Misc., still delayed by Norton 2007 problems ...

I am stuck with Norton freezing every time it manages to update itself without my permission. I don't mind the definition updates, but the other ones crash it. I've got the "improved" Norton 2007 running under WinXP Pro (fully updated). So, I end up using the custom uninstaller and reinstalling about once a week.

That cuts into my time for things like game playing or blogging.

But, I covered home teaching for two other people this last week, saw my mother safely home from the hospital (her surgery and hip repair went very well) and dealt with other things ...

Work has been busy. As a litigator, on vacation work just keeps rolling in (though I did clear off court and similar things for when I was gone).

I'll blog about vacation more. Basically, we got a free flight into Zurich and back home again, took second class train rides all over Italy, and used a lot of Rick Steve's guides.

Rick Steves' Italy 2007 (Rick Steves)

Rick Steves' Florence and Tuscany 2007 (Rick Steves)

(and, had a couple more we bought, but did not use).

We were gone from the 3rd to the 13th, spent four days in Cinque Terre with Egli, two days in Florence with another recommended hotel, and two days in Venice with a hotel my wife found on Hotels.com (rather than call around the recommended list) -- for $75.00 (not euros) a night, clean, new, and with delightful private bath and shower and a breakfast they cooked fresh every night (it was wonderful to come in to the smell of fresh baking every night).

I can't say enough good things about the company. I so enjoy my wife. Next time we are taking the kids with us. We ended up missing them so much.

Cinque Terre has a lot of trails, more stone in the terraces than in the great wall of China, though I joked that it was really the stair climbing of Italy event ... very pretty.

Florence was better than the guide, the only time I've felt let down by Rick Steve's -- the guide is mostly "hit the 'must see' sites and get into Tuscony" -- and the Pitti Palace was better than Versailles in a lot of ways.

Venice was fun (cheaper food than Florence), and I'll have to upload some pictures of Win being swarmed by pigeons, not to mention some of the Italians we met -- they were delightful people. Though, I don't know what has gotten into them -- like the French they just are not smoking like they used to (great for me, I'm allergic to cigarette smoke).

We decided to skip Rome, which had been the original place we had decided to go in Italy. So instead of a Rome focused trip, we skipped it all together. On the other hand, we did Italy on the cheap, about what you would spend in the same time in Dallas, if you went there on vacation, though our street vendors don't sell silk ties.

Lost a pound and a half on the trip, have done my best to regain it now that we are home. Food was wonderful, but we walked a lot.

I'm rambling. More later.