I Took Notes

I wish that I had some sort of exciting story or experience to share with you about my day so that we could all somehow live vicariously through one person's experience without leaving our laptops.

But, alas, I have had no true adventures this eve, and instead turn to a listing of the things I did learn today.

1) Some news place things that eating 2 egg yolks a week is as bad for you as smoking. This makes for a scrambling of jokes.
2) I'm confident my grandmother still remembers nearly everyone who has lived/worked/played in a 25 mile radius of "the old house."
3) Patience, by definition is building a house from scratch and not only doing it perfectly, but doing it by hand.

And thus completes my learning for the day.

The Tragic End of Smokey Twlight-the Bear from Bath and Bodyworks

When it rains, it indeed does pour. Holy cats and dogs of the thunderheads. And I'm the kind of person who gladly frolics in the rain when the opportunity presents itself, but you'd better be packing scuba gear for this kind of storm. We're talking more than cats and dogs falling from the sky, this is a whole zoo and a wildlife sanctuary on top of it. Seriously. We don't have vast windows in our apartment, and due to being at the end of the hall there's this funny little alcove thing that basically keeps our room hidden from everything except the bicycle rack, and it was serious business watching this storm blow in. Bring your poncho and your hip waders, you are going to get wet.

Which brings me to the point where I have to go out in this downpour. [Note: part of the following paragraph with be overly dramatic. Please read accordingly]. Remember the dog sitting gig? Oh yeah, well there's one more pooping party to go for the day, and it's to the point in this storm that I'm thinking, "Hmmm...the benefits of getting drenched.  I could walk over there.. that way it wouldn't matter if I got wet taking the dog out. Or I could drive the block and a half and attempt to save a few square inches of clothing to wipe the rainwater from my eyes by the time I get back. I opted for the drive and a miracle.

This is the point in the story where God took pity on me and said, ok fine, but you'd better be nice. So the rain slowed to a more realistic thunderstorm pace and I took the dog outside. Nothing too exciting there except I still got wet and it's a good thing I wore flip flops instead of real shoes.

Now for the tragic scene. Since there was just no feasible way to get any suitable dog exercise in the house, Rudy did something unforgivable. She slaughtered the closest bear. Not a real bear, but in the imaginations of the children this could have been the most ferocious bear in all of Yellowstone. But alas, this smallish dog really go the better of him this time. I heard this strange noise coming from the sun room. And not sure where the lights were, I looked to see Rudy, in ready-to-play position, stuffed animal between her front paws. Oh. No. Uh.... "Rudy...(warning tone)" and this escalates into me running around the house trying to convince the dog that this bear was not in fact a dog toy, and rather should have belonged to me. Time elapse cameras would show something a long the lines of a blur of two figure running after each other followed by extremely intense staring contests.  After several minutes, I managed to distract her long enough to rescue the now deflated carcass of the once pleasantly huggable bear. Poor Smokey. Just not a good day. I do hope that this hasn't crushed the dreams of the youngins of the household.

The moral of this story is don't leave your shit where it doesn't belong.

Or what I'm going to take from it.

Roots and Katniss

Please, notice the title of this post, it'll be useful later.

I caved. I gave in. I quit.

Those are not things you usually hear me say, but I guess it's true in this case. I'm officially reading the Hunger Games. "But Kelsey, why? You're an English major! You should be reading things like Austen, Delillo, and Hawthorne- not that book by Suzanne Collins. How silly of you!" I know. I know. But I've actually caved to peer pressure. And by peer pressure, I include my mother. Yes, my mother. I figured if the book is meant for the 9-15 crowd, and my mother has already read all three, it's about time I at least skimmed them. Though let's be real, I know what happens, I do use the internet and I do have friends. The fact that I have friends that like to talk only makes this problem worse. But with any luck, I'll have all three done before I return to the land of the lakes and I will be back to reading the literary pillars of the world.

