20041130

'i was playing with myself for a while... but i think i cheated'

pre-amsterdam -
post crit [which i will not talk about here because that's boring crap that no one really wants to hear about...], we all go out for drinks at sam's because it's morgan's last night to dj at the bar and i get to say good-bye to everyone from miami and because we're all really in the mood for a drink after a really rough week and such. so, we're at the bar and having a marvelous time and i'm getting only fairly tipsy, as i have to be at the train station in time to catch a 5am train to pisa in order to catch a 10am flight to amsterdam... we have a grand old time at the bar and stay there clear until closing time...

this is when it gets good...

so, we're all standing outside of the bar, as we're on our way to a club called 'anima' because we want to shake our ‘groove thangs’ until the sun comes up and all that jazz... david [who is very very very inebriated by this time] comes up behind me with his back to mine and with out even warning me, he loops his arms through mine and leans forward really quick... because i wasn't expecting 'the turtle,' my weight wasn't distributed properly and instead of me stopping him from pulling me all the way over his back, my feet left the ground. the thing is, david wasn't coordinated enough to stop our forward [well, his forward, my upward/backward] momentum and we fell - he on his face, me on the back of my head on the wonderfully hard roman cobblestone... i whited-out for a good 5 or 6 seconds... when i could see clearly again, i realized that david was laying, belly-down, arms outstretched on the cobblestone with blood gushing out of the bridge of his nose... there's a whole lot of commotion, i end up sprinting from campo dei fiori to our apartment to get david's passport so that the ambulance can whisk him away to the er to get stitches [which he adamantly argued that he didn't need even though he really did] - anyway... it was kind of funny, because cat [the lovely woman who owns sam's] normally calls david 'arkansas,' but she kept calling him 'arizona' instead: 'hang on, arizona. you'll be just fine. you'll be in and out of the emergency room in under an hour.' ‘yes, arizona, you will have a scar. that will leave a scar.’ 'yes, arizona, you'll still be able to go to amsterdam.'

anyway, saved for the initial panic of sending david to the emergency room and me feeling overwhelmingly guilty for having basically caused david to break his nose and end up with 7 stitches [yeah - they gave him 5 on his nose and 2 on his forehead], it was at least an interesting night. we were even early to the train station.

amsterdam -
we were good little architecture students while we were in amsterdam... yes, we were. i promise. zack, peter, allison, david and i did all of the 'architecture walks' in the blistering cold and the butter-thick fog. we perservered...

so, i have a little side note to add here: unlike all of the hostels that i've been to, the hostel 'cosmos' - though really nice and all for a hostel - didn't provide towels... we ended up taking showers and having to dry off with our t-shirts... well, most of us dried off with our t-shirts, zack, however, preferred to dry off with his previous day’s underoos [actually, not his whole body… only his hair] on the first day... needless to say, we ended up buying towels... oh - and yeah, the shower at the hostel was at least 250 degrees... good god! it felt like someone was trying to make soup out of me… you know, in those old ‘merry melodies’ cartoons where some dude on a desert island sticks bugs bunny into a cauldron over a really big fire and tries to make rabbit stew out of him? yeah, that's what i'm talking about... that’s exactly what it felt like

we ate pancakes and watched dutch television [which is entertaining just because the language is just silly - i can't think of any other word to describe how it sounds... well, i actually can, but it's not very 'p.c.'] and went 'coffee-shopping' and got completely 'lost' and went to nemo [it's a science center place with lots of cool gadgets to play with and such] ...

rotterdam -
unlike what everyone told me, we did actually make it to rotterdam... we didn't just veg out in our hostel room and smoke ourselves stupid... aren't you proud? we went to the nai [netherlands architecture institute] and the kunsthal... we saw the un studio 'baby blue monster' erasmus bridge [sigh] and walked around looking at all sorts of cool junk... we also ate at a cool cafe called 'floor' - i had pumpkin soup that rocked my socks off! - and then at a blessed pizza hut... all i have to say is that that was the bestest hawaiian pizza i've ever had... mmm mmm mmm. david and peter had a ridiculously entertaining eating contest - david eating, rather, stuffing the pizza into his mouth with his hands and peter stuffing the pizza into his mouth with a fork... i haven't laughed that hard since i was a little girl... ahhhh. so loverly...

anyway... this has been way too long... i could tell you more, but i won't... i can tell you that i am planning on living in amsterdam as soon as possible for as long as possible... oh yes.

ttfn kiddies...

20041128

gahguh dahdah? soopeh de boor.

this will be short, as - to be perfectly honest - i'd rather be sleeping at the moment... amsterdam and rotterdam are the most lovely cities in the world. i will live in amsterdam one day when i'm filthy rich so i can spend all of my time looking at architectural eye candy and mingling with the most courteous people on the planet. sigh. i will give a full play-by-play on the morrow but sleep must come first, my friends. sleep must come first.

ciao kiddies...

20041122

can't lounge in the boozer all day... i've got man-oo-vores to make

blah blah blah - i've got crits on the morrow... have much to do and yet i will still squeeze as much procrastination out of this evening as i possibly can. why? because i like to...

ciao...

20041120

'well, i'll kick your ass with my brad...'

my suspicions have been confirmed... our class is cursed when it comes to field trips. once again, the weather was shitty yesterday... you know? you'd think that we'd go visit gardens when the weather is warm - at least warm enough to support the growth of flowers and not so cold that it kills them... anyway - it was most wonderful to be able to walk around in gardens yesterday... we could actually hear the wind rustling through the trees - a sound that i know i haven't heard since the night before i left the states almost three full months ago. there was grass and i was quite tempted to through myself down onto it and roll around like a toddler... if there hadn't been a rather intimidating-looking docent with us, i probably would have - it's actually quite refreshing to realize that i still have wonderfully comical childish impulses that i'd actually act on.

i was quite sad when we got home... we were supposed to be back by about four in the afternoon, giving me just enough time to run to my flat, pack an overnight bag and jet to termini train station in time to catch a train with my friend, ottavio, to his hometown to go see his band 'candy and sky'. this did not happen... we got home at about 5:45 and i missed the train. i was most upset... however, upon receiving a text message from ottavio reassuring me that they will be playing in rome in a few weeks, i felt a little better. it might be better that i stayed, because our crits are on tuesday and i have to draw like a madwoman...

last night at dinner with brad and camille. we had the [dis]pleasure of sitting behind an obnoxious table full of americans from dallas - actually, as we found out later, they were all originally from new york but are currently residing in dallas, tx. oh. my. god. they were all drunk off of wine [before they had even ordered their food... sheesh] and speaking so loudly that the whole restaurant could hear them... all they were talking about was the 'dahler' [dollar] and how they 'didn't want bubbles in their water. bubbles are for champagne, not for water' - yes, they actually said this to the wonderfully nice waiter at the restaurant who had just finished explaining to them, quite clearly i might add, that they only kind of water they had was 'frizzante,' or sparkling water. argh. it's unfortunate that all americans abroad are stereotyped into being these kinds of characters. inconsiderate, 'everyone should speak english even in their own country'-thinking, pushy, overly-loud people. it is most thoroughly unfortunate for any considerate american person traveling abroad. actually, it's quite embarrassing. truly embarrassing.

oh - by the way, 'mother f!@#er' has been replaced in parts of the u-of-a-rome-center-study-abroad-group-slang with 'mother farnese,' which can be shortened to 'mar far' ... just thought that you'd like to know...

aaaanyway, i finished an absurdly freakish novel this morning: 'crash' by j.g. ballard. it's one of those novels that one really can't describe or discuss to/with anyone who hasn't read it. it's just that f!@#ed up [for serious lack of a more eloquent phrase]... the weird thing about it was that i honestly couldn't put it down, it's incredibly well-written - i started it yesterday morning and finished it in a total of about 7 hours of reading [224 pages]... it weirded me out so much, i just wanted to find out what was going to happen next. i think that i've been permanently scarred by it... honestly.

random nugget - it takes about 142.18 licks to reach the center of a tootsie pop.
oh yeah!
ciao.

20041118

we should call him 'suck face' instead...

two words: graham coxon. you should click on his name right now and go check out his music [pronounced me-you-sack by most of the italians that i have met... it's so cute.]... it's some good stuff, man. i had the distinct pleasure of being kidnapped last night by my friend, ottavio. he hijacked my evening and took me to the graham coxon concert at a swingin' hot spot called circolo degli artisti and it was wonderful because, not only was it just a really cool, small club for concerts and stuff - complete with its own wall-bar - but it also reminded me of jr's... it was kind of like being at home again, except that i was surrounded by people who couldn't speak english and i had to/got to speak italian to all of ottavio's friends [let me remind you that when i speak italian, i sound like a very very very stupid three-year-old...]. it was a grand evening...

