POST-TARA

Friday
I got a chance to catch up with David, Anna, Jack, and Mom. Awesome day for conversation. I grabbed a falafel and moussaka sandwich and then went to the bar for my friend/bartender Mateo’s birthday party. When I got back home, it was the Aussie farewell party. As a thank you, they generously got us a big bag full of alcohol. Bottles of Jaeger, Absolut, spumante, wine, etc. After a few decidedly difficult drunk games of gin rummy, we all settled into the couches and watched American Psycho.

Saturday
I woke up to Sal making vanilla tea and Jesse saying “If I give you cous cous and vegetables, could you make them for me?” Sure. From her pantry I took some cous cous, zucchini, onions, potatoes, carrots, curries, cumin, and cinnamon. From my own, I added some extra virgin olive oil, celery, tomatoes, butter, red and white peppers, parsley, and sultantina raisins. It came out pretty well. The aromas during the cooking gave Jesse a foodgasm and literally brought tears to her eyes. In a good way. That night, since she and Gerard cleaned the kitchen and a lot of people were out of town, they Tom, and I made family dinner with the special theme ingredient of PANCETTA, the Italian version of bacon. It was incorporated into every dish. Jesse made cheeseburgers, Gerard a spicy ginger chicken stirfry with Asian-seasoned rice, Tom a diced vegetable pasta, and I some Parmesan and garlic smashed potatoes. A few bottles of wine and a nice long leisurely meal by shot-glass-candlelight. We all went to get gelato after for dessert and were just too full to go out and drink after.

Sunday
I don’t remember anything except for Mass and a lengthy hibernation as a result of the pancetta-fest. Oh and everyone else came home.

Monday
Chocolate class was about using cocoa as an ingredient for savory dishes, so through the wonders of molecular gastronomy, we made an olive oil ravioli, both regular and cacao pastas, grana padano sauce, and crushed cacao nibs. That night I went to the gym with Lisa and Adrian, and from the treadmill watched The Cardio Queen and Barbell Fanatic.

Tuesday
Mediterranean class was all about cous cous and lemon tart. Diedre and Sal had missed the tart in the vegetarian class the first day, so Adrian and I saved them each one. As well as some cous cous. Sal commented that it was “delicious, but the ones you always make Jesse are better.” That made me feel great. In vegetarian class, the vegetable of the day was bell peppers, so we made rolls of them and stuffed ones.

Wine-Wednesday
Cosimo took us up to his studio for our fashion photography class. We just played around a little with the professional equipment and shot some portraits of each other. He made us a pesto pasta for lunch and opened a few bottles of wine. Then Massimo cancelled our pairing food and wine class so we could go to a wine-tasting with the current boss of the Fiore wine family. Their wine is awesome and they even sell two types exclusively to Florence’s premiere, three-star Michelin restaurant. Then when I got home, my roommates convinced me to crash the aperitivo they were going to at Gabriela’s. Obviously there was lots of wine there. I was relieved when she greeted me with “Ciao caro! Dov’e tu fratello?” rather than “What the hell are you doing here?” It was an awesome, awesome night. Afterwards, a few of us went clubhopping but the numbers dwindled down until Diedre and I closed down the last club. When I got home, Tom, Gerard, and Jesse were still awake due to the aftermath of people being wasted and a certain someone almost setting the kitchen on fire twice. So we watched Requiem For A Dream and then all went to bed.

Thursday
Naturally the morning was slept away. Lampredotto. Coffee. Chilling. We went to the second anniversary aperitivo party for our favorite bar. Alex and I left the apartment a lot earlier since we were starving. We probably ate half of the huge pork roast at the aperitivo before the rest of the gang got there. Eventually, he, Lisa, Adam, and I left early to go get gelato. The house was quiet since almost everyone went to Rome for the weekend, for various reasons. I played Rummy500 with Tom, and we finished just in time for him to leave for his trip to Amsterdam. Aeri was still awake, so we watched American Psycho since she had missed the screening the other night.

Friday
I spent the afternoon at the wine bar getting wine and internet. Since Kyle and Aeri were coming to pick me up, I ordered a café latte to perk up. That miraculously turned into a coffee spiked with Bailey’s and whiskey. (I’m looking at you, Christian.) When we were about to leave, Christian jump-started Kyle’s birthday celebration with shots of limoncino. Aeri, Kyle, and I hit up aperitivo and gelato and a random church organ music fundraiser and went barhopping and celebrated Kyle’s birthday at midnight, as he wanted, by dancing. We met up with Johnson in Piazza della Repulica then killed some time at his place with him and some of his friends.

