Camera phone moment... if I had a camera phone

I saw a pretty funny advertisement for western Maryland's Wisp ski resort this morning on my way to work on the metro. In big, blaring letters, it said "SKI FREE" and then on the next line below, it said "starting at $69 per person."

I presume they're talking about some sort of lodging/lift ticket combo package... but you'd think they could come up with a less laughable way of advertising it. As it is, they're basically asking viewers of the ad to accept 0 = 69 as a valid equation.

Roma and Firenze
(Rome and Florence)



We decided to give Flickr a try with our pictures. So here is our Italy album. And here is our London album, revisited. One thing worth noting about Flickr is that if you run a slideshow, you do not see the picture descriptions. So if you want to read them as you go along, click on the first little thumbnail in either album and then manually click your way through the album using the "next photo" button on the right.


self-picture in the Sistine Chapel

We had four plus days in Rome and two days in Florence. Rome had an amazing collection of things to see and do: the Vatican, the Forum, the Colosseum, awesome food, crazy shopping, etc. But Florence just seemed like an all-around wonderful city... which I wouldn't quite say about Rome.


just some cute old men?   or a meeting of Florence mafia bosses??

As I said in the London post below, the pictures tell a good story, but not the whole thing. There were plenty of things that we could not (or were not allowed to) capture on film, especially in Florence. We spent some quality time with Michelangelo's David there -- thanks to our decision to travel during the off-season, the galleries and museums were mostly empty during our trip. This was a pleasant surprise after hearing stories of huge crowds and two hour waits for things like the David. There was also Florence's Uffizi Gallery. And a visit to the excellent Aqua al Due restaurant (based on a recommendation from my sister) where we had exquisite pasta and dessert samplers. And in Rome, we wound up at Trattoria Melo for dinner on three of our five nights. The atmosphere was perfect, the lasagne and broiled swordfish were both delicious, and the rest of the dishes we got there were also generally excellent.

I guess the bottom line is that we loved all three cities, but would probably be more excited about return visits to London or Florence before making a return to Rome.

London

What a fabulous five days. I posted a few choice pictures right here on the blog. The rest can be viewed here if you're interested.


"Look kids! Big Ben, Parliament!"

I guess the pics in the Yahoo gallery above tell a good bit of the story, but of course, there's still much more. One night, we saw Spamalot (and as an added bonus, it was during the brief period that Tim Curry was reprising his original Broadway role as King Arthur). We spent an entire day just visiting the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. We spent a couple hours one afternoon at the Cabinet War Rooms. And we got to spend some time with an old friend from our time on the kibbutz in Israel.


a classic Tower Bridge photo op

We left DC without planning anything beyond our flights and a hotel. So we went in wondering if we would even find five days worth of stuff to occupy ourselves with while in London. When we left, we were definitely wishing we had a lot more time!


just because we were in London didn't mean I had to stop being a Steelers fan

At this point, I was planning on posting stuff about the second part of our trip -- Italy. However, Yahoo photos sucks, so we'll have to get to that sometime in the next day or two.

Looks like the bowling class I took in college finally paid off



My parents should be so proud.

I have detected a flaw in my recent yogurt-eating setup

Apparently, if you try to eat yogurt with a fork, there is a far greater probability of the yogurt ending up all over your shirt. Perhaps next time, I will actually go to the kitchen and find myself a spoon instead of attempting to use the fork that just happened to be on my desk already.

And on the subject of Presidential candidates...

I'm still pulling for Al Gore. This Rolling Stone article does a pretty good job of laying out some of the basics.

the potential Democratic Presidential candidates

I can't stop myself from looking at them as two groups.

The ones who voted for war in Iraq:   Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards

And the ones who did not vote for war in Iraq:   Kucinich, Obama, Richardson, Vilsack -- and Gore, if you still consider him a potential candidate

The first group will all tell some version of the same story. They were misled by the Bush administration back in 2002 when the House and Senate authorized the use of force in Iraq. I wish I could go along with their descriptions, but I can't. "Misled" is not the right word. I think it would be more accurate to say it was some combination of "suckered" and "bullied." And I would prefer to have a President who was not recently suckered and/or bullied on an issue as huge as the decision to go to war.

Dennis Kucinich knew better. Russ Feingold knew better. Paul Wellstone knew better. Nancy Pelosi knew better. Ted Kennedy knew better. Pat Leahy knew better. Carl Levin knew better. Both senators from Maryland knew better. Former President Ford apparently didn't like it. Colin Powell probably knew it was mistake deep down inside. And I would argue that most strikingly, former President Bush has never seemed to like it -- I would suggest that we have seen four years of condemnation-by-silence from him.

The Iraq war authorization took place little more than a year after 9/11. It was a tough time to say "no" to a President and Vice-President thumping their chests and spouting about dangerous, scary things going on in Iraq. Of the eight or nine candidates I listed above, only the least viable one had the foresight and/or courage to vote "nay." I would hope that Gore, Obama, Richardson, and Vilsack would have done the same had they been in Congress at the time, but for now I guess we can at least give them a slight credit for not actually registering a "yea" on Iraq.

New Year's / Post-trip Update

Mary and I got back from our London-Italy trip on Sunday night. The trip was awesome. London and Florence were both even better than we expected. Rome was also a blast -- of course there was plenty of great food and great things to see -- but I guess London and Florence are just two places that are pretty tough to compete with when you get to ranking cities. I'll put together a post soon with some more about the trip along with some pictures.

In other news, Tuesday was back-to-work time for us. Mary had some major career/job decisions to make upon her return. And I need to start following through on my New Year's resolution to find myself a better job.

One hiccup I foresee is that a lot of the public interest-oriented attorney positions that I would be really interested in will pay less (sometimes significantly less) than what I'm doing now. And though I'm not typically someone to focus on that sort of thing, it is more of a concern with 2007 looking like a good time for us to buy a home. So do I continue doing boring document review and litigation prep work for big, heartless corporate clients this year for the sake of saving up more down-payment money OR do I take a potential pay cut to do something I would really rather be doing???

Of course, I might not have to worry about the decision at all if my new public interest-focused job search goes as poorly as my Nov. 2005 - Apr. 2006 search went. Obviously, I'm hoping for better luck this time.