Italy – Life In A Word

Caffè Companions

My wife made a batch of rolled sugar cookies last week, cut into traditional Christmas shapes like bells, wreaths, and stockings. It’s the first time in a long time for these cookies, inspired by the assistance of our young and attentive granddaughters. Though the cookies never donned their frosted/decorated costumes, they sure tasted great all by themselves. Kind of like the biscotti I’m giving up in 2026.

Are you a fan of biscotti? They’re the small, oblong cookies that resemble tiny slices of sourdough bread. They’re hard and dry, with just a smattering of almonds or almond extract for extra flavor. Biscotti are meant to accompany a drink, just as two of them do every morning with my coffee. Biscotti ward off the nausea I feel when I down my vitamins on nothing but a cup of joe. Nice excuse for daily cookies, eh?

When the calculator (which doesn’t lie) reveals you ate over seven hundred biscotti over the course of 2025, you quickly come to your senses and declare a resolution for the coming New Year: Shift biscotti from “habit” to “occasional treat”. Yep, it’s time to cut down on carbs.

Before we seal the lid on the cookie jar however, biscotti deserve a little more attention to set the record straight. First and foremost, the pint-sized pastries I consume with my morning caffè are not technically biscotti; they’re cantucci. Cantucci contain ingredients like milk, butter, and flavorings, none of which are found in an authentic Italian recipe for biscotti.

Here’s another distinction. Biscotti were never meant to be partnered with coffee. They were (and still are) served alongside a glass of sweet wine as a light Italian dessert. Americans pair cantucci with cappuccino at upper-crust hotels and coffeehouses. You’re supposed to dunk to make them softer (and take the edge off the coffee) but I prefer to eat them just the way they are.

Biscotti translates to… not “biscuits”, but “twice-baked”, which is exactly how they’re made. First baked as a full loaf; then baked again as individual cookies. Now then, another Italian translation for you: Nonni means “grandmother”. Nonni’s also means a brand of biscotti (whoops, make that cantucci) you’ll find in your grocery store… and in my pantry. The Nonni’s version is an unashamed dessert cookie, with a layer of chocolate, caramel, or lemon frosting to add to the appeal. My advice: Nonni’s need to be put on a hard-to-reach shelf else they’ll become a habit just like the ones with my morning coffee.

In some Western European cultures biscotti are thrown into savory dishes, which I’m not going to get into because I find the idea unappealing. Biscotti are classy little sweet treats in my book – one of the two items in my “grown-up milk and cookies”. Alas, in 2026 it’ll just be “grown-up milk” for me… that is, as long as I stay away from my wife’s sugar cookies.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #7

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

Today we took a mini road trip, as I chose to build the fountain’s Bags 12 and 13 – of 15 bags of pieces – on the kitchen counter (instead of upstairs in the home office). Kind of fitting considering the counter is topped with white marble. Kind of annoying considering the laundry machine and dishwasher were running nearby the whole time, interrupting Arcangelo Corelli’s moving “Christmas Concerto” in G Minor.

Maybe it was the change of venue but some strange stuff happened today. To begin with, I couldn’t find the very first piece in the build at all, until I looked closer at the instruction manual drawing and realized I was after a tiny statue. Once I found him I was off and running, though I found it sad that one of his companion statues ended up being a leftover piece.

Thought you should know: the back side of the LEGO Trevi is a sheer wall of white.

Now for the strange stuff. I assembled a flat L-shaped piece on top of another flat L-shaped piece, only to discover they weren’t supposed to go together that way. No amount of fingernail dexterity could pry those two apart. Fortunately I found myself in the kitchen. Sharp knives everywhere! It took a careful pry without cutting myself but I finally got those two unmarried. Never let it be said building LEGO models isn’t a dangerous sport.

That little brown round one (nestled top left) was missing from Bag 13!

More strange stuff. LEGO left a piece out of Bag 13. Okay, technically they left it out. “Technically” because in my growing pile of leftover pieces I found its twin. But considering LEGO never leaves out pieces, I had to wonder: Did the little guy just wander over to my leftover pile when I wasn’t looking? Or is he somewhere in the trash right now, along with the cellophane bag of Bag 13? Maybe he’s resting quietly on the kitchen floor just waiting to stub my toe? Who knows. I’m just thankful I had a “replacement” from my leftovers. And I don’t think I’ll be building LEGO models in the kitchen anymore.

Next week: The Trevi is completed!

Running build time: 6 hrs. 52 min.

Total leftover pieces: 35 (including a lonely little statue)

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Priceless Hatches

I’m enjoying a couple of soft-boiled eggs right now, my every-other-day breakfast entrée. The timer I use to prepare them sits right in the pot of water, indicating when the eggs are cooked to perfection. I pay a little more than average for my eggs, to producer Vital who advertises “pasture-raised – tended by hand by farmers who care”. On the other hand, if I wanted to pay a lot more than average I’d simply go to a rare goods auction and buy one from Fabergé.

You wouldn’t have a Fabergé egg for breakfast, of course. No one would ever sink their teeth into a priceless work of art (well, maybe a banana), let alone one of only fifty that were ever created. One of the Fabergés – the “Winter Egg” – went under the auction block last week, with the winning bid confirmed in a mere three minutes. The buyer’s purchase of a single Fabergé for $30.2 million dollars is a new record; noteworthy considering how many times the eggs have changed hands in the last 140 years.

