Scenes I hope pop up as my life flashes before my eyes. Numbers 1-25: 1. Carrying the sleeping Critter upstairs to bed. 2. Buying our first house. 3. Selling our first house. 4. Easter Mass at the Vatican. 5. Waking my bride up to point out the western-most Waffle House. 6. My crush on Casey what's-her-name when I was 5. 7. Riding an Irish draft horse through the Scottish Highlands. 8. Serving a whole roast pig. 9. Playing the banjo for my adopted grandmother in the nursing home. 10. My father drawing a picture to illustrate where hiccups come from. 11. Seeing the baby octopus in the Red Sea 12. Watching the doctor don a face shield when the Critter was born. 13. Making chorizo from scratch. 14. Walking through Westminster Abbey. 15. Visiting Traveler's grave at Washington and Lee university. 16. Washing my face in a pond at 13,000 feet in the Sangre di Cristo mountains. 17. The tomato salad at our wedding. 18. Eating my sister's country-fried steak. 19. Riding in an Army cargo plane to England. 20. Squirmy's ultrasound. 21. Seeing my mother compete in the Mrs. Georgia 1980 pageant. 22. Eating gelato in Venice. 23. Building a potato catapult. 24. Making biscuits and gravy with my grandmother. 25. Standing on top of Hadrian's wall with my daughter. Inspired to write my list by Mighty Girl. Now you write one, too.

People often tell me that they get very frustrated when they have to work in Italy. I'm luck enough to have the opportunity to come here a couple of times a year for my job, and I've always told people that when I travel to Italy, I just reset my expectations, and set my stress threshold down about twelve notches, and I'm fine. Which is really just a lesson that I should apply when traveling in general, I know. But there's something about coming to Tuscany that makes me willing to deal with things that I wouldn't otherwise be prepared to handle without serious amounts of alcohol or prescription strength medication. Today, I flew into Pisa on my way to Siena, which is the literal heart of Tuscany. There are no direct flights (of course), so I ended up flying Lufthansa from Manchester to Munich (which is a gorgeous airport, especially compared to the eternal post-modernist beast that is the Frankfurt airport), and then a small flight down from Munich to Pisa. The flight from Munich to Pisa was titled "Lufthansa", but was operated by one of those small, sub-contractor airlines that you get on the shorter routes. This one was Italian, titled "Il Duce Air" or something. We all got off the shuttle bus and trudged up the stairs to take our seats and prepare to go. The pilot came on the PA as we went through this routine and told us that our slot was delayed a bit, but he wanted to get us in the plane, just in case things improved. About this time, the passenger in front of me called the stewardess over to point at her window. Which had just fallen into her lap. The plastic liner had fallen forwards into the plane, and landed in her lap, and the plexiglass interior window had slid down to tilt precariously at her head. The exterior window still looked to be in place, but the stewardess screwed her eyebrows together and then hurried to get the pilot. Oh boy, I thought. I'm never getting to Pisa tonight. The pilot came back and looked at the window and said "um.. we'll call maintenance". And then the stewardess moved the ladies from that row up to row 1, and opened a bottle of wine while we all sat and waited. About 10 minutes later, the maintenance guy showed up, took a look at the window, pulled out the precarious bits and said "oh, go ahead and fly. That inside window isn't important." Er. Ok. Then why, exactly do they put it there in the first place, I wonder? Excuse my murmurings. I suddenly got religion. We did take off, and we managed to make it to Pisa without explosive decompression, however, so score one for the insouciant maintenance guy. But wait. There's more. In Pisa, we had to de-plane and get on the little bus that drives you 50 feet to the terminal (because that large expanse of runway is dangerous to us ignorant civilians.) And we waited patiently in the baggage claim area for our luggage to be tossed onto the conveyor belt, talking about the miracle of our successful passage. And then our bags started coming through. After about three bags, however, the power shut off for the entire airport. Except for the P.A. system, which inexplicably continued to work, as they continued to call for other departing flights to begin boarding. In the next ten minutes, not a single word was said about the power being out, but some resourceful lady reached through the strips of tar paper screening the luggage conveyor belt from the outside where the baggage handlers were and started hauling in a bag. In about 30 seconds, all of us had formed a human luggage chain, like a suitcase bucket brigade pulling in the contents of our plane's cargo hold. What was fantastic about this was not that the passengers took it upon themselves to figure out how to cope, but that no one raised even an eyebrow at the power outage or the lady half crawling through the baggage chute to get the next suitcase and pass it back. The customs guy I passed on the way out kind of just shrugged as if to say 'Yeah. But what can you do?' I seriously do love this country.

Somehow, I missed "world turn-off-your-power-for-an-hour" day last week, because apparently, I live under a giant Republican rock. (I find it interesting that the environmental group doing the encouraging was titled the WWF - which I always associated with the World Wrestling Federation. I imagine having Hulk Hogan showing up telling you to turn the power off would be motivating. Too bad it wasn't sponsored by G.L.O.W.. Which would have worked on multiple levels.) Anyway, I ran across this comment on the hype of renewable energy which I reproduce because, well, it's worth reading. Solar energy at the DNA Lounge

Every few years, I read another article about solar power, and how there's been some new technological breathrough in efficiency, or some new incentive program, and soon all the buildings will have solar panels on their roofs and everything will be sweetness and light. Well, a few times now, we've actually investigated installing solar at DNA, and each time it has gone exactly like it went this last time. It's pretty comical, so I'll share it with you now. We've had this same exact conversation three times over the last eight years: We contact someone who has a business installing solar panels. We tell them, "It would be nice if we could do this for emotional or environmental reasons, but environmental reasons don't pay the bills, so we're not doing it for that reason. We're only going to do this if it saves us money." They say, "Oh, it will totally save you money! Since you use power at night, you'll be feeding power into the grid during the day, and buying it back more cheaply off-peak! It makes so much sense for you. It's like you're the optimal case. Now, if you'll just write me a check for $20,000..." "Whoa, hold up there, Sparky. How does me writing you a check for $20k save me money?", I ask. "Well, it will pay for itself in only 20 to 25 years! Then you'll be totally in the black." "Wow, you must be an investment banker, with a pitch like that." "Oh, and also there are all these rebates and incentive programs. The Government will pay you to install the system! Also, you can do an operating lease with no money up front, or a Power Purchase Agreement, or this, or that, and it doesn't cost a thing!" "Zero? Zero sounds great! Get back to us with some options." "Ok, so the installation will cost $100,000 before incentives, and after the tax credit and five years of depreciation, the hardware only ends up costing you $13,000!" "Is yours a hearing problem, or an understanding problem?" "But it will pay for itself in only 25 years! Maybe 30." "You are such a tool. Goodbye." Honestly, I can't tell if the problem with the people pushing solar is that they are earnest-but-incompetent hippies, or are just straight-up scam-artists. Either way, it seems like it'd be more efficient to actually set paper money on fire and use that heat to drive a turbine.