when in Rome...

I'm keenly aware of the fact that, shortly after SWM gave me (and my good friend Laurie) props for having good blogs, I promplty dropped the proverbial blogging ball.

Before anyone else (namely SWM) has a chance to point out that fact, and in my defense, I'd like to offer a few pre-emptive points:

1. Good blogging takes time and energy, which are two things I have been short on since the aforementioned SWM prop-giving, partly because
2. I had a visitor last week, and
3. I was out of town for a few days. However,
4. it's not going to get much better for at least another week because
5. I'm leaving tomorrow to traipse around a few Italian towns for the next 10 days, and
6. even though I'm sure they have Internet Cafes readily available, they are (shockingly) not at the top of my "must see" list, and
7. if I should happen to experience any earth-shattering events while I'm there (such as falling in love with a fabulous Italian man),
8. I won't be taking the necessary time out of that whole thing just to tell YOU people about it, when
9. we ALL know the first thing I'll do is blog about it when I get home.

Yeah...so it's clearly not as eternally significant as the group of folks heading off to Cuba on Saturday (my prayers are with you guys)...but it IS Italy.