To (Christmas) card or not? That is the question

Several of my friends have been talking, on their blogs and on Facebook, about their Christmas cards and having family portraits done for said cards and how many weeks in advance they'll have to mail them for them to reach people in the States before Christmas.
Yes, us Foreign Service types are a weird bunch, but you try mailing things from East Timor and let me know how it goes. (Hi, Kelly!)
So I'm trying to decide what to do about cards. For many years -- before we were married and a few years after that -- I sent A LOT of cards. Definitely more than anyone else I know. Like 100 or so. I did personal notes to the people on my list I wasn't in regular contact with, but I skipped the annual letter thing. (I don't think there are many people who want to know THAT much about what's going on.)
The past few years I've sent fewer and fewer cards. Sometimes they've just been to family members and others who sent them to us. Sometimes I've sent Christmas/New Year's greetings via e-mail. And now I have to decide what to do this year.
We're in an awesome place. We have awesome photos of this place, and if I try hard enough, I probably can get a photo of our entire little family in front of some cool scene. But does every member of our families and all of our friends need to receive a printed version of said scene? Does wishing people a Merry Christmas (or Happy Hannukah or Holidays or Kwanza if those are your thing) have to be about printed material?
Not that I'm anti-printed material, of course, being a newspaper person and all. I'm just not sure it's always necessary.
So, people, share some thoughts on this. Do you send cards? Why or why not?

My pretend life as an inventor

On a road trip from Nashville to my parents' house years ago, I ended up with a bug in my car. It occured to me then that it'd be cool to have a sort of central vacuum system for cars, where you pressed a button and everything not attached would be sucked into a reservoir of some kind. It'd come in handy in our current car, too, now that I think about it, since its previous owners were nice enough to leave lots of their dog's hair for us.
But this post really is about floors and my lack of ability to mop them thoroughly or correctly. At least I assume that's the problem, since they often end up looking dirtier than they were when I started. I need my grandfather and his mopping-obsessed self here to do it. Alas, he died in 2006.
So this morning I've decided it would be really cool if there was such a thing as a sort of lint roller for floors. It'd be for all types of floors, not just carpet. It'd be a big sheet of film that you'd stick down and leave for a little while (walking on it would make more stuff stick, which of course is the whole point). When you pulled the film back up, all the nastiness from the floor would be on it -- and none of the stickiness from the film would be left on the floor. Because the thought of that possibility taints my dream just a little.
And while I'm dreaming, I want the whole thing to be biodegradeable. So maybe it'd be more of a paper than a plastic.
Hey, I have to find ways to entertain myself as I mop. Bellowing at the toddler to stop taking all of the canned food and plastic containers from the kitchen cabinets just isn't cutting it.

One big happy (Facebook) family

I realized yesterday I'd never written the post I'd planned about Facebook bringing families and friends together in times of need. Then I realized I had 666 Facebook friends. I'm back down to 664 today, though, so don't go blaming any apocalypses on me, OK?
When my dad died Aug. 18, I talked about it in my Facebook status that night. Between comments on that, other Facebook notes and e-mails from people who'd seen the news on Facebook, I got about 125 messages of condolence. (Some of those people also sent "real" cards. Thanks, Teresa and Neil and Michelle!)
The Foreign Service life makes it difficult to have friends in the traditional, have-lunch-and-hang-out sense. Such friends we have right now will be gone before we know it, or we'll leave and they'll stay, or some such. Combine those friendships with others we've had over the years, and that's a lot of people to try to maintain contact with.
Yes, Facebook has its issues (security and time vacuum, to name a couple). But my 660-something friends include relatives far and wide, people I knew growing up, friends from college, co-workers and others from my five far-flung newspaper jobs, many cohorts from the American Copy Editors Society, church friends from over the years, and a vast selection of people I've met (both in person and online) since Kevin joined the Foreign Service.
I wish we could all hang out in person periodically, but we all know how impossible that is. And since that's the case, I'm glad we have Facebook to bridge the geographical gaps.

Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr

Awhile back I read a "My kind of town" narative in Smithsonian magazine about Boise. It wasn't until I started reading this book I realized they had the same author.
Anthony Doerr -- along with his wife and twin sons, one of whom happens to be named Owen -- spent a year in Rome as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The book chronicles that year, fall through summer, which included the death of Pope John Paul II and the naming of Pope Benedict XVI.
It's well-written. The subtitle is On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World, and the parts on parenthood -- the twins are 6 months old as the year begins -- are touching and often funny. And the travel details are great.
It's a short book and not complicated reading, although there are a lot of references to the writings of Pliny the Elder. I recommend it.

Abbazia di Chiaravalle

I went here yesterday on a tour hosted by the PTO at the American School. The tour was great, the other parents (all mothers) were fun, our guide was wonderful, and Owen was relatively well-behaved. This was the only site I was able to take photos at, but I'm sure I'll be returning to many of the places.
Chiaravalle was founded in the 13th century. It's still a working abbey -- we saw a young monk mopping the floor of the dining hall -- but draws tourists because of its Giotto-style frescoes and other historic details. (Those are the Four Evangelists below.)
Not everything here is original -- there apparently was some damage from bombs during World War II -- but I was impressed by this "knotted" column.

Life skills

I often happen upon scenes such as this when I've forgotten to hide Kevin's wireless mouse.

This is hard to say, but ... my mom may have been on to something

When I was a teenager and needed to drive somewhere, my mom often made me take my brother Heath along. It didn't matter that a teenage boy wasn't needed at whatever event or outing I was going on. She insisted he needed to be there to pump gas.
OK, so we lived in the middle of nowhere, and our vehicles never were what one could call fuel efficient. So there almost always was gas to be pumped. But really? I'd say. I'm capable of pumping my own gas.
This sequence of 20-year-old events popped into my head this morning as I contemplated having to put gas in the car. We don't drive much here, and it just so happened that Kevin's always been there when we needed to buy gas. Plus, at a lot of stations, even the self service pumps are manned by helpful little guys who do the pumping for you. So I'd never personally bought or pumped gas in Italy.
But there's a first time for everything, and this afternoon I stopped by a little streetside station near our house. (It's hard to explain, but many of the gas stations in the city are pretty much a pump on the side of the road.) There was a line, so I sat and waited for a few minutes. When I finally made my way to a pump, it was a self-service one, so I started pumping.
Before I was done pumping my planned 40 euros worth, the attendant made his way over, and I think he realized I was worried about stopping the pump in time. So he took it from me and finished the job himself. And I was on my merry way.
Of course, I'm sort of wishing my mom was around to send a brother with me to pump gas. Because really, he would come in handy a lot more often than he did in 1989.

Kevin celebrates his birthday with the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps

Yesterday we went to International Day at the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps' Italian headquarters. Each NATO country had a booth with examples of its traditional food and drink, and musicians and dancers from some of the countries performed. There also were judo, rugby and equestrian demonstrations.
The American tent had hamburgers and hot dogs -- oh, and Cheetos -- although I didn't eat any of that. I'm guessing the Turkish food had to be good because the line was so long we never got anything from there. But the cheese from the British tent was great, I had some delicious Hungarian goulash, and the Greeks also had some tasty things. I think Laura's favorite part was the cotton candy -- zucchero filate as the Italians call it -- and Owen managed to cover himself in chocolate thanks to a woman passing out cookies.
Laura got to hang out with a soldier -- I'm not sure of his nationality, although he spoke English -- dressed in a World War II U.S. Army uniform.
We didn't get any photos of the birthday boy -- I failed miserably in all kinds of birthday-related ways -- but he seemed to have had fun.

