Things I should mention

• Ellen and Spence are married. W00t. More on that later, I promise.
• In spite of walking miles every day for at least 10 of the days we were gone, I gained weight. This does not come as a big surprise since I felt like I ate all day every day. Oh well.
• Either my eyes have gotten very bad, or Blogger (in draft) shrinky-dinked their template page font. Everything is minuscule now.
• I love my Nook. I may have mentioned that, but it's still true. It's not the same as reading a book-book, but that doesn't make it bad by any means. Some books won't work right in it, and sometimes you just need to hold a book, but the content of the book in a Nook is the same. Maybe better, since I can adjust the print size and leave myself notes without needing a pen to hand all the time.
• Between the Nook and the Flip, we got lots of attention from technophiles overseas. And we took illegal video. Maybe I'll post some. :-)
• Speaking of the Flip: WHAT THE HELL, Cisco?? Really? What.the.hell.
• Karma bites hard. I did a somewhat-bad thing, and had the same thing happen to me in return. On the same trip.
• Sparky ended up at the hospital, briefly (for a chest X-ray), while we were gone. FIL, however, had no problems whatsoever. Of course, we had prepared for the precise opposite, and didn't even leave Sparky's insurance info with either of them. Sparky's fine, just had a bad chest cold that caused him to have trouble breathing in gym class one day, and to miss one other day of school.
• Speaking of my brilliant son who has 5 AP classes under his belt...he missed the deadline for signing up to take the AP tests for those classes. I have, so far, restrained myself from punching him in the head.
• So yeah, the week before we left on vacation, I had a kidney stone problem. The follow-up visit to the doctor resulted in the news that I should probably try to drink more than 2 liters of water (liquids in general) per day. Two liters. That's a LOT of peeing! 
• No, I did not follow those directions in Europe. Give me a break.
• I am tired of saying, "No, not that wedding." But I will probably watch some of that wedding.
• "Gelato!" and "Room 4-4-6" will always remind me of Florence.
• It was warmer in England the days we were there than it was in Italy. That, my friends, is weird. I about died of heat prostration at the wedding reception.
• With the exception of tram, I think we road on every available sort of transportation available in the past week. Well, not city-bus-route buses or bicycles, either. Planes, trains, automobiles, taxis, coaches, subways...and then there is walking, too.
• I will upload pictures tonight. Unless I end up needing to iron, in which case, I will upload pictures...this weekend.
• Had my annual review yesterday. She likes me. I'm one of those who actually gets a (pathetic) raise this year. Have bitten off far more than I'll be able to chew for the upcoming year. Ugh.
• My brand-new (to me) car is back at Carmax having its CD player replaced. For free. I had to drive the hour to S-burg yesterday and leave it there. I'm currently driving a red car with a spoiler and a sunroof. Sport-tay! Too bad it's rain-rain-rain all the time and I probably won't get to use the sunroof. I have to go back and get my real car over the weekend.
• Before we left town, our washing machine had started making thumping and jet-taking-off sounds. We knew we'd have to have a new one--repairing the old one would have cost the same as buying new. By the time we got home, the spin-cycle wasn't removing any water from clothes, so Beast took our dirty vacation clothes to a laundromat Tuesday once he established that it took three drying cycles to get sheets to moist. 
• Consequently, last night we hit Best Buy for a new washer and brought home the floor model which is now in our basement. If you want pictures, it's more-or-less this one.
• Being a grown-up is really BOR-ING sometimes!
• In case anyone is going to England, "The Slug and Lettuce," while a catchy/cutesy name for a pub, is only a cover for being a Ruby Tuesday. Yes. We got suckered into that one. Still, astoundingly tasty nachos...for England.
• OK, so work. I need to go. More prose, less of the bullet-style ... eventually.