Work work work

It's hard for a guy like me to read this and not get excited for my upcoming weekend trip to Lucca. Maybe a night isn't enough for this place, but that's what I'm working with. Interestingly enough, I hadn't heard of it until last weekend.

Not too much has been going on with me. Lots of schoolwork. That pretty much will explain Monday-Wednesday for the next 3 months. Not fun.

Part of the schoolwork is pretty interesting, though. For example, this morning I went to the Basilica of San Clemente, located south of the Colosseum. For our Renaissance Monuments in Rome class (the workload for which is seeming insane, I may have to talk to the prof) we are to go to a monument each week and write a paper about some artistic aspect of it (this is only the smallest part of the potentially insane workload; in fact, for forced work this is downright delightful). By the way, if you're on a basilica tour, that one is rather skippable. It got 2 stars (out of 3) from Michelin, which essentially means "see it if you're here for longer than a week", but no way. The art was all out of whack (great 12C art in the front, lame 18C art on the top, boring chapel I was forced to write about).

What else is there to talk about? Last night I cooked for Dan and Andy. I found a delightful pastry shop at the market, which provided a delicious apple streudel and a sfoglia that was also excellent (it was intended for Dan, but he ate too much of my pasta and veggies last night and couldn't handle a dessert, so I ate it this morning). We ate at Dal Baffeto for dinner. So, yeah, a lot of my thoughts involve food. Between food and sports (I still have my podcasts!), I would say that probably occupies 70 percent of my thinking time. And that's probably being conservative, because I really can't think of anything else I spend a lot of time worrying about

The world is conspiring against me. That's the other 30 percent.