Keeping Busy

First thing I wanted to do in Italy was play with the white carrara marble that is in abundance here. It's very easy to carve and work with, so I started by making the weird shapes above and then decided to carve an ear because listening (to stuff I don't understand) is on my mind a lot right now.
Not sure what, if anything, I'll do with either the ear or the other pieces; I'm still thinking.

I am also sitting in on the book making class and have so far made several pamphlet style books.

It is very fun and something I've always wanted to learn to do, so I'm grateful to have the opportunity.

And, when all other inspiration fails, I make a spoon. So here is my newest little spoon--a good size for espresso here in Italia!


No idle hands for the devil's playground here!

Italy is so Italian.

N and I are having a great time in Italy.

Some parts, Rome especially, have been so exactly as I pictured them that they were almost underwhelming. But there have been many other surprises, including the fact that fewer people speak English here than I expected/hoped.

We really should have worked harder on our Italian lessons...

For more pictures of our time in Rome, click here

The Last 24 Hours

So this is how it went:

N and I arrived at Austin-Bergstrom International airport at 6:30 a.m. for a 9:30 a.m. flight to Dallas, intended to connect to a flight to Philly, which would take us to Rome.

Instead (thanks to the Blizzard that Crippled the Midwest), we flew to Chicago (genius) to connect to a flight to London and then to Rome. After people laughed at us when we said we were flying out of Chicago at 5 p.m. on Tuesday (blizzard warning started at 3 p.m. and lasted until 3 p.m. on Wednesday), we called the airline and asked to be sent someplace southern, quickly.

That worked, and we flew to Raleigh-Durham for a flight to London, and then to Rome.

All told, it took 4 flights in a little over 24 hours, and a little running through some large airports, but we made it just 6 hours later than originally scheduled.

Sadly, our checked luggage was not as lucky.