La Spezia – a glimpse

La Spezia, Italy

I’ll be coming back to my Italy/Greece travels from time to time. The story leading up to this one is below.

After circling for hours in Pisa, Tani and I made it to our hotel in La Spezia sometime around 2 a.m. in the morning.

“I am going to be so mad if those guys aren’t awake and worried about us!” Tani said as we climbed the stairs to the room. “Those guys” were Chelsea (with baby Jane), Emmy, and her friend, Robert. We figured that they were probably in a state of panic because we were supposed to be back hours ago. Um, not so much.

We knocked on the door and eventually Robert opened it up, sleepy and almost falling over, and groggily asked, “Are you guys okay? We wondered what happened to you…until we all fell asleep.” Ah well, so much for high concern.

In the morning, I had a quick glimpse of La Spezia before we headed out to start hiking the Cinque Terre. I love that everywhere you go in Italy, there are rows and rows of bikes and motorcycles.

Flickr - Tyson Williams

The 45th parallel

I crossed the 45th parallel yesterday as I headed into Oregon for the week. I came up to spend some time with my sister, Katie, and her little family because hey, I could and I can. Well, and I also came up to take a look around. If a move is in my future, Oregon is where it’s at.

I’m actually sitting by some of my co-workers at the Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro right this very second. It’s strange to actually walk in a building and see scads of people milling around — and I don’t know their names right off the bat. It’s baffling to actually have food on site —and with so many choices! I went immediately to the PC guys to have my laptop fixed because at our Utah site, they give you an Etch-a-Sketch or Speak-n-Spell as a loaner  if yours breaks and you have to ship it off.

It’s weird. I’m actually at a fully functioning, totally filled to capacity site. It reminds me that I do work for a large multi-national company that isn’t going out of business. It’s just leaving the business of Utah behind.

The 45th parallel is an appropriate symbol for what I seem to be going through right now. It’s the line halfway between the equator and the North Pole. And I am halfway between two monumental decisions. There’s my Utah life potential and my Oregon life potential running in parallel to each other, both offering great opportunities. But it seems that no intersection point exists. It’s one or the other. Sigh…I’d like to have both for differing reasons.

But for now this week brings lots of fun and good times with the Demcaks. Farmers markets, Powells books. Burgerville, Papa Haydn’s, Lincoln City, outlet shopping, coastal driving and so much more. And lucky me, fantastic weather all week long!

The King of Pop popped and Farrah dropped

Who would’ve thought these two would go out on the same day? And I was just listening to “Rock With You” this afternoon…

Paris-Pisa-Panini

Okay, so I am waaaay slow in posting anything incredibly specific about my trip other than my quick synopsis below. But it’s mainly because I’m having a devil of a time getting my images transferred from my Canon 40D to my laptop. Issues. Sheesh. All these beautiful pictures and it keeps erroring out. So, I did take my little Nikon point-and-shoot but took a small handful of pictures with that camera as compared to my lovely other cam. I’ll use what pics I can from there but will hopefully at some point (fingers crossed) be able to share the more photo-wonderful shots.

This is me landing in Paris – almost 14 years after I went there for a study abroad program:

Sigh…entirely too short of a visit if you ask me. I literally had time to get off the plane, walk to a comletely different terminal, and board the plane there to Athens. In all, I spent about 87 minutes in Paris. Dang it.

After getting into Athens, I had to pick up my bags and change carriers to go to Pisa where Tani (my ex-mom-in-law) was going to be picking me up. Unfortunately, no direct flights go from Athens to Pisa so I went to Rome for a short time and then on to Pisa. At the Rome airport, I had quite the stereotypical Italian moment.

I was sitting near my gate, people watching (because how fun is that to do when you are in a foreign country?), sniffing pasta-laced air, enjoying the fashion of Italian men, and overhead the sound system starts to play Offenbach. You know, that song from Life is Beautiful? Seriously, I couldn’t stop giggling because it seemed all so, so…Italian. When I boarded my little plane to hop over to Pisa, the flight attendants were these drop dead gorgeous Italian women who spoke like, EIGHT languages. And the Japanese guy across from me was texting on his phone and I know he must of thought I was staring at him because I found it fascinating to watch his fingers move and select the characters/symbols for what he was trying to say (ever seen somebody text in symbols? weird…but so cool). And because I am a total dork, I wanted to jump up from my seat at one point and shout, “Ah, principessa!” I was having another Life is Beautiful moment.