I can’t say why we Westerners even know about Fabergé eggs. Most hide in private collections or in museums you’ve never been to. The eggs were created in St. Petersburg, Russia in the late 1800s by jeweler House of Fabergé for the reigning tsars of the time. One or two eggs were produced every year as exquisite Easter gifts, from 1885 through 1917. Most are jeweled with diamonds and other precious gems, and hinge open to reveal delicate animals or scenes within.

The Winter Egg (1913) is described as “the most spectacular, artistically inventive and unusual” of all fifty Fabergés, which is quite a statement when any one of the eggs deserves the same praise. The Winter Egg took almost a year to design and create, and the value is evident in the details. 4,500 tiny rose-cut diamonds are married to a platinum snowflake motif to create the impression of a block of ice dusted with frost.

The Winter Egg hinges opens to reveal a hanging basket of wood anemones, made from white quartz and rare green “Tsavorite” garnets. I can’t imagine working with these expensive materials on such a small scale but maybe that’s because I don’t have the delicate fingers of a woman. The Winter Egg was designed and created by Alma Pihl, the only female jeweler in the House of Fabergé.

On a cruise around the Baltic Sea several years ago, my wife and I were fortunate to spend a couple of days in St. Petersburg, touring Catherine Palace and Peterhof among the cities other sights. When we returned to the ship we were greeted by a local jeweler, who offered replicas of the Fabergés (for less than $32M, thank goodness). We chose the Imperial Coronation Egg (1897), inspired by the color of Tsar Alexander III’s robe. The Coronation Egg houses a replica of the imperial carriage, made with gold and platinum and detailed with rubies and diamonds (the original egg that is, not ours).

After learning a single egg can set you back $32M, I now look at my breakfast eggs a little differently. $10.99 a dozen? That used to be top of the heap. Now it’s just pocket change.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #6

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

There’s a moment in every LEGO build where you look at what you’ve constructed and think, Hey, I’m almost done! That moment was today. Bags 10 and 11 – of 15 bags of pieces – brought the structure of the Trevi Fountain to new, practically finished heights. The tiny, tiny pieces I worked through (so many of them I was afraid to count) resulted in the uppermost level of the backdrop you see in the final photo.

From my magic hat of Italian composers I somehow chose Claudio Monteverdi for my musical accompaniment today. You don’t know Monteverdi and apparently I don’t either. Had I realized his contribution to classical music was mostly opera (hard pass) I would’ve reached into the hat again. Alas, I was subjected to Monteverdi’s L’Arianna “lament” – equal parts sorrow, anger, fear, and so on. Those singers sure didn’t sound happy as I snapped together LEGO pieces, but honestly who knows? I don’t speak “sung” Italian.

Here’s an expectation with a symmetrical LEGO build. If you construct an element that goes on one side of the model you’ll be mirroring it on the other side before you know it. A hundred or more pieces went into the windowed wall you see here, and a hundred more went into its twin soon after. It’s repetitive yes, but at least you go faster the second time around since you just had practice.

A word about the little devils in this photo. Because they’re cylindrical they can roll. Because they roll they can hide under something. Something like a LEGO instruction manual. Once again I was fooled into thinking I was missing pieces… until I thought to look under the manual. Sure enough, there they sat just smirking at me. So I promptly arrested and cuffed them, hauled them away, and now they’re jailed in the backdrop you see here, without possibility of parole.

We’re just four bags of LEGO pieces from “turning on the water” of the magnificent Trevi. I’ll admit to peeking into the box at those upcoming bags. They are small, all four of them. Perhaps I’ll wrap the fountain construction in a single go next week. Even if not, conveniently, the final block of travertine would be laid the following week, just in time for Christmas. Now that’s what I call a gift!

Running build time: 5 hrs. 42 min.

Total leftover pieces: 32 (tiny, tiny pieces)

Some content sourced from the CNN Style article, “Faberge egg fetches record $30.2 million at rare auction”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Failing Asleep

I’m almost done with Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Secret of Secrets. The tagline on the front cover: “Author of The Da Vinci Code” was a good add, because that romp through Europe was written over twenty years ago. This romp, alas, is not really much of one. The story ping-pongs relentlessly between explanation and action – making for restless reading – but at least the premise is intriguing. What if the human conscience could operate outside of the human body? What if “you” could exist in both a spiritual and a physical form at the same time? Well, maybe I do, at least when I’m trying to fall asleep.

When you get to be my age – somewhere between “middle” and “senior” – you wake up at least once a night. Not for an outdoor stroll under the stars and not for a midnight snack. You wake up “to take care of business”. It’s an inevitable phenomenon as we get older, especially for us guys. And when I stumble out of the bathroom I also grab a quick drink of water. That one-two punch wakes me up, at least enough to get the gears turning and thoughts churning. Getting back to sleep can be a real challenge. There are nights I log many minutes memorizing the look of our bedroom ceiling.

Counting sheep has never been my thing, nor the “white noise” of those bedside appliances, but some new strategies have been an interesting experiment. The first is known as cognitive shuffling. It’s word play, where you take the letters of a word and spin off new words on each letter for a few seconds. I start with “piano” (my Wordle starter!) and then go “pepper, portray, people, ponder”, “illuminate, inch, icicle, ignite”, and so on. What does this do? It puts the mind in a random state, where you can’t concentrate on stressors like paying bills or fixing stuff.

The next sleep strategy is called “sensory grounding”, which means coming up with lists of things you can smell, touch, taste, hear, and see. It’s kind of like cognitive shuffling so I’ve never given it a try. Nor have I tried the breathing techniques, the calming playlists, or getting out of bed and writing down my thoughts on paper (to “release them from my mind”). All of those seem like a lot of effort just to fall asleep again.

