Roamin' Holiday

Finished my last Italian class last night. Only fifteen bucks a lesson, from a nice italian lady here in Austin, too. Elsa Gramola is a (very) recent immigrant to our shores, and one of the things that makes her a great Italian teacher is that she does everything con fuoco!, the italian version of con gusto! (if ya follow my drift).

One of the cool things about Elsa is the fact that she is turning her Italian heritage into a cottage industry. Con fuoco! In addition to teaching informal Italian, Elsa also runs wine tastings, cooking classes, guided tours of her Sicilian homeland, will run your Christmas party for you etc. She is looking for someone who will travel around Texas selling Italian wines. She also has a unique way of getting the word out: You can find her business card by rummaging through the italian guides at Barnes and Noble. She surruptiously stashes her cards in the books while no one's looking. I had to explain to her what a guerilla was when I complimented her on Guerilla Marketing... When she told me recently that she has just gotten her US citizenship I was not surprised. What is the word for entrepreneur in Italian?

Anyway, I haven't been in a real class with real tests for many moons, so going through the nervous anticipation of testing, even in as gentle an atmosphere as this one, was kind of weird. Like many people I have dreams of being unprepared for tests all the time, and here I was fortunate enough to get to have that experience in real life!

I did OK.

What is unknown is if learning the rules for definite/indefinite articles and the tiresome vocabulary found in elementary school (due matiti! certo!) will do me any good when I am half drunk in some enoteca asking for the bill incoherently... (il conto, per favore!)

My list of lists in preparation for the trip is slowly being whittled down. Still have to do mail and newspaper, and it's always an adventure to see how they interpret my "hold til we get back" instructions. Last time the paper got it right but the mail stopped coming as soon as I submitted the request, almost a week early. Time before that mail was right but papers kept coming, making a lovely freeform yard decoration to welcome us upon our return. What does it mean when the only thing you do, you do badly?

I am actually better prepared for this trip than for most we have gone on, but you'd never know it from the flutterbyes in the tum...

Battery chargers. I will need to take rechargers for: Axim X5 Pocket PC, Sharp portable DVD player (can't be stuck with airline movies when Two Towers Extended just came out!), Braun whirly toothbrush, Ipod (actually I may leave this behind, just out of geek embarassment); Samsung cell phone... oh it's pathetic, ridiculous. ridicolo I believe is the term in my newly adopted mother tongue.

My biggest headache is the major project I am running at work, which will be interrupted for two weeks as I take this trip. My employers have been most gracious and accomodating, but the old "I set it up a year ago! I can't help it!" line only goes so far.

Anyway, I promise not to continue this whiny tone as we move forward, but I am not holding back since I fully expect that as the trip commences, and I ease into what I hope is a more reflective state of mind (fueled by vacation, pasta, gelati and salubrious European air), a sweetening of spirit will be documented by the serial musings herein. Either that or this will be a riveting collection of bile, anomie and sarcasm. You win either way, gentle reader! We shall see, no?

In the meantime, watch me while away the wait with whines aplenty. Gruesome news
about the new low of the dollah against the Euro (AY-OOR-O, as expressed in my newly adopted mother tongue). As Saint Bob once muttered/sang, "Nothing we can do about it said the neighbor, It's just somethin we have to forget..."

I've been listening to the public radio show Splendid Table via the internet lately. It, like many other public radio shows, is really well done, interesting and informative. I like listening to it while I'm puttering around in my craft room. The host, Lynne Rosetto Kasper generally interviews a couple of food people - chef's, kitchen designers, cookbook authors, etc... and there is a segment at the end of the show where listeners call in with their food related questions. One of my favorite segments of the show is done weekly by Jane and Michael Stern who write the Two for the Road column for Gourmet magazine. These two travel all over the place trying out the local flavor. Though they usually travel in the states, Gourmet recently produced an issue dedicated to Rome (a copy of which found it's way to our house - Thanks Nancy!) so the Sterns had occasion to spend a little time there and have recommended some great sounding places in the Jewish Ghetto that we're going to have to try to find while we're there.