  My neighbor, who has previously been a jackass of enormous proportions, has returned from his Memorial Day weekend. How do I know? Because he's tooling around down there with some crumby music on, or a video game or something. He doesn't know how to keep the volume of things at an acceptible level. He leaves his amp cranked up (to 11) and has his two "Fuck you!
" "No, Fuck you! " jackass friends over until all hours. I was kind of hoping he was gone for the summer with a job in his home town, but it seems my speculation that he'd be in summer school was accurate. He recently got a new girlfriend (or one-nighter, since I haven't heard her over there since), and that night he played his bassy music until 4am, at which time the headboard started hitting the wall, and she started screaming. I didn't want to call management about this, so I made a point to talk very loudly the next day about how the loser (he really is a loser, you should see him) had gotten laid, and wasn't I embarassed for him, etc. I don't know if he heard me, but she hasn't been back since. Sixty days until he moves to a different apartment.
At least the apartment complex management like me enough to tell me these things. Today I spent the entire day on the internet reading about Italy and Sicily. There's a 25% chance (and probably lower, actually) that a paper I wrote will be accepted to a conference in Sicily, and I will get to go to the conference to talk about it. Since this means a mostly free trip to Italy, I figured I'd spend an extra week there. Yes, the odds are very low that the paper will be accepted, but it's fun to dream. In my little dream, I'm going to fly into Sicily, landing on Sunday morning. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday is the conference, ending Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday afternoon I'll take one of the fast trains from the boot tip of Italy to Naples where I'll stay until Friday morning. Friday morning I'll go to Rome by train, and see Rome until I leave for Florence on Monday morning. I'll leave Florence for Venice on Wednesday morning, and leave Venice for Rome on Friday morning.
Saturday morning I'll catch a plane out of Rome for Newark. The problem with this plan is which kind-souls will pet-sit for me and take me to Newark. It's a long vacation to take, I know, but when will I get this opportunity to get out there for so cheap again? And how much longer do I have to wait. Just reading about Italy made me hungry for it. The little cafes, the history, the people... all things I want to be a part of.
I'm sure "Under the Tuscan Sun" egged this on, too. Meanwhile, I was reading about Malta. Malta, while beautiful, is an island whose mainland is ten miles across, and not as many tall. Who let them be a country? They have population 300,000, which is like a small, suburban neighborhood. There are probably three grocery stores. It would be like letting Martha's Vineyard become its own country. Even weirder than that, though, is the country of Monaco, which is 0.76 square miles. France wants to reannex them as soon as there are no more heirs to the throne. I can't believe the French army couldn't just go in there and take them over. The only thing Monaco is good for as a country is the Monte Carlo district, which I guess France might not allow. So does Monaco get the same votes in the UN as, say, Brazil? Uncanny. 
