Love in Dark Settings

"Why do I feel a whiff of 'Dante' here?"

Because it's my translation of Dante? :)

"By the way, I just returned from Florence"

Oo, neat! I went there with my mother when I was twenty-seven . . . and then was frustrated during the whole trip because (as you no doubt noticed) the entire city is filled to the brim with plaques quoting The Divine Comedy. I didn't know Italian, and I didn't have a copy of the The Divine Comedy to check the verse references. It drove me crazy.

My Italian-American mother was of no help in translating, by the way. I'd spent the entire time in France trying to train her to say "Pardon" rather than "Scusi," and the moment we crossed the border into Italy, she began saying "Pardon" to all the Italians she bumped into.

Am finally plowed out of memorial event plans, so now I can start to tackle my backlog of e-mail. If Hurricane Ike lets me.