Italy

I'm writing this post from the balcony of our hotel in Florence and I'm staring at the facade of the Duomo which is about 100 yards away. Very cool.

Our trip began in Rome. Like many people, I spent a semester abroad in college and Rome was where our campus was located. I remember being annoyed at Rome at the beginning. It was filthy in parts, stunningly inefficient, and chaotic. By the end of the semester I found myself in love with the place. That is probably in part due to the many friends I made, the tendency to romanticize one's travels, etc., but I've been back three times now and I still love Rome as I did then. I don't know when or why the chaos became something wonderful or when the inefficiency of it all made me smile rather than shake my head and long for the States, but it happened.

Some random observations:

1) I don't know what bus drivers make in Italy but whatever it is, it isn't enough. NASCAR drivers have nothing on these guys. We did a day trip to Siena yesterday and there were a few moments of sheer terror as we went around corners side by side with semi trucks and I could have literally reached out my window and touched the truck driver. This was considered by moped drivers to be plenty of space to pass between. Crazy.

2) The myth of the ugly American. Maybe it's a myth no longer in circulation but I can say that I simply have never seen it. Quite the contrary in fact. They tend to speak louder in public settings and they have an annoying tendency to shout in English as an attempt to communicate with Italians as if somehow the volume will assist the attempt at communication. That's about it though. The worst? The French, and it is not even close.

3) Europeans are thinner as a group, but it sure as hell is not because they eat less. Leigh and I usually split a salad and then each have a primi or secondi for dinner. Most of the Italiand have an antipasti, a salad, a primi, a secondi, possibly dessert.

4) My favorite day so far has been the day where we made no plans. We just got off the Metro at Spagna (the best stop) and got lost for the entire day. It was wonderful just to walk around the city and soak it in.

Off to explore. Uffizi today and Academia tomorrow.

Vacation Time

Heading out of the country on Monday for a long-awaited vacation. I'm pretty excited as we will be in Europe for a month and I'm going to be in a few countries I've never been to before. Here's the itinerary:

Fly into Rome and spend a few days there, then off to Florence. Florence to Lake Como (one of my favorite places in the world). Lake Como to Interlaken. Interlaken to Paris. Paris to Ireland. We're staring in Shannon, going to Dingle, then ending up in Dublin. Finally, we head to London for a week before returning home.

I've been to Paris, but never spent meaningful time there. Also, for all the traveling I've done I have never set foot in the United Kingdom which is kind of odd. Ireland will be new for me as well. Pretty cool trip.

Consumer Crap

One of my favorite things to do at the grocery store involves slowly browsing the aisles for the latest nonsense products. I really need to start taking pictures. A few of my favorites from this past week:

- A prepackaged hot dog in the bun. Who buys this? How is that any better or easier than placing a hot dog in the bun yourself and nuking it? Reminds me of this classic from The Onion.

- Breakfast cookies. No explanation needed.

- Oreo Cakesters. Vomit.

- Not from the grocery store, but Quizno's across from my office is offering "Toasty Bullets" which appears to be a slightly smaller version of a normal sandwich with a terrible name.

Of Tea Parties, Astroturf, and Townhalls

I've been watching with interest the volleying between all sides as to who has the "real grassroots" in the health care fight. I do think it is funny that one side claims the other is astroturfing while at the same time ads such as this one offering $15 per hour to promote Obama's plan are making the rounds.

My sense of the townhall debacles is that they are legit. People are PISSED. I don't know why and I'm not sure many of them know precisely why. The performance of some of the elected officials has not done much to calm them down either. Taking phone calls while constitutents are speaking, admittting you have not read nor are you familiar with the details of massive reform bills, dismisisng constituents as partisan activisits, etc. has not done much to smooth over the public's understandable angst.

I'm not the first person to suggest it, but there seems to be a sentiment that the D's have just overreached. It's understandable as they've been waiting 12 years or so for a shot at having a say. But the public's repudiation of the R's, the Bush fatigue, and Obama's undeniable popularity must have convinced them that the public had embraced their entire agenda. I think the townhalls, Tea Parties, and polls cast serious doubt on that idea.

Austin Energy

Here in the People's Republic, the city council has made the decision to shift toward "green energy." I've got mixed feelings on how much government, particularly city councils, should be doing on this front and particularly this city council which has a pretty lousy track record with some of their grand social engineering projects. Whatever.

Anyway, there are some aspects of the plan which offer substantial subsidies to homeowners and businesses. Tax credits which will offset up to 45% the cost of installing solar panels in some cases. They also offer free energy audits for your home. Well, I decided to take them up on that offer. Our AC broke and we were going to have to get a new one anyway and one of the choices was the super energy efficient one which was far more expensive list, but about the same after accounting for city, state, and federal tax credits. So we bought the super energy efficient one, and did some retrofits to the abode. I figured since we were staying in our house for a while it would be an ok purchase and Austin is moving toward required retrofits for houses before you can sell anyway.

I was really interested to see what our energy bills would look like. I have to say I've been really surprised. In the midst of a sweltering summer, our energy bills have dropped substantially- like 15-30% per month.