The Aerie

Happy Alberti Day!

Hey y'all. I wanted to blog this yesterday, but I was too busy partying? Why?

Because yesterday was "Alberti Day"!

Yes, it's carved in stone somewhere, so it MUST be true.

Alberti Day was named on behalf of the first Italian settler on Long Island. To put things in perspective, when this guy stepped off the boat, Columbus' discovery of America was not as old as the Civil War is to us now.

Along those lines, my friend Giovanna has clued me into the fact that if you can trace your ancestry back to Italy, you can become an Italian citizen! And since my father's father was from Palermo, I have the opportunity to undertake the multi-year quest to gain Italian citizenship.

This is no small thing! WIth such citizenship, I could get work in the European Union, and also I could own property in Italy. Here comes my Tuscan retirement villa! Gio has offered to help me out with this quest, with the caveat that she's moving to England in the fall in order to become an archaelologist.

Other than that, the news is that I'm continuing my quest to NOT work more than 40 hours a week, in the hopes that this will improve my health. It helps that I was given the resources of another individual to assist me, so I can give him the extra 20 hours that I've been working every week. So I've been trying to get my more bicycle rides in, and to get to the gym a little bit more. Also my wife has been helping me with nutrition.

Speaking of my lovely spouse, we recently celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary, which strikes me as completely nuts. That means of course that we celebrated the 20th anniversary of our engagement. Here's the thing - nobody told me that life accelerates so fast as you age! It just doesn't feel like we've been married for twenty years. Heck, I don't feel like I've done ANY particular thing for Twenty Years, although I know that I have.

Anyway we had a lovely trip down in Red Wing, which photographs I'll post when I have a minute. Lots of shots of turkey vultures flying over bluffs. We stayed in the St. James Hotel, which has regrettably (or not depending on your dietary condition) canceled its Sunday Morning Gorge Fest, also known as the Sunday Breakfast Buffet.

The weather being fine, we ate an ordinary breakfast out on the patio. I enjoyed listening to the fifty-something woman behind me discuss politics with her husband, the highlight of which conversation was when she started a sentence with the phrase, "Well, the word on the street is..." I almost choked on my coffee. I wonder if she also spoke "Jive"?

So hopefully I'll be blogging and writing a little more than I've been able to over the past couple of months. I know, promises, promises...

Posted by Albatross at June 3, 2008 3:50 PM | TrackBack