefully made sure it was only slightly tilted in an effort to shut her up; she still called the flight attendant repeatedly and demanded that I be told to stop leaning back so far, and the attendants patiently explained that I was barely away from upright). My next three trips were all "business class" to our campus at Qatar, where I was treated royally except for the time I nearly missed a flight in Paris because I stopped to use the restroom and brush my teeth between planes. (Then we sat on the tarmac for about 45 minutes for reasons I never learned after we boarded.)
This trip was easy from College Station to Houston, where I had a layover of several hours before heading to Newark, NJ. Once there, I was told my gate had changed, and I rushed from the landing gate to the takeoff gate. I did have the presence of mind to ask if I had time for a potty stop, which I was granted, but I boarded pretty long after my row had been called. Just about the time we got the plane filled, the rains came. And came. And came. Since the weather in America moves the same way we were traveling (west to east), we had to wait for the storm to pass over NJ and over the Atlantic far enough for us to gain altitude and fly over it to Rome. Two hours on the tarmac is yet a different experience.
Once we got up. the attendants got about supper for us as quickly as they could. When they got to me, the young man asked, "What do you want?," to which I replied, "What do you have?" He made an exasperated remark about people not listening because of their headsets, and said, "We're out of the chicken, so all we have is meat and pasta. Do you want it or not?" I said, "That's not the same question. If you only have one item, you might ask me whether I want it or not, not 'What do you want.' Yes, if that's all you got, that's what I'll have." He handed me a tray and went on, shaking his head and muttering.
My diet for the day wasn't looking too good. I had started with my usual morning milk, and I had splurged on a cinnamon pretzel when I got to the Houston airport, but I had worked on my computer during that whole layover, and I really hadn't much digested the pretzel when our flight took off. The meal on that flight was a small "burrito" that was mostly a tortilla with a little Spanish rice and maybe some hamburger, and a bag of carrots with a miniature Twix for dessert. Still, the "rodeo mac" and lettuce they called salad wasn't much, and with a pretzel, tortilla, and rice already down for the day, I wasn't at all sure the macaroni was a good idea with my tendency toward hypoglycemia. I ate what I could and settled in for the long flight. The movie was the updated Karate Kid that I had wanted to see anyway, so I was fine for a while.
Shortly after the cabin lights dimmed for the night, my head started to swim and I felt nauseated. I tried just leaning back and closing my eyes, but that didn't help. I tried leaning down and putting my face on my knees, but that didn't do it. I had tucked a little packet of peanut butter into my carry on "liquids" bag, but I was so dry I couldn't choke that down, either. (Peanut butter is usually my first line of defense against problems with my blood sugar, but my symptoms could also have been dehydration because of the little amount of fluids I had gotten on the planes.) I finally gave up and signaled the attendants.
The first one was comforting and assured me she'd be back with the milk I had requested, and a couple of minutes after that, she had a cup of water for me, too. Ten or 15 minutes later I was still pretty woozy, so I called for more milk, which at least seemed to balance me back out enough to calm both my tummy and my dizziness. Aside from the fact that I spent the rest of the flight sort of wadded up on my tray table with my head twisted awkwardly into the aisle, I at least survived the rest of the night without further incident.
I had stuffed a small carry-on with things I didn't want to check, and I had my netbook bag under the seat in front of me, with my liquids (including the peanut butter and the little bit of makeup I wear) in it. I had pulled out my raincoat at some point because the plane was, again, way too cold, and between the frustration of the night before, having to round up the computer, my headset, the raincoat, and the carry-on, I somehow managed to leave the liquids on the plane—so I'm sort of doing Italy naked.
To get from Rome to Florence, I had to take two trains. The trains were comfortable and fast, but hauling a big bag (with a big camera bag in it I wish I hadn't even bought, much less brought with me) and my carry-on up and down the stairs on and off the trains was not in my range of great fun. I can hardly wait to undo that on the way back to Rome.
Since I was completely lost when I arrived, I went out the back door of the Florence train station, drug my bags a half-block or so in the wrong direction from my hotel, then managed to take a couple of other wrong turns before I found the tiny little doorway I've been calling "home" for a couple of days now. At least that's one part of my trip home I can manage: the "front" door to the station is only a couple of blocks away!
I left Texas early Thursday morning so I could make Florence by Friday and my committee meeting Saturday. I've make enough flights now not to have my stomach flip-flop on take-off and landing, and most of my flights have been pretty good. My first international flight was on a freezing plane to Holland, where the woman behind me seemed to complain the entire flight because I leaned my seat back (although I carefully made sure it was only slightly tilted in an effort to shut her up; she still called the flight attendant repeatedly and demanded that I be told to stop leaning back so far, and the attendants patiently explained that I was barely away from upright). My next three trips were all "business class" to our campus at Qatar, where I was treated royally except for the time I nearly missed a flight in Paris because I stopped to use the restroom and brush my teeth between planes. (Then we sat on the tarmac for about 45 minutes for reasons I never learned after we boarded.)
