Delicious, delicious pork, how I love thee.

On my way back from Rome, I had a three hour layover in Frankfurt.  I decided to make the most of my short stay in Germany and stopped at the Erster Wiener stand where I was faced with a tough call: sausage? bratwurst? frankfurter? bockwurst? currywurst? chicken? pork? beef?  

I ultimately decided on a bratwurst, made my purchase, and walked over to the the lounge.  As I checked in, the lounge attendant looked, with disdain, at my cardboard plate holding the bratwurst, roll, mustard packet and a plastic knife.

"You're bringing your own food in?" she asked.

Well, I call that cheek.  

"Yes," I replied. "This is the last fresh pork I will see until Christmas and I'm not letting it pass me by.  I might even get another on the way to my plane."

Then I proudly marched into the lounge, filled a beer stein up with Diet Coke, and settled in for a delicious meal.

Rome

I spent quite a bit of time walking, looking, smelling and tasting my way through Rome.  The picture-taking aspect of it didn't quite happen.  I guess I just didn't feel like my little Cannon could really capture most of what I was seeing.  I mean - how do you take a genuinely good picture of a cathedral anyway? 

I did take a few shots, just to prove to my future self that I actually was there...

Campo di Fiori

Piazza della Minerva and the Pantheon

smallest and cutest car in Rome - sadly, it was locked

they did their best to bring her back home

Piazza Navona

Vittoriano Monument (just noticed the "Italian flag" flowers)

the Colosseum

Roman Forum

Ouch.

I had been in Rome for less than 24 hours when I started to get a blister on the ball of my right food (stupid throwback jelly shoes).  I bought some "blister corns" (no moleskin) and a new pair of Havianas on the way home my first evening, in the hopes of staving off an even bigger blister.  

No such luck - by my second evening, I was in serious pain and had a perfectly round, perfectly enormous and perfectly painful blister.

I held the following desperate consultation via email with my Dad:

Me: Dad, I have a blister - should I pop it?  The only thing I have to pop it with is the back of my earring." 

Dad: "That's not a blister, its syphilis."*** 

Me: "It hurts so bad." 

Dad: "Pop it at the base, leave the dead skin in place and bandage it. Make us the beneficiaries of your life insurance.  Good luck (spoken with a heavy eastern European accent)"

So, I gathered up some tools and commenced performing minor surgery.  

surgical tools

the first cut

drained..

...and freshly bandaged

I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with myself - 24 hours later and I can barely even tell I had an enormous blister preventing me from even enjoying gelato, prosciutto and gorgeous Italian men (the horror!).

***He didn't actually say that but it is his usual reply to any medical questions I direct at him so I exercised some artistic license.

Jet-lagged.

This blog just might become all about Willy.  I couldn't resist posting these pictures - he's so jet-lagged right now and its kinda cute because all he wants to do is cuddle (except at 3 AM when he wants to growl with suspicion through the crack under my door).

The Return...

Susan and I arrived back in Jordan today with her dog, Willy, in tow. He made the 26 hour journey with a relatively minor amount of fussing (aside from a growling panic attack at the start of our SLC to Houston leg).  

the much-despised carrier

making a break for freedom

Thanks goes out to Dramamine for calming him down, Frankfurt Airport for medians filled with dreamy and lush grass to roll around in, a lounge to stretch out in, and McDonald's for a tasty snack.

And lastly, thanks to United and Lufthansa for blankets under which we could hide Willy, who wasn't supposed to be taken out of his carrier but was only happy when snuggling with Susan, from the prying eyes of the flight attendants. 

why no sir, there are no dogs under this blanket...

or these ones...

or these ones...

He slept like a baby, albeit one in hiding and slightly smothered by blankets and pillows.

Messing around at the Cabin

The fam-damily spent a few days in Bear Lake at my Grandma's cabin. We were relaxing on the deck when Matthew appeared and commenced a panoramic photo session featuring himself and tiny slivers of the cabin exterior. 

He used my iPad and graciously left me all 106 pictures to remember him by. The following are a few choice highlights:

Projects

We like to do projects while visiting each other in my family.  While staying at Rachel's, the designated project was hanging the rest of her pictures.

Many hours spent trolling the internet gave her the brilliant idea of making paper mock-ups of the objects to be hung and then arranging and re-arranging the paper versions until you get the configuration juuust right.  Once you've got everything arranged to your satisfaction, you secure all the paper versions firmly with tape, get a level, and start nailing stuff on the wall, over the paper.    

The level was with the neighbor and this particular project was being carried out in the wee hours of the morning, so we couldn't actually hang anything...but I think its going to be pretty spectacular when its done.

cutting everything out - thank goodness for Anthropologie catalogues

piling actual objects in the corner, after placing their paper versions on the wall

the (almost) finished product