Finally though, there’s a technique called “mental walk-throughs”. This one is more fun than word games and works pretty well for me. Think of somewhere you’ve been, preferably a long time ago. Maybe the neighborhood you grew up in, a house you lived in, or a store you enjoyed spending time in. Now take a virtual walk through one of those (and here’s where I sense my mind separating from my body). Look in several directions to see what surrounds you. Think about how you feel as you’re taking it all in. Trust me, it’s nostalgic, it’s calming, and it’s calming enough to put you back to sleep.

I read somewhere that The Secret of Secrets is already being made into a movie. That was fast. The ink hasn’t even dried on the critic’s reviews, but I guess having the The Da Vinci Code in your back pocket promises another profitable venture. Maybe I’ll buy a ticket and go see the show. It’d be another effective strategy to help me fall asleep.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #5

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

LEGO decided I needed a big helping of humility this week. Bag 9 – of 15 bags of pieces – brought me to my knees in one heart-pounding moment. Just as I was cruising to the final steps of the build (in a brisk forty-five minutes), my pulse went into overdrive as I realized the module I’d just constructed wouldn’t attach to its rightful place on the fountain. It just wouldn’t click in. In the land of LEGO this is very bad news. You might as well unfurl a big banner saying: Start over, Dave.

If you’ve built IKEA furniture, you know those do-it-yourself sets are engineering marvels. Everything goes together perfectly; not a piece out of place. So it is with LEGO. If one part of the model doesn’t “click” comfortably with another, you’ve done something seriously wrong and that, my friends, summarizes today’s build in a nutshell. The pile of parts above resulted in the module you see below… only it’s wrong… just slightly off from the way it’s supposed to look. My penalty: disassemble all those pieces back to the first step to figure out where I’d gone astray.

Just like the second time through Antonio Salieri’s Sinfonia in D Major, I took another forty-five minutes to reconstruct what I’d already built. The scene at my desk was an interesting disharmony of orchestral beauty, pinched fingers, and nasty thoughts. Thankfully (and with no surprise), once I got the build exactly as it was supposed to be, everything clicked together the way you see it here.

Bag 10 had to be laughing at me from inside the box. Bag 10 was scheduled to be opened and completed along with Bag 9 today Then it watched me fumble the football early on in the build. Yo, Bag 10, why didn’t you say anything? You’re a mean one (just like Mr. Grinch) but “I’ll get you my pretty”. Your time is coming… er, just next week instead of this one.

Running build time: 4 hrs. 33 min.

Total leftover pieces: 25

Some content sourced from the CNN Health article, “If worries keep you from falling back asleep, experts know what to try”.

An Unhealthy Modern Phenomenon

Somewhere in the wee hours of Tuesday morning I had a bizarre dream; one I retained well into my conscious hours. I was on some sort of overseas sightseeing excursion with others, and our group stopped for lunch at a historic convent. Egg salad sandwiches were handed out by the nuns and I promptly dropped mine onto the cobblestones. The dream only gets more disconnected from there but I’ll share one more noteworthy detail. My traveling companion was the actress Mary Stuart Masterson.

Got all that? Okay, now forget about everything except Mary Stuart. Masterson has had a respectable (if not award-winning) career as an actress. She was only ten years old when she first appeared on the silver screen, in the original version of The Stepford Wives. She went on to play colorful characters in Fried Green Tomatoes and Benny & Joon. But her most enduring performance – the one she will forever be linked with – was as “Watts”, the companion/tomboy of “Keith” in the high school rom-com Some Kind of Wonderful. Masterson’s turn as the loyal friend who quietly wanted to be more absolutely stole the show.

As if nuns and egg salad sandwiches aren’t enough, you’re wondering why Mary Stuart Masterson was sitting next to me in my dream. Actually it wasn’t Masterson herself; it was her movie character Watts. Which brings me to the Cambridge Dictionary’s 2025 Word of the Year. Would you believe Cambridge added 6,000 new words to its big book this year? 5,999 of them were runner-ups to parasocial, a word “describing a connection people feel with someone they don’t know (ex. celebrities, influencers, and other online personalities)”.

Blogger’s Note: WordPress needs to get on the ball here. “Parasocial” is underlined here in my draft post as being an unrecognized word.

Parasocial’s win as Word of the Year has everything to do with Taylor Swift. Her engagement to NFL star Travis Kelce generated countless claims of “heartfelt feelings toward a couple the vast majority had never met”. The same applies to Watts. I don’t know the first thing about Mary Stuart Masterson herself, but I know everything about Watts from watching Some Kind of Wonderful a dozen times or more.

“Parasocial” has actually been around since the 1950’s. In that era it referred to the innocence of television viewers connecting to television characters (or in my case, movie viewer to movie character). But today’s version of the word is described as “an unhealthy modern phenomenon”. Why? Because of social media. Because of artificial intelligence.

My example of Watts is one movie and one instance. I’ll finish this post and the “encounter” will fade into my memory forever. But social media – which brings the viewer constant feeds about the “viewed”, and artificial intelligence – which creates a sense of connection where there really isn’t one, makes it clear why there’s reason to be concerned. Are we really so desperate as to develop foundation-less relationships with strangers?

