25-Feb-2006

For being what I thought was to be a fairly uneventful day, a lot happened. This morning I headed to the market to start some observations for that project I’ve been thinking about starting and also to do some shopping. I bought a trout from the fish market and figured I would have some fun trying to remember how to clean fish. Well, the cardinal rule for cleaning fish is to have a sharp knife, which we don’t. To make a long story short, I felt so bad for the fish when I was done trying to filet it, that I almost didn’t want to eat it. But I did and it was pretty good. Jeff and I had a good laugh about it and then he told me he’d give me a refresher course for the next fish. You almost can’t go wrong when you buy stuff from the market. I’ve had some bad luck with some produce, but for the most part, if you look around a bit you can find the best quality stuff.

After the fish fry, two of the girls who live downstairs came up and asked if we had any desire to buy their short track speed skating tickets for tonight because they found something better to do. I didn’t really want to front the cash, but Jeff and Casey did so they bought the tickets. Unfortunately for Casey, but fortunately for me, she’s still feeling pretty sick. I ended up going with Jeff to the finals. It was pretty awesome. I must admit, it was better than the women’s speed skating that Al and I went to. We saw Apolo Ohno get the gold for USA and saw some really good races.

The past week a lot of towns in Italy have been preparing for Carnival, which, from what I gather, is like Mardi gras. A neighboring town, Ivrea, has an added twist to carnival, they have an orange throwing battle. It’s a tradition that started with throwing rocks!! A king long ago made the rule that he had the right to any maiden who was about to be married. One maiden got feisty and the town rebelled against this ritual and threw rocks at the king’s men. Apparently they had so much fun that they wanted to keep it up and eventually it changed from rocks to oranges. Smart move if I do say so myself. Anyways, I might try to go see that tomorrow if the weather isn’t too bad. We’ll see.

I suppose that’s it for now! Ciao ciao!