So a couple friends of mine (we'll call them "Alex" and "Morgan") are leaving on Friday to go for six months to countries in the mid-east (we'll call them "Kuwait" and "Egypt," respectively). What sucks about that, besides not getting to see their lovely faces for the next six months, is that we feel compelled to go hang out with them every night until they leave. Even if it means going to bed four hours before getting up for work every night this week. Which looks like it's going to happen.

Also, I think my landlords actually are my parents in disguise. I forgot they had invited me up for dinner tonight, and made plans to go out with "Alex," "Morgan" and company. So my landlord comes down to get me for dinner, and the discussion could have come straight out of a high school drama. Translated from Italian to English, it basically went like this ("Antonio" being my landlord, and "Me" being me):

Antonio: Chris, it's time for dinner in about twenty minutes.
Me: Oh, no, I completely forgot. I'm so sorry. I was going to go for pizza with my friends.
Antonio: But we told you about this a couple days ago.
Me: I know. I'm so sorry; I forgot. I was going to go out with my friends because they leave on Friday for six months in Kuwait and Egypt.
Antonio: Call your friends and tell them you'll meet up with them after. Patrizia made a lot of food for you.
(Boy did I feel like the jackass at that point.)
Me: Fine, fine, I'll do that. I'm sorry.
Antonio: Also, we found pot in your bedroom.
Me: What?
Antonio: I can't believe you tried to hide that from us.
Me: What the hell were you doing in my bedroom?
Antonio: I own this house. I can go into whatever room I want.
Me: Why were you going through my drawers? That's my stuff! I can't believe you did that! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!
Antonio: If you don't like it, you can move out onto the street.
Me: Maybe I will! I'll probably be better taken care of out there!
Antonio: Fine. I want you out by morning. And don't come crying back to your mother and me because it's too cold.
Me: How 'bout we just forget about the whole thing and have some limoncello?
Antonio: Va bene.

Apparently, auditors have figured out that a lot of money in Iraq just sort of disappeared under the watch of the U.S. reconstruction officials during the earlier days of the reconstruction.

I wonder if they've tried looking under Dick Cheney's mattress.

I am exhausted. Burt and Julie had a "little" (read: "big") get-together at their place last night. And this evening, the party continued at the Admiral's house. His daughter is a friend of ours, and not only is it her birthday tomorrow, but this Thursday she leaves for Kuwait for six months. So it was a combination birthday and going-away party. Turns out when you're the Admiral in charge of the US Navy in Europe, you get a pretty sweet house.

Me, Matt and Jason, the "special" submarine LTs, with the big guy.

Alex's turn for a birthday party. All three of those beers are hers. Really.

Apparently silly hats are now all the rage in Italy....

So when you go out drinking with the Brits and they tell you to take a cab home because they don't know how to get back to your hotel from here, and they're from London, turns out you should listen. Instead of saying, "oh, I know where I am, and my hotel is less than a mile's walk, so I'll hoof it." Which was what I did. And I was, in fact correct. But instead, I ended up walking three miles, going around in a circle to where I started, and then walking completely the opposite direction of my hotel, giving up and taking the subway back. (Keep in mind I was completely sober by the time I had finished walking in a circle.) We were at a pub off of Piccadilly, and I was staying at Marble Arch. Somehow I managed instead to go to Knightsbridge, via Buckingham Palace. For those of you more familiar Boston than with London, it's sort of like trying to get from the Pru to Fenway Park and instead winding up at Faneuil Hall, via MIT. I ended up walking 2.8 miles until I gave up and took the subway, which doesn't sound like much except that we'd been walking all evening and I was in an incredibly uncomfortable pair of new dress shoes. Thanks to Google Earth, I'm able to throw at you the following statistics:

Had I gone home the way I thought I was going, I'd have walked only 1.9 miles.
Had I gone home the most direct way from the pub, I'd have walked only 0.9 miles.
Had I gone directly from the pub to the subway stop I ended up taking the train from, I'd have walked a whopping 0.8 miles.

From now on, I carry a map when I'm in London.

On the bright side, I got a free paring knife by watching a knife demonstration at a department store in London on Tuesday evening. Same place I bought my shoes.

