Well…it’s heading home day today and I am a little excited about getting back to the states…it’s going to be a long traveling day today with leaving here to head to the airport at 9:30 am for a day that is not going to end until we get into Dulles at 7pm edt…10 hours on an aircraft is not my idea of fun and I will be relieved when they close the door to the plane after we board…international travel always stresses me out and I will be glad when it’s over…I’m going to need a few days to recover from the trip and try to sleep my way back to normal and it is going to feel good to walk into my house Sunday afternoon…then the work starts to get the house working again…the water and water heater need to be turned back on along with getting the router and modem working after I shut them off for the trip…and I will need to mow the lawn…at least the front Sunday and then the rest of it Monday some time…I am going to have cocktails when I get back and the first thing I’m going to do is grind some beans and make coffee even though it will be in the afternoon…my body is going to be so screwed up it probably won’t notice I’m drinking coffee in the afternoon…and I’ll use my new coffee cup from Venice to celebrate being home….more later…
Let’s add more lies…
Well…the desperation is oozing off the WH as they finally realize that almost everyone in this country hates them and what they’ve done to hurt the people of the US including starting a stupid war in Iran that is dangerously closet to starting runaway inflation here…so the response is to try to lie the the Iranians are rooting for the dems to win this fall…they sent a 26 page letter to the moron in chief decrying him starting this stupid war and asked the American people to vote these corrupt politicians out…now, if you were to poll most of the countries in the world, they would say the same damn thing since trump and his cronies have damaged almost every country with their stupidity….but of course the repubs lie and try to conflate that to mean they are actively supporting the dems in the election but this time the lie is not going to work…as none of the multiple other lies they have been spewing all year have worked…people are just frickin tired of nothing but attacks by the repubs…have you heard on proposal where the repubs are trying to help the people of this country? Of course you haven’t since they don’t give a damn about you and me and think things are just fine as we all pay for their stupidity…geez…
Last day in Rome..
Well…it’s the last day in Rome for us and we are done at about 11am…I think both of us are pretty worn out and are looking forward to heading home tomorrow…we’ve been spending some time apart I think that’s healthy…I can get on a person’s nerves after a while and I think she needs time off from me…I’m not used to being around so many people or any people for that matter…it was funny when we met for breakfast this morning and since we were looking for something to do I mentioned that maybe we could see the Pantheon and she told me that she went last night after I mentioned that I had seen enough churches…but it was the last big thing to see here in Rome so she walked me over to it and I stood in line to see it as she sat on a marble fountain that is in the square in front of it…the we walked around a bit before calling it good for the day…only have dinner left to do and then I’ll pack for the trip home tomorrow…I am really looking forward to getting in my car Sunday and driving home to get my house opened up and working again…think I’ll wait to ride the bike til Monday so I can decompress after the stress of traveling…man, I feel old today…10 hours in the plane tomorrow…ick…
Another ICE shooting investigation stopped…
Well…damn another ICE shooting of an unarmed man sitting in his car is being covered up by DHS and the election can’t come soon enough to hold these thugs accountable…at least this time the victim survived but to add insult to injury, this victim was charged with assault for sitting in his car and taking a bullet…assault on the bullet? We need to haul every one of these thugs in to congress to ask them why it is alright to shoot unarmed people sitting in their cars and presenting no danger to the agents…the first thing that needs to happen when the idiot trump is gone is to dismantle ICE completely and make these thugs go away…and then prosecute every damn one of them who have shot, beaten, or intimidated anyone in the US…I don’t care if they are undocumented…less than 1% of the people ICE has attacked have criminal records at all and are just trying to make a better life for themselves and families…Ice can just go right to hell after what they’ve done to these human beings…geez…
I think we’ll do this…
Well…I was ready to dismiss seeing the Pantheon, the 2,000 year old intact church that is just a few blocks away from here since we’ve been in a lot of them on this trip but every travel writer that I’ve read overnight said they never miss it so I’ll see what my daughter has to say when I meet her in a half hour for breakfast…I have hung my long pants up to get the wrinkles out of them just in case but I’m not sure if you need advance tickets or not…I really do have to think of what she wants…and seeing the first unsupported concrete done in the world would be cool…it should take a couple of hours to stand in line and tour it but we have all day to fill so that would be a start…more later…