The Month of October in Text Messages

Cristian 10.58pm 10/4/08: Dove siete? Shot shot

Chad 3.34pm 10/9/08: So i’m on the train now and an meant to arrive in firenze santa maria at half four.!

Molly 3.38pm 10/17/08: Heyy whats up do u know when we are meeting tonight?

Sergio 2.17am 10/24/08: I am coming to 21 with gina, anita and her sister… See you there?

Tom 10.17am 10/24/08: Ryanair fucking sucks. I want to shoot myself.

holler back

Let’s pick up as if I never stopped writing due to a lack of Internet. All the gaps will fill themselves in sometime. Since I just introduced all my roommates on our arrival, I’ll just begin with them leaving for break.

Here’s a picture of my roommates that I wish I had been around for. Adrian and I had already left to go drinking out, but we all wound up at the same club. Anyway, I figure I have enough pictures of The Super Marin Bros. Marlene is missing too, but she hadn’t moved in yet.

Front row, from left to right: Tanjila, Vanessa, Tom
Standing, from left to right: Aerie, Kyle, Diedre, Jesse, Lisa, Sal, Gerard

This picture is almost two months old, so everyone looks slightly different now.

Wednesday
My exams ended. I turned in my fashion photography “legs” assignment. See a picture below. Then I went to my wine tasting final. Wednesday night pretty much everyone took it easy and opted for a rest and relaxation night instead of a party hard night. Jesse and Sal both left that night for break. Jesse’s visiting Chad in London, who visited by the way. [We spent the 24 hours he was here drinking and dining. And luckily (?) for us, there was no casino with blackjack anywhere in site. And of course, everyone loved him, particularly Tanjila and Diedre.] When he heard she was couch-surfing a random stranger’s couch, he suggested he be the stranger so it would be a little less random. Kyle, Tom, Gerard, and I went for a walk just to get some fresh air. And then we just hung out in Kyle’s room with Tanjila, Aeri, and Diedre.

Thursday
I don’t know remember what I did all day. Tom, Gerard, and I started a game of Rummy500 in the afternoon. (Half of us roommates play it. A lot. Everyday.) Neely, who came to be with Adrian during break, Adrian, Gerard, and I went to a bar for aperitivo. We got back here and Adrian and I popped off some bottles of spumante (Italy’s version of champagne) we had bought off to celebrate midterms and break. Eventually, Aeri, Diedre, Marlene, Tanjila, her visiting friends, Gerard, Kyle and I went my favorite bar (now everyone’s favorite bar) in my old Santa Croce neighborhood. Or Santa’s Crotch, as some of us have nicknamed it. Of course, Sergio and the regular crowd were there. Molly, a friend of ours from class who lives in an all-girl building on my old street Ghibellina, was out too. Her birthday is coming up and we need to celebrate it in a fashion reminiscent of Nick’s and Vanessa’s (from class) birthdays, which were honestly kind of shit shows, in a good way. Eventually we all went to a dance club and then worked our way back home. A bunch of us were still awake, so Tom, Gerard, and I finished the game of Rummy. (We always play at the dining table in the middle of the living room, and non-players tend to sit on the couches L-shaped around the table.) We ended just in time for Tom to catch an hour or two of sleep before his flight in the morning.

Friday
Vanessa, Lisa, and Tom left for their break adventure together. It’s possibly Tom will end himself or the other two before their return. Gerard, Kyle, Tanjila, and I have all bet on the probabilities already. Adrian left, with Neely of course. What else? Aeri went to Rome to fetch her mother but came back the next day. Marlene, Gerard, and I – mostly Marlene – made the kitchen the cleanest it’s been since we got here. I met Gerard’s visiting parents. They went to the same Mexican aperitivo at Sei Divino that Kyle and I went to. He and I got back here in time to meet up with Diedre, Marlene, her “conversation buddy” Simon, his nameless friend, and Alex. We taught the two Italians how play Up-The-River-Down-The-River and Kings (the two house drinking games) and then went to the Festival of Creativity. Or Whatever. On the way back, sans Italians, Marlene and Alex, we stopped at our neighborhood enoteca (aka a wine bar… that has become our other hangout besides my old bar) to get a round of drinks and finish off the night. I accidentally got drunk because when I ordered tequila shots for the table, Christian generously poured the rest of a bottle into my mouth and opened a new one for the table. We talked about ethnic heritage for some reason. Kyle freaked out when he realized he was the only white person. We got back here, and I made drunk food for everyone. Farfalle with a simple sauce of garlic, shallots, white wine, and truffle extra virgin olive oil. We borrowed Tom’s laptop to play music to listen to. Kyle and I had a sleepover in my room because we were jealous (?) that Diedre and Marlene, and Tanjila and her visitors were having sleepovers. Drunk logic.

