one week and counting

today, of all days, is monday. i would say it's a monday like any other except that exactly one monday from this monday, i will be leaving on a jet plane that will take me far far away to italy. i haven't been since the summer of 2002, when i spent a 5 week semester (yeah, let me tell you how much i studied) there in between "real" semesters in college. this will be a short trip, but one i've been waiting for for over a year now. actually, i've been waiting for this trip since my flight returned me to the us of a back in 2002...so it's a long time coming to say the least. i'll do one night in rome, two in florence and one in venice, where i will meet up with the rest of my family and we'll cruise on out of venice for the greek isles. life is rough, isn't it?? i've never been to greece before and my inner art history nerd is beyond thrilled at the chance to get to see all those monuments and artworks i studied for so long in college and in high school. i almost don't even know what to do with myself, i'm just so excited about it. granted, that's not a lot of time to spend in italy, but i'll take what i can get at this point, because it's been too long since i've had geniune italian gelato or bought some handmade in italy leather shoes! i don't have any real plans about what i want to do or see just yet, but i still have a week to at least come up with a (short!) list of what i want to see in italy...and our cruise will be a week long, too, so i have no complaints at the moment. i haven't been out of the office for 2 weeks since i started working at the age of 23 (hey, it took some of us a while to get out of college, ok? what's your hurry??), so the time off is also just icing on the cake. i promise photos when we get back, IF i come back!!

why is it always so dark in las vegas???

i do not know if you are a fan of csi: las vegas, but i am for sure (grissom, if you're reading this, call me!!!xoxo) and for as many episodes as i've seen (and re-seen) i can never seem to get over the fact that it is almost always entirely dark in every scene. in the miami version, it's always orange. in the new york version, everything is blue-r than it should be. but in vegas, these people are constantly investigating crime scenes in the pitch black darkness of someone's house or some field in the middle of nowhere with their flashlights and i have to wonder if the sun just doesn't come up in vegas or what? even when they are inside and it's dark, they walk around with their flashlights, when - hello - why don't you just turn on the LIGHTS?? and still, in the complete darkness, they can manage to find a hair under a car seat, or a fingernail clipping buried in shag carpet. it's quite infuriating when you think about it, especially when you consider that in most episodes, they get all the evidence, get dna results back, and put the guilty party in jail (and by the way, i do not know much about the way the judicial system or whathaveyou works, but i'm pretty sure that crime scene investigators do not find the evidence, question the suspect, and then make arrests. there are like 3 sets of people who do that - do they not watch law & order??), one neat little hour long package for our viewing pleasure. granted, none of this is as infuriating as the fact that horatio on the miami version NEVER looks at anyone when he's talking to them, but that's beside the point. my point here is: 1. turn the freakin lights on and 2. we may be fat couch potatoes but we are not stupid so don't think i don't realise that you don't find a body and solve the crime all in one day. except that gil grissom is the smartest person alive so i guess he can do whatever he wants. i'll still watch it.