before i was kidnapped and taken to the concert, i had the pleasure of cooking dinner for nine people - me, brad, camille, kristen, alenya, [the next four are from the university of miami] rachel, kara [i found out that it's spelled with a 'k'], sherry and morgan... wow... i made [in order of appearance] a tomato, feta, and field greens salad - complete with my own garlic-vinegar-dressing concoction - followed by garlic-pepper chicken over fettuccini topped with a white-wine-sautéed mushroom cream sauce, fresh green beans and wine [brought to my flat by my lovely guests], and finished off with apple crisp/crumble [whatever you want to call it] and coffee with bailey's. i felt bad because everyone got there before i got finished cooking and i was all hot and disgusting and stuff... oh yeah, and the cream for the cream sauce decided to explode all over my black shirt and the flour from the apple crisp decided that my black over-shirt was a wonderful host... basically, i looked like i had been rolled in all of the ingredients for yesterday's dinner... it was marvelous... anyway, we all ate and the kiddies from miami started teasing one-another about being in 'the clean plate club' and a whole lot of other clubs that i don't have the brain capacity to remember the names of and it was a grand old time... i also got to play everyone some stephen lynch... so funny... so so very funny. i played 'why mommy left us' and everyone was tickled pink and stuff - i like stephen lynch very much... yes, yes, he is most entertaining.

on the morrow, i will be going to villa lante and caprarola and hopefully, i will be headed to ottavio's home town [i honestly can't remember the name of it] along with his entourage to see his band 'candy and sky' perform tomorrow evening... yea!!! it will be a good weekend... come hell or high water, this weekend will rock my socks off... oh yes. oh yes.

ciao.

20041112

yass, yass... that's raht, ah'd like some ass-tay

whassa happenin' hot stuff? ... sorry, i had a little 'sixteen candles' moment, there... today is a be-a-u-tiful day in roma. no more rain [at least for now] and a simpson's sky and all that jazz. i'm designing a museum and a restaurant and a tourist information center and a piazza and an outdoor theater, all right in front of the coliseum [kind of]... i'm starting to get excited about my project... woo!

my mom is in rome and we're having a blast... i took her to the vatican museums with my class yesterday morning... she got to meet emilio - tee hee - and got to walk around non-stop, up and down stairs, ramps and what-have-you from 8 in the morning until 1:30 in the afternoon... when we promptly caught a cab to 'pizza creeps' [aka pizza buona... we've dubbed it pizza creeps because david didn't know what a crepe was and asked what a 'creep' was... long story... think i've told it before... whatever]... mom's a trooper. we also got to go to my favoritest restaurant in rome, right next to the portico d'ottavia: da giggeto... oh man... so good. and the gentleman who was waiting on us totally made my night: i'm collecting corks from wine bottles so that i can make a wall with them [round end out] and it will be all swell and stuff... well, i asked him if i could keep the cork from our bottle of wine, he asked me why, i explained... not only did he give me the cork from my bottle, but from 30 other bottles as well... he also told me that if i call to make the reservations for dinner in advance, he can give me many, many more... they apparently open a lot of wine every day [duh!] and they don't keep the corks... so they're very happy to give them away... yea!!

aaaanyway... only bad news i have from the past two days is that financial aide sucks... i'm getting the runaround [what else is new] and now i get to try to figure out how to fund the rest of my trip... all will be well in the end... i hope... i guess that if it's not one thing, its another - so i get to make the best of what i've got.

i'm off to show my mom the over-whelming-ness of saint peter's basilica... this should be fun... i can't wait to see the look on her face... tee hee...

ciao kiddies!

20041110

hey... man... at least i'm housebroken.

i'm having an interesting aural experience at the moment: i'm sitting at the computer in the rome study center's library typing on the computer, rocking out to 'you don't even know her' by i am the world trade center while the italian class is jammin' out to italian opera at top volume in the classroom [the classroom and library are separated by glass doors...] - needless to say, it is most interesting to hear i am the world trade center's wonderfully electronic beats laced with blaring italian opera... wow. it's pretty strange, yet absurdly entertaining...

