Amongst more Alaskan rain, we have been moving and organizing wood piles around our house. You see, certain ones must go in certain places: useable dry firewood by the house and in the garage, and the newly cut trees elsewhere for years to come.

In using commas (yet not in a series), I like Justin's comma discussion from his pseudo info page. Good stuff! Perfect for my English teacher bound self in about a week and a half............

In addition to that outside excitement (and it is exciting b/c the yard is getting crispy clean alongside our freshly growing green grass! Pretty!),

I have been organizing and purging junk, old books, senseless scrapbooking pieces of trash, YOU KNOW a paper trail. Paper is weird, it's always laying around with ink on it and it piles up no matter what: magazines, junk mail, notes, print outs and pig dogs (they go together).

The trick is to find categories for everywhich thing. And don't forget the uncategorized category, b/c it is quite crucial. One box a night! BRILLIANT!

And all that has been inspired by two new bookcases compliments of Casey's parents! NICE! Thanks! Organize upwards is the key. Did you know it takes 3-5 years to get settled into a new house? Hear that 1156!

Well, finally here it is: A ROME REPORT:

First, a random collage of Italian signs in the subway.

Here's a hilarious answer to the vespa on a Rome street!

Interesting trees by the Vatican that somehow take me back in time to Caesar's ruling. I can picture Roman soldiers with chariots and various business purposes.

While traveling the western coast countryside from Rome to Naples, we kept seeing random huge ruins. Just there, beside apartment complexes. It certainly was a privilege to be in a world whose civilization is thousands of years older than our country. There are no pictures of those ruins though due to the speed of trains of course. Sadly there are no photos of the perfectly detailed portrait of Ludacris graffiti either :(

Rome was a great part of the trip for it's history and tours. We took a yellow double-decker bus called "The Christian Tour". It takes you to all the important Roman Catholic places (b/c we are Catholic and all), but also gave us tons of architecture and history that we so wanted to hear (and not have to read). It's always good to just be somewhere like Rome, to soak it all up and try to fathom the legacies, the people, the histories that probably could never be studied entirely in this lifetime.

Rome itself was a normal metropolis with clean streets and tall upright buildings all around. We perhaps were spoiled by staying only 3-4 blocks from the Vatican, b/c we certainly saw other shadier parts of town like all big cities have.

A nice night scene of a castle guarding the Vatican (in old days). Photo by Tracey prior to the water fountain mishap by Mary.