Firenze, Italia
(Winter Term 2005)
March 4, 2005 On to Athens!! Hide the ouzo...springbreaking UM co-eds storm Greece. Photos to come...Click here for a little on-location commentary from Mavourneen herself.
Rubbing elbows with Royalty
London, 2/1/05. Not content with the status quo of Villa life (or Italian men, for that matter), Lady Mavourneen recently escaped from Florence for a weekend of R & R across the Channel. And whom did she hook up with almost immediately? Hunky Princes Harry (left, the short, dumb one, who refrained from wearing his Nazi uniform on this gay occasion) and William (right, the really hot one and future King, displaying innate royal bearing even in this buffoon's costume). The two are in disguise, of course, to throw off the bloody press. Brilliant!
The above trio, along with Lady M's traveling partners, Lady Coco and Lady Katie, were later seen having a spot of tea at The Generator, London's home away from home for all slumming young aristocrats.
Click Here For More Astounding Shots Of The British Empire!
Holy shit!!!Click here to read about how opera was born in the villa that Mavourneen's staying in!
In them thar parts, He da man.
A side trip to Verona
Saturday 1/22
Standing on THE balcony, but, sadly, no Romeo in sight...so the girls (Mav and friends Coco and Katie) rub Juliet for good luck (below). Fortunately, none of the Capulets were around to witness this act.
Click here to see more Italian Webshots, hot off of Mavourneen's memory card....
Latest Florentine Dramas (week 2)
1. Lost keys (found later under pile of dirty laundry)
2. i-Book crashed (still looking for Apple Cares' connection in Florence to initiate repairs).
3. Dilemma: Should she purchase authentic Fendi purse with hugely discounted price at The MichelAngelo outlet mall? (Called personal Fashion Consultant --Amira -- by cell from store and rousted her from deep sleep: "Don't do it," advised Parsons' student Amira and returned groggily and grousingly to her slumber).
Analysis: Evidentally, navy blue purse with black strap is just plain wrong. Post Mortem: Did shopping queen Mavourneen take this sage advice? Turns out NOT. And now she's carting around an absurdly overpriced status symbol of a purse (fortunately, not the one listed here), having nearly drained her Christmas money in the process, and with nearly 15 more weeks to go.... Ay, yi, yi, and se la vie! Bottom Line: If she's happy, we's happy....
Ciao, baby.
Ponte Vecchio as seen from the Uffizi Gallery
It's off to Florence for the winter term for Mavourneen, on the crappiest driving day of the year. Good time to leave A2, unless you were her chauffeur. Sure beats my Study Abroad Program...13 months in Korea protecting the world from those crazy Commies. Accompanying her? An 80-pound suitcase that I could barely lift into the van. When she returns on April 29, she'll be 21-years-old. Believe it or not. WOM
Well, she made it to Italia and to U of M's historic villa in Tuscany (damn, does that sound good, right now, as the thermometer plunges like Anna Nicole Smith's bustline), and here's Mavourneen's mournful tale in a nutshell: Marooned at Metro, 3 hours; flight to Chicago, 1 hour; hanging out at O'Hare, 6 hours, including 3-hour flight delay; flight to Frankfurt, 9 hours; stuck at airport during layover in Germany due to missed connecting flight, 5 hours; flight to Florence, 1 1/2 hours; baggage malfunctions, 1 (bottle of Chanel Chance broke and leached 3.5 ounces of Christmas-present-perfume onto and into carryon items in backpack); demoralized and distraught daughters, 1; collect calls home for moral support, 1 (at 3 am our time from Frankfurt); concerned parents during this ordeal, 2.
The Final analysis: It ain't easy for a young lady traveling abroad alone and toting bags that weigh more than she does; but you live, you learn, you somehow get through it, and in the end, all's well that ends well.
The next day...a quick addendum to the above story:
Mavourneen called on her Italian cell from her Italian cell (her room in the villa -- THIS villa, in Sesto Fiorentino, Tuscany)
and clarified some things: Upon further inspection of her backpack, it turns out that her bottle of Marc Jacobs perfume (that was nearly gone anyway), NOT her Chanel Chance, had broken and leaked out. What a relief! Except for the strongly passionate aroma that infiltrated the plane's cabin making some passengers feel uncomfortably amorous, there was no real harm done. Also, when she hung up after her 3 am call to us from Frankfurt, she proceeded to the departure gate (where she would have to wait for another 3 1/2 hours), and what did she find? A goodly number of fellow UM students, who had come in on another flight, all awaiting the same connection to Florence. And now, some guest commentary from Dr. Phil: "Group suffering is always easier to tolerate than individual suffering. It's the commiseration factor...when you share the pain and agony with others, you can curse your fate and bitch and moan and lament TOGETHER, and of course, you can comfort each other which helps alleviate the pain. On the other hand, when you're all alone, you soon begin to feel sorry for yourself and to think that the whole world is against you. The isolation can be crushing.... Okay, enough of that...Could I interest you in my diet plan...?"
Check out the weather in Florence here.
Check out the weather in Ann Arbor qui.
(above) Warrington Drive, 1/23/05
Springtime in Paris
April 7-11
The Seine and Notre Dame at sunrise, photo by Michael J. Marion, circa 1980
There's an exceeding cynical expression in our language -- Life's a bitch, and then you
die -- that for this occasion I will alter to Life's a bitch, and then you go to Paris, which is a far more sanguine concept. It relates to young Mavourneen's travails in Florence where from her room at the historic U-M villa in which she's lodged, a lowlife scumbag of a kleptomaniac made off with her ipod. Not an enormous surprise. After all, ipods are all the rage, and thieves abound in all corners of the globe. Still, it hurts...all that music, painstakingly collected over many months, now in the grubby, grasping hands of a heartless, soul-less scoundrel. But we must move swiftly away from misfortune, as wallowing in self-pity serves no purpose other than to breed yet more self-pity. And what better way to put the immediate past behind than to go to Paris for a long weekend? That's where the lassy is now, immersed in Parisian splendor, and it is to be hoped, coming to an acceptance of her temporary bad luck by learning a French counterpoint to Life's a bitch, generally spoken with a slight shrug:
Se la vie (loosely, that's life).