yesterday evening, my cohorts and i had a hankerin' [yes, i actually used the word 'hankerin' – hick-ish as it is, it's really a great descriptor for a serious craving... anyway] for some mexican food [tex-mex, to be more accurate]. after 'talking' [i.m.-ing] with chris, we decided to look up the very popular tex-mex establishment 'olephant,' which - according to every single restaurant guide i could find for rome - lies right outside of piazza navona. my cohorts and i trudge through the cold rainy-ness that was rome last night to go to eat some tacos and drink some cold [beers in rome are rarely served cold] american beer. what do we find instead of 'olephant'? some retarded bar called 'café friends' that serves nothing but hors d'oeuvres . blah. i had a shawerma instead, but i am becoming increasingly more desperate for mexican food as the time passes... all i have to say is, 'acambaro, look out!!' the minute i get back to fayetteville, i'm kidnapping chris from whatever he's doing and forcing him to go to eat some greasy, nasty but oh-so-delicious mexican food with me... [chris, i'm giving you ample warning...]

to cap-off the evening, i was privileged to enjoy a viewing of 'the big lebowski'... oh, how i adore that movie... the only downside to the viewing was that we didn't have time to run to the liquor store prior to their absurdly early closing, so white russians [aka 'caucasians'] had to be substituted for coffee with bailey's [which is also an extremely enjoyable beverage...]... so i wasn't quite as 'dudical' as i would have like to be last night... i still had an incredibly lovely and joyous time watching lebowski... twas a marvelous ending to an average day...

this morning was positively spectacular - it was raining and cold and i didn't have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn to go to class. i just felt like staying in bed for a while under my warm warm blanket in my comfortable position, reading 'on the road' and intermittently taking naps... sigh... it's going to be a great day... yes, yes, t'will be a wonderful day!

... on top of all of the pleasantries of this fair afternoon, i get to pick my mother up at the airport at 10:30 tonight... we're going to have a blast... my mom is so much fun... and i get the pleasure of playing 'tour guide'/'fun-stuff-organizer' until she leaves on monday... rock out!!!

ciao kiddies... that's all for now...

20041108

how can it be cold as hell when hell is supposed to be hot?

i love florence... i want to live there. it's so quiet and clean [well... compared to rome, it's clean] and pretty and lively and wonderful... i wish that i'd been able to stay there this semester instead of rome in a way - i know that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and what have you, but i think that it would have been marvelous to study in florence for a whole semester. speaking of studio: why don't we do the whole 'moving studio' thing like most schools do? i mean, why only see/experience one architecturally/historically significant european city in a semester when you could see many architecturally/historically significant european cities in a semester? i think that would be a rockin' semester abroad... granted, i am having a blessedly wonderful time, but i would have liked to be able to see berlin, moscow, prague, leon, bath, edinburgh, dublin, etc. while in europe... not to mention that flying/travelling by train, etc. from rome is absurdly expensive... to go to the netherlands over thanksgiving, it's going to cost each of us [there are 5 of us going] about 300 euros just to travel... that doesn't even count hotels/hostels and all that glorious junk... oh, and just to fly to paris it costs 200 euro [by train, it's about 350]... how crazy is that? blah... i'm rambling... on to more interesting stuff [i think...?]:

so, the duomo in florence has 466 steps... count them: 466. my crazy-ass classmates decided that it would be a marvelous idea for all of us to haul ass all the way up to the top when all of us were stupidly tired and hungry... does that sound like a good idea to you? ...[pause for effect...] ... no? yeah, that's what i thought. not to mention that it was hot... yes, that's right... it was hot in florence in november [now it's cold as hell, but i'll get into that later...]. so after we desperately race up all 466 stairs [me, counting all of the way up because i'm obsessive compulsive like that...], we are sweating and huffing and puffing and relishing the view from the top of florence while trying to catch our breath [you know the position: bent over, hands on your knees... head down... trying to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth - which, i might add, is quite difficult when you have a sinus infection ...]. all of the sudden, david pops up and says, 'i can't breathe... i need a cigarette,' proceeds to light one up, pull in a deep inhalation of sour smoke, hold it for a second and let it go slowly. 'that's much better....' i chuckled hartily and proceeded to take as many pictures as possible. when we came down, my legs were shaking from the climb [so was almost everyone else's]... we proceeded to have the most expensive self-service lunch i've ever had and the food wasn't even good... just average... you know? the whole business of putting food in your mouth and routinely swallowing but not really liking what you're eating? ...

