Hit It

Episode 3 recap, which sucks a lot less than last week's did

It's Bootylicious, Baby!

and the embers never fade in the city by the lake

i'm generally not a person to be homesick. not now, nor have i ever been. i'm pretty happy where i am, for the most part.

i've spent considerable time out of america in the past few years and i can honestly say that i have never once wanted to be at home instead. but everyday, there's little things that i miss and some days, the little things add up to make one slightly larger, but still pretty minimal trigger. that's what happened today.

my mom sent 11 magazines in the mail to me for valentine's day and i finally got around to reading the latest esquire which had a 14 page section dedicated to delicious sandwiches. we're not talking simple turkey and swiss on whole wheat, we're talking about chipotle chicken salad and avocados and pepperjack cheese and ranch dressing lumped a good inch thick onto fat slices of grilled sourdough bread. something inside of me died a little when i just wrote that sentence because out of all of those ingredients, the only thing i can get here are avocados which is kind of like saying go play a round of texas hold 'em with just these 13 spades. good luck with that.

italy does not have sandwiches. they have thin crispy prosciutto mozzarella paninos (technically, panini is the plural of panino, but whatever. i wont go all italian grammar on your asses) and those are fine and yummy mind you, but they are not big delicious filling sandwich creations. i'm not even sandwich crazy for the most part. but pretty much every restaurant at home carries some sort of sandwich option. and you don't realize how much you want those options until they are gone. so, lesson one of this post, is i really want a friggin delicious sandwich. now.

then, i was doing some general scouring of transport options for the eurotrip this summer and had to deal with feisty airline sites in spanish, french, and italian. and yeah, most of them had english options, which i used, but they'll "forget" to translate the error messages or the "this page did not process and here's why" messages and they'll tell you to call but no, thanks, i don't feel like calling spain/france/italy and asking habla ingles/parlez vous anglais/parla inglese for 20 minutes until someone with remedial english comes on the line and we can pow-wow it out with my remedial spanish, laughable french, or semi-literate italian.

i managed to have the new jack johnson cd shipped out to me (which i was really disappointed in, by the way) and realized that i have no idea what is going on in music at all at home or even over here really since i don't have a radio. i'm plugged into the same 3989 songs on my ipod. once upon a time i was obsessed with new music and once upon another time i actually worked at a radio station so i had to know new music like it was my job. you know, cause it was.

so finally after deciding that my 3 mile park walk today essentially overrode the need to run on the treadmill, i turned on the italian telly and what was on? ferris bueller. obviously one of my favorite movies ever and obviously one of the greatest love letters to chicago. my heart ached for one of the perfect unseasonably hot (not warm, hot) spring days and i killed for a car and lake shore drive and the skyline.

i would never want to cut out on rome - i don't want it or miss it that bad. on days like today though, i just wish i could be two places at once. namely, here in rome, but also simultaneously driving down lake shore drive in may with the windows down, listening to chicago radio, and shoving a fantastic sandwich/hot dog/cheeseburger in my mouth.

take two

here ya go

due to technical difficulties of all kinds, it's late this week. but on the brightside, now it's up on monday, so you have something to do when you're bored at work this morning. have yourself a chuckle.