Not location specific, No rules: Welcome to ILX heaven

Patrizia, come stai?

Er, I don't know how I am yet, Michael. We only got as far as saying who we are and where we come from. Like the scouts.

But I'm guessing an acceptable answer to "come stai?" is "va bene", si?

My two favourite words so far are "piacere" and "salve". I didn't know people outside classical Rome got to say "salve". Deadly stuff.

Ha ha Ciao bella!

Wait until you get to the insults that the modern Romans use. Personal favourite: li mortacci tua! Basically explained to me as a curse on your dead relatives souls. Lovely stuff!

Ciao Kev-lolz.

What news from your wedding? What did you eat? How was your suit? What was the stag like? Tell all. I'm bored. (Not that I wouldn't be interested if I wasn't bored.)

Babysitters are like buses, you wait ages then two come along at once! Mum-in-law took Megan last night and my Mum's taking her tonight - meaning we get two nights sleep in a row! It's been so long since the last time that happened that we feel not a pang of guilt.

Tonight I am seeing iLiKETRAiNS and getting drunked with my wife! Yay us! Tomorrow I shall be onimoed.

(really hating typing that lower-upper-lower-upper-case shit - get one proper band name)

MAC hell, plz to be over today.

I would like to see iLiKETRAiNS but I am house-sitting for my maw-in-law who is going out to get drunked with her husband and needs someone to make sure the plumber doesn't nick stuff, so I shall be getting slowly drunked and screaming at the telly as Celtic get their arses kicked into the middle of next week by a team managed by a thug. Hurrah :-/

(onimo, would you require text updates?)

I'll probably catch the first half somewhere before going into King Tut's (not arsed about support acts tbh) but any texts after that would help, as long as they're about winning.

Wedding was fun accentmonkey. I won't go into much detail here but the wedding took place here:

http://www.abbazie.com/certose/foto/Certosa_FI_103.jpg
http://www.santantonio.org/messaggero_emi/upload/foto/1016.jpg
http://www.marcuslink.com/travel/Europe2002/images/02-certosa-01x.jpg

Reception (with lots of lovely nibbles, drinks and the best food I have ever had at a wedding) took place here:

Sadly all my pics are at home so this is the best I can do. Of the 10 (!) ushers none of the English speakers had been sent the email confirming that we were to only wear ordinary dark suits. That was pretty indicative of the chaos we were working with. It all worked out wonderfully though, everyone had dressed formally, most were wearing DJs and the locations served to keep everyone (mostly) in high spirits. The bride's dress was a pearl-ish colour, criss-crossing lines of diamantes across a slightly rough-materialed bustier. She looked wonderful. Neither could stop grinning or giggling. Great stuff. The groom wore a grey-ish suit (pale pink and brown stripes) and with gold-ish tie, top hat of same material (not brilliantly made sadly but really only needed for ten minutes in the end!). Groomsmen (i.e. me and 9 others) had to wear ordinary red ties on Groom's instruction. Didn't quite work with DJ but I looked fantastic as always. I'll put some pictures on facebook at some point. As usual, no faces just objects!

Reception took place here. Stupid lack of hotlinkability:

http://www.castellodibibbione.com/images/veduta%20aerea%202.jpg

Sausage update:

First batch went very well, but was quite a small quantity - just about a kilo, which probably serves 4 (although you could probably get 5 out of it). It's not nearly as difficult to stuff them as The Generation Game led us to believe.

I got a big bit of beef cheap in the supermarket last night so am going to do another batch at the weekend, this time in a big enough quantity I will have some to give out to other people (about 2 1/2 kilos). This time I will take photos.

Fucken hell, kev-lolz! That place looks like it should be overrun with spies/writers/artists/popes.

Aldo, I await with bated breath the photos of you filling your sausages.

Man, there's no end to the humour in that.

Hullodere evvabody.

What a great week. I'm beat.

That looks like an awesome place for a wedding.

Week of suckage here. Numerous fires to put-out at work. I will be burnt-out myself soon.

