Josh scored us the very best table in the house at this little restaurant on the Grand Canal in, yep, Venice. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful city with my beautiful husband, and his weird-o drink, Campari with soda. Ciao, baby.
Along the Grand Canal, shot from a boat tour we took.
A little town called Gualdo Cattaneo, somewhat less touristed than Venice. Okay, it was an absolute ghost town. We wandered around completely empty streets during siesta time. I don't think we found a single establishment open. We did see a cat or two. All this was near our "agriturismo", an organic olive oil farm called
Le Case Gialle.
We got a little lost, okay, I got us right much lost, trying to find Le Case Gialle (which we deduced, after leaving there, meant The Yellow Houses). But one, we didn't get cell phone reception to call the English-speaking hosts, and two, I don't speak Italian. We gamely asked a couple of people for directions, which I came away with phrases like "third town", "turn right", "after Bruna", and "it's easy". Turns out this degree of language skill is insufficient to find a rural country house in Umbria. Also not helping us were locally posted maps such as this one:
Josh says, "Note: blue lines not rivers." We don't know what the blue lines are. We don't know what the white lines or the red lines or the dotted lines are either. We did figure out we had to go through the unfortunately named "Bastardo" to get to the place, but these singularly unhelpful maps did not get us there. Eventually the two of us and our rented Fiat Panda arrived, and it was worth the trouble. Heads up if you go to Italy, middle of nowhere Umbria is just spectacular.
Since obviously we have tons of pictures, we want to caption them before we forget what and where they are all, and put them up on Snapfish for those who'd like to check them out.
Other news: I was "recommended" to fill a position at the N.C. Industrial Commission, which I guess is not a formal job offer but will be a formal job offer pending approval by the personnel department. It will probably start fairly soon, like 3 weeks or so. This was a job I wanted and I think I will like, so I'm very pleased. You may or may not remember that I applied for this job in something like November, heard nothing and nothing and nothing, got my interview rescheduled from tomorrow afternoon to this morning with about an hour's notice, and got the phone call about the recommendation several hours later. A very strange sequence of events, but anyway. The job title is "Special Deputy Commissioner", where Special = The Very Lowest. If you're interested, the IC is sort of the equivalent of the court for adjudicating workers' compensation cases. There are commissioners on top, then deputy commissioners, then special deputy commissioners. Basically I would be making 3 different types of administrative decisions, and I would be making them quite frequently as the IC juggles tens of thousands of cases per year. The setup, decor, technology, and lighting of the office could best be described as "Soviet" and I probably wouldn't even have an office at first but would be sort of a lurker in the law library. Doesn't that sound fabulous? Seriously, I am excited to have a real lawyer job with real responsibilities and boy, I sure do hope nothing changes. Thanks to all of you who wished me well!
Super tough snake tattoo.
Josh scored us the very best table in the house at this little restaurant on the Grand Canal in, yep, Venice. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful city with my beautiful husband, and his weird-o drink, Campari with soda. Ciao, baby.
Along the Grand Canal, shot from a boat tour we took. 
A little town called Gualdo Cattaneo, somewhat less touristed than Venice. Okay, it was an absolute ghost town. We wandered around completely empty streets during siesta time. I don't think we found a single establishment open. We did see a cat or two. All this was near our "agriturismo", an organic olive oil farm called Le Case Gialle. 
Josh says, "Note: blue lines not rivers." We don't know what the blue lines are. We don't know what the white lines or the red lines or the dotted lines are either. We did figure out we had to go through the unfortunately named "Bastardo" to get to the place, but these singularly unhelpful maps did not get us there. Eventually the two of us and our rented Fiat Panda arrived, and it was worth the trouble. Heads up if you go to Italy, middle of nowhere Umbria is just spectacular.
