The Magpie Killing Field

        Another bird has gone down on the section of the lawn in Newnham's Garden that I have renamed "The Magpie Killing Field."  We're up to dead bird number four since my arrival on campus in October, and I've given up on alerting the authorities.  No one on staff seems really bothered by the handiwork of the magpies except for the guy who mows the lawns every other week or so, and he only really cares if the lawnmower finds whatevers left of the bird before he sees it and scoops it into a big black trash bag.   Regardless of how many maintainence requests are entered that mention the need for yet another victim to be removed from The Magpie Killing Field, I get the feeling that this poor guy never gets the memo in time.
       One of the perks of living in a small collegiate town that plays home to a large science based university is that the presence of dozens if not hundreds of life science students means that almost *all* the birds here that can be described as having any level of intelligence at all, have been netted and tagged.  Frequently more than once.  They bouce around on the lawns or scream from the trees with little red, yellow, orange, purble, maroon, green, or blue tags on their legs, just waiting for someone to hang out with a notepad documenting the days of their lives.  This makes naming the magpies easier.
       Purple-Blue-Yellow (colors in descending order) is a particularly nasty specimen, and has a habit of hanging out in the apple tree near The Kills, in order to scream at anyone passing by.  He even sleeps there.  Or at least seems to, because on occasion I've decided to take predigious advantage of Newnham's exceptionally liberal attitude towards lawns, and cut corners off the trails coming home at night.  Walking on the grass, and inevitably rousing his ire. 
       Green-Orange is a sweetheart in comparison.  She'll follow people from tree to tree, sort of waiting to see if you'll drop any food, and while I've caught her eating the victims on the Magpie Killing Fields, I've never actually seen her engaged in direct murder.  It could be that she doesn't have the stomach for it, or it could be that she's just happy to let others do the hardwork, while still reaping the benefit herself.  I'm also not really sure if the magpies are taking advantage of place where birds sort of go to die naturally, because it's quiet and away from most people, or if they locate sick birds and harass them across campus to the apple tree where they have some dark plot to torment them to death.  Either way, it almost always ends the same way.  Fat, happy magpies.
       If there is a plot, I blame Only-Purple and Maroon-Blue-green.  They are friends.  But only with each other.  Anything else living, including other magpies are either on the "enemy" list, or the "dinner" list.  They like to hang out together in the big poplar-looking-tree-that-isn't-a-poplar-because-there-aren't-poplars-here, and dive bomb other birds and the occassional squirrel.  I wish I could find the students who are conducting the Purple, Maroon, Blue and Green experiments or observations and explain that they ought to track both Only-Purple and Maroon-Blue-Green if they want the whole story behind these birds.  But since I have yet to see a bird actually being caught and tagged, I'm gonna go with my current understanding that science students are really smart and will someday have actual jobs, and therefore us mere mortals in the social sciences don't run into them often.   Kind of like legends or gods.  You hear about them, you see evidence of them in history books, etc.  But you never actually meet them.
       I figure a dead bird is as good a way to start 2014 as anything.  It means a) the magpies are fine, and b) that life goes on regardless of the markers and changes that we attach to it.  The universe, no matter how we try, doesn't like being put into a box.  
        Yellow-Orange-Red, maybe the oldest and scruffiest magpie that hangs out around Newnham, was still screaming at me this morning when I opened the bathroom window to air out the steam.  Either that damn bird is just *always* screaming and we just can't hear him with the window closed, or he really does hate people so much that even the idea of seeing us is scream-inducing.   
       A dead bird right now---with all the college staff gone home until the 2nd---also means one more thing.  The Magpies are gonna get to eat for DAYS.  Way longer than they normally would.  A veritable Happy New Year's feast.
     I'm gonna make a bet with myself; I'll get two extra deserts next week if that bird is still on the lawn when I get back next week.  And guess what?  I'm gonna win.