And I get home at 7:30 last night (needing to work) to discover G. had added a kitten to our menagerie. Now I'm not anti-kitten by any means but adding new animals is a decision fraught with much hand-wringing for me. His haste stressed me. As did dealing with baby cat, big mean cat and two dogs who were licking their chops. Oh also the peeing on us in the bed early this morning.

Not good timing.

Next door's cat appears to like us, or at least seems to think we are still the people who lived here before us. The last few evenings, clattering heralds the sound of the cat trying to get in our kitchen window (if you've seen the knife block, candles, ornamental chicken and plant pots that live on our kitchen windowsill, you'd realise this is a thankless task). Whenever I am cooking, the cat is sitting either at the patio doors or on the bin outside the window, trying frantically to attract my attention. For now I am ignoring it, because I don't want it to get into the habit of thinking we want to adopt it (even though I secretly would like to part-own the cat, my hayfever and my husband may not share this)

Just feed it and keep it outside! That might satisfy it and then you wouldn't have to deal with allergies/husband.

Oh Mis, that sucks :( Still though: Kitten. WANT.

Fascinated at idea of ornamental chicken... Ignore cat, it will only end in (allergy caused) tears...

Oh as per comments that yes it was a nice place to have wedding: It was fantastic. Does anyone use picasa by the way? Is it possible to link from pictures?

Yay! I has MAC and it is with my new supplier. I will soon be able to ACTUALLY USE new computer.

kv, I don't think so. At least not the version I use. It just allows you to work with photos but will upload directly to a hosting service (flickr) or blog.

Ornamental chicken = a thing I bought in John Lewis about six years ago - it is a rooster with wire legs and tail feathers and sort of hardened papier-mache stuff, it is a sort of dark mottled yellow (the sort of yellow that I associated with Spanish bars and cafes) with sort of terracotta-y red bits and it matches my kitchen perfectly (it used to sit on my fireplace where it matched my old living room). If I knew where the camera was, I would take a photo.

(the body is the hardened papier mache stuff, the tail feathers and legs are fashioned from wire)

kv, I don't think so. At least not the version I use. It just allows you to work with photos but will upload directly to a hosting service (flickr) or blog.

Ummm I don't think I understand. Is it like a halfway house: I collate everything there, it connects to my flickr account and that's it? HELP ME I R TECHNOLOJCLY DUMM!!

Somehow ailsa that sounds remarkably like I imagined it... No. I lie, I thought it was a teapot!

Aldo: YAY! etc.

Yes, it's kind of like a free photoshop for people who don't really need photoshop. (downloads your photos, organizes them, allows you to make minor adjustments, size, etc.)

The connecting directly to Flickr is optional. You'll save them on your computer and can always upload to Flickr the old-fashioned way.

Actually I can't seem to upload quickly to flickr Ms Mis. It asks for me to confirm who I am, I enable cookies on firefox but then it says "enable cookies you fraudster" and I am left uploading one at a time. Any thoughts?

When you're in the browser? I don't know. I had a Flickr account before they were bought by yahoo. Maybe you need to register a yahoo account now?

(Does it really call you a fraudster?)

Picasa will host your pictures online on Picasaweb, but you can only see them if you're signed into google, I think.

If you upload them to your Facebook photo book, you can link to them if you open the photos in a separate window so that you get its unique URL, if you know what I mean?

Oh also the peeing on us in the bed early this morning.

Oh yes, this is always a fun stage. We got around it with smidger by keeping a litter tray in the bedroom, but she still peed on us. Now she's not allowed in the bedroom anymore. Just like all cats before her. I don't get why they do this, really.

Yeah we have a litter tray for her but I don't think she knows how to use it yet. I wish we could get Wheezy to teach her but I don't think that will happen. Queen Wheezy is very displeased with this new development.

She hadn't gone at all since we brought her in and I was cuddling with her around 5 this morning, wondering when/where she would go. She kept trying to get away from me to go over to G. (he's like Dr. Dolittle, all the the animals love him more). I finally let her go and then he woke up saying he was peeing on her. Ha-haw.

When you're in the browser? I don't know. I had a Flickr account before they were bought by yahoo. Maybe you need to register a yahoo account now?