Saturday
Diedre and Marlene left. I woke up and went to the bathroom, where I found Pablo sitting on the closed toilet with a note “Dear Andrew, please take care of me. XOXO.” Pablo is Marlene’s stuffed animal, an ear-muffed penguin with shut-happy eyes. I put him in between the beds Kyle and I were on but didn’t fall asleep again. I finished reading Invisible Monsters, another thing Marlene had entrusted to my care. It was crazy and outlandish and freaky-deaky but all in a good way. It’s by the author of Fight Club, and its protagonist is a supermodel who gets half her face blown off. It has great twists and turns, some of which you see coming, some of which you never would, and some of those what-a-surprise-but-looking-back-it-should-have-been-so-obvious-but-it’s-crazy-enough-not-to-be.

Anyway, apparently we all slept through a cleaning lady coming (?!) who cleaned the floors. And she also cleaned our balcony’s ashtray, and by ashtray, I mean the rain gutter enwrapping our balcony.

Tanjila and her friends went out for the day, so Kyle showed me a museum with an exhibit he really liked that closed that day. He stayed to watch a film and sketch, so I picked up my jacket from the wine bar, where I had forgotten it on Friday. I went to the grocery and made myself boar pappardelle since the kitchen was clean. Kyle had fallen asleep, and the house was empty. I started to read Haunted but took a nap. When I woke up he was awake, and the girls were home, and Gerard and Aeri were both back. Gerard and I played a quick game of 500. Tanji’s visitors went to bed so roommate bonding among Aeri, Tanji, Gerard, Kyle, and me ensued. Music and dark chocolate (71%) Perugina sfoglie all around. Everyone loved how thin the slices were. Kyle suggested we put them atop these crackers he had. Amazing.

Tanjila: “You should make a movie, like Harold and Kumar.”
Kyle: “Kyle and Andrew Go to Kebab? It would be like three minutes long.”

Although now that I think about it, Tanjila and Aeri get kebabs way more often than we do. They keep our neighborhood kebab guy in business since the rest of us have gotten over our first-week dependency on him.

Sunday
Tanjila and friends left. Aeri and Gerard spent the day with her mom and his parents, respectively, and leave with each Monday and Wednesday, respectively. I spent the afternoon enjoying the sunshine and walking around the city then met up with Nick for mass. I planned on roasting a chicken when I got back here, but seeing as how both Kyle and Gerard had already eaten and I was impatient, I ended up out for dinner. After months of eyeing it, I finally sat down at Rossini, the Michelin-starred restaurant on the river. The manager, who was accommodating a party of 30 Japanese businessmen and women and a table of Russians with finicky women, seemed relieved to find out I only wanted a light dinner and not a six-course tasting menu. He kept the Chianti Classico, an awesome pairing for the meal, coming. Acqua naturale, of course, and three kinds of bread so fresh they were warm. The primo piatto was homemade pappardelle with tomato, chunks of meat, and “salty ricotta” garnished with a little arugula. Words can’t do it justice. The secondo was roast pork flavored with thyme, chicory, and balsamic vinegar over steamed zucchini, eggplant, mushroom, and peppers. Pork is almost always my last choice when it comes to protein, but this was extremely delicious... perfectly moist and right in the balance of leanness and fattiness. I also got treated to a dessert that wasn’t on the menu, a coffee-flavored semifreddo with a hint of cinnamon and topped with blue, rasp-, juniper, and straw berries all whittled to the same size. If you wash all that down with some Italian coffee, you’ve got the best meal I’ve had in Florence this season. When I got home, Kyle was procrastinating and Aeri had just gotten back from chilling with her mother, so I popped open a bottle of spumante to try Adrian’s suggestion of an “Ognissantini.” It’s like a bellini or a mimosa but instead of putting peach nectar or orange juice with the sparkling wine, you put ACE juice. It was a success. We all enjoyed them. Nick came over to discuss possible travel plans. We’ll see.