I would also like to mention that I am writing this in conjunction with my food baby, procured from my Aunt and Uncle's restaurant.  This is the point where I will shamelessly plug the Gobblers Roost.  My uncle Kent and aunt Kathy do a magnificent job over-feeding the hungry who arrive at the door. I'm pretty sure the cooking thing runs in the family... Genetics are weird like that. (For instance, my father is the only one of his three siblings who has not had his own restaurant for a while. Think about that one.) From the atmosphere in the practical middle of nowhere, to the five-course dinner, to the fact that I get to chit-chat with the family for a few hours makes it all worth it. It's not too often that all of those happen in one place, but Green Springs Missouri, well I'll be! Sure does happen there!

And going out to visit, driving along the dirt roads in between fields and pasture reminds me of my roots a little bit. I've survived in a giant city, and a tiny town this year, strictly rural isn't that far away, and I'm sure I'd love that too. At least for a while. Then we'd have to figure something else out.

So I'll leave you by reminding you how clever the title of this post was. Katniss Roots are edible. DUH.

Ok, I'm done. I've been making "good" jokes all day, and no one laughed at those either.

This Is a Really Old Rock Wall--watch your step

TODAY- (that's in an official announcement voice) we had an exciting adventurer to Ostia Antica! Now I know you're excited. As it was described to me initially, it's like the flooded version of Pompeii.  So rather than everything being preserved in volcanic ash, it was preserved under water when the Tiber flooded years ago (and that's a lot of years if you couldn't tell by the inflection). Moving on, basically they have uncovered a bunch of this ancient city that's about an hour outside of Rome down the Tiber toward the Mediterranean Sea.  It was initially used as a defensive city for Rome before she reached the height of power at which point it switched to a port city that basically fed Rome.  Naturally, it's then a really sweet place to find all kinds of neat-o artifacts and discover the ways of life from 240(ish) BCE to well past the 3rd century.  So lots of old things.  And that's awesome.

Let's play a little game called-Describe stuff. The cobble stones were very very smooth, but were incredibly uneven in places, this naturally made it some what challenging to walk without tripping. The consequence of not tripping of course is then missing the 2,000+ year old architecture. Unga Bunga. Our dear guide-we shall describe him as a Billy-goat ninja (and this is because he was not only agile over these precarious rocks, but he was a ninja with lightening fast speed too!) was both informative and as a plus an art history professor. Mine? Perhaps... we shall see. But he was nice enough, and I thought I learned a lot, so that's a plus. We walked around for 2 hours, checking out the baths, the other baths, the temples, the other temples, pointed to the first known Synagogue in Europe (that's pretty sweet), mosaics, ancient toilets, some more stone stuff, some frescos--you get the picture. Mostly delightful with the exception of the heat thing, that was a little sticky.

After we survived that feeling much more enlightened, and very dehydrated, we loaded back up on the bus (PS, driving a coach bus in Rome must be the single most terrifying job in the city.  Not a joke. You could just crush dozens of the little baby Smart cars and not even know!) and went for another 30ish minute drive to this farm called Borgo di Tragliata.  The subtitles to that go something like "the most beautiful place you will ever eat a 5 course meal".  It was literally the best kind of get-me-another-plate-of-that-would-you-please place you would ever want to eat. But the trouble is that even if you LOVE (and I do mean the kind of love-you want to marry it) you can't possibly fill up on that alone because you know the next course is going to also be spectacular.  A very peculiar dilemma. So here's the menu-the good and the better of it: White and tomato pizza, red chicory ham and mozzarella tart (THE BEST), cous-cous with vegetables, spaghetti pasta amatriciana style, chicken with peppers served with roasted potatoes, and finished off with apple cake.  Can we talk about how delicious that entire thing was? And the company was pretty damn good too. We laughed, we talked, we thought the potatoes tasted like cookies, and had just a jolly time. Then as kind of a lets-work-off-all-of-those-calories-time we walked up to the castle on sight, and saw the gardens and the pigs near by. Hannah, we took pictures just for you.  Then back on the bus, for a short nap on the way back to Rome.

Then, because Kate apparently thought that everywhere was as cold as MN=false. So we had to go shopping where we found some clothing, and I found a black belt (not the ass kicking kind, I always have that kind) to replace the one I left in Belton. That was then considered pretty successful-along with the addition of the gelato we found on the way. Came home, made dinner, talked, laughed (are you seeing a trend here?) and now it's group blog time, and then to bed. Beautiful.