Once in Pisa, I met up with Tani to head to La Spezia where we were staying. It was about 10:30 p.m. when I arrived in Pisa so we thought we would get there, oh, maybe around midnight. Famous last thoughts.

I couldn’t leave Pisa without seeing the Leaning Tower Of so went cruised on over for a couple of quick shots in the night. Little note to future travelers: the tower is not so very well lit up at night and is quite difficult to take a shot of. Thus my results below (the best of about 30 attempts we tried):

After my photo session with the tower, Tani took me to get something to eat because 24 hours of nothing but plane food is not exactly warming to the stomach. I wanted something not served in a tiny, compartmentalized, plastic tray.

A little outdoor cafe was open right by the tower so I hopped inside to find several different choices of panini sandwiches to choose from. Ooooooh, what to choose, what to choose! Can’t remember what I chose, but it was good and tasty and a perfect first Italian food.

The plan after picking up the panini? Head out to the autostrada to go to La Spezia. The plan roughly 2 hours later? Head out to the autostrada to go to La Spezia. Pisa was the city we could not leave – even though we were trying like crazy!

Here’s what happened: Tani input the address to the hotel in the GPS she brought along. The GPS kept sending us on a route to a closed freeway entrance. Like, a hundred times it sent us back to that route. We tried every which way imaginable to get OUT OF PISA and it would inexplicably send us in circles.  We saw the same roads 50 times over, saw a few “ladies of the night” showing off their wares to get us to stop, went down dead end after dead end. We were in the Black Hole of Pisa.

I couldn’t stop laughing and at one point turned to Tani and said, “I think I’ve seen enough of Pisa now; can we head out of the city, please?”

Mercifully, we finally found a way to escape and get on the autostrada. Of course, now we were out of gas…

A Tale to Tell

I’m sitting in the “eating” area at my hotel in Santorini, Greece right at this moment, listening to a group of British chaps wile away the hours while they throw back drink after drink. They are killing me with their conversation. It reminds me of my dad’s family friends from his mission time in England and suddenly I am feeling nostalgic.

“I’m noht sayin’ it’s yohr faul…but I’hm absolutely chockered…I’m staggering…red wine, whyyyte wine, oof!”

Seriously, they are killing me.

In about six hours, I am leaving this beautiful little island off the coast of Greece and heading back home after eight days of absolute joy aaaaaaaand absolute terror. Yes, joy and terror. Two feelings and reactions that go hand in hand, don’t you think? I will be posting more about my wonderful travels when I get a moment to download my 586,000 pictures I’ve taken. How to choose what to post?!

But a quick synopsis of what fun I’ve had (with a promise of more details to follow):

• Tuesday, leave for Italy/Greece: straight to Paris from SLC, then to Athens, then to Rome, then to Pisa
• Get picked up at 10:20 p.m. Wed night by Tani (my ex-mom-in-law); head to Leaning Tower of Pisa, proceed to get lost in the Black Hole of Pisa for almost 2 hours; arrive in La Spezia at 2 a.m. in the morning
• Thursday, hike the Cinque Terre with Tani (and Emmy and Chelsea on a couple of parts); gelato – twice
• Friday, spend day in Florence and die from happiness (thankfully, in Italy so everyone is religious and they raise me from the dead); see The David, browse the Uffizi, troll the Ponte Vecchio, buy beautiful journals
• Saturday, visit Italian flea market near Genova, head to Lake Como for an hour (MUCH too short – must go back next year just to Como); fly out of Milan to Athens
• Sunday, day in Athens spent viewing the Acropolis, Parthenon, Hadrian’s Arch, the Agorra, the Plaka, and buying fake designer bags i.e. Chanel clutch, Burberry laptop tote, and amazing coconut rolls
• Monday, fly out veeeeeeery early to Santorini, check into Atalos Villas (stay here – Yannis is the BEST HOST EVER!), rent scooters, head up steep mountain, crash, fainting, bleeding, French speaking, hospital, stitches, tetanus shot, whew!
• Tuesday, hobbling around elicits sympathy from everyone – free drinks (meaning water or Fanta) wherever I go! Oia is incredible
• Wednesday, still hobbling, visit back to hospital to change dressing on knee, pass out again, pain, but beauty supercedes it in this place
• Thursday…leave to go home…dang it

Until my pictures are flooding my laptop (got to get rid of a lot of stuff to be able to download it all), this is what I’ve enjoyed and am sad to say goodbye to:

Can I have the letter ‘V’ please, Pat?