This trip was easy from College Station to Houston, where I had a layover of several hours before heading to Newark, NJ. Once there, I was told my gate had changed, and I rushed from the landing gate to the takeoff gate. I did have the presence of mind to ask if I had time for a potty stop, which I was granted, but I boarded pretty long after my row had been called. Just about the time we got the plane filled, the rains came. And came. And came. Since the weather in America moves the same way we were traveling (west to east), we had to wait for the storm to pass over NJ and over the Atlantic far enough for us to gain altitude and fly over it to Rome. Two hours on the tarmac is yet a different experience.
Once we got up. the attendants got about supper for us as quickly as they could. When they got to me, the young man asked, "What do you want?," to which I replied, "What do you have?" He made an exasperated remark about people not listening because of their headsets, and said, "We're out of the chicken, so all we have is meat and pasta. Do you want it or not?" I said, "That's not the same question. If you only have one item, you might ask me whether I want it or not, not 'What do you want.' Yes, if that's all you got, that's what I'll have." He handed me a tray and went on, shaking his head and muttering.
My diet for the day wasn't looking too good. I had started with my usual morning milk, and I had splurged on a cinnamon pretzel when I got to the Houston airport, but I had worked on my computer during that whole layover, and I really hadn't much digested the pretzel when our flight took off. The meal on that flight was a small "burrito" that was mostly a tortilla with a little Spanish rice and maybe some hamburger, and a bag of carrots with a miniature Twix for dessert. Still, the "rodeo mac" and lettuce they called salad wasn't much, and with a pretzel, tortilla, and rice already down for the day, I wasn't at all sure the macaroni was a good idea with my tendency toward hypoglycemia. I ate what I could and settled in for the long flight. The movie was the updated Karate Kid that I had wanted to see anyway, so I was fine for a while.
Shortly after the cabin lights dimmed for the night, my head started to swim and I felt nauseated. I tried just leaning back and closing my eyes, but that didn't help. I tried leaning down and putting my face on my knees, but that didn't do it. I had tucked a little packet of peanut butter into my carry on "liquids" bag, but I was so dry I couldn't choke that down, either. (Peanut butter is usually my first line of defense against problems with my blood sugar, but my symptoms could also have been dehydration because of the little amount of fluids I had gotten on the planes.) I finally gave up and signaled the attendants.
The first one was comforting and assured me she'd be back with the milk I had requested, and a couple of minutes after that, she had a cup of water for me, too. Ten or 15 minutes later I was still pretty woozy, so I called for more milk, which at least seemed to balance me back out enough to calm both my tummy and my dizziness. Aside from the fact that I spent the rest of the flight sort of wadded up on my tray table with my head twisted awkwardly into the aisle, I at least survived the rest of the night without further incident.
I had stuffed a small carry-on with things I didn't want to check, and I had my netbook bag under the seat in front of me, with my liquids (including the peanut butter and the little bit of makeup I wear) in it. I had pulled out my raincoat at some point because the plane was, again, way too cold, and between the frustration of the night before, having to round up the computer, my headset, the raincoat, and the carry-on, I somehow managed to leave the liquids on the plane—so I'm sort of doing Italy naked.
To get from Rome to Florence, I had to take two trains. The trains were comfortable and fast, but hauling a big bag (with a big camera bag in it I wish I hadn't even bought, much less brought with me) and my carry-on up and down the stairs on and off the trains was not in my range of great fun. I can hardly wait to undo that on the way back to Rome.
Since I was completely lost when I arrived, I went out the back door of the Florence train station, drug my bags a half-block or so in the wrong direction from my hotel, then managed to take a couple of other wrong turns before I found the tiny little doorway I've been calling "home" for a couple of days now. At least that's one part of my trip home I can manage: the "front" door to the station is only a couple of blocks away!
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Alpha Bitch shows her stuff
I'm not always sure I love my little Alpha Bitch. When I adopted her from the shelter, she was mostly a little bear-like furball, and since I've always had a fondness for bear-like furballs, I wound up bringing her home.
At the time, I thought I wanted a dog about the size she's turned out to be, although since then, I've wished she were only about half as large. I've never been too fond of sweeping up dog hair, either, but that barely crossed my mind when I adopted a pound puppy that looked like a bear. So sometimes I don't like that too much.
