Books, bubble baths and Italian dreaming

Wow, it felt great to sleep in this weekend. I finally got my sleeping arrangements straightened out. Feeling a little prima donna, I have so much padding on the bed, but the matresses here are ultra firm. Sure, support is great, but if I wanted to sleep on the floor, I would have.

Now, every time I go in the bedroom to get something or put something away, the bed calls to me, as does the big bathtub, in which I actually started to doze last night.

Rented some movies this weekend to get caught up. Zodiac: Bloody but worth it. It's really well done and the script is written from notes and books and remembrances of the actual people involved. and it was great see San Francisco, cool to see they used an old Modesto Bee (yay, Bee!) in one of the shots, and, in a random six-degrees moment, cool when one of the characters said he was reading a crime investigation book written by my friend David's grandfather, even mentioning Dr. Snyder by name.

Not so great: Lonely Hearts (even with our friend James Gandolfini and John Travolta) and Lucky You.

Thought I might rent more tonight, but chose Barnes & Noble instead. I can never get out of there without a bag of stuff, but I love having books piled up waiting to be read. It feels nice to read again, even though I'm still slow. For almost a year, starting when mom died, I couldn't concentrate long enough to even get through books I'd already read several times, let alone comprehend something new. Someone gave me a book right after the funeral, and I vaguely remember vaguely reading it (yes I meant to repeat myself) over about a month and a half, when usually it would have taken me three days, tops. I remember thinking it was good, but can't recall even one sentence from it now.

Now I'm down to about three weeks for a book I'm into. That's progress, I guess. I'm reading "No Reservations," about a journalist who decides she's going to take a year off her "real" life and travel Europe. It's good so far, but makes me feel inadequate for not having some great artsy reasons for going to Italy in the first place and for not writing adequately about it afterward. But maybe now I have enough persepctive on it to get out my travel journal, look back over my daily entries and write something coherent, just for myself.

Although I'm ready to read, I'm not ready for Jane Austen yet. My sister's copy of "Pride and Predjudice" will have to sit on my side table a while longer. So I got a Dave Barry book, my new AP style book for work (what a geek, I know, but I'm excited to have it in hand again, instead of online) and my Italy and Tuscany calendars for next year. The pictures are so pretty I wish it was already time to hang them up.

I'm already dreaming about my next big trip, which will definitely be a return to Italia. If I had a year to live in Italy, I'd start in Rome and walk every street until I'd seen everything at least twice and found, well, everything. I'd get to know the city like a friend. Then I'd do the same in Florence and Venice. I'd see the Amalfi Coast and Capri, Calabria, the Cinque Terre, Naples and Milan.

For now, I can look at my pictures, write about my trip and start making plans.