Month: September 2005

Since I’ve been working during the days here in Florence, I haven’t had the chance to see a whole lot yet, but I did notice a couple of things.

There aren’t many homeless people on the streets, but I did notice one on my way into the office today and while clearly down and out, he had dangling from his perma-dirty-hand a bottle of red wine. No Thunderbird or Mad Dog here.

Another thing that stands out to me is how much cooler old people are here than in the US. They are substantially more fashionable, they are out riding bicycles and scooters, it’s great. It goes some of the way to making sense of Flavio Briattore, a 55 yr old F1 team manager who is the father of Heidi Klum’s child. The pic to the right is not Heidi, rather another model he date(d?)(s?).

It proves that growing older does not necessarily require nurse-shoes, house coats, padded toilet seats, and immobility.

Just as the day was ending, filled with extolments about Florence and Italy, the band at one of the cafes outside our window began to play a spirited “New York, New York.”

Floss then brush or brush then floss?

Bonus Q: Floss in AM or PM?

I just found out I’m going to Italy tomorrow for work. This will be my first trip to Italy. Any travel advice for Florence is appreciated.

Ciao

 

 

 

 

 

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The Biggest Loser is back for season 2.

I can’t wait until tearful wife/husband reunion time. While it seems cruel at first to keep someone out of contact with their families for five weeks, it is worth it the greater good of TV entertainment.

Semi-seriously, the main reason I like this show is that it is inspiring by virtue of the reality stars themselves. The show does some amount of over-producing TV moments, but really, if someone can lose 28 pounds in one week, that’s pretty incredible, no matter how you slice it. I don’t need to be dropping that kind of poundage, but I could put more effort and time into my workouts and this silly show does just that little bit to get me motivated.

Going away to summercamp for 4 days two weeks ago put me behind a 2500+ RSS item backlog that I still haven’t caught up with. There’s some question of whether this onslaught of information is worth the time it takes to wade through it, but every single time I sit down and go, “OK, I’m just going to scan headlines and be quick with the Ctrl-Q mark-as-reads” I find some jaw dropingly great nugget of information that I feel fortunate to have the means (time, knowledge, experience) to find.

My current system has my feeds divided into three categories with corresponding Outlook 2003 search folders: RSS.Scan, RSS.ScanTextAndPix, RSS.ReadEveryWord. 80% of my feeds are in the second category, I click on the item, scan the pictures first and scan the text of the article. I probably read 60% of the text on average.

Anyway, I’m down to 149 posts and I think I might achieve a zero unread bounce tonight. Once I get to this stage I’ll be much, much more apt to post here.

My good, old friend Jared invited me along to see the men’s final at the US Open Tennis match yesterday, Agassi vs Federer.

I realized around the beginning of the third set that I was quite tense, and when I assessed the situation realized that it wasn’t the riveting tennis. Live tennis matches are supposed to be quiet events with cheering confined to breaks and immediately following the end of a point. However, 23,999 other fans around you creates a level of one-upmanship that invariably ends in raucous cheering during non-appropriate times, in my opinion. The result is I sit there mentally shushing the entire crowd and feeling personal shame for outbursts.

Yes, I realize this is irrational and I tried to mantra something to the effect of “Corey, you can’t do anything about someone yelling ‘go Agassi’ when the other guy was about to serve, just relax and enjoy the game.”

Reminds me of the Medieval Times restaurant in South Boston. It is one of those dinner theater deals where the whole place is themed. Beer is mead, dinner is meat and potatoes (no giant turkey leg sadly), and waitresses are wenches. The whole time the act going on on stage and all around you is funny and interactive. Except for about 2/3 of the way through the show the female leads start in with Scarboro Fair with full sincerity. The trouble is the audience is still a) drunk b) not transitioned from the sword fighting on stage with a French roll between their legs and starts yelling “nice song wench”, etc. to the point where they have to stop the whole show and remind everyone over the P/A that these are professional entertainers and they are trying to get through their song, and I sit there feeling the combined anxiety for a hundred people.