AI has already found its place on Spotify. Search for Xania Monet, the first artificially intelligent singer to grab a ranking on a Billboard chart (Adult R&B). Everything about Xania was created on a keyboard. But her face, her social media profile, and her voice suggest she’s a living, breathing human somewhere out there in the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if you can even chat online with Xania. If so, you’re developing a one-sided relationship (you) with someone who isn’t real whatsoever (a computer). Seriously, who has time for this nonsense?

Coincidence or not, one of the Cambridge Dictionary’s runner-ups for Word of the Year was “slop”, which in this day and age means “content on the internet that is of very low quality, especially when created by artificial intelligence”. Let’s declare “slop” a lot of what’s going in parasocial relationships as well.

The real message of this dictionary winner is clear. We need to remove the “para” from parasocial and focus on simply socializing with our fellow humans. It’s the only path to truly fulfilling relationships. Having said that, for some reason I’d love an egg salad sandwich right about now.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #4

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

The travertine is stacking up quickly as we continue our work on the LEGO Trevi Fountain. Bags 7 and 8 – of 15 bags of pieces – came together like the Domenico Scarlatti piano sonatas that accompanied them – seemingly simple on the surface but more intricate and involved the further we dove in.

The Trevi Fountain has some strange elements, made even stranger when represented by chunky LEGOs. Check out the shapes I assembled today (and don’t ask me what they’re meant to represent). Little LEGO pieces positioned in just about every point on the compass. My singular mistake this round – realized well after the fact – was putting the right piece in place, only the wrong color. Then when I came across another “right piece wrong color” I knew I had them transposed. Took a little disassembly to get everything correct.

A continuing mystery of LEGO sets is bags within bags. When I opened Bags 7 and 8, each came with a smaller bag of pieces like you see here. It’s not like the smaller bag represents its own unit of the fountain. You just tap into those pieces every now and then as the instruction manual demands. Yes they’re tiny, tiny but you also find tiny pieces in the bigger bag. Maybe someday I’ll tour the LEGO factory and solve this packaging mystery.

We worked with some surprisingly large pieces of travertine today – the entire wall of white you see behind the fountain and the white surround you now see defining the entire front of the main pool. Would’ve taken a dozen Italians to put these monster pieces in place on the real Trevi. And don’t miss the pink accent strips to the left and right of center (pink!) This fountain is turning out to be more colorful than I expected.

Running build time: 3 hrs. 5 min.

Total leftover pieces: 23 (10 more extras today!)

Some content sourced from the BBC.com article, “Parasocial is Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year”, IMDB, “the Internet Movie Database”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Swimming Upstream

I can think of a dozen name brands I gotten hooked on for years, only to see them suddenly disappear from the shelves, never to return. Breakfast cereals. Hair spray. Cars. And what do we do when this happens? Simply find another brand and get used to it – easy-peasy. But when your streaming television service drops an essential channel, you can’t just jump to the next provider. Try that and you’ll hit your head on the cage they have you securely locked into.

Even if you’re not a sports fan, you’re probably tuned into my topic today. YouTube TV – which provides me the five channels of streaming television I care about (and 95 forgettable others), dropped ESPN from its lineup. It wasn’t like they warned us months ago they were renegotiating with Disney (ESPN’s parent), and that these talks weren’t going so well. Instead they alerted us last Thursday just before midnight – with an email coyly titled “An update on our partnership with Disney”. Then, the following morning, ESPN was gone. On Halloween. How fitting.

Without going into the weeds on why ESPN was dropped, let’s just call it the proverbial contract dispute. Disney wants one number. YouTube TV wants another. A stalemate akin to what we’re seeing in Washington right now. Yes, what D.C. is blocking is so much more important than a television sports channel. But when you’re a die-hard college football fan you can relate to losing an “essential service”.

Getting my ESPN back is not like choosing another breakfast cereal. If only it were that easy. Instead, we have to shift to an entirely different grocery aisle. Make that an entirely different supermarket. As soon as YouTube TV dropped ESPN, Disney was only too happy to promote its own streaming service. Sign up for Disney+, including ESPN and Hulu!!! Only $29.95 per month – a savings of $5/month!!! Only twelve months of subscription required!!!

All those exclamation points are a ruse, as if this is a service I can’t live without. Disney Channel? Not my thing. Hulu? I’m already getting enough entertainment on Netflix. I just want ESPN please. And apparently I should be happy to pay a minimum of $360 for it, in addition to my monthly $80 for YouTube TV.

Bless our tech-savvy children. We turn to them for all things electronic. I checked in with one of my sons – who is every bit the college football fanatic I am – and he came to my rescue. Fubo – a streaming service looking like a twin to YouTube TV – offers a free one-week trial that includes ESPN. It’s kind of like Congress signing a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open. Now I have another seven days to figure out what to do.

YouTube TV promises a credit if the lack of negotiations with Disney continues long enough (sorry, the same does not apply to our government). But I can’t necessarily wait for that credit. In one week I’ve got to decide if I’m a YouTube TV guy or a Fubo one. Can’t have both (at least, according to my budget).

Of course, it feels almost inevitable that Fubo will run into a contract dispute with Disney as well. So even if I go that route I could lose ESPN again. Maybe I’m getting forced into a Disney+ subscription after all? But another $360/year? No way. I’d sooner get on a plane and go watch my college football games in person. Er, assuming the FAA doesn’t cancel my flights. Swimming upstream indeed. Sigh…

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #3

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

We resumed our fountain build this week with more confidence than the last, accompanied by the merriment of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Bags 6 and 7 – of 15 bags of pieces – were filled with tiny, tiny finger-numbing LEGOs, and at times I wondered just what the heck I was putting together. Didn’t look like the makings of a fountain to me.

According to LEGO, water is white and blue. I suppose the white is meant to be rushing water (as in “waterfall”) while the blue is calm water (as in “pool”). We shall see. But check out the look of the fountain in the final photo. Anyone else see a monster’s mouth with white teeth?

Since this is my fifth LEGO model, it’s high time I make the following proclamation: LEGO never leaves out a piece. Never. I still have moments where I’m searching through a pile of pieces in vain for the one I need. I almost get to the feeling of “it’s not here”. But suddenly there the little guy is, staring up at me as if to say, “What took you so long?” Some day I’d love to see how LEGO pulls this off. Thousands of pieces in every box, not a single one of them left out. That’s some logistical magic going on there.

I’m proud to say I made zero mistakes on the build this time around, a dramatic improvement from a week ago. Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. I left a piece off the back of the fountain, but immediately discovered my error when I added a section and realized there was nothing to support it. Fixed in a jiffy, but the merry instruments on Paganini’s violin concerto sounded even more gleeful as they saw my confidence take a hit.

Running build time: 2 hrs. 27 min.

Total leftover pieces: 13

Chain (Saw) Reaction

When your kids celebrate you on Mother’s Day, you get flowers and chocolates; maybe even a homemade breakfast. When your kids celebrate you on Father’s Day, you get a gift card to Home Depot or Lowe’s, which is awesome. My kids are perceptive enough to know there’s always something I need for the workshop, so that little plastic rectangle of credit always brings a smile. But what I need is always trumped by what I want. Like power tools.

A polesaw is one of the cooler power tools out there (especially if you have a use for it). A polesaw is essentially a chain saw mounted on top of twelve feet of plastic pipe. At the bottom is the trigger. It’s like the world’s longest rifle, only you’re spinning chain saw blades instead of firing bullets. Picture the head and neck of a very thin giraffe. Or something out of a horror movie you’d watch this Halloween.

Polesaws are perfect for cutting down those overhead tree branches you cannot reach. You avoid the whole fall-off-the-ladder thing, which is fine with me since I’ve done it before. And with today’s super-batteries, you’re not tethered to a cord or a gas tank. Which brings me to my real story.

After purchasing my brand new Craftsman polesaw at Lowe’s – and barely fitting it into the back of my SUV – I headed on home eager to try it out. Charge up the battery, unsheathe the chain saw blade, and get to chopping down branches. When I did get home however, I realized my most basic of blunders: I had no battery. Right there on the box in plain English: TOOL ONLY. BATTERY AND CHARGER SOLD SEPARATELY. Talk about “buzz kill”.

A few days later I made it back to Lowe’s. Found the battery (the last one!), as well as an employee to escort me to check-out to make sure I paid. I get it – those batteries are expensive – more than the pole saw itself in fact. Okay, so now I have my pole saw and my battery. When I got home again however, I discovered my next blunder. It’s just a battery. It’s not a battery and a charger. Without a charger, a battery is just a bunch of chemicals housed in a case. Good grief, Charlie Brown! (with a whack on the forehead)

The next time I went to Lowe’s – where they now know me on a first-name basis – I found the charger. But here’s the problem. The charger comes with a battery, versus being sold all on its own. In other words, I have to buy a battery I don’t need. Okay, so I’ll return the first one. But after another employee escort to check-out and a little thought, I realized my biggest blunder of them all. I’d already unpacked and installed the first battery on the polesaw. Now I have a polesaw, a battery, a charger… and another battery I can no longer return. Needless to say, I’m well past the amount of my Father’s Day gift card by now.

I like to end every story with good news. The polesaw advertises “325 cuts per battery charge”. In other words, I’m never gonna need that second battery. Sure looks lonely sitting there on the workbench. Guess I just found me an excuse to buy another Craftsman power tool!

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #1

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

Our LEGO Trevi Fountain already feels like it’s flowing after just 3 bags – of 15 bags of pieces. You know this is going to be quick construction when I’m showing evidence of “brick wall” and “waterfall” just twenty percent into the build.

The rust on my LEGO skills was apparent from the first bag. I assembled the first two pieces incorrectly, thought I was missing a piece (which you always find later), and questioned why I ended up with an extra piece (which is LEGO’s way of saying, “in case you lose one”). Bag 2 had similar challenges. And Bag 3 was a little more difficult because you get lost in all those dreamy shades of blue. There was a moment when I placed an entire section of the fountain too far forward, corrected it, and thought, “Wow, Travertine is hard to move!”

For my fountain-building accompaniment, I thought it would be appropriate to listen the to the works of classical Italian composers. For today’s portion, I went with Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”. Bag 1 took me through “Spring” while Bag 2 took me through “Summer”. Bag 3 required the other two seasons. But as you can see, I already have a four-seasons pool I could throw coins into!

Running build time: 1 hr. 5 min.

Total leftover pieces: 2

Brick Wall Waterfall

If you were to spend an entire year in Rome, you could visit five churches every day and still miss out on some of the more than 1,600 within the city limits. You could also visit five piazzas (public squares) and never see all 2,000. If monuments are your thing, Rome has so many that instead of an actual count they simply say “more than any other city in the world”. And then we have Rome’s fountains. You could dip your hand in five a day and never see them all in a year. So here’s a better idea. Just spend a few hours at the Trevi and assume all of the others are second best.

