An Absatively Awesome Weekend(s)

A few years ago, the three friends I made during a summer program in Washington University in St. Louis came to visit me. During the week they were in California, I squished as much of California as possible into the days they were there.

Scratch THIS blog entry. I stink at finishing what I start.

Let’s just content ourselves with this short recap of that weekend:

This is Lacey holding a postcard with the major sites of Rome superimposed onto a purple and pink background to give at least a feeling of romance to the receiver before he hurls all over it. Because Rome: It will bombard you with Romance! We went to all those sites, plus some more, in 2 days. I am proud to say my slave driver tendencies are still up to par.

So, this weekend Stephanie, Diana, Arnaldo, and I went to Venice, where I feel like I spent a huge chunk of the time huddled behind my camera lens. Venice has a decidedly view-finderish shape to it, if you ask me. We also spent a large bit of the time crowded around a map because Venice is not yet up-to-date with the maps made for it. Also, because you’d encounter multiple personality disordered signs like this:

Not that you really needed a map much in Venice, because it is so wee. However, at one point late at night when we were trying to make our way back to our very Gothic hostel, Arnaldo exclaimed something like:

“How come we are so dumb that we can’t even find our way back to the hostel?”

The answer is pretty simple.

1. These three people were with a person who got on the wrong train

2. We do things like this:

Here you see Diana, Arnaldo, and me participating in what might be the world’s first recorded purring competition. I don’t mean to blow my own horn, but I consider myself a pretty good purer now. I just beat a bonafide Puerto Rican who could speak about 1,456,389 words per minute with 20 grapes in his mouth. Arnaldo’s tongue might be mother-tonguing his R’s, but mine is mighty from all those years of rather convulsively purring at the drop of a hat. Which, why? What is going to happen to me when I am 45 and I am still purring AND wearing retainers? I might as well not lose years worrying over these trivialities, though.

I love Venice. On my previous visits to this city, I had always been too awestruck to realize just how creepy it is, but now that I have figured it out, it is that much better. It is basically a floating horror movie where each street could be the perfect place for Jack the Ripper to strike again. Also, before this I had always only noticed the Murano glass. It’s kinda hard not to see it, since everyone is basically throwing these things after you.

However, this trip I started to notice the Carnaval masks. Stephanie was the first to become enamored with them, and after Stephanie had dragged us into the 70^th store, I noticed their charm. Diana, Stephanie, and I are now bound and determined to come to Venice during Carnaval and have an awesome, nay, staggeringly elaborate costume. Arnaldo alone was the only one who was untouched by this maybe strictly feminine addiction and remained unphased even when we saw robot-like Carnaval masks that the cast of Star Wars could only dream of having.

This weekend is another one in which I shall be reunited with the one and only Mary Kate, if she still remembers me and well, I will tell all the gory details some other time.