Par for the course

That's right; got my first ever legitimate par on a hole of golf today. Fittingly, it was the last of the 18 we played. Never mind that I shot 125 on a par 71 course...one hole is all you need to keep you coming back.

In other news, turns out that the sun doesn't come up quite so early in the morning once summer gets near the end. I came so close to going kayaking today for the first time in a couple months...last night I put the boat on top of the car, got all the equipment out and ready to go, and set the alarm. This morning, I sprang out of bed at 6 in the morning, went outside...and noticed that the sun wasn't really even close to coming up yet. Also, the winds were approximating gale force. So, needless to say, I didn't make it down to the water before having to go into work this morning. At least it was nice by the time we got out on the golf course.

I want to marry my cleaning lady

Even though I've only met her once, and she's old and Italian. I haven't had her come for the last couple of months, and things were starting to get a little out of hand. She was supposed to come the last couple weeks, but apparently some combination of sickness and holidays made that not happen. She finally came today, and cleaned the heck out of my house. It sparkles. It shines. I close my eyes and open them again just so I can see again how clean it is.

I'm delinquent

I realize I'm rather behind in posting these days. It's sort of hard, because the browser on the Mac I'm borrowing (while my computer is on the fritz STILL) doesn't like to show all the buttons that Blogger likes to make available to me. Also, I haven't really done that whole "transfer pictures from my camera to someone else's computer" thing so that I can show you all the fun things I've been doing. But because I know you care, I'll at least tell you about them. So, last weekend:

Friday: We all left work early to go play in a golf tournament. 18 holes in the blazing August sun is rough, but I managed to make it through because, hey, the American taxpayers were paying for me to play golf. We split into two groups. The "good" group placed second in their bracket. The "fun" group came in dead last, by 14 strokes, in a best-ball tournament (meaning there's only one score for the whole team, and each time everyone hits the ball on your team, your whole team goes to whoever hit the best ball and then hits from there, and so on). I'm sure you can guess which team I was on.

Saturday: We decided on a whim to go to Rome for the night. Because we can. So we drove up and called a hotel on the way (it happened to be the one my parents stayed at when they visited, and they highly recommended it; they were right). On the way up, we stopped off at an outlet mall just south of Rome and bought some fine Italian threads. For just over $400, I scored two nice wool suits, two dress shirts, a pair of linen pants, and a tie. We continued on, made it to the hotel, checked in, and walked around for a bit. Had dinner at the fantastic Argentinian steakhouse near the Forum that I'm always raving about, and it was once again, fantastic. Then we went back to Campo di Fiore, which our hotel was right next to, and happens to be the piazza with the best bars and nightlife in Rome. So we sat outside one of the bars in the piazza and undertook some quality people-watching and -meeting until they closed down the bar.

Sunday: We went to Mass at the Vatican. Because we can. I was actually going to be a Good Catholic and go to confession there, too, but when I went over to the confession area, there was only one booth that claimed the priest spoke English, and there was a wait for it, and it was taking quite a long time. Apparently English-speaking peoples have a lot to get off their chest. After Mass, the people behind us asked us if we were Americans, and, imagine that, so were they. Americans? In Rome in the summertime? Imagine! Then the lady told me I looked like Garth Brooks. I must have looked offended (I wasn't) or really confused (I was; that's one I've never heard before), because she quickly said, "no, no, I mean a YOUNG Garth Brooks." Yeah, because that makes more sense.

Weekend Update

I want to get a boat. A bunch of us rented a 14' (or so) RHIB (Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat) (you know, one of those raft-looking things with a big engine strapped to the back and a steering console in the middle) on Saturday and drove out to the islands of Procida and Ischia. Did some swimming (and some floating), paddled in to shore on Ischia and had a great lunch. Also managed to shred my hands and feet when I decided it would be a good idea to swim up to and climb on some rocks we had anchored near. Turns out they were lava rocks. Covered with tiny little barnacles and shellfish. Against which the waves kept washing me as I was getting out of and back into the water. Ouch.

Sunday I played 18 holes of golf for the first time in years. I got noticeably better as the day went on, and I think I can actually call myself "adequate" with the irons. I still can't drive to save my life. And the only thing the pitching wedge is good for as far as I'm concerned is to throw across the course in frustration.

In hot water

No, that's a good thing, really. Just got my hot water working again today; it's been out for most of the week. It was one of those typical Neapolitan mornings: wake up and find out that your electricity has tripped off, then discover that you have no hot water, and finally when you go to check the gas tank out back to make sure it's full enough to make hot water, you get stung by a wasp. Awesome.

I think I'm ready to take the equivalency test for my Italian degree in electrical engineering. I spent awhile trying to figure out what was wrong with the hot water heater and eventually concluded that there was no power going to the control box. I concluded this based on the fact that all the lights were out and the pilot light was out, and the "reset" button wasn't relighting it. So my landlord's mother-in-law and mother came over and called my landlord (he's on vacation in Sardinia) and he attempted to direct them in troubleshooting for about 20 minutes. I told them, "there's no electricity," but I don't think they believed me. So about 2 hours later, my landlord's brother-in-law came over and I told him, "there's no electricity." And he went ahead and called my landlord and spent 20 minutes trying to troubleshoot it. And what does he tell me when he hangs up? "There's no electricity." They finally got someone in to fix it today, thankfully. And now it's all better.

Just call me "Tiger"

Played golf yesterday for the first time in over a year (and for only the second time in about four years). It was pretty awesome--shot a 63 over nine holes. On the bright side, it's the first time I've ever played and not lost a single ball.

Good to see the NY Times thinks like me

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/opinion/30sun1.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials&oref=slogin