Discovered in the pinacoteca at Castello Sforzesco

As I mentioned in the mummified crocodile post, we ventured to the Castello Sforzesco on Saturday to visit its museums. In reality, there's one big museum with many themes, and one ticket gets you into all of them. We missed the musical instruments this time, but I'm sure we'll be returning.
I've posted photos of the castle before, but this is the courtyard from inside the building. It's pretty cool.
In the pinacoteca is this Mantegna, Madonna in gloria e santi Giovanni Battista, Gregorio Magno, Benedetto e Girolamo. Laura's name for it: Mary and Jesus in a Tree of Floating Baby Heads. She has a point, I suppose.
I didn't have time to dwell on that, though, because I was distracted by the question of the day: Did Jesus lift weights in utero? If you take a look at this detail of Giovan Battista Trotti's Adoration of the Shepherds with St. Clare and St. Francis of Assisi, you'll see what I mean.I mean, he's both chubby and buff at the same time. Is that possible? (I don't seem to have taken a picture of the whole painting, but you can see it here.)

I had to take a photo because it probably will never be this clean again

This is Owen's room in Milan. I've just finished arranging everything (the closet armoire and changing table aren't visible but are to the right). This is the smallest of the bedrooms in our house, but it's still a decent size. Many of the substantial things -- the dresser, bedside table and floor mats -- were courtesy of our friends the Norbergs, who were nice enough to give us all kinds of things their boys have outgrown.

It's not every day a person gets to see a mummified baby crocodile

But I did Saturday in the Egyptian section of the Castello Sforzesco museums. I know you're jealous, but please try to contain yourself.

Today's installment of "Dangers of having a big sister"

Apparently I've created a (creative) monster, as Laura took these photos herself and requested I post them.Seconds later Owen came to his senses:

On random acts of kindness -- and toilet paper

I’ll spare all of you the details, but my dad died at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. For a variety of reasons, that’s also where the family congregated to receive visitors – and the food and toilet paper those visitors brought. (No, I’d never heard of bringing toilet paper when people die, either, but apparently I was the only one who missed the memo.)
The day after I arrived in South Carolina (two days after Dad’s death), my brother-in-law Bubba had gone over to mow the front lawn – more like a good-size hayfield – at Thomas and Dayna’s house. But the grass was too thick for his riding lawnmower, and he was doing it with the push mower. It was going to take a long, long time.
A neighbor stopped and mentioned he’d seen the coroner and ambulance leaving the house earlier in the week – and added that he had a tractor with a bush hog back at his house a couple hundred of yards down the road and would be happy to bring it back and finish the mowing. Which he did.
OK, so it was a typical Southern neighborly thing to do, and it’s fairly minor in the eternal scheme of things. Bubba could have finished the job (or at least made a decent-size dent in it), and the world wouldn’t have come to an end had the grass not been mowed. But to me, it was just as significant as all of the food and toilet paper and flowers and thousands of miles flown and driven by family and friends for the visitation and funeral. Because this man – whose name we weren’t sure of until I was able to find him in the phone book – didn’t know any of us or what had happened beyond seeing a bunch of vehicles in the driveway that one day.
Conclusion of today's lesson: It doesn't hurt to ask questions, even if the people you're going to be asking are complete strangers, and to follow up on the answers.

The mystery in Box 49

Our last shipment of household effects -- things we shipped from Washington, D.C., that didn't make it into our air freight -- finally was delivered today. It took so long -- at least by my standards -- I really couldn't remember what was in there. I think I'd remember having dogs, though, especially if I'd packed them into a box for a slow trip from the U.S. to Belgium to Italy.I assume the dogs in question are of the stuffed variety, but I don't dare open the box to find out. I'm sure Laura will be willing to, though.

First day of fourth grade

We're lucky enough to have an American School bus stop right outside our house. And that Laura got the teacher everyone seems to love. I do sort of wish the school had uniforms, though. (Laura points out they do have to wear gym uniforms, but that's not really what I had in mind.)