Back Just in Time...

...to be totally behind on work and also have to prepare for Thanksgiving. Oh well. It was worth it. In between bouts of cleaning the house, I'm trying to upload our pictures to Flickr, and I've done about half as of this moment. For once, I took most of them.

Usually Rob likes to be the photographer, but this time he was the backpack beast of burden and map-reader. Well, we took turns reading the map, but he was definitely the official carrier of items. Rob's mom was in a car accident just five days before we left for the trip, and her wrists were still really sore (possibly mildly sprained), so we all helped out with carrying bags, etc.

More soon! Must get back to vacuuming, sweeping, tidying, and food prep. We're going to have duck, lamb, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, green beans, and rolls. Fumi and Tricia are bringing appetizers, and my mom and stepdad are bringing pies. It's going to be a ridiculous amount of food, plus our house is still in crazy construction mode, but it should be fun...provided I can get everything ready in time.

Arrivederci

I'm really just allowing myself a few minutes here, as I take a break from getting everything ready for our trip--we're leaving this evening and staying the night near the San Francisco airport, since our flight leaves tomorrow morning at 8:40 a.m. It doesn't arrive in Venice until Friday shortly after 10 a.m., after two stops (not ideal, but cheap). The last few days we've been arranging for friends to take care of our cats and bring in our mail, making sure all our last-minute work is done (and trust me, there was some major last-minute work), and packing.

We're just about ready to go, though--all I have to do is wash a sinkful of dishes, set out a few days' worth of food and water for the cats, and arrange for some kind of dinner-like food for us to eat on the road. The plan is for Rob's parents to come to pick me up at home at around 6:30, then we load our stuff into their car and go pick up Rob at work (he's letting his evening class go at 7:00). From there, we drive to SF.

I'm...inexpressibly excited about this trip. We have been exhausted. Grumpy. Overworked. On top of it, I sneeze all the time because of construction dust, and I'm starting to suspect I'd rather not live in Modesto, but that's a whole separate can of worms. In any case, a break is much needed. When we arrive in Venice, we'll still have the better part of a day open, so once we check into our hotel, we'll spend some time walking around and seeing the sights in a leisurely manner.

Saturday's still up for grabs, but Sunday and Monday we're checking out the Biennale, which ends on the 21st and is our main reason for going. Tuesday we're taking a day trip to Milan, and we'll have our one guided tour, which was the only way we could get tickets to see Da Vinci's Last Supper. Wednesday we'll walk around Venice some more. Thursday we're taking a day trip to Ravenna to check out the Byzantine-era mosaics. And then we leave on that Friday. Just over a week--it's really not that long and I know it'll fly past, but hey--we'll take lots of pictures and (this is important) eat a lot of excellent food. In fact, we'll try to take pictures of some of the food...I'm starting to feel a little delinquent in my contributions to the "I Ate This" photo pool on Flickr.

I might post a quick hello from Italy--we'll have the laptop--but if not, back in a little over a week!