More Christmas Complications

       It's December 27th, in years past I might be taking down Christmas trees, wrapping ornaments in newspaper and lining them up in ratty cardboard boxes.  Winding lights into neat circles, and bunching tinsel into plastic bags to settle neatly underneath dust for the next 11 or so months until the sound of Christmas radio and church bells coaxes them out again.  I'd pay a bunch of Girl Scouts $10 or so to take my tree away for "recycling" and make a promise to buy cookies as soon as they come back around with their order forms and sales goals.  I'd be back at work and the last few holiday events of the season would be winding their way down, culminating in New Year's Eve parties and a long lazy January first before the new year begins it's eternal countdown to another holiday season.  The days growing first longer and then shorter.
       This year I'm sleeping in longer than I should, staying up late at night watching documentaries on Netflix, reading articles about gender differentiation and trying to wrap my brain around what the next six months of my graduate school adventure will entail.  Wiling away the post Christmas days with student loan paperwork, and almost-daily erg regimes that will undoubtedly turn out to not have been enough once the term starts and rowing picks up yet again.  
       I have to keep reminding myself that another holiday season has come and gone.  Without those annual traditions it almost doesn't feel like Christmas has come, let alone gone.  Cambridge has been a ghost town since about the 20th of December.  The students that are left either come from far enough away that they can't afford to go home for the holiday break, or for whatever reason they don't have anything worth going home to.  Some of the science students are here to run experiments with living things like rats, beetles or cell samples that need checked on daily.  But we're a small, odd group, enjoying the stark cold sunny weather and waiting for our friends to come back from where ever it is that they went to celebrate Christmas.
       Holidays are always an opportunity for me to wonder what it is that causes tension and trouble.  What flips a bland afternoon into an evening of fighting, screaming and hurt feelings?  When do you cross that line from semi-boredom to saying and doing things that you'll regret for weeks or months to come?  What turns a mildly awkward family dinner into a chance to rehash--over and over and over and over and over--bad days from years ago.  The minutes turning into hours of staring at the same ugly history.  A history that can't change because the past is what it is.  Family get-togethers mean proving loyalty.  Demonstrating that you still know what's "right" and who is "wrong."  A world in which time with friends is worth so much more than time with family, because one comes with pain, the other with laughter.
       From that perspective, a quiet Christmas in Cambridge was a Christmas devoid of expectation.  Good or bad.  There was no sickening dread in the pit of my stomach to be quenched and swallowed, and no hope to be crushed.  And I come from what could widely be considered a pretty happy family.  No one is dying of cancer, we've all managed to avoid substance abuse and most of us are employed.  I can't imagine what a Christmas would be like if there were actual problems.  Real things causing real stress.
       I like to believe that every year is a new chance to make new memories.  Enhance what is good, replace what's not.  But bit by bit, year by year, the choices we make can change or reinforce what we expect, and maybe the key to letting change in, is to let go of those expectations.  To untie the present from the past as much as one can.  We can choose to be defined by what happened before, letting old wounds fester and seep into the present.  Sometimes we can't help it.  Pain can take years to ebb into the everyday flow of life.  But it can shape us, without defining us.  It can become a part of us without controlling who we are and how we live.  That we were hurt does not need to become our identities.
        And the chance to see the motions of life from another perspective, to take a year quietly 'off' of traditions and home, can be a chance to remember that.  To remember that every day is a new chance to be not who we have always expected to be, but to be who we have always wanted to be :-)
       
       

Callie Writes a Race Review

       On December 5th, 2013 my crew--NCBC Novice Women's 1--had our last race of the season, and our last race as a crew.  Coming in a day before the end of term, I promised that I would write a race review for the NCBC website if no one else did while I was on a long weekend to Rome.
      No one did.
      So I promised I would write it "soon" if no one else did.
      Soon ended up being a couple of days ago, but I did write one.  And like most things that I write for other things, I'm also going to throw it up here, just so I have it saved somewhere in context :)

       Enjoy.