This is also very exciting: Researchers at Harvard University have demonstrated that gas bubbles can exist in stable non-spherical shapes without the application of external force.

Now I can sleep in peace.

This is interesting.

The Author Who Got a Big Boost from Bin Laden.

Good for him.

I'm sure you'll all be happy to know that my wake-up-and-pack-in-the-morning strategy worked. Except that I couldn't find my black dress shoes, which I think I left in San Diego. So I had to buy a pair here in London. They're actually having all kinds of sales here, too (apparently it's not just Italy, but all of Europe, that goes on sale in January), so I might wander out in my free time tomorrow and see if I can find some nice Scottish cashmere something or other for a good price. (And no, by "something or other" I do not mean "kilt.")

Incidentally, for anyone interested in some pictures of the birthday shenanigans, my friend Alex has a couple on her site, here and here.

So let's say you're on watch and so you're working until 8 p.m. And then at 7:45 p.m. one of your friends calls and says, "hey, you want to meet up with the girls and go for dinner when you get off work?" And you know that a) you have to pack so you can go to London tomorrow, and b) you have to dry laundry before you can pack to go to London tomorrow. What do you do?

Turns out, what you do is go for a really long dinner, and then go by your friend's house after dinner where you all sit around and watch Eurotrip until 1:30 in the morning, then come home and start the dryer and convince yourself that if you get up by 5:45, you'll have plenty of time to pack. Hey, it's only for two days, right?

Last night I had the best birthday party I've had in years. It was actually a combined party for me, one of the guys in the office, and one of the girls who hangs out with our group. A bunch of us went to Carney Park, which is a recreational park that the Navy owns in Naples (golf course, pool, ballfields, etc.) and rented a few cabins for the night. Cooked out, drank, talked, played cards, drank...it was a really good time. Of course, I then came home and slept most of the afternoon.

Sadly, today's adventure in search of a sea kayak ended in failure. I emailed the company that manufactures them and they sent me the names of a two stores in the general area (by which I mean "within an hour's drive") . One of the stores is in Pozzuoli, which is the city that I live in the outskirts of, and I figured that would be more convenient than the other one, which is probably about an hour away in a town I've never heard of. So I drove into downtown Pozzuoli, accomplished the nearly-impossible feat of finding parking, and found the store with very little problem (having consulted a map last night). Unfortunately, the store doesn't so much sell kayaks and sporting goods as it sells preppy "yacht-club" type clothing. So it looks like I'm gonna have to drag myself out of town to find one. It wasn't a complete failure, though--walked around the port area in Pozzuoli and checked out all the little shops and stuff; it's actually a very nice city. Much more managable than downtown Napoli, and much better kept. Drove around and found a couple nice little shoreline neighborhoods that I've been meaning to find for the last few months, with all kinds of good restaraunts and such. So at least it was a useful day out in that respect.

So my brother has spurred me to action (or at least, the thought of action) by stealing...um, I mean, "purchasing," my kayak from me and hauling it to Vegas to never be seen again (except in nice photos of kayak condos). Which means I now have to get a new kayak before I go home to be a poor starving law student with no income. Which means I might as well get one before this spring so I can use it, which means I might as well get one this month while everything in Italy is on sale. So my goal for this weekend is to come home with this very nice birthday present for myself. Oh, wait, I meant this one.

In case anybody missed it, that second-to-last sentence was also a not-so-subtle reminder that my birthday is this weekend. (Apparently my parents were reminded of that at midnight on Sunday when my dad's cell phone alarm went off with the reminder of "one week until Chris' birthday." I wonder who put that in there.)

Ugliest rental car I've ever had.

Made it to Norfolk and back. Of the three trips to the States and back in the last month, not a single one of my return flights has worked out correctly. Also, I got sick while I was there. Which really sucked, since on the last leg of my trip, into Naples, I couldn't equalize the pressure in my ears on the descent down to land, so I got to experience some pretty excruciating, piercing pain in my head. That's the first time I've ever had that happen; turns out it really, really hurts. My right ear still hasn't popped, so I'm walking around half deaf at the moment.