I wouldn’t decree “best fountain in all of Rome” if I hadn’t been there and seen it for myself. I spent a college year in the Eternal City studying architecture, and you can’t help noticing the other elements of the city while you’re at it. Like fountains on every street corner. The Trevi Fountain was walking distance from the hotel/dorm we Americans lived in, so you can bet I stood before the Trevi’s gushing waterfalls many a day. Even a few nights.

Most people assume “Trevi” is an Italian word. It’s actually two words mashed into one. Tre = three, vie = ways. The Trevi is located at the intersection of three streets. It’s also the terminus for an aqueduct from ancient times. Water is picked up from a source outside of the city, carried over fourteen miles through the aqueduct, and deposited “with a splash” at the Trevi, to be further dispersed to the city underground.

Here’s a little more trivia on the Trevi. It was designed and built in the 1700s, on the back wall of a palace. It’s primary material is travertine stone (pricey!) quarried from nearby Tivoli. Besides the columns, arches, and niches along the wall, you have quite the trove of imagery going on over the water, with mythological creatures like tritons and hippocamps. I have no idea who the sculpted figures gazing down from either side are, but the big guy front and center is Oceanus, a pre-Olympian god.

If you’re a top-five tourist attraction in Rome, you must be pretty darned attractive for a city with countless places to visit. Maybe it’s the coin thing. Why do tourists stand with their backs to the fountain and toss three coins over their shoulder into the water (right hand, left shoulder)? Because legend says they’ll return to Rome some day if they do. “Legend” is really just Hollywood, from the movie Three Coins in the Fountain. But if you really know your Trevi trivia, you say the tossed coins follow the ancient tradition of honoring the gods of the waters, granting you safe passage home.

I’ve talked about the Trevi before, in Too Many Roads Lead to Rome. The fountain has become so popular you now need a ticket and a specific time to stand in front of it. But what I haven’t done before is build the Trevi. Last spring, the “architects” at LEGO immortalized the fountain in a 731-piece model, which I will construct over the next several blog posts. I haven’t put my hands on a piece of LEGO since Notre-Dame du Paris last January (which still beckons me to add its lighting kit). I might be a little rusty at this. The fountain might leak a little. But I’m up for a dip in this brick wall waterfall if you are.

Author’s Note: The title of this post was inspired by the strange-but-sweet Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. The movie included a little ditty my thirty-one year old daughter can still recite to this day: “Brick wall, waterfall, Dickie thinks he got it all but he don’t, and I do, so BOOM with that attitude. Peace punch, Cap’n Crunch, I’ve got something you can’t touch. Bang-bang choo-choo train, wind me up I do my thing. No Reese’s Pieces, 7-Up, you mess with me, I’ll mess you up.”

Some content sourced from the TripAdvisor.com article, “Everything you need to know about the Trevi Fountain coins”; IMDB, “the Internet Movie Database”; and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Pretty In Pink (and Green)

Here in the South, the arrival of spring has been declared with aplomb. You can already watch the grass grow, and it seems to need cutting every other day. But even more apparent, the blooms are everywhere. Pink azaleas (a staple at last weekend’s Masters golf tournament) run rampant. The roses have never been redder. And the giant flower heads of white hydrangeas will soon spring forth. This Easter week therefore, it seems appropriate for this blog to pay a visit to another cathedral: Saint Mary of the Flowers in Florence, Italy.

My LEGO creation of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris is quickly coming to a close, so I need to tour you through at least one or two more cathedrals before I’m done. The first, you may recall, was Saint John Lateran in Rome (read about that one in Tucked-Away Place to Pray). Today we’re a three-hour drive to the north, at Santa Maria dei Fiore. It’s no surprise my tour of the world’s prominent cathedrals continues in Italy. To be honest, the whole tour would do just fine if it never left the country.

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany, known for its stunning landscapes, world-class wines, and Renaissance art and architecture. Approaching the city from any direction, you cannot help but notice Santa Maria dei Fiore. The cathedral is not only one of the largest in the world, but its exterior is finished with marble panels of pink and green, giving the structure a light, airy contrast to the surrounding buildings. The church is crowned by a distinctive dome, which captures your attention even before the church itself.

The architect in me wants to highlight Santa Maria dei Fiore for the remarkable engineering that went into this massive structure. I could spend an entire post talking about the design of the dome alone. Consider, its structure is actually one inside of another. The brick-clad concrete shell you see from the outside is connected to the one you see from the inside by “chains” of stone, iron, and wood. With this approach, Santa Maria dei Fiore doesn’t require the flying buttresses so prominent in Notre-Dame de Paris (a structural element the Italians regarded as “ugly makeshifts”). And the dome’s four million bricks – which might seem heavy-handed (ha) – are a much lighter material than stone or tile.

There’s more to this cathedral than its dome, of course. The plan, a traditional Latin cross, includes three rounded apses surrounding the altar, each used as a chapel. The nave (sanctuary) is the length of two football fields; a vast interior space with single aisles on either side. The structural arches soar 75 feet above the seemingly endless marble floor. And perhaps most unusual, Santa Maria dei Fiore is actually a complex of three buildings. You enter the adjacent octagonal Baptistry of St. John through sets of bronze doors (which are replacements for the famous originals now residing in a nearby museum). And the slender free-standing Giotto’s Campanile (bell tower) is a decorated work of art in itself. All three structures blend together with those distinctive pink and green marble tiles.