       Wednesday, December 4th, NW 1 met for a short outing.  Just one last practice outing as NW1 before Fairbairns and the end of our existence as a set crew.  The weather was perfect.  Sunny, not too cool.  The water was pristine.  Flat, even.  Empty. The most perfect rowing conditions the Cam has to offer. Basically everything that Thursday, December 5th--race day--was not.
       Thursday, December 5th, was so windy that several of the girls decided to walk from Newnham to the boathouse because they figured it might not be totally safe to cycle.  The flatwater of the Cam stirred up about as nicely as the atmosphere in the locker room when NW2 (racing in the same division as NW1) realized they were short of a rower as a lovely morning surprise.  
       Jenna screaming “Call ANYONE who has ever held a blade NOW!” was how we started out our race prep. Sarah Adams, our stroke, saved the day (it seemed) when she talked a friend who had rowed in college to join us---until that friend called back after puking.  Messages were left, hair was pulled out, madness occurred and in the end NW1’s cox, Sam Flint, threw in her sweater and donned her lycra to row for NW2, and NW2’s coach, Hayley, nabbed said sweater and pinned on a boat number as NW1’s new cox.  Already down a rower (Leanne did GOOD on breaking basically everything in her thumb except  the bone) Gabby ended up being swapped sides to Bow side (for the first time), and the footplate on seat 6--a constant culprit for needed boat repair--got re-inserted literally minutes before push off. 

       Marshaling 50+ boats on a river barely wider than an 8 is long, was everything anyone whose rowed the Cam could ever dream it might be.  Beautiful chaos.  All that was missing was an orchestra to provide a soundtrack.  Angry swans, screaming coaches, cox and near collisions galore. NW1 happily pulled off our first ever rolling start as a crew (in our last row as a crew) and off we went for 2.7 kilometers of Cam, wind, rain and then sleet down the river, under the bridge and onto the reach, with our coach Jenna, and injured teammate Leanne, cycling along.  
       Hayley took every opportunity to power 10 us up through the fabulous new cox box (somehow breaking the boat earlier in the season meant it reappeared not only fixed, but updated).  With a final time of 12:01.1, NW1 came 6th in our division, and even better than that, we managed to spin and row home without getting blown into the bank.  Not something either the boat ahead of us, or behind us, were able to manage.  By the time the afternoon races rolled around the rain had turned to solid sleet, a tree fell over and blew into the river, and hence races were cancelled.  
Overall, a very good day for Newnham novices.  We’re officially ready to keep rowing and as seniors now :)
Oh yeah,  it was basically the best time ever.

       To read this, and other Newnham College Boat Club news and race reviews, see: http://www.newnhamcollegeboatclub.co.uk/#/current-race-reviews/4569851752

I'm Here Because of Obamacare.

Okay, another blog not about the history of Cambridge, or cultural differences, or even somewhere else I visited.  I know, I know.  I’m being a bad travel guide.  The longer I live here, the more this feels like just another place that I live.  The shiny is starting to wear off the fact that sometimes I study in things that look like castles, and real life is settling back in, and settling back in hard.

Over the last week or so quite a few of my friends have been posting about how the Affordable Care Act has been impacting them, good and bad.  “Obamacare” as it is more popularly known officially becomes a thing in it’s most visible format (required insurance, and guaranteed care) Jan. 1, 2014.  The ride to this point has been a rough one.  Since barely surviving the disaster that is the Congress of the United States in 2009 and 2010, the law has been gutted to a degree.  That said, it’s key provisions remain intact.  All Americans must have health coverage--of one kind or another--medicaid can be expanded to include far more low income folks, that coverage cannot be denied or revoked when your health insurance carrier finds out you've been diagnosed with cancer, lifetime care caps are a thing of the past and the 80/20 rule means that 80% of your premium actually goes to delivering you care.

