I Promise This Is Not a Joke

On the last night before Allison was return, I decided to make an omelette. It was a four-egg omelette. Am I aware of what that does to my cholesterol? Not really. Let's not get into that right now.

Anyway, I cracked the first three eggs into a bowl and, without any manipulation whatsoever by yours truly, here's how they fell:

Yes, that is for real. I had to take a picture. I did, and went and put the camera back away. Then I cracked the fourth egg, again without disturbing the natural results of said cracking, and got this:

Of course, I had to go back and get the camera to take a picture of that too.

And that's how my face looked when I picked up Allison at the airport yesterday.

This Post Has Nothing To Do with Feminine Products

1. Very fancy ancient luxury dinnerware, on display at a museum in Brescia:

2. The house and balcony claimed by tradition to be that of Juliet in fair Verona, where we lay our scene:

Race for the Cure

I signed up for the Race for the Cure 5K in Rome tomorrow, so today I went to the ‘Race Village’ to complete the registration process, and they gave me a ‘Race Bag’. From the contents of this bag, one can tell that this event is directed toward the fairer sex (for obvious reasons). Here is a sampling of what I found, besides the t-shirt, when I dug into the bag:

*Retinol Anti-Cellulite Modelling: Moisturising Slimming Care: “Reduces the ‘orange peel’ appearance and redefines the silhouette’
*Neutrogena Hand Cream (‘Assorbimento Rapido’; ‘Formula Norevegese’, in case you were curious)
*Johnson’s Baby Bedtime Bath (‘Dolci Notti’); so maybe the event is also directed at babies

And–wait for it–a GIANT box of ‘Carefree’ maxi-pads, using the innovative ‘Triplefresh [TM] System’. The box contains ‘40 + 4 gratis’, which seems like a hardy number to me. Then again, I don’t know very much about these things.

The run seems to have a nice route: it starts near the Baths of Caracalla, goes by Circus Maximus, the old Republican temples of the Forum Boarium, past the Theater of Marcellus, through Piazza Venezia, past the various Fora, around the Colosseum, past the Arch of Constantine (my favorite Roman monument), and back to the Baths.

Basilica San Marco, Venice

Those bronze horses you see in the second picture are copies of Roman originals. The originals used to be where the copies are at present, but are now housed in a museum inside the building complex.

Why No Pictures?

I tried to post a couple of pictures the other day. I really did. But the computer wouldn’t let me. This made me angry. But since most anger is useless, I decided to go and have a snack.

This is for the Birds

An old man and Allison feeding pigeons in Piazza San Marco, Venice:

Some Venice for You

The streets really are all made of water! Well, most of them anyway.

Hike Follow-Up

After the hair-raising hike, Allison and I stopped for lunch to relax and debrief. We were tired after all that running-low-to-the-ground business. Allison befriended a dog, which was apparently the mascot of the place. He was lying in the middle of the floor (that's right, dogs in restaurants and cafes here). He just wanted some love.

URGH

Well, I was going to post some more stuff, but blogger won't take any of our pictures right now.

HARUMPH.

Ischia Hike

I think I mentioned before that Allison and I went on a hike in Ischia. It was very...interesting. And also cool.

But not in temperature; shortly after embarking on the walk, after seeing the wedding procession, we started to feel the sun. So I changed into the shorts I had in our bag and ended up looking like a German or something:

Allison also sported primo hiking gear:

After we got into the wilderness part of the hike, the signs marking the trail got very bad. Actually, they were bad before that, but at the top of a long ascent, there were paths diverging in various directions, with none marked as to which was the correct one. So we picked one. We walked for a while. Allison wisely suggested that we turn around and go back, realizing we probably weren't going the right way. She's a little quicker on the uptake with such things than I am.

Anyway, as we were walking back we again passed old abaondoned-looking shacks such as the following:

These shacks, and much of the trail, were littered with shotgun shells. Not two seconds after I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm glad nobody is popping caps right now," especially since I think we must have accidentally wandered onto private property, someone started shooting right on the other side of the hill, or so it sounded to our astounded ears. This dude must have fired a couple of hundred rounds within a span of a few minutes (at least that's what it seemed like in the heat of the moment; if Dan had been there, I suppose he would be able to give a more accurate description due to his experience in guarding the fort), and topped it off with something that sounded like a cannon. We booked it, running low to the ground. It felt like a movie, only substantially more frightening.

