Scooter Ride!

My first scooter ride ever! Wheeeeeeee!! A pair of brothers on my program has rented a scooter for the month and I got to take a ride around the block (no, I was not “taken around the block” nor have I “been around the block a few times” thank you very much) but it was AWESOME! I totally want one now – it’s like an overpowered bike. Jessie said I could have a longer ride tomorrow. So FUN!

Meanwhile, this past week has been INSANE! I have literally gone out every night this week and then some – half the time having to get up really early the next day. It all started with going to buy Harry Potter at 1am before I had to meet the group at Termini at 7am. Anyway, on Tuesday I saw George Clinton in concert, which was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!! It was four hours straight of non-stop high-energy funkadelic soul music; the whole crowd was up on their feet and the musicians just kept switching out and kept the music going. I didn’t stop dancing for a minute. There were old original members there too – it was crazy! And the incredibly hot woman with the piercing electric violin – Bev kept saying over and over again that she wished she were a lesbian because she was in love – she and every member of the audience, male and female.

The next day I got up early and met with Eric, who was/is a member of St. Paul’s Within the Walls, the church at which my grandparents Nona and Papa were married. (funny, I guess it’s Nonna, Italian for grandmother…) Anyway, we went to the parish office and I got the book and looked them up – March 22, 1946 – and there they were, Edward C. Borrego and Mary A. Morhbacher. He: “widower” age 40. She: “maiden” age 22. How about that?

And Anna was here to visit! Yay!!! But now she’s gone (boo…). Yesterday we went to Ostia Antica and then to the beach – the beach was so great! The waves were fairly large and crashing around us, the water was cool and the sand and sun were hot. We jumped over and into the waves like a couple of giggly twelve-year-olds.

And just so you know that I’m still doing Latin – here’s the bit we read today, Minucius Felix concerning the beach at Ostia!

Ibi harenas extimas, velut sterneret ambulacro, perfundens lenis unda tendebat; et, ut semper mare etiam positis flatibus inquietum est, etsi non canis spumosisque fluctibus exibat ad terram, tamen crispis tortuosisque ibidem erroribus delectati perquam sumus, cum in ipso aequoris limine plantas tingueremus, quod vicissim nunc adpulsum nostris pedibus adluderet fluctus, nunc relabens ac vestigia retrahens in sese resorberet.

Meaning: Here the pouring soft wave stretched out to the final sands just as it was paving a walkway; and, as the sea was always unquiet (the winds having been put down), even if it did not go out to the land with white and foamy waves, nevertheless we were completely delighted in that same place by the curly and twisted meanderings of the sea, since we were dipping the soles of our feet in that threshold of the water, because in turn now the wave played out a pulse to our feet, then gliding and drawing back, it absorbed our footprints back into itself.

How perfect is that?? Anna, nos exilientes natantesque, delectatae perquam sumus canis spumosisque fluctibus.

And Matt is now in Indonesia, where he is going to buy me coffee and clove cigarettes. :)