The roughly 40,000 Americans that from a variety of reports found on the CDC to CNN to the BBC, we know are dying every year because they lack basic health care, get diagnosed too late, or can’t go to a hospital until it’s too severe to treat, are going to start living longer, healthier lives.  Some big businesses will pay higher taxes if they choose not to insure employees, and many people who purchase private health insurance will either see a spike in the cost of their current insurance policy, or have to shop around to find a new policy that they prefer in their original price range. So-called "disaster policies" are a thing of the past. Your health insurance now actually covers health, not just a portion of your care after a catastrophic accident.  I, according to facebook, know a lot of people whose policies are being impacted.  And let me tell you.  They are pissed.

If I were still at home, would I be?  Maybe.  My old health insurance---the health insurance I carried since birth, funded through college, into which I poured tens of thousands of dollars, about 1/12th of my working income during my total adult life--would have doubled.  I would have had to have gone back to the calculator, figured out how to make it work, and then scrambled to find the money.  Because as an asthmatic, once I lost that policy, I would never be able to get insurance through a private policy again.  Never that is, until now.

The fact that Obamacare was being implemented before I would finish my degree and return to the United States opened the door to me to attend the University of Cambridge.  To say yes to an opportunity that I believe may greatly enhance what I can do for the world in the short time I get to be a part of this world.  I will go home, and I will buy insurance.  I’ll pick something I can afford that covers my inhaler.  I will not be charged more simply for being female, and most importantly, no one will send my form back with the phrase “denied” stamped across the front of the letter.  No one will explain to me that their corporate profit margin is more important than my ability to continue to breathe, and no one will take away that coverage after I’ve paid for it because they as a company changed their mind about their ability to insure me.

The fear of going without coverage will never dominate my life again. That was my world.  I bought employment flexibility by pouring money into a secondary health insurance.  I bought security of mind by never being a day late, by buying top ramen and rice, and riding my bicycle to work so that in the pre-Obamacare world I would always know I had the healthcare I needed to continue to be a productive member of society.  I delayed graduate school, and worked a minimum of two jobs at a time.  All because I wanted to be healthy enough to contribute.

Yes.  Some people will have to change.  Yes.  Some policies will cost more.  No.  That’s not going to last forever. No, that's not necessarily a bad thing even if it's scaring you.  Obamacare is designed to reign in health care costs over the long run by reducing emergency room visits, upping the health of our population as a whole, so we’re catching disease earlier, and treating it when it’s cheaper to treat.  Obamacare is designed to extend all our lifetimes.  And I won’t lie, if you have been so lucky to have never had to ask yourself what you would do without insurance.  So lucky to have never watched a loved one struggle with a company for life-saving treatment.  So lucky to think that the worst possible thing is an increase in insurance rates from one year to the next if you’re unwilling to change policies, then I would ask you to take off those rose colored glasses and take a look around.

Almost 50 million Americans are getting insurance for the first time.  Millions of others are like me, and are experiencing the freedom to take risks, go to school to become more qualified, apply for new jobs, that we never could have taken when our lives were governed by an insurance policy.  And try to remember, skeptics that you may be, that the day may come yet when you or a loved one is lying in a hospital bed, thanking their lucky stars, because without Obamacare, their treatment would have been denied, they would have hit their lifetime cap of care, or you might have just been eliminated from a policy, and weren’t, because Obamacare protected you--the consumer, and you, the American, and you the Human Being--because you have value and the value of a human life and opportunity should not be weighed against corporate profit and found lacking.

Even if, lets say, you NEVER would have had to have faced any of that because you are just so damn lucky, you will still be better off in a nation whose economy benefits froma healthier workforce, whose children grow up well, whose people don't live in fear, and can take this opportunity to better themselves, start businesses, take risks because they are not tied to a single employer for a single policy. You will benefit, and even if you can't see it now, you will benefit directly.