Monday/Today
Aeri left this morning.
And then there were three.
Gerard will leave on Wednesday.
The Asylum will be empty.

it's the freakin' weekend.

Yeah, I have four day weekends. I don't think this has happened since sophomore year of college, and Lord knows what sort of mischief I got into that year.

Anyway yesterday I was dead to the world, but I made it to Fashion Photography anyway. I need a few more pictures for my first assignment... a six photo spread on Shoes, Hats, & Accessories. (Accessories is open-ended, so let's get creative. Anyone with cool jewelry, expensive purses like those birthday gifts from junior year, or inappropriately small dogs, let me know.) Pairing Food and Wine was entirely about white wines, so my classmate Val and I had fun with that.

We both hung around after for the workshop on Tasting and How We Taste, Etc. It was no new information for me after all my crazy classes in psychology and food but still entertaining. Met up with Kyle, Adrian, Aeri, Tanjila, and Tom for aperitivo at the usual bar. Then we went on a mission to regrop with Aeri who had found her way to the Uffizi. Back home, I made hot chocolate from scratch for Jesse, Tom, Adrian, and myself. Since I finished Rosemary's Baby I started reading another book from our well-stocked shelf. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown.

I haven't finished it yet, but it reads so familiar for some reason?

Prologue - Someone dies a mysterious death.
Chapter 1 - The protagonist is having a dream. She (in this case) wakes to a ringing phone with bad news about a mysterious emergency to which she must immediately MYSTERIOUSLY attend to.

(Dan Brown wrote Angels & Demons and its more famous sequel Da Vinci Code, if you're not familiar with popular fiction.)

After that I crashed for several hours.

Today has been very productive. Granted, today began around noon. But I finally sent off my Permesso Siggiorno - I wonder how many exasperated and exhausted student the lady at the post office has dealt with. Then I went to the bookstore and registered to vote with a friendly lady from California who reminds me of a grandmother slash junior high teacher. Then I went and got Gelato from St. Sarah and Southern Anna's favorite gelateria since it was next door. I got my (second) locker here in the arts school and dumped the photo paper in it. Three errands in less than an hour.

Enough productivity. Sergio wants to "party big" tonight, so I think that's the plan. Game on.

Tara, if you're still reading, of course I'm aware you're coming. We can cuddle. It'll be awesome.

Space Mountain the other week

Let's put some faces to these names.

If you don't know who he is, you probably don't know who I am.

Nick, Diedre, Sal, Jesse, and Tom executing some symmetry

Jesse, Aeri, myself, Vanessa, Alex, Tanjila, and Deidre catchin' a breath

Firenze

Happy birthday, Nick. Belated happy, Adam.

It was a good weekend. Saturday night, we went out for Nick’s birthday. Nick is one of “The Triplets” that live across in the river in Jack and Juan’s former apartment. He, Adam, and Alex (my old roommate Giuseppe’s younger brother) are “The Triplets” because “they’re all kind of the same person.” But not in a bad way. They love to go out, party, and pick up girls. That sounds like every guy our age, but they have more in common than just that. Cool guys though.
Anyway, so the three of them and all of us roommates (except Adrian who along with his visitors Neely and Aly were tired from a day of sightseeing) went out to celebrate. I guess this is a good time to say that we have a thirteenth roommate named Marlene, a little bit of Latina fire from New York. She was practically living here already because her other roommates weren’t as much fun I guess? But she officially moved in, paperwork and all, the other day.

Jesse, who enjoys baking more than cooking, made dark chocolate birthday cakes for Nick and for Adam (whose birthday was like the second night we got here). They were delicious, and Adam’s was slightly mangled but then took on a mountain theme because he’s a climber anyway. Afterwards we all went out to my (now our) favorite bar and got shots and bought Nick drinks and got pretty messy. Sergio was there, and he and Kyle finally met after hearing so much about each other and were surprised at how actually cool the other was and not just the product of exaggeration. Eventually, as the drink numbers increased, the party numbers waned, and we all split off. Sergio, his friend Rose, Sal, and I went to another club for a bit. But I stayed only for one round, courtesy of Serg. I went off to find Sal and he called me and told me he got lost and wound up at The Duomo, so we just met up at home. People here were in various states of... functionality, the more functional ones babysitting a little bit.

