Italian sojourns have become my secret travel vice, ever since my exchange student days in Milan. A day in to the Venice leg of the honeymoon reminded me again of this fact - and no sooner than the hour-long vaporetto ride that introduced Wendy & I to the deserted nightlife of post-ferragosto Lido, an accompanying island to Venice. After a semi-restful first night (Wendy's introduction of the paperback thriller "Angels & Demons" kept me turning pages later than I would have liked), the adventure took us by water taxi around to Piazza San Marco and the center of Venice. 10 hours later, we were happily fed (pasta, pizza, frittata mista, and gelattoed out), newly dressed (a wonderful present of a shirt from Wendy and other close calls for her too numerous to list), monumented (the impressive Doge's Palace with an equally superb temporary exhibit on Venice's connection to the muslim world through history), and walked out (including narrow lanes and bridges). Venice by foot is truly a pleasure.
Memorial Day weekend came and went like the thunderstorms that rumbled on Sunday evening here in the DC area. I thought that a three-day weekend would be just the cure for a crazy-busy schedule the past month (work projects blowing up all over the mainstream news, wedding planning, homeownership nicks & nacks, getting my personal affairs in order, travels, and stealing a moment for reflection), but it turned out that the only salvation was that the next weekend was now only 4 days away. Oh yeah, and a great friend was going to be in town in the upcoming week but that is the topic of another post. Still, I tried to make the best of the extra out-of-work time - which got funneled right back into homeowner activities (and what else does a homeowner do except spend free time keeping up with whatever is going on around and inside the home?). To be more specific, I took to cleaning up the "jungle", Wendy's vividly wonderful description of our backyard's overgrowth. I...
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