Italy!

I booked a trip to northern Italy next Friday!

The flatmate's got an Italian friend who lives north of Venice so

 we're going over to visit him for a long weekend. We will take a few day trips around to maybe Verona, Florence, Venice, Padua or something. 

This is what it looks like in northern Italy:

And also this:

and also this:

My first response to these pictures was that I have to find a replacement to my lost camera charger FAST!

Oh my gosh I can't wait! Off to Italy for 3 days, how unbelievable! Then it's (fingers crossed) Prague in October and Frankfurt in December for the Chriiiiistmas markets! WOO! Good trips planned, guys. I couldn't be more excited. :)

Now, in case you're landlocked or bored, I've stumbled upon (but not stumbleupon) a few cool sites that you might really enjoy:

1. Tavi

She's a blogging 12-year old with more funky fashion sense than 98% of the people I know. This is a guaranteed addicting blog. 

2. White Noise

There are two cornerstones of online white-noise generation: Simply Noise and iSerenity. My favorites are brown/red noise on SimplyNoise and Library on iSerenity. Just kind of drowns out your CEO's littany of eff bombs, or whatever you have going on in your background.

3. Silent Rave

This isn't a website so much as a phenomena. Have you heard? It involves a few thousand people congregating in a public place, putting on their headphones, powering up the iPods and having a kick-ass, silent dance party. It's individualistic while being social at the same time. It involves the ravers and onlookers. Everyone kinds of ends up talking and laughing and doing conga or moshing or whatever to their own music. No noise violations, none of the traditional rave pill-popper junkies. Just people rocking out, silently. What a cool idea!

I'm off to do a bit of pre-meeting research on the novel "March" before we meet to discuss it tonight. Have a good Wednesday!