anyway... i have this little theory about our school trips: the university of arkansas school of architecture is cursed! every time we go on a trip, the weather is horrid and everything we try to see is somehow altered... take florence for example: not only does is rain while we're there... oh no... every single building we tried to go see was covered in bloody scaffolding, under construction, or closed to the public for 'works.' arrrrgh. the laurentian library was closed [we were, however, able to see the staircase in the vestibule... sigh]... palazzo medici was covered in scaffolding, palazzo della signoria was covered in scaffolding, santa croce was covered in scaffolding - outside and in, the duomo was covered in scaffolding, and of course, the vassari corridor was partially under restoration, and requires a two-week-in-advance reservation to enter... frustration... frustration... frustration...

anyway... i loved my trip. like i said, florence is beautiful and quiet... i will never take silence for granted after this semester... ever again...

so... it's really bloody cold in rome today... it was 80 on thursday and now it's 45... but it's a really cold 45... i am wearing 2 shirts, my heavy jacket, jeans and such and i'm freezing my friggin' butt off... studio is cold, so i can't really concentrate, my apartment [aka hobbit hole] is also freezing [warmer than studio, though] and i just want to go home and take a nap - which i think i will do right now...

20041104

yesterday, i wept for the world...

the results of the election yesterday hit me much harder than i ever thought they would. i spent most of last night after finding out that kerry conceded feeling like i was going to throw up. i actually felt that 'impending doom' feeling – i’ve never really felt that before. i just can't make myself understand how, after four years of virtual hell on earth, the american people could come out in droves and vote that man back into office. the scariest part of that whole sha-bang to me is that now, there's not even the house or senate to stop shrub. everyone's decided to shift everything right on over to the ridiculous right. ... did people even read the republican platform before they picked up their voting utensil [mouse, pencil, punch-thingy, what have you] and voted for shrub?

please, someone help me understand…

help me understand how a man who has sent thousands of people to fight a senseless war could be voted back into office. please, help me understand how a man who has been proven to be dishonest insofar as 'intelligence' [national, not his own...] could be trusted with that 'intelligence' again? - more importantly, how could a man who has incited so much outright hatred for our nation be trusted to keep us safe? how could a man be such a horrible president and still get the majority of the votes?

is america asleep? is america deaf, dumb and blind? ... i just don't get it and i don't think that i ever will.

what are we supposed to do now? i cannot just sit idly by while shrub incites world war III and a new depression... and yet i feel so utterly helpless – check that - i fell so utterly powerless to change things...

how could we have let this happen again? how, after seeing all that has been allowed to happen for four years, could we just open the door to disaster once more? ...

20041103

god save us all

as a pre-note to the 'to be continued' story from this weekend, i'd like to explain the surreal state all of us in rome are in now that it is d-day for votes... i have never felt so helpless and anticipatory in my life... after having mailed my absentee ballot [yeah... i was turned away from the american embassy twice when i tried to drop off my ballot there... hmmmm], i am wondering how much my voice really counts in this election. i stayed up for a while last night watching the italian news coverage of the american election and gave up after a while of not being able to interpret anything that the commentators were saying about the progress of the tallying. needless to say, i was deeply disheartened by the news that the presidential race is a] way too close for comfort right now, and b] that three states' votes have been delayed due to causes undisclosed on international news at the moment [well, besides ohio - which i knew was going to be a problem]. i actually had nightmares last night that bush had won the election... good god, what will happen to america and the world if he triumphs in this election? god save us all if he does.

anyway... to curb my political rambling, i will continue the 'tale of the wicked weekend' that i began the other day....

saturday - i wake up in the morning [actually, mid afternoon... tee hee] very excited about the fact that i am attending a costume party later on in the evening [at the flat of a newly found friend of mine who works at sloppy sam's - jasmine]. i meander out of my flat and work my way over to the hat store near piazza navona so that i can buy my sweet sweet sweet bowler cap, suspenders and black cane so that i can at least have some of the essentials for dressing up like alex from 'a clockwork-orange. needless to say, in rome, i have no bloody clue where one can purchase fake eyelashes that won't look like trash... so after a conversation with my roommate, brad, i decide to adapt my costume to a pseudo charlie chaplin, pseudo pimpstress costume... all worked out well... that is except the funny looks we got while walking through campo dei fiori on the day before halloween, me in a weird get-up with a cane, a hat and lots of make-up, camille, dressed - very convincingly - as a gypsy [complete with begging cup and all], and bradley - my dear, dear bradley - dressed in a bed sheet [actually, it was supposed to be a toga...].