‘V’ as in vacation. ‘V’ as in very, very far away for 9 days. ‘V’ as in a variety of yummy foods I will be tasting. ‘V’ as in Venetian glass or (Italian/Greek) vistas. “V” as in vaguely able to concentrate on anything at work because I am daydreaming about leaving. 

For your weekend enjoyment, you may want to check out some new tunes that I am digging right now:

• Mat Kearney - Everyone I Know (this is my FAVORITE song right now – love, love, love it!) 
• Dave Matthews Band - You and Me (brand new on iTunes)
• Safetysuit - Stay

I’m hoping that authentic gelato might help me find a bit of clarity, too. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Golden wings

Did I ever mention that I decided to get myself one of these dainty necklaces? I picked up angel wings:

I don’t think I’ve taken it off for months now. It’s become me.

Behind the 8 Ball

I swear on my life that this week is never going to end. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve moved out of my lovely, comfy home into a space that is temporary and feels somewhat familiar yet simultaneously foreign. I don’t know if it’s because I have so much work to do before I take off next week for some “Me” time. I don’t know if it’s because school is ending on Friday and I’m stressed over what to do with Caden for the summer, something I stress about every single summer. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t been able to go to the gym because I’m living out of a box and am trying to locate the right box of stuff that will help me get out. I don’t know if it’s because sometimes people really overstep the boundary of “nice” to “overbearing and utterly opinionated” in 3.2 seconds when you don’t agree with them or aren’t doing what they would do in a situation.

Take my situation. Who doesn’t know what’s going on with my life? I realize this little blog of mine allows some people access into my day to day that I didn’t fully anticipate. I try to keep some things off of here but I’m being approached by people in the strangest of places asking what’s going on with The Guy. You know, if you don’t read about it on here, I’m not spilling much more to you if you are not a blood relative (and even then I’m still pretty picky).

One of two things is going to happen: Marriage or Moving. There you go. At some point I will either post a pic of a ring or a moving truck so as to share what’s going down. But the chatter/banter/discussions that lead up to the biggest decision of my life (well, at least for the past 8 years or so) will be kept on the down low. 

I will give you this little insight. I have found something that has been proven to be very effective in decision making:

I heard that if you drink the juice inside, visions of your future will come to you. You’ll just have a purple mouth for a few weeks as a side effect.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll address politics…because that’s not an incendiary topic whatsoever. But it will create a diversion…

Tuesday Tidbits

Is it weird to be at my desk humming the song “If I Only Had a Brain” from the Wizard of Oz? I happened to have a run in with a business partner from California and found myself humming this little diddy upon the conclusion of our conversation. Hmmmm…

A lot of people I work with that are choosing to stay with the company are moving to Arizona vs. Oregon. Heat vs. rain. That’s what it comes down to. And scorpions. Scorpions make me say, “No way, Jose, to Chandler, ‘kay?” Scorpions are pregnant for a year and a half. At least God knew what he was doing there. 

Sometimes you can find the silliest things to help celebrate a day. Like today, for instance, is National Rocky Road Day. I picked up ice cream and plenty o’ good toppings for my building mates and threw an impromptu party for the grand occasion. Although I realized after setting up the sundae bar, I forgot to pick up actual Rocky Road ice cream. Ah well, we’re all on a rocky road at work here anyways – that counts, right?

I am getting a gazillion opinions and advice on what I should be doing, what decisions I should be making. Thank you, thank you all for caring – now leave me alone. I promise not to be under the influence of some mind altering substance when the final drum beat is sounded on where my feet will land. Well, that is if you don’t count chocolate as a mind altering substance.  

Follow up to the above: A word to the wise ain’t necessary. It’s the stupid ones who need the advice. Bill Cosby

Who came up with the ridiculous idea of running in place? It’s not running if you don’t have forward motion. All you’re doing is stationary stair climbing. But really fast. Madness.

I have 9 pillows on the bed I’m currently occupying at my parents house. It’s still not enough. 

I {heart} Dilbert (the guy who writes the strip used to work for the company I work for; his humor makes sooooo much more sense to me}

It’s a Tuesday.

“I could wile away the hours, conferrin’ with the flowers, consultin’ with the rain…do do, do do, do-do-do…”