I have one!

(Does it really call you a fraudster?)

Sadly not :(

Fraudster!

I like it when you get saucy error messages.

I am so tired. Why why why is it that when I get in drunk on BEER and cocktails that I can't just go straight to bed and have to stay up til 2.30am listening to pop songs and flipping through old magazines?! It's not even as if my vision weren't blurred so I could actually READ them! IDIOT! So so tired, can barely even type now and work is so busy yet all I can do is refresh gmail...

Aldo - your sausage sounds a bit of alright. I think I might need to eat sausage. I have eaten scando ponce food today. And a packet of Wotsits. And a FUDGE. And drunk a tonne of strong coffee. Feel very strange. Oh blegh.

My sympathies, Sarah. I got precious little sleep last night but I am shockingly uncrapulent.

I nipped out for a quick pint after work last night and was still in there (more or less) at closing. Surprisingly unonimoed.

Whilst I am rambling on about nothing I must say that I am impresed with AMAZON - I placed an order at about 11am yesterday, paid for 1st class postage (bcz one part was a textbook I needed like last WEEK) and woosh - there it was on my desk when I got into work the following morning! Very glad I didn't pay the extra for their EXPRESS delivery cos it was express anyway! Yay!

MW: I think it is the coffee slump now more than anything! And the fact that today I just HAD to buckle down and send off some things which were horrible and I've been putting off and putting off. Ah well. Hometime soon. NOT staying late today. Not physically possible anyway!

I am listening to some gongs. Not Gong. Gongs.

What I *really* don't need now is someone ringing me up and telling me about their new policy relating to the collection and use of human tissue...

... but that's wot I got :(

I'm glad I didn't get that...

Still sick, and think my cold is moving out of the way for bronchitis, so I imagine this will be a super fun weekend (it's already ruined all my plans for the week, the bastard...)

I would like a new kitten, but not as much as the two big dogs would like one, so no kitten for me.

Sarah, how was your run? Sorry, I mean YR RUN?

Sorry you're sick Luna. There will be more weekends in lovely southern California.

I would like a new kitten, but not as much as the two big dogs would like one, so no kitten for me.

Haha, yeah same here. We're definitely going to have be supervising things closely and keeping them apart for awhile. I think a small, furry, scurrying thing is just too much for our dogs' strong prey instinct.

Same with mine. I think Zero would genuinely like to play, but Zoe... well, I suspect Zoe is looking for something more like a snack.

Dogs gotta eat.

Our dogs are alternately baffled by and afraid of our kitten. Who is not much of a kitten anymore, reall. She's getting to be a real live cat now.

Reall?

I meant fo' realz, obv.

Aw, our dog got on well with both of our cats when I had dogs and cats in my younger days. I think Sandy (dog) was kind of confused by sudden appearance of The Cat, but by the time the The Ginger Cat came along (necessitating The Cat's name to be changed to The Grey Cat) he was fine with it and they became bestest of friends.

Yr dog wz a pussy

The dogs have no problem with grown cats. They understand they are fellow family members who are allowed on the furniture (unlike them) and are not to be messed with.

It's just baby cats I worry about. Poor thing. None of them want her around.

Poor smidger. Nobody loves her.

I do let my dogs on the furniture. Because, fuck it, nobody visits me anyway.

Ah, see, we got both our cats as grown-ups, The Grey Cat chose us after getting fed up with her current owners, and The Ginger Cat was taken from the rescue home after The Grey Cat moved on from us to a family across the road.

I prefer grown-up cats. Mostly b/c kittens almost always will get adopted before adults will. I pity the unwanted.

This one is the baby of one of the neglected cats we've been feeding. I had been aiming to eventually take one of them in but this kitten was on our front porch chair yesterday. So far none of the kittens have ventured across the street from the drug dealers' house. They are moving (yay!) and G. thinks they left it on our porch so we'd take care of it. Hmm. I disagree but I'll let him stick with his romantic story.

It's black, opposite of white Q-Tip who I had to put down last Dec., so I'm calling her Bizarro Q-Tip at the moment.