Soon after that, though, we found the real trail, to our great relief.

All in all, it was a fun and adrenaline-filled hike.

Running Behind

Wow, I'm really running behind updating this thing! REALLY behind. It's probably due to some extent to having limited access to the information superhighway and also to trying to get some more work done at the moment. And also to the fact that I'm great at making excuses!

In other news, today while I was running in the park, a dog bit me. At least, that's what I think the little mutt was trying to do. But he didn't break skin, so I let him go. I was also rocking out on the headphones at the time, so I couldn't be bothered.

It's hard to motivate oneself to clean up the apartment when the better half's not around. But shhhh...don't tell her.

Just kidding.

Salutations!

Flying Solo

Well, Allison's flight should be landing in Detroit in about 20 minutes, and I be a lonely boy! Some of you blessed readers will be seeing her sooner than I will. I'll try to hold down the fort here in the meantime.

More Ischia

Allison and I departed for a hike from a town whose name I can't remember. Before we left, we saw a traditional-looking pre-wedding procession coming up the street as a father escorted his daughter (I'm assuming to the church):


And a view from the hike:

Ischia Pics

Ischia Porto, where the boat arrived:

Forio, where Truman Capote stayed and wrote an essay about it:

The sunset from Forio:

Inter-run-tion

So Allison and I ran a 10K in Brescia this weekend. It was fun, and I clocked in at just a shade under a decade. Hal Higdon of runnersworld.com was a great coach, but Allison was better, and we were both able to finish. Afterwards, in our hotel room, we posed for this shot. As you can see, we are both wearing medals--they gave these to EVERYONE who crossed the finish line, but you better believe we told ourselves what big winners we were anyway. And I am flexing in this picture--QUIET! I already know you can't tell, but that's what happens when you have no muscle in the region of the bicep. So keep you're jokes to yourself, because I'M NOT LISTENING.

They had a marathon that startted at the same time as the 10K. The elite runners are so fast that we just had time to run our 6.2 miles, walk the 5 minutes or so back to our hotel, take a quick shower, pack, and walk the 5 minutes or so back to see the first finisher from the 26.2 mile race. Here is the winner, who is a Kenyan (as was the second-place finihser; Kenyan also won the Rome Marathon). This, ladies and gentlemen, is a very, very fast man, and he makes 26 miles look effortless. He was like a bounding deer or something.

And here are the top three finishers at the awards ceremony with their trophies.

Ischia

As mentioned previously, Allison and I went to Ischia the weekend before last on a spur-of-the-moment change of plans. I mean, hey--it's mentioned in the Aeneid, so that seems classical, right? Here's a snippet on the island from Wikipedia:

Ischia is a volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples. The roughly trapezoidal island lies 17.5 miles from Naples and measures around 10 km East to West and 7 km North to South with a 34 km coastline and a surface area of 46.3 km2. It is almost entirely mountainous with the highest peak being volcanic Mt. Epomeo at 788 meters: the volcano was active in Classical times [1]. Population: nearly 58.000 people.

Ischia is also the principal city (pop.17,256) of the island, divided into Ischia Ponte and Ischia Porto. Its main industry is tourism, centering on thermal parks that cater mostly to European and Asian tourist clients eager to enjoy the fruits of the island's natural volcanic activity and highly nutritious volcanic soil.

We camped in Ischia Porto. Here is Allison displaying our tickets as we waited to board the boat that was to take us from Molo Beverello (Naples' port) to the island:

After the walk from the port to the campground we ended up at (love my grammar?) (we found out upon arrival that the campground we had planned to use was not open), it was time to set up the sweet tent Aaron got us for the wedding:

Of course, we forgot a hammer to pound in the stakes, so my boot had to suffice. Allison got a nice action shot of the process: