The Emperor Has New Clothes!

And that title has nothing to do with this blog post.

I, sadly, don't have anything exciting to report about my life. There have been no escaped convicts, or escaped animals roaming the St. Peter flooded streets. In fact, the streets haven't been flooded at all-unless you consider registration a sort of flood. Then yes, impassibly high waters.

Biggest news: Justin won't admit he's a Hufflepuff. Sad but true.
In other news: No one believes I'm a Hufflepuff. I assume this to mean that I'm wicked good at transfiguration. What up.
But I have my name sewn into all of my clothing. That's an important feature of who I am.

And that's the life and times of what ever you call this. Word.

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.

The Water-skpades

So in other news, Rome floods.

But seriously, we're talking the cracks between the cobblestones can no longer keep your feet dry, in fact, the cobblestones are now under water completely. And this is all from one little bitty baby thunderstorm last night. As in for the first time, maybe ever, I woke up because of a storm.  Then I thought to myself, "it's a thunderstorm in Rome!" and curled up in a little ball and went back to sleep. However thanks to that extra large thunderclap a a brief spurt of hail, I was at least semi conscious for the next hour ish. But in my semi-conscious state I had a wonderful spontaneous dream reunion with Kaitlin. As magical as it was, it is only a tiny fraction of how blissful our real reunion will be. And that's a fact.

So eventually I got up, and due to Erica's persistence, I watched a video that she took of our bathroom this morning. For those of you following along, our bathroom has been a source of semi-constant irritation for those of us living here. And today's mishap involved both the shower drain and the toilet water gurgling. Not just like a swish-swish gurgle, like a full on volcanically ominous cauldron a la toilet. So that was fun.

And as far as adventures to class, we had the surprise of noticing the street-sized puddles as well as the nice little mudbanks that had formed by all crosswalks over night. How? I'm placing money that Charles has something to do with this, but I don't want to assume too much. So half puddle leaping (that's different than puddle jumping which involves landing in the puddles, puddle leaping has the distinct goal of trying to avoid the puddles), half mud skating, I made it all the way to class. Exciting no? Welcome to Rome-soggy edition. It's very different from the frozen version that MN usually offers, but you know, hydration in any form.

And now I'm patiently wading (punny) for my parents to smoke signal me when they get to their apartment. (I suppose I should say something like, "Oh yeah, my parents are coming to visit me for the week!" but I figured you all would figure it out soon enough. You're clever people.) But I'm afraid that the smoke signal technology is a little short circuited with the whole wet Rome thing. So we'll see how that goes. Other than that it's a regularly planned Thursday! And that means blues with the roomies tonight should the weather cooperate. Here's to hoping!