Some things I will tell you:

• I have a bit of a pain in my foot.  I think it has to do with trying to get back into my running routine and wearing high heels.  Note:  not when I’m running.
• I enjoy gum.
• Something that puzzles me:  how on earth do public libraries work?  It’s such a utopian concept:  an institution invests a lot of money and effort in amassing a collection.  The public goes in, gets the resources, takes them home, tries not to ruin them, and gives them back, all of this at no cost to the consumer.  The punishment for returning them late is a very reasonable fine.  This is not quite the same as a rental situation, in which the user pays upfront.  This is all based on trust.  It’s really amazing.  Why don’t people screw it up more?  It can’t be more bad than good from the libraries’ perspective, or libraries wouldn’t exist anymore.

My lovely cousin Erin is getting married this summer in Sarasota, and I just got our tickets.  We were planning to fly from Moline to Tampa, then renting a car and driving to Sarasota, but that itinerary had 2 stops (Minneapolis and Memphis–how stupid to fly to Minneapolis to get to Florida) and really beastly departure times.

For only a little bit more money, I found an intinerary that has much better departure times and goes straight to Sarasota.  It still means driving to Moline, but that’s no big deal; it’s just an hour or so and a very familiar path.  I’m getting excited about the whole thing.  I haven’t seen an ocean since our honeymoon coming up on two years ago.

I need to buy some sun-blocking clothing.  I have the unfortunate combination of a sunscreen allergy and aspirin-white skin, but I also love to swim and snorkel.  I was thinking maybe something like this… (thanks, Linds).

I must admit, I want to see Grindhouse.

It has a lady with a machine gun for a leg!  That’s practically like my grandfather Pop-Pop, except he has a prosthesis for a leg.  Awesome.

Also, I bought a giant bag of almonds to keep in my desk.  It was only a dollar more than one of those tins of almonds.  Almonds are my favorite food, and they’re very healthy in reasonable portions.  The only challenge is eating them in reasonable portions.  They’re so delicious I want to pour the whole bag down my throat.

Hint:  NOT RECOMMENDED.

ALSO:  some time when I have a free weekend, I’m going to make these fabulous-looking tamales.

My feet are not in shape for sandal season.  I wore comfortable shoes in to work today (it’s a bit of a haul from where we park to the office) and then put on my cute sandals once I got in.  I’m getting blisters already, I think.  It always takes a good couple of weeks of breaking-in before things are fully ready to rumble.

Hey, here’s some exciting news:  my dear friend Emily is now known as Auntie Em.  Her sister Andrea and brother-in-law Chris have a new daughter named Norah Elisabeth.  Em sent a couple of pictures, and the baby is as sweet as can be, and as far as I know, everything went just fine.  Congratulations to them!

Denny posted his Rome photos.  They are, predictably, very good.  He’s good at light-art.

I also like the layout of his photo pages.  He used Aperture to do it, and it was his first major foray into that software.  It turned out pretty well, yes?

I’m 30 today, as you could have extrapolated from yesterday’s post.

I’m okay with it.  It’s cool.  I’ve been wanting to be a grown-up my entire life; much of my childhood was spent in great frustration that adults WOULDN’T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY.

Today I told some people I don’t know very well that it was my 30th birthday, and they were surprised and thought I was 20.  I don’t know if that’s a testament to my immaturity or the fact that I wear sunscreen every single day.  Oh well.  One time in high school I was complaining to a friend of mine about how everybody thought I was younger than I am, and he said that was a good thing, because it was something people didn’t know about me.  I thought that was kind of strange, but it wasn’t until (years) later that I learned his father was hiding from the Nicaraguan government.  I guess it was naturally for him to put a premium on mysteriousness.

So anyway, here’s a picture of me with the presents Denny gave me this morning.  Shown:  my beautiful cashmere-lined leather gloves from Rome, my C.U.C.I.N.A. (the Italian word for kitchen; also an acronym for the Italian translation of “How a kitchen inspires new appetites), and a cookbook by the author of a really good food blog I read.  Not shown:  some pretty earrings and a gorgeous tart from Deluxe, the bakery that made our wedding cake.  We also have a dinner date tonight, and champagne is chilling.  Whee!

What do you think about that?

We’re home. I’m tired. We had a really great time.

Here’s the evidence.

We’re just doing a few last-minute organization and packing tasks, and then it’s off to Rome (by way of Chicago and Stockholm).

I’ll say hi to the Pope for you, but I can’t promise I’ll get too close.

It’s going to be hard to get through this workday.  Hoo boy.

I woke up early this morning and wanted to start packing.  Denny thought I was weird because I was looking all over the house for the European voltage hairdryer (which I actually bought for my mom, but she has kindly lent it to me, and I will give it back to her the next time she skips the pond) before I even took a shower this morning.  I can’t help it.  I’m very excited.

Since I don’t have much work to do today, I will probably type up my packing list and arrange it in order of how it should be done.  I’ve been adding a little bit to it in every boring meeting I’ve had this week (especially a certain phone  conference; good lord, that meeting was worthless.  It was twenty minutes of content in a 100 minute call.  My coworker actually fell asleep and I had to wake him up because someone asked him something.  If I were capable of falling asleep in public when not jet-lagged, I would have too.)

So yeah.  Whee!

Also, the Capitoline Museums (which are on my Must See list, which is two pages single-spaced) offers free downloadable audioguides.  We’re bringing the iPod anyway for photo storage, so why not skip paying the six euros and looking like a chode with those dorky headsets when I can just listen to it on my sleek little iPod?  It is a lovely service, and I tip my hat to the Capitoline Museums for providing it.

I wish there was an audioguide for the whole city (and if there is, ideally a free one, please let me know).  The awesome thing about Rome is that you can just wander around, and you can’t turn your head 30 degrees without seeing something interesting from Ancient Rome, medieval days (not Medieval Times; I don’t think they have that), the Renaissance, and more.  Without some kind of idea of what you’re looking for, it can all kind of blur together.  I think I could spend a few days just walking around the city, looking at stuff, and it would be a more enriching experience if I knew what I was looking at.

An iPod-based audioguide also makes one look more like a hipster and less like a dork with her nose in a guidebook.
Of course, almost all travel comes with a certain degree of inevitable dorkiness.  One thing I’ve discovered in my travels  that is quite dorky but also quite useful is to carry a compass.  This is especially useful when you’re going to an unfamiliar city and use the subway system.  I don’t know about you, but when I step out of a subway station, I never have any idea which way I’m facing.  A lot of times street names aren’t clearly marked, and even though your map is telling you to walk three blocks north to get to your hotel, that doesn’t help if you don’t know which way north is.  Hence, the compass.  I think we got one that came with a Dublin city guide, and it came in so handy that we never travel without it now.

Thank goodness I was a Girl Scout so I know how to read a compass.  Or maybe I learned that on the sixth grade camping trip.  What I learned from Girl Scouts is that when parents don’t let their kid eat sugar, the kid goes kind of nuts during the “decorate your cookie with candies” activity.

The way it always worked in my family, on your actual birthday, you get a home-cooked meal of your choice (I usually picked my dad’s grilled lemon chicken).  Then on a weekend close to your birthday, you got to go out to the restaurant of your choice (I think my brother picked Domino’s Pizza one year, but he’s weird).

I like that tradition, so I’m continuing it in my little family.  Denny’s birthday is actually tomorrow, but I have rehearsal so he’s having his special dinner tonight.  He’s chosen Serrano ham and manchego tapas with bacon-wrapped dates.  I think we’ll save his birthday cake for tomorrow night, though.  I baked it already but I still need to frost it.

As for the dinner out, I think we’ll do a dual birthday celebration some time in Rome.  My late grandmother gave us money for Christmas, and in order to have something to open at the family gathering, I made a little graphic of us eating spaghetti Lady and the Tramp-style.  It will be nice to remember her as we enjoy a dinner.

Eeg, it’s almost time to go home and I haven’t posted yet.

There are different schools of thought on what it means to be important in one’s job.  I’ve noticed that the longer I’ve been in this job, as my experience and responsibilities grow, I have to go to a lot more meetings.

I have six (6) meetings tomorrow.  Four of them are consecutive.  Some of them go longer than an hour.  This is not unusual for my boss, who is more important than me.  I’m not convinced it really has anything to do with mad skillz, though.  Maybe people are scheduling me in all those meetings because they want to keep me from doing damage out in the real world.

I bet George W. Bush goes to LOTS of meetings and he’s not important to me at all.  And yet, he’s done a lot of damage.  Hm.  Clearly, my theory needs work.  I’ll get back to it some time after I finish all my damn meetings.

My mom told me that when she was pregnant with me, she ate so many peanut M&Ms she thought I’d be born looking like one.

Here’s an artist’s depiction of what life would have been like had that been true…

What’s in Alka-Seltzer and its ilk that make them go all fizzy in water?

I’m waiting for an Airborne (actually the generic equivalent “AirShield”) to dissolve.  There are a lot of sick people around the office and I really don’t want to come down with anything before the trip.  Plus, airplanes are germ-o-rama, so these will be good to have for that as well.  So far so good.

The directions on the package are funny:  “Drop one effervescent tablet in 4 to 6 ounces of water.  Let fully dissolve (about 1 minute) and drink.  Repeat every 3 hours up to 4 times a day.  For children 2-12, adults please dispense one half tablet daily.”

I like how they get all polite about it when it comes to the children.  They’re bossy on the adult directions, but when it comes to the kids, they’re all please please please.

…is the fact that, when I’m looking forward to something that’s coming up, I get really excited when it finally is included in weather.com’s 10-day forecast.

It looks like it will be rainy for our drive to O’Hare, but warm, so probably no danger.