If you’re ever fortunate enough to visit Saint Mary of the Flowers, be sure to purchase the ticket to climb to the top of the dome. Filippo Brunelleschi – the architect -included a narrow staircase between the two shells so you can reach the uppermost cupola for a spectacular view of Florence and the surrounding countryside. Brunelleschi designed other structures in his lifetime; churches, chapels, hospitals, and such, but the Florence Cathedral is his crowning achievement. It’s no wonder you’ll find his tomb right inside the entrance, alongside the more prominent players in Santa Maria’s storied history.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #12

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

Oh my stars, the build was challenging today! Bags 22, 23, and 24 – of 34 bags of pieces, focused almost exclusively on the west facade and the rising of the bell towers. We added the final rose window (above the west entrance) and reinforced the upper reaches of the nave in anticipation of adding the roof.

So here’s a detail I didn’t expect. In Notre-Dame’s towers, just below the uppermost structure (where the bells live – still to be built), you have – how else can I say it? – “stars on flag poles”. Forty stars on flag poles, to be precise. When I dumped out Bag 24, I thought, “What the…?” as the pile of magic wands you see here appeared. Did LEGO mistakenly add pieces from a Harry Potter model into mine? A Disney perhaps? Nope. Look at the final photo. Every one of those stars is planted at the west end of the cathedral like palm trees; most of them in the bell towers. Nice detail, Notre-Dame. As for installing them? It’s tough enough to push little poles into LEGO holes one-by-one-by one, but then you have to rotate the stars precisely forty-five degrees from the plane of the cathedral walls. The engineers at LEGO are having a barrel of laughs at my expense.

By the way, we’ve made it to the year 1245 as we build the bell towers, almost a hundred years after laying the first cornerstone at the opposite end. And we are almost done. By the numbers we have ten bags of pieces to go, but by the look of the model we’re closer than that. They must be small bags of pieces. Whatever. I just hope they don’t contain any more stars on flagpoles.

Running build time: 12 hrs. 01 min.

Total leftover pieces: 32

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Tucked-Away Place to Pray

In trying economic times like these, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear about people using credit cards to pay their bills. After all, when you have more month at the end of the money you do what you must to stay above water. But it’s a bit of a fool’s game isn’t it, creating one debt to eliminate another? Its what we call robbing Peter to pay Paul. And speaking of the Christian apostles, let’s talk about robbing John to pay Peter.

As promised when I began construction of the LEGO model of Notre-Dame de Paris last month (read about how I started this project in Highest Chair), I’d like to pay homage to a few of the world’s prominent cathedrals along the way. These magnificent structures are places of worship at heart but oh-so-much more besides. Each can be completely different in look and location. My goal here is to not have you walk away from Notre-Dame thinking “seen one, seen them all”.

What better place to start than at the most significant cathedral in the world? I’ll give you three hints. It’s located in the middle of Rome. It serves as the seat of Rome’s bishop (who just happens to be Pope Francis). And it’s named for one of the most influential figures in the Bible. Okay, time’s up, let’s have it. Did you guess St. Peter’s?

If St. Peter’s was your guess, you’d be… incorrect, and in fact, incorrect three times over. The St. Peter’s you’re thinking of – the “largest and greatest” church in the world – is not even a cathedral (but merely a basilica). St. Peter’s is not even in Rome, since the Vatican is technically its own country. Finally, St. Peter’s is not the seat of the pope (or any other bishop), even though Francis does live close by. Instead, the award for most significant cathedral goes to Saint John Lateran.

The Lateran cathedral is about a 5K jog from St. Peter’s Square. In fact, if you were to make the walk from one church to the other you’d pass by several of Rome’s highlights. The Pantheon. The Trevi Fountain. Piazza Venezia. The Forum. The Colosseum. Eventually you’d be standing in front of the imposing facade you see above.

Click the photo to see the tiny tourists!

Saint John Lateran is old – even by Rome’s standards – first established in the mid-300s. It sits on the site of the former Lateran family palace. The cathedral survived several fires, earthquakes, and periods of deterioration, eventually retreating into the shadow of the grander St. Peter’s. In the 1700s the Lateran received a complete overhaul, including the facade you see today. But it has always served as the cathedral of Rome. In fact, a plaque near its ancient bronze doors deems (in Latin): “… mother and head of all churches in the city and the world.”

Like Notre-Dame de Paris, the Lateran boasts a lot more than just the structure itself. Giant statues of the twelve apostles line the interior of the sanctuary. Six popes are buried here. The ancient Egyptian obelisk in front of the church is the world’s tallest. Finally, the Lateran claims to have hosted significant relics of Christianity over its many years, including the Ark of the Covenant, the wooden table where Jesus hosted the Last Supper, and (for the less faint of heart) the skulls of St. Peter and St. Paul.

It goes without saying; a trip to Rome isn’t complete without a visit to St. Peter’s and its surrounds. The sheer size and elegance of the basilica is unparalleled and worth several hours (if not days) of your time. But now you know; Saint John Lateran also deserves your attention. It’d be a shame to travel all the way to Italy and back without claiminng a visit to the most significant cathedral in the world.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #6

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

The model-building word of the day, boys and girls, is structure. Bag 9… of 34 bags of pieces, brought us face-to-face with the finished look of Notre-Dame de Paris’s iconic flying buttresses, installed carefully around the walls of the cathedral’s east end. Most of those “pasta bits” I showed you in our last visit amounted to fourteen (or about half) of the cathedral’s buttresses. They look like tiny cannons, don’t they?