She has a really strong protective sense so that she won't even let my sweet Miss Kitty up on the bed with me, and she's got a strong waking reflex so that if anything touches her when she's asleep, her autoresponse is to snap back. So far she hasn't hurt anybody, but it's pretty annoying if I move in my sleep and get snapped at.
But she's good at winning friends when I tell her to "stick ’em up" and she pops her front paws into the air until I tell her "Bang!" so she can roll over and play dead. She does some other tricks, too, which are pretty good for entertainment.
I'd never been much of a ball-player before I got her, and I didn't make a point of playing fetch with her when she moved in, either—but that all changed when her "cousin" Bubba (my Soldier Son's dog) moved in. I've written here before about how Bubba got started with fetch (although Number One Son correctly advises me that the way he plays, it's mostly "catch").
Shortly after NOS moved in, SS went out in the yard to practice swinging a golf club he had just acquired. He made a fine game of chipping the dog ball for the dogs to fetch, which worked fine until he chipped one over the fence into the neighbor's yard. We took turns going next door (the house was vacant then) to see if we could find it, but none of us had any luck with that. A day or two later, Bubba managed to slip out the front door into the yard and down the street with a ball just like it, but when we got Bubba back, we didn't get the ball. I was cranky that day, and I was ticked off that the two boys had managed to lose two relatively new, really nice balls just days after I had bought them.
NOS hopped in his car and took off to buy more balls to shut me up. (No, I wouldn't have been much surprised if he had brought them home and shoved them in my pie hole. Fortunately, by the time he got home, we had both cooled down a lot.) I grabbed a leash, took Bubba next door, and told him to find the ball.
At first, Bubba had a grand time sniffing around the neighbor's yard, and nothing he went near seemed to have anything at all to do with the ball. He finally got tired of exploring, though, dragged me about 40 feet from where the boys had said the ball should be, stuck his nose in the bushes, and pulled it out. The look on his face pretty much said, "That's enough now. Let's play ball!"
We started keeping a leash by the back door so that if the balls tipped out over the fence, we could put Bubba on duty to find them; we've only lost one ball since then, and that may have been because NOS didn't trust Bubba to find it in the dark; by morning, it was gone.
AB never seemed to think it was fair that she was stuck in the fence when Bubba went out to find the balls, so one day NOS let her go out with them—and she found the ball before Bubba did. In fact, even though we hadn't made any real effort to train her to stay close without a leash, we soon discovered that she normally would, so NOS started taking her to find the ball instead of Bubba, saving the effort of getting the leash.
In fact, one day this week, Bubba tipped a ball over the fence, and I just sent AB out to find it on her own. Bubba and I went back to the place where we'd last seen it from the inside, and seconds later, AB had the ball.
This afternoon, Bubba managed to get out the back gate. We don't know why it was open except that several years of sand buildup may have just pushed it too far, but when NOS let the dogs out, Bubba headed straight out the gate and away.
We've discovered that one way to get him back is usually to take a ball onto the driveway and bounce it, calling him to play. Until today, that's worked pretty well.
Today, he came flying down the street, caught the ball, and flew right on past NOS and into the back yard. He emerged a few minutes later from between two houses farther down our street. Without the ball.
NOS caught up with him across the street, where he was heckling the dogs in the neighbor's yard. I asked about the ball, and NOS was sure we'd never see it again.
Alpha Bitch to the rescue. I went to the backdoor, got out the leash, and started out. At first, I just pointed her to the backyard and told her to find the ball. She headed toward the usual places, sniffed under some interesting bushes, and tangled the leash around a dead branch. She worked her way somewhat erratically across one neighbor's yard, up to the front of the next one, and across it to visit with the neighbor who was setting up a lawn sprinkler. No ball.
NOS was back in our front yard, so I quizzed him again about Bubba's adventure. He had started in our back yard, so he could as easily have dropped the ball by the gate, which had long since been closed. AB and I headed there.
That didn't work, so I urged her again to find the ball. This time she followed more of the route NOS had suggested: behind our little barn, through the jungle the neighbor and I consider our back yards, and into the next yard over, this time without working her way to the front. There she stopped to nibble the grass—something she doesn't have a chance to do in her own barren yard. She really, really wanted to eat the little plant she was working on, but I finally dragged her away from the grass, reminding her we needed to find the ball.
This time, she cut across one more yard, working her way to a small, fenced side yard where the neighbors let their pint-sized dogs out to play. She leaned in to sniff at the fence, too curious about the hole under it to look much to her right or left. She might have if I had let her, but I didn't see a need to: she had taken me three houses away and found her ball!
At the time, I thought I wanted a dog about the size she's turned out to be, although since then, I've wished she were only about half as large. I've never been too fond of sweeping up dog hair, either, but that barely crossed my mind when I adopted a pound puppy that looked like a bear. So sometimes I don't like that too much.