Yes, it’s easy for me to see that because I am a immediate beneficiary.  Yes, it sucks to pay a little more each month for something you are required by law to buy. Yes, sometimes it sucks to not be totally self-focused, and selfish about an industry such as healthcare. Having to think about the nation as a whole, and people who aren't as well off as you is difficult.  And yes, Obamacare will change America.  I honestly can’t wait.  As a citizen of the most inequal society that has ever existed, it’s nice to breathe the fresh air of a little change.

Christmas Reflections: NOT SAPPY.

       December 19th.
       I'm not the kind of person who counts down the days to a holiday.  Whether Christmas is in a week or a year or a month or tomorrow isn't that exciting.  Sparkling lights, ringing bells and carols are more a reminder that another year---once tiptoeing in---has inevitably slipped away.  The days after Christmas come easier to me than the days before.  The sky is lighter each day starting on the 22nd, and life's easy routines are back by the beginning of January.  Miserable drives to work in the freezing rain.  Cookie season.  Another chance to set New Year's Resolutions that I'll be ignoring within 6 weeks.  Improv classes start back up, and usually I get a cold.
       In other words, life.  Being in another place means that as of yet, my regular routines haven't been interrupted, or disrupted.  Lectures are over, but labs and libraries and study rooms are still open.  There's more for me to read in the next four weeks than I think anyone is capable of reading in a lifetime.  The weather's gotten milder.  Sunny every day for the last week.  But other than the fact that the in-town parking lot now has the "full" sign lit up every day, and the crowd back in the colleges is looking more and more international as everyone wanders home, not much else has changed.
     Here and there you'll find a Christmas tree, and some shop windows have strung up lights.  But in comparison to the virtual Christmas Cornucopia of Capitalism that invades every aspect of my life starting in October in the US, this is pretty tame.  Almost September-level for what I consider my culturally appropriate Christmas-time-meter at home.
     And honestly, I don't at all know that I mind.  Holidays are complicated little messes for my family at the best of times, and I would be lying if I said in any way shape or form that this year represented a "best of times" for us as a group.  All roosters come home to nest, and the diaspora that hits even easy happy families as adulthood hits the kids, is in full effect.  Holidays, a chance to have your loyalties vetted, to see where you stand and they are more complicated than ever.  Siblings, parents, my grandmother who probably doesn't know or care that it's Christmas anyway.  Siblings partners families meaning we balance when and where and how on top of a rattly cage that can barely hold all our emotions in anyway.  
     I tend to grit my teeth and bear it.  Doing "Christmas" because I have younger siblings who deserve a family at the holidays.  Who still haven't spread their wings to fly, and for whom having that picture, that Christmas tree and string of lights, with gifts and a train underneath, still seems to mean something.  Who deserve to have a holiday even if I wish I were making time and a half pay washing dishes or playing at data entry or whatever else it is I do to get by with each passing year.
       But this year I don't have a choice.  The cost of a plane ticket home over the holidays would have been more than my entire cost of living for the next three months.  That's what happens when you move half way across the world.  And while I miss the chances to sip hot coffee with my friends, to wander through the zoo with families and their kids, marveling at the lights, to write a ridiculous Christmas letter about how I am still single, still happy and forever childless, I think a quiet Cambridge Christmas, spent wrapping my brain around the idea of gendering epistemologies, is exactly what I need.

   Merry Christmas ya'll--from Callie, the Grinch.

The Colosseum: Callie Consults Wikipedia.

