Fluffy

I gave in and had to fill the fuel tank on Friday, though I still had a 1/3 of a tank, just to have enough fuel when I pick up my father from the airport Monday.  Who knows if there are gas stations along the way, let alone ones that are open and take gas coupons.

For Memorial Day, Jim #3 and I are going to the lsle of Capri.  This is our travel plan:

Fly to Rome

Take bus from Rome airport to end of metro line

Take metro to train station

Take train to Naples (possibly see one of the churchs or museums briefly)

Take subway to ferry dock

Take ferry to island

Take bus to hotel

For the journey back, repeat the above steps only backwards.  It would only have cost about $75 for me to fly straight into Naples, which is more than worth saving all of that trouble, but it’s much cheaper for Jim #3 to fly into Rome.  Lots of disaster potential, but that makes the trip all the better once you get home safely.

Days without filling the gas tank: 25

And I still have a third of a tank leftover.  This is awesome.

Trying to work out a trip to the lovely Isle of Capri for Memorial Day weekend with Jim #3.

Watched 2 versions of “Wuthering Heights” over the weekend, the one from the 1930s and the 1992 version.  Ralph Fiennes makes a scary Heathcliff but is in the better movie.  Laurence Olivier is more along what I think Ms. Bronte intended with her novel, but that version leaves out the crucial last half of the book.  Neither movie does the book justice.

The pilot light went out Saturday and I still can’t get it to work.  This means I have not had any hot water since Saturday.  But it forces me to get up in the morning and go to the gym in order to take a hot shower, so since I”m at the gym I exercise anyway.  Bright side to every dark cloud right?

It has been nearly five years since I have lived in an apartment.  My last apartment was a very large 2 bedroom, 2 bath, in a relatively quiet area.  Since then, I have lived in a house with 2 invisible roommates, a 8 x 10 dorm with two very visible roommates, a dorm with a neighbor who liked to watch adult films at 2am, and a four story house.  So now I am back to apartment living. 

I was very happy to move into my new place and it’s sort of nice to have smaller living space.  Too much can get creepy.

However, I forgot about the many drawbacks of it.  As in hearing the radio go off at 7am when I was soundly sleeping.  “That’s odd”, I thought, “perhaps I left a clock radio on”.  So I stumbled around the house looking for a radio to turn off when I realized “Hey, I don’t own a clock radio”.

It was my freaking next door neighbor’s radio and no, s/he did not turn it off.  I put a pillow over my head to muffle the sound and eventually fell back asleep, but only for a little while as I had trouble breathing.  Weird though because the walls are made of concrete so I can’t quite figure out how the sound carried thru unless my neighbor purposedly had the radio speaker positioned right at me.

I can’t believe people are still posting stuff about my Schnappi translation.  Holy cats, don’t people have anything better to do?  If that many people are posting, how many are actually reading it? 

Interesting to read all about the immigration debates going on back in the states.  Let’s consider that the guest worker/amnesty program passes - has anyone wondered where an illegal immigrant will get $2,000 to pay a fine plus back taxes?  Most of them probably don’t have much money to spare, and what they do have goes to support their families, so how can they be expected to cough up $2,000?  A moot point probably but I had to ask.

Saturday night, I was putting on my pajamas and prepared to settle down for an early night and get up early for a volksmarch.  Just as I climbed into bed, the phone rang, making me almost jump out of my skin.  Turned out to be my coworker Fred, who was inviting me out with his Italian friend for pizza & vino.  What the heck I figured, and quickly changed back into my clothes and met up with them.

Little backhistory: after a horrendous soju incident in June 2004, I swore a solemn oath to refrain from alchohol for at least a year.  And I did, in fact, for over a year.  Never even touched a sip of it.  This definitely cut into my social life in Germany, as fun usually required beer and Schnapps.

So in Italy, I decided to gradually build myself up to where I could drink maybe half a glass of wine at dinner or other such place, in order to be sociable (and not always stuck being the designated driver).  And for the first 2 or so weeks in Italy, I was doing well.

So much for the best laid plans of mice and men.

The wine just kept flowing and flowing, and possibly beer and Jack Daniels as well.  I have no idea what happened after the second carafe of wine, but the last thing I remember was hanging out with at least 4 Italian guys, one in particular named Lorenzo.  I woke up the following morning with a rather fierce headache and found some cocktail napkins on the kitchen table.  The handwriting was mine but very messy (drinking and writing, never a good idea).  Apparently I had been taking notes on common Italian phrases.  The best one of all was this:

 VAFFANCULO = FUCK OFF

Days without filling the fuel tank: 11

Well, another rather funny note about the electricity: I’m not the only one with problems.  At the gym about an hour ago, I was ready to hit the treadmill.  Some hotshot guy on the middle treadmill was running intervals at very high speeds.  I guess his last interval was all the poor circuit could take, because it blew a fuse and that entire row of treadmills went out.  We waited a while for the repair response, but when I realized I was on a military base trying to get something repaired, I found a cross-trainer instead.  Getting something repaired on base it like watching a turtle crawl backwards up a hill (or waiting for a soccer mom to write a check in the express lane at the grocery store):  SLOW.

My coworker convinced me to register to run the Venice Marathon.  I can only plead temporary insanity when I signed up for it.  I was a pretty good runner in high school and even some of college, but sadly I have let my skill deteriorate to the point where I can barely run a mile right now.  Plus, I hate running.  But he has this whole 4 month preparation schedule planned, which works because the marathon is in October.  I figure if I start the plan now, I have an extra 2 months to fine tune my endurance.  Even if I blow it, the registration fee was only 27.62 Euros at this time.  It goes up to something like 70 Euros and then even higher as the big day approaches.

So, this is a little surprising.  Upon arrival in Italy, I learned that most homes are wired for 3 KW of power.  Key word here is most.  With this kind of power, you can’t run the washer and dryer at the same time without blowing a fuse.  One of my decisions in renting my new apartment was that my landlord was installing air conditioning.  I don’t need it, but my parents do. 

I was rather surprised when the housing office called me Friday at work to pass along a message from my landlord.  His contractor installed the AC alright, but when they went to test it, it blew the power.  Want to know why?  BECAUSE MY APARTMENT HAS 1.5 KW OF POWER!  Arrgghh.  For an analogy, let me put it this way: if I want to run the fridge, turn on the TV and DVD player, and make a bag of microwave popcorn at the same time, I can’t do it.  Heck my little sister’s gargantuan hair dryer would likely blow the fuse if I had the lights on and possibly a radio on at the same time.  So now I have to get the electric company to upgrade my AC to the “normal” standard of 1.5 KW.  Who knows how much that is going to cost me.  It is not the end of the world, and after moving so many times I am used to and well prepared for initial move-in expenses, but I honestly never thought about the power problem.

Then again, I’m living in northern Italy, where the scenery is so freaking beautiful and the food is so good and the wine is cheaper that water, so I have no grounds to complain.