Remember, the structural support of this cathedral is on the exterior, allowing for tall, thin walls, and more uninterrupted open space inside. Someone could come up with the ten coolest structural elements for buildings and I’d have buttresses “fly” to the top of the list.

If Notre-Dame’s parishioners felt a sudden sense of security and stability, it’s because the giant hand of Dave was buttressing the very walls around them as they worshiped. And if these structural elements aren’t elegant enough, they also house horizontal pipes to drain the water from the cathedral roof.

I keep referring to the cathedral’s “east end”, but now that we’re starting to see the finished product we should use proper terms for church architecture. We’ve effectively completed the chancel, which is the altar and surrounds to the east of the transept. Picture a giant Christian cross laying on the ground. The top of the cross is the chancel and the crossbar is the transept. The lower length of the cross, where most of the parishioners sit, is the nave. At the very bottom of the nave will be the bell towers.

Today’s build was not without its adventures. A small black piece escaped to my home office floor early on, prompting a prolonged hands-and-knees search. I swear I heard the piece clatter to the floor yet neither hands nor knees made the encounter. I was perplexed. Finally, with the aid of my handy-dandy iPhone flashlight, I found the crafty little devil way, way back in the dark central recess of my desk. This little guy was clearly making a move to freedom. Sorry, bud; it’s time to come home.

Finally, I thought the adjacent photo was worth including. Pretty much every single LEGO piece of Notre-Dame de Paris is unique in size and shape. Except this one. How does a singular “trademark” LEGO block end up amongst thousands of irregular pieces? Sadly, this piece was installed one level below the dark gray roof line of the chancel, which means you’ll never see it in the finished product. So I figured it deserved its moment of glory here instead.

Running build time: 5 hrs. 32 min.

Total leftover pieces: 23

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Overblown Air

When you travel to Colorado, you should pack a few things you might not think to bring. A reusable water bottle will be your constant companion since it’s high and dry in the Centennial State. Lip balm will be your pocket pal. Your wardrobe should be designed in layers since Colorado’s weather is so unpredictable. And finally, for the lack of air in the Rockies, don’t forget to bring a can or two of oxygen.

Canned oxygen? For the longest time I thought this was the biggest scam on earth. There was a time you could find “oxygen bars” at Colorado ski resorts – high altitude establishments where you’d pull up a stool and choose from a menu of “airs” to augment your oxygen intake. Watching those suckers – heh – with their mouths attached to transparent hoses had me picturing a guy on the other side of the wall furiously working the plungers of bicycle pumps. But forget oxygen bars. Now you can take a hit from your very own can instead.

Boost , a popular brand of canned oxygen, has been around for a while since its humble beginnings through Shark Tank. In Colorado you’ll find Boost products in every market, drug store, gas station, and airport concession. Boost is advertised as “95% Pure Supplemental Oxygen in lightweight, portable, and affordable canisters for health, recovery, natural energy, and athletic performance”. That’s an impressive string of words to describe nothing but canned air.

First-timers will react to Boost with a well-defined smirk. Gag gift for the relatives back home? Stocking-stuffer? After all, you’re paying $10 for a can of… well, nothing. Yes, Boost comes in flavored varieties like lavender or eucalyptus menthol but in the end, it’s just air. And watching someone take a hit of Boost is just like the goofball in your kitchen who tips the can of whipped cream directly into his mouth. Even the sound of escaping compressed air is the same. Just no whipped cream.

Naturally this is the point where I admit I’m a canned-air convert. Never thought I’d see the day I’d actually need a “boost”. But last January as I was moving belongings out of our Colorado house, I came to a breathtaking realization: I was no longer acclimated to the thin air of the Rocky Mountains. Climbing a set of stairs had me huffing and puffing. Lifting a box made my heart go pitter-patter. For some reason I’d thought to add a can of Boost into my suitcase, so what do you know? Compressed air to the rescue. Every now and then I’d blast the can into my mouth and darned if it didn’t clear my head and help me breathe. I was no whipped-cream junkie but rather a bold astronaut, seeking the occasional hiss of his supplemental oxygen.

For all its success, the legitimacy of a product like Boost is sullied by similar products having no health benefits whatsoever. On your next trip to Italy, head up to Lake Como in the far north for a look at the pristine waters and nearby snow-covered Alps. While you’re there you can purchase a can of “Lake Como Air” for $11. Lake Como Air claims no value other than “something original, provocative, and fun”, or “… a tangible memory you carry in your heart”. Really? I have lots of tangible memories from Italy and they didn’t cost me a dime.

On your next trip to Israel (which best not be anytime soon), head over to the Dead Sea for a look at the biggest, saltiest resource of natural minerals in the world. You can float in the Dead Sea without even treading water. And no surprise, you can “purchase” the Dead Sea in small containers. The so-called manufacturer claims its consumption “contributes measurably to feeling better and to looking wonderful and healthy”. Huh. Not sure about you but I like to think I feel better and look healthy just by drinking from the tap at my kitchen sink.

The list goes on and on. Holy dirt from New Mexico. Healing waters from right here in western South Carolina. Rocks from outer space. I mean, seriously, when are we going to stop paying for natural elements we can help ourselves to just by stepping outside our front doors? Yeah, probably never. That train left the station for good the day someone decided to bottle water. Now we have canned air as well… and it’s a good thing. Turns out, I’ll never take another trip to Colorado without a little Boost in my suitcase.

Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “Cans of ‘fresh air’ from Lake Como on sale to tourists in Italy”.