October 21

"Happy Birthday!"

For all those people that don't know -- today is Matthew's birthday! He is a whopping 29, which prompted him to call me 'Grandpa' all day, me being older, of course. :-) For the celebration we got quite enibriated [sic] and had a tearful farewell. Matthew returns tomorrow to England, and I continue on to Rome 'toutes seule'. I shall miss Matthew most fearfully, but shall endeavour to keep a stiff upper lip in the true British style. For his birthday, the B-Day fairy left him a little gift, which is pictured here:

We took a little drive to Pisa, and then hung a left and then another and promptly got lost. A little while later a tower appeared, so we stopped and took a couple of photos. If you look carefully, you can see Matthew helping to straighten the tower for the goverment.

In case you can't tell from this super-huge picture it is indeed a super cool miniture single-scull. I'm holding the tiny oars in the picture. This was after 1 beer ;-) It was a great gift from the B-Day fairy.

An odd thing is that the government seems to think that 600 tons of lead weights stacked on the opposing side's foundation should help balance things out. Personally I think they should try Matthew's solution.
I need to work-out more, that tower was heavy. Well tomorrow I leave back home to spend some time with the folks and to visit friends and partake of a few beers in a few choice pubs. It's been fun. I will have the last

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