       Rome in December is a balmy 65 degrees.  In the sun.  After a cold wet British fall that even puts Portland to shame in terms of long grey days and endless drizzly nights, the idea of sun at all is sort of mind blowing.  The idea of sun all day, or even standing in line in the sun, is sort of like the idea of a space elevator. AKA, that's nice, but come back to reality.  All of which made standing in line, outside, in the sun, for tickets to peruse the largest bit of Roman architecture still "standing" (ish) almost unbelievable.  The Colosseum is like Big Ben.  These things are real, but in a far-away-I'll-never-see-them since.  Having seen both within two and a half months is disconcerting.  At best.  For 12 Euro (18ish dollars) you can tour not only the Colosseum, but several other historical sites as well.  For 18 Euro (more dollars) you can have a guide.  12 Euro was pushing it.  No guide.  That meant that when I finally got back into the hostel last night all I wanted to do was read about ancient Rome.  So I did.  And now you are the beneficiaries.  Concocted from Wikipedia, signs on site and helpful things I gleaned from trying to steal into other people's tours, my little sum-up of the Colosseum, aka the largest-sports-arena-ever-known-to-man.      
      The Roman Colosseum, perhaps more correctly referred to as the Flavian Amphitheatre, is to this day, according to Wikipedia (well known as the font of all knowledge) the largest amphitheatre in the world.  At one time the massive structure played host to crowds of between 50,000 and 80,000 per event.  Originally the wooden floor of the arena/stage could be removed and the empty pit below flooded so that the emperor Titus (heir to Vespasian) could watch elaborately staged "sea battles" in addition to the gladiatorial combat and wild animal hunts.  Built initially in just over ten years, the Colosseum was upgraded, repaired, remodeled, and re imagined by Roman Emperors for over 500 years before finally falling into disuse, disrepair and starting to crumble in the 7th century A.D.
       Today the Colosseum is the largest single structure left from Rome in the world.  It towers meters above the tourists wandering outside, and is in a perpetual state of repair.  Scaffolding hugging the exterior of the building, and tan men with bright yellow hard helmets and orange vests occasionally appearing in the midsts of the crowds of onlookers and tourists who wander through by the thousands day after day.  Originally over 150 feet tall, and over 600 feet in diameter, the Colosseum is to this day a sight to behold.  Over a thousand years of earthquakes, political dynasty shifts and scavenging have left the building a hull of it's former self.  Originally adorned in white marble, with frescos decorating hallways and statues lining the arched exterior, today brick shows through.  The wooden floor of the arena is long gone, and the tunnels below it were turned into graves, and then emptied out by archaeologists seeking out history.  Recycled from the heart of the Roman Empire's entertainment the Colosseum has been a church, a castle, a quarry.  Held stables, and tool sheds, and monks and squatters.  With Rome collapsing around it the Colosseum stands even today as a reminder of what once was.  A visual note that empires do not last forever, and that when the mighty fall their bones are ground to dust at the same rate as those of beggars.
       Despite popular belief, the Colosseum was not actively used to martyr Christians.  There were indeed executions staged there, but surprise surprise, public executions were not what drew Romans by the thousands to sit on the marble steps, eat hot food sold by vendors who had access to ovens below, and drink wine---allotted by pre-given tokens.  Romans came to watch sport.  Teams of gladiators battling for favor, victory and life.  Hunters (men and even sometimes women in the later years) chasing prey that ranged from rabbits to tigers through elaborate sets meant to imitate the natural habitat of the hunted.  Executions served to pass the time.  When sets were being removed, or lunch was being served and people might be wandering about.  In other words, they wanted to keep things busy, but certainly didn't want to spoil the main attractions.
       Standing in the Colosseum it's hard to imagine the might of the Roman Empire.  A people who before electricity and steam engines and penicillin, could erect this structure in barely 10 years.  A people whose iron fisted rule governed the extent of the known world, and whose Republic inspired the idea of people as equals for generations to come, and who even then, fell into despotism and decay.  The child of an empire, raised in it's shadow and beholden to it's glory, I find the idea that empires rise, fall and then fade into antiquity one that is humbling. Rome, a modern metropolis situated in the midst of the ruins of an empire long faded, is a reminder that we can neither imagine the world behind us, or the world to come.  Time is a bitter mistress and in the end none can stray from her steady gaze.  Not emperors and not street urchins.
       From the Colloseum, it's a short walk up the hill, through a series of arches, to where the emperor's palace once stood.  Standing on the edge of the hill, with the sun settling over the western sky, it's easy to imagine that one day this bustling city will shift and change unimaginably. Harder is to have any idea of what it might someday look like.
      On a lighter note, guess what I saw yesterday?  Also: the icecream here is good.

