Italian Holiday

Who says you can't plan a trip halfway around the world in a week? We had been planning to go on a babymoon for quite some time and had decided to venture to Italy, where neither of us had ever been. We originally hoped to go in early March, but work kept on getting in the way -- not uncommon here in Silicon Valley. With the clock ticking, we finally decided that we just had to go. Thanks to Mobissimo, we found a good deal on the flight and bought tickets on Thursday to depart for Italy the following Thursday. With the flight settled, I spent a crazy week tying up loose ends at work, making hotel arrangements, figuring out how to get from one city to another within Italy, and planning our itinerary. I'm going to post my reviews of the various places we visited and stayed at in successive blogs. In the meantime, we're getting ready to fly from Rome back to the States tomorrow, having spent two nights in Florence, two nights in Venice, and three nights (not counting tonight) here in Rome. Ciao!

Out of Whoppers

While traveling in Las Vegas with my wife and in-laws, my brother-in-law David and I made a lunch run to Burger King. My father and mother-in-law had asked us to bring back Whoppers for them, but David surprised me by ordering double cheeseburgers – which were on sale for $0.99 – for them instead. He explained that, on an earlier trip to Wendy’s, our father-in-law had spent a long time ordering what turned out to be a plain hamburger. David later discovered that it wasn’t that our father-in-law didn’t like cheese or particularly desired a plain hamburger, but rather that he wanted some sort of hamburger product for as little money as possible. However, by trying to figure out the best value on his own, he ended up spending $1.50 for a plain hamburger when he could have enjoyed a bacon cheeseburger for $0.99. So this time around David decided to take matters into his own hands, insisting that our parents-in-law probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.

He was almost right. Everyone was happily munching on his or her sandwich when my mother-in-law asked, “Didn’t I order a Whopper?” I nearly busted my gut when David responded, without losing a beat, “Oh yeah. They were out of Whoppers.” Our wives looked up in surprise, only to meet David’s mischievous smile. Our mother-in-law simply responded, “Oh,” and went back to eating.

The real kicker is what happened the next day, when David and I were sent to Wal-Mart for supplies. Our father-in-law asked us to bring back a bottle of Jergens lotion for extra-dry skin. We had split up the list of items, so I didn’t notice the lotion until we were standing in the check-out line. I almost died laughing when I noticed that, while David had indeed grabbed a bottle of lotion for extra-dry skin, the bottle was not a bottle of Jergens lotion. Instead, David had grabbed a bottle of Equate lotion, Wal-Mart’s generic brand!

Swish-Swoosh

We went to the doctor's earlier this week for a short checkup. No ultrasound this time, but the doctor did take out a device used to listen to the baby's heartbeat. It took a moment to find the heartbeat, but we eventually heard a steady, rapid swish-swoosh sound, like the mummuring of the wind over rushes. Very cool. We lost the hearbeat, and it took the doctor another moment of sliding the listening device over Deb's tummy to find it again. The doctor explained that the baby was quite actively swimming around in there. Also very cool.