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!!