Jelly Babies, Stress Eating and Rome.

       Jelly Babies are what power the Newnham Women's Boat Club.  So I have been told.  They are small, powdered sugar covered chewy candies with oddly soft centers.  They come in a variety of flavors (aka colors) and they have names.  The back of the package tells you what to call them and provides fun facts about their individual personalities.  As a person who is capable of anthropomorphizing everything, this is a candy which suits me well.  It was also the only thing available at the airport boots Sunday morning for under two quida  bag, and as I am incapable of flying without engaging in a fair amount of stress eating first, had gotten myself a bag of Jelly Babies, and was picking out all the "Bubbles" (aka yellow-flavor) first when it occurred to me--as it does every time I fly--that I was not only going to eventually die, but that "eventually" could be sometime within the next four hours, and that my death might in fact be preceded by the most terrifying three minutes of my life as the plane fell from the sky.
       Logic isn't something I excel at when airplanes are concerned, and the older I get the more it becomes apparent that I'm going to keep flying, and keep traveling, and that flying is really the most sensible way to simply and affordably get from place a to place b and still maintain any semblance of a job.  So with t-30 minutes to boarding I moved onto "Bumpers" (aka orange-flavor).  I always feel bad eating Bumpers, because Bumpers is the drummer in the Jelly Babies band, and without a drummer, what's a band?  Bumpers is also the second best color/flavor and the least sticky of all the Jelly Babies.
       Moving on from Bumpers to Baby Bonnie--pink--I kept glancing at the arrival-departure board.  Ryanair does not apparently announce their gate numbers until 15 minutes before boarding.  This seems to be a combination of hoping that people wont' gather at the gate, and honest-to-god-maybe-actually-not-knowing.  We were the 9:10am Stansted, London to Ciampano (rhymes with champion) Rome flight.  Two hours, 17 minutes and approximately 4 cups of sugars worth of Jelly Babies stress eating from me standing on the actual European mainland and chalking the number of contents I've had my boots on up to four.
       North America was fun.  I think.  Having been born there I don't actually remember my first day, but I imagine that it was traumatic and engaging.  India (asia) blew my mind.  Africa humbled me and gave me a good taste of my own uppity-ness and weakness.  Europe?  No idea yet.
       As to whether or not the UK is a part of the European continent proper I have no idea.  Maybe?  Maybe not?  Depends who you ask?  Italy?  Solidly.  For sure.  But for a mainland European nation, it reminds me oddly of the center of Guatemala City.  Except that here I have no idea what's going on.  And it's colder.  Than Guatemala.  Warmer though, than the UK.  To date (in the one day I've been here) we've seen the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Forum Romanum, the Arch of Constantine, Tajan's Column, The Arch of Titus, The Column of Marcus Aurelius, several musems and a shit ton of tourist shops full of the same magnets (only 1 Euro) and bonafide Italian scarves (made in China).
       The list of things yet today before I buy myself another bag of Jelly Babies or Mars Bars at the Ciampano airport in anticipation of my next stress-eating adventure, is enormous.
       In the meantime I actually miss my camera for the first time since the little lens on it froze up, and regret dropping my phone---as minus both of those things,  I have no camera at all--not a problem in Cambridge, but apparently I like making facebook albums of pretty things more than I'd thought I did.  Hopefully since I can't take another photo of a fountain that's been photographed a thousand times, I'll just appreciate seeing the fountain for realzies even more.
       Well, as they say here Ciao, and stay away from Big Heart.  He plays bass and tastes like cough syrup.