She has a really strong protective sense so that she won't even let my sweet Miss Kitty up on the bed with me, and she's got a strong waking reflex so that if anything touches her when she's asleep, her autoresponse is to snap back. So far she hasn't hurt anybody, but it's pretty annoying if I move in my sleep and get snapped at.
But she's good at winning friends when I tell her to "stick ’em up" and she pops her front paws into the air until I tell her "Bang!" so she can roll over and play dead. She does some other tricks, too, which are pretty good for entertainment.
I'd never been much of a ball-player before I got her, and I didn't make a point of playing fetch with her when she moved in, either—but that all changed when her "cousin" Bubba (my Soldier Son's dog) moved in. I've written here before about how Bubba got started with fetch (although Number One Son correctly advises me that the way he plays, it's mostly "catch").
Shortly after NOS moved in, SS went out in the yard to practice swinging a golf club he had just acquired. He made a fine game of chipping the dog ball for the dogs to fetch, which worked fine until he chipped one over the fence into the neighbor's yard. We took turns going next door (the house was vacant then) to see if we could find it, but none of us had any luck with that. A day or two later, Bubba managed to slip out the front door into the yard and down the street with a ball just like it, but when we got Bubba back, we didn't get the ball. I was cranky that day, and I was ticked off that the two boys had managed to lose two relatively new, really nice balls just days after I had bought them.
NOS hopped in his car and took off to buy more balls to shut me up. (No, I wouldn't have been much surprised if he had brought them home and shoved them in my pie hole. Fortunately, by the time he got home, we had both cooled down a lot.) I grabbed a leash, took Bubba next door, and told him to find the ball.
At first, Bubba had a grand time sniffing around the neighbor's yard, and nothing he went near seemed to have anything at all to do with the ball. He finally got tired of exploring, though, dragged me about 40 feet from where the boys had said the ball should be, stuck his nose in the bushes, and pulled it out. The look on his face pretty much said, "That's enough now. Let's play ball!"
We started keeping a leash by the back door so that if the balls tipped out over the fence, we could put Bubba on duty to find them; we've only lost one ball since then, and that may have been because NOS didn't trust Bubba to find it in the dark; by morning, it was gone.
AB never seemed to think it was fair that she was stuck in the fence when Bubba went out to find the balls, so one day NOS let her go out with them—and she found the ball before Bubba did. In fact, even though we hadn't made any real effort to train her to stay close without a leash, we soon discovered that she normally would, so NOS started taking her to find the ball instead of Bubba, saving the effort of getting the leash.
In fact, one day this week, Bubba tipped a ball over the fence, and I just sent AB out to find it on her own. Bubba and I went back to the place where we'd last seen it from the inside, and seconds later, AB had the ball.
This afternoon, Bubba managed to get out the back gate. We don't know why it was open except that several years of sand buildup may have just pushed it too far, but when NOS let the dogs out, Bubba headed straight out the gate and away.
We've discovered that one way to get him back is usually to take a ball onto the driveway and bounce it, calling him to play. Until today, that's worked pretty well.
Today, he came flying down the street, caught the ball, and flew right on past NOS and into the back yard. He emerged a few minutes later from between two houses farther down our street. Without the ball.
NOS caught up with him across the street, where he was heckling the dogs in the neighbor's yard. I asked about the ball, and NOS was sure we'd never see it again.
Alpha Bitch to the rescue. I went to the backdoor, got out the leash, and started out. At first, I just pointed her to the backyard and told her to find the ball. She headed toward the usual places, sniffed under some interesting bushes, and tangled the leash around a dead branch. She worked her way somewhat erratically across one neighbor's yard, up to the front of the next one, and across it to visit with the neighbor who was setting up a lawn sprinkler. No ball.
NOS was back in our front yard, so I quizzed him again about Bubba's adventure. He had started in our back yard, so he could as easily have dropped the ball by the gate, which had long since been closed. AB and I headed there.
That didn't work, so I urged her again to find the ball. This time she followed more of the route NOS had suggested: behind our little barn, through the jungle the neighbor and I consider our back yards, and into the next yard over, this time without working her way to the front. There she stopped to nibble the grass—something she doesn't have a chance to do in her own barren yard. She really, really wanted to eat the little plant she was working on, but I finally dragged her away from the grass, reminding her we needed to find the ball.
This time, she cut across one more yard, working her way to a small, fenced side yard where the neighbors let their pint-sized dogs out to play. She leaned in to sniff at the fence, too curious about the hole under it to look much to her right or left. She might have if I had let her, but I didn't see a need to: she had taken me three houses away and found her ball!
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