Me and my Daydream

Sunday I thought the sin of the day would be sloth, but mine turned out to be gluttony. We all got up late to really late. Some of us went to the bar to get some free internet. The same mass-goers as last week (Marlene, Lisa, Gerard, Sal, Nick, Adrian, and myself) all planned to go but ended up losing track of time and missing the one English mass across town. We’ll fix that next week probably. And just when I thought I’d do nothing all day, I started eating a lot. On the way home from the bar, Tom and I stopped for kebabs. And then some time later I had a bowl of cereal and donated the remains of a bottle of red wine to Gerard’s stew. And then I went with Jesse to her favorite falafel place. And then I came home and had some of Gerard’s stew. And then I showed Adrian the falafel place, and he tried a kebab from there and an egg sandwich, and I bit off some of each. And then I came home and had more of Gerard’s stew and pieces of Deidre’s orange and apple.

And Deidre, Sal, Gerard, Lisa/I (forming a team who’d trade off), played two games of Rummy500. I was winning most of the first game, probably due to the fact I was the only innocent one not affected by the these-are-stolen-cards karma. But Sal won both games. We sat at the dining table originally just singing whatever and changing words around to make the songs aout our roommates, and when that got old Sal brought out his laptop and playlists.
Around 11:30 at night, the entire apartment came to life and everyone either woke up or came home and people were milling around. Everyone went to bed late.

Gerard also made use of the random scroll paper all over our dining table by marking it as “Scripture” and beginning to inscribe all the quotable stupid things people have been saying. It won’t take long to fill up between the twelve of us.

The rest of Monday was pretty much just my chocolates and confections class. We made cremino-filled chocolates. (Cremino is a hazelnut cream made of hazelnut paste and white, milk, or dark chocolate. I love dark chocolate, but it overwhelms the nuttiness in filling. White is a good contrast to the dark chocolate shell. Milk is the best taste on its own... like Nutella.) After that, I stopped by the Chinese take-out place in my old neighborhood on the way home. I spent the rest of the evening reading (and finishing) Rosemary’s Baby, which is in our rather sizable library of books-left-by-previous-tenants, the majority of which being Florence or travel books.
We played Rummy500 again, Jesse playing instead of Sal. Team Lisandrew won, despite the jeers from Team Diedrian (Adrian was on Die’s team in spirit). We left the TV on to watch shows in Italian, which got pretty amusing. Some time after midnight, Tom and Alex came home, so Vanessa, Kyle, Adrian and I hung out with them in the kitchen. We all got hungry, so Tom donated his ingredients to my care. Red bell peppers, tomatoes, ground beef, Parmesan cheese, and pasta became… a pasta. My olive oil and Vanessa’s fresh basil helped a lot too. After everyone else went to bed, Kyle and I just talked a bit while he drew for art class. I changed his world with our discussion of the magic of aperitivo. He also said he’d help me with lighting and stuff for fashion photography, so that’s a major relief.

Today has been pretty uneventful. I wasn’t feeling well, so I missed Mediterranean Diet’s Pasta with Chick Peas and Cod with oregano and sun-dried tomatoes. Along with Vegetarian Cooking’s market trip, which Sal and Diedre assured me wasn’t that epic anyway. I figured I should take today easy rather than be sick tomorrow and miss Fashion Photography and Pairing Food and Wine, the two classes I’m least experienced in anyway.

I walked to Jesse’s Egyptian falafel place, unaware it was closed for siesta time during the afternoon. I just chilled at home and got some actual studying done and then met up with Adrian for sushi aperitivo at the wine bar near our house. Vanessa and Tom eventually joined me. (Adrian left to go see Tristana et al.) After a few glasses of wine and several shots of Swedish liquor Cristian brought back from Sweden, my head is swimming. I’m writing from The Triplets’ Apartment (aka Jack, Juan, and Anton’s old apartment) where we’re eating Pringles, watching Half-Baked, and eating the eggs and buttered toast Alex cooked. And I’m catching up with Jack and Sarah. And Aneet. And Liane. And Anna. Man, I miss them.