Okay, count that last one as October 1st
Well…jumped the gun on the last one that was supposed to post on October 1st but I hit the button too early and it was still Sept 30 in the states…so this is a place holder to make the count right…and again, more later…
October 1st
Well…up and moving at 5:30 am is morning on our last day before the travel day tomorrow…I am looking forward to being home Sunday and getting back into my routine…to sit on my couch and tv that’s not in Italian…not sure what we’re going to do today since we’ve seen everything we had planned so I guess I should take a look at the internet to see if there is something close that we can walk to…I think I’ve lost weight on this trip with all of the walking when I had really expected to gain a few pounds with eating so much…but that’s okay…I’m running out of clean clothes and it will be nice to do a load of laundry or two when I get home…still can’t believe I’m in Italy and that it’s the last trip I’ll ever take but I’m good with that…trips are wearing and a lot of work but fun, too…not sure if I’ll ever figure out my daughter and how she’s feeling but that’s a DeVol thing and I have to accept that…didn’t spend all the euros I brought with me so that will be a goal for today…the cab to the airport is on me but only 65 euros and that will leave me with probably 50-75 left but that will make a good memory….okay, need to get a post out to Mastodon so I’ll end here…more later…
A good day…
Well…we had our last tour of the trip today out to the Colosseum and it was a lot of fun…I finally got to see in person what I’ve seen so many times in movies and tv shows…we had a great tour guide named Vera who really knew her stuff and I learned a lot so that was cool…one of the weird things I saw was what I wanted to see in the old city…where Julius Caesar was cremated and I have a photo of the stone altar where that happened and it used to have a temple over it but it’s gone…walking through the old city really gave me a feel for how it was like to live in those times and the ruins were fantastic…we saw the old senate and a huge church that is only half there but is still huge…and to see the entire city from the hill where some of the emperors lived was really neat…and I got out ahead of the pain by taking tylenol, ibuprofen, and my gout medicine so I got through it with little pain and Vera recommended a restaurant for lunch and I had seafood pasta with clams, mussels, shrimp, and fish with a langostine crustacean on top…another yummy meal that I’m not sure you can get in the US…at least not in Muskegon…
Get the hell off big social media…
Well…if you’re not one of the maga faithful, (and if you’re here you’re not) you need to get the hell off the social media giants like meta, facebook, and x since they are doing evil across the world and fostering the far right takeover of many countries…ole elon single handedly handed an election to the fascist Orban in Turkey by blocking all of the ads by his challenger on x and since the mainstream media is all under the control of Orban, the last avenue for the challenger to get his message out was squashed by the right win billionaires who really like to have fascists in control…and the same thing is happening in Brazil where the right wing challenger to the progressive Lula is being given free advertising on x while ole elon blocks Lula from airing any ads at all…is there any better reason to tax billionaires out of existence? The money and influence they have has resulted in essentially buying elections in foreign countries to install the fascist assholes that the tech bros just love…I think we need to encourage people to get the hell off these platforms to take away the power these thugs have and make home grown software that take the control away from these fascists that it’s been shown their business model is to do as much damage as they can…I for one am not on anything from meta or x or anything that rewards these assholes for being assholes…geez…
God, are these folks stupid…
Well…the idiot repubs in the senate called Jack Smith in for a grilling that they thought would distract Americans from 6 dollar a gallon gas and runaway inflation that they are responsible for…and the ringleader of this farce was a senator from Missouri named eric schmitt who really thought he had evidence that Jack Smith perjured himself in previous testimony to the senate…and he constructed lie filled questions that he wouldn’t even show the evidence he thought he had against Smith saying that Smith lied when he said he hadn’t been to an Atlanta Hawks game on some date a few years ago…the only problem, pointed out by dem senator Amy Klobuchar was that schmitt confused the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes which was the game that Smith actually went to…so this moron schmitt spent hours of staff time and the senate’s time on a gotcha question that was entirely wrong and tried to impugn Smith’s honesty just to try to say that if Smith lied about that, he could have lied about the idiot trump stealing top secret materials that we have all seen the photos of…where the hell do the repubs find people this stupid and why do they elect them as senators? Man, I hate these morons…geez…