we met up with some friends from the university of miami - one of whom was dressed marvelously as a nerd [hiked-up pants, suspenders, taped glasses with huge frames and an alfalfa hair-do] - and made our way all the way out to battastini [a suburb of rome about 15 kilometers from the vatican]... we were among the first to arrive. once the rest of the guests filtered into the party, we noticed something very strange: we were the only americans there... not just that, besides jasmine and a very very select few of her friends, no one spoke english at all... my italian was put to the test, and the very nice people at the party excused my lack of eloquence [put plainly, they excused the fact that my italian, saved for my accent, is really quite elementary... if that]. we had lots of fun... danced some salsa rather clumsily [actually - quite terribly, but anyway], ate lots of really yummy yummy hors devours, drank some rather good italian beer, listened to a wonderful assortment of really good music, had wonderful, though limited, conversation... and then one of the romans brought up politics... ugh.

it's hard enough to explain my embarrassment, disappointment and disgust with our current administration in english [oh, wait... that's not true at all...], but trying to do it in italian was nearly impossible. i managed to thoroughly convince my new-found roman friends that not all americans are 'for' the war in iraq, that not all of us are political imbeciles, that not all americans are un-educated hicks [which he seemed to be fully convinced of], and that quite a lot of us had voted for kerry... for all of you who don't know, italians - on a whole, especially younger italians - are staunchly against bush. staunchly. once more: staunchly. yeah, isn't there some sort of rule that in social gatherings, one never speaks about politics or religion? yeah, that's what i thought, too... - all ended up being hunky-dory and everyone decided that talking about other random junk would be much more entertaining than talking about politics... thank you, thank you, thank you...

my friends and i decide to head out, as it's about 4 in the morning [actually, 5, if you don't count the time change] and we have to either get a taxi - we hope that we can get a taxi - or hike back to campo dei fiori [about 1.5 hours... needless to say, as i was wearing heals, that walking was not an option]... finally, after about 5 or 6 cabs had just flown past us, we caught a cab and made it back home safe and sound...

sunday - sunday can be summed up in seven words: the kings of convenience rock the house! for that matter, so does the auditorium parco della musica, by renzo piano... ahhh... great music in a great building... what more could a girl ask for? the kings of convenience have this wonderful simon-and-garfunkel-type harmony that makes you want to close your eyes when you hear them play... sigh. it was positively delightful. not to mention that they are the two most adorable people that i've ever seen... one of them kept sliding off of his stool, as it was too high for him to keep his feet on the ground while playing [though he was probably about 6'-3" or so...]... so cute. ...

my night would have been perfect, had it not been for the bus ride home... we just happened to get stuck next to the most offensively bigoted, valley-girl-speaking, ridiculously mean group of people i have ever had the misfortune to encounter... not only was their conversation inappropriate by all standards of social etticate [no, i wasn't eavesdropping... they were speaking loudly enough for people in milan to hear them...], but their disgustingly anti-semitic commentary made me want to throw up all over them. i was so taken back by the fact that people my age - my age, for christsakes - could be so... so... i haven't the words. i just couldn't believe my ears. nor could i believe the candid way in which they carried out their conversation... like the whole bloody world had reverted back to the ice age or something. -- insert heavy-hearted sigh here -- finally, one of the people in the group happened to look my way in the middle of a sentence [mind you, i am so shocked, so disgusted, at this moment that i was uncontrollably looking at this person like i could kill them with my eyes... i hadn't even the power of mind to say anything, though i really wish that i had...] and caught himself mid-sentence and abruptly changed topics... i simply couldn't believe it... i'm sorry, but it is hard for me to believe that people could be so hateful... i thought it entirely impossible... apparently, i was sorely mistaken.

well, folks, that's the end of my story [though there is much, much more that i could tell... i just thought you would appreciate me not writing you a book here...]. i hope that it was worth reading and such...

ciao... for now.