Just got done watching the Pats' decisive 28-3 playoff win against Jacksonville. Stupid time difference.

I almost died again today on the Tangenziale, which is the main highway running through Napoli and I'm pretty sure means "highway of death" in Italian. A friend of mine, we'll call him "Burt," has duty tonight but his car won't start so I picked him up and drove him to work. On the way there, I was cruising on into the Telepass lane at the tollboth (like the Fastlane or EZ-pass lanes for those of you from MA and NY, respectively), when the car in front of me just slams on his brakes. Now mind you, there's no gate on most of the Telepass lanes, so it's not like he was about to slam into it or something. He just decided to stop because the light was red, and he was going to reverse out of that lane. Fortunately the brakes are the one part of my car that works well. Me and the driver behind me were just yelling for him to go on through (me in English, him in Italian), but he didn't, so the guy behind me backed out, and I backed out (and into the guardrail next to the tollboth, incidentally) and went into the next lane. And then once both of us had backed out, the guy who had stopped just decided to go through anyway in the lane he was already in.

Speaking of "Burt," it's too bad he has watch this weekend. I have a pretty good setup going with him and his wife, "Julie." They live in a nice little downtown area with a lot of restaraunts and bars within walking or short driving distance. So over the last couple of months we've developed a good system where we'll go hang out for the evening, either at dinner, or at a bar, or both. And usually we end up consuming a good amount of "Burt" and "Julie's" liquor cabinet. And then I crash in their guestroom, which has a very comfortable mattress. And then when I get up in the morning, "Julie" makes omelettes and turkey bacon for "Burt" and me. And then I go home. It's really a pretty good arrangement.

I find I eat a lot more oranges when I can walk out into my garden and pick them off the trees.

So let's say, hypothetically, you found out on Friday that you had to fly out on Tuesday for a three-day conference? What cities would be at the bottom of the list of places you'd like to fly to on short notice for a conference in January? I'd put Norfolk, Virginia pretty close to the bottom.

By the way, guess where I'm going on Tuesday?

While I was home last week, I picked up this little guy with some gift certificates I got for Christmas. It's pretty effective--now I can continually play every single music file on my computer endlessly, on my not-quite-high-end home stereo system. Also lets you connect to streaming internet "radio" stations, which is nice for things like news and sports when you're living abroad. Sound quality is fantastic, and the device is remarkably easy to use.

I'm finally getting around to unpacking my suitcases from my Christmas trip home. Among the many presents I recieved are two small round tins of gumballs, with a Red Sox theme. One of them has a picture of Jason Varitek on the cover, and the other one has Johnny Damon. Interestingly, somewhere on the journey home, the Johnny Damon tin came open and all the gumballs fell out all over my suitcase. The Jason Varitek container, on the other hand, did NOT sell out for $12 million and defect to a hated rival, disappointing millions of loyal fans.

I was just forced to watch the ball drop on, of all places, Fox News Channel. Apparently AFN TV is too good to carry Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve. I have to go wash the bad taste out of my mouth now.

See? Elisabeth Shue really did graduate in my college class. (Scroll down to the 6th bullet under "trivia.")

Good Lord, I'm bored.

Another good, more thought-provoking story from the Advocate:

It Has Happened Here. It has happened here, "it" being fascism, American-style. Sinclair Lewis satirized this latent impulse in It Can´t Happen Here , a 1935 novel. (12/29/05)

Interesting story from the Hartford Advocate:

An Insider Look at The Connecticut Mob

Interesting facts that I have been reminded of the past couple of evenings:

1. I am the worst dart player in the world.

2. The term "microwave safe," when used to describe a plate, applies to the safety of the plate inside the microwave, NOT to the safety of the person touching the plate upon completion of its time in the microwave.

3. I really, really, really suck at darts.

Happy New Year, Zulu time (or Greenwich Mean Time, to most of you).

Happy New Year.

I just went upstairs and looked out the front door of the office building. Fireworks everywhere, 360 degrees around. And we're not talking bottle rockets and Roman candles; we're looking at Class I real-deal no-kidding big stuff being shot up in the air by random folks at home. Neapolitans take their pyrotechnics seriously.