20041101

tv is a laxative for the brain...

whooptie woo! fun was had by all - well at least i think 'all' had fun... i know i did - in the eternal city this weekend... oh yes... no doubt about it... fun fun fun fun fun. just to let you know... i am going to post this weekend's events in a couple of installments, as i have a feeling that this is going to be too long... so you'll get one today and one tomorrow.. okay? okay...

thursday night [yes, thursday is part of my weekend... ain't it grand?] - i head down to sloppy sam's on campo with some of my friends right after school to go get a post critique drinky-boo [i won't go into the crit... because it would just be depressing...not really, but i don't want to bore anyone with school junk while i can talk about festivities... hmmm (i'm making the 'weighing' hand gesture right now)... school junk... festivities... school... fun stuff??? hmmm... i'm going to say: fun stuff!!] my friends decide to call it an early night, as one of them is catching a 5am train to venice and the other two are just tired, as it's been a fairly rough week for all... add alcohol to already exhausted people and you get people ready ready ready for sleep. ... i receive a phone call from camille and kristen and we decide to meet up at sam's again a little later on because the three of us don't feel tired at all [strange, considering that i had only slept for about 2.5 hours... oh well]. i head back to my apartment to see if the brad-ster is awake yet [he crashed hard directly after crits] and we head back out to meet the girls for a quick night-cap. after the bar [we really weren't there for very long...] we - brad, camille, and i - headed back to my/brad's flat... i stepped outside to make a quick phone call only to come back in to find brad and camille had kind of fallen asleep on one-another's shoulders... so cute.

i kind of fell onto my little mattress on the floor and slept until about 1pm on friday afternoon!!! i love sleeping late [actually, i just love sleeping, but oh well].

friday - so we all kind of lazily crawl out of bed at around 1... get our respective showers - rome leaves a kind of funk on you - we've come to a collective resolution that it's the combination of pollution, all of the people, heat, humidity, etc - so, twice-daily showers have become a habit for me. we head out to trajan's market, as there's a pretty nifty-looking sculpture installation there and we [brad, camille and i] really want to see it. --- this is where things get a little funky ---

there are NO cars on the streets. NONE. i was able to walk out in the middle of corso vittorio emanuelle II in the middle of would-be rush hour traffic without having a single car pass me. WEIRD!! there were also no people out... compared to a normal friday afternoon in rome... no people, just LOADS and LOADS of police. i felt kind of like we were in the twilight zone or something. ... 'there is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. it is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. it is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge. this is the dimension of imagination. it is an area which we call ... THE TWILIGHT ZONE.' [rod serling's (creater of the show) intro to the twilight zone...]

so we head off to trajan's market [only later do we find out that rome hosted the signing of the first european union constitution on friday... thus, all of the police and no cars and such]... only to find out that the market is closed for the day... still somewhat weirded-out, we made our way across the street to the museum at the vittoriano monument to check out the lovely degas exhibit there... i have a great affinity towards degas' paintings [even though he was a misogynist and such], so that made for a lovely start/middle of a fairly weird day.

from there, we went back to our apartment to try to figure something out for dinner... brad and camille head to the store to try to find something that we can make [as we have NO food in our apartment]... the come back with PEANUT BUTTER!!!! and CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE MIX!!! i'm in heaven, to say the least. i had the best damn peanut butter and jelly sandwich that i've ever had in my entire life. i have never, ever craved peanut butter before, that is, until i came here. ... for desert, a lovely serving of chocolate chip cookies with milk!!! we dined like kings/queens. it was amazing!

after that, we met up with everyone from studio [saved for zack, baldwin, austin and david, who were visiting the biennale in venice] at sam's for drinks and conversation. after just a little while, everyone but me decided that they wanted to call it a night... just then, my new friends, cara [i don't honestly know if it's spelled with a 'c' or with a 'k'... sorry], rachel, becky and victoria pop into sam's on their way to a club called 'anima' to go dancing... thank god! i've been waiting to go dancing for ages... so needless to say, i'm excited.

we head out and go dancing - i swear, the people who run that club are daft... there were probably somewhere around 100 people in a space the size of a closet with no bloody air conditioning/ventilation... nothing. i've never been so hot and uncomfortable. we decided to go grab a quick drink to cool off... we decided that it would be best to go somewhere else to go get drinks, as anima serves their rum and cokes for a whopping 9 euro. on our way back to campo, we got followed by group of guys after group of guys... none of whom spoke english... so i had to try my very best to interpret conversations using my three-year-old-like italian skills [rather, lack thereof] to try to explain that all we wanted to do was get a quick, refreshing drink and a slice of pizza. italian men! i swear... after i said 'good-bye' to rachel and cara [as becky and victoria had gone home a little earlier than the pizza run], i started back to my flat... only to be followed all the way home by some creepy guy that we had met earlier that night... perfectly nice, but a little bit creepy... i'm glad that i live with guys, as i told him that if he didn't leave me alone, i'd sick my roommate on him... that and the five-point dead-bolt did the trick...

more to come, kiddies... more to come...