Saturday 16th	Current weather:
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We woke up early 'cos our flight to Italy leaves at 11:15 AM and we have to be at the airport two hours earlier for the check-in. We will be back on the 30th late at night. The weather in Italy has been very hot (about 35°C) till yesterday, but after a thunderstorm the temps have dropped down to 25°C. We don't like really hot days, but we hope to have at least some sunny days in order to go to the beach. We want to swim and play water fights, LOL! Here in Paisley the days have been cloudy and chilly, around 15°C. Here are two photos of a sunrise we saw at the end of June. This one was taken at 4:30 AM… … and this at 4:34 AM. We thought that our Mailing-List Members deserve to be spoiled a little bit. So, starting from September 2008, every month we will choose 2 names among all our mailing-list members. The winners will receive a free sigtag of their choice. Spread the word and stay tuned. Behave yourselves while we are away - leave a paw-print of your stay, please. We did not mean to "hide" our comments you can find them clicking on the book at the bottom of the page.
Posted by Kia and Zeno @ 7:11 AM

Friday 15th	Current weather:
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I thought I'd drop in and leave a quickie post. Thank you very much for welcoming us back online! We're so glad to be back, we missed you all so much! And thanks for your kind words about our denim webset (Comfy Jeans). Zeno and I are both "Jeans and T-shirt" kind of persons and making this set was kinda fun! I saw many of you are watching the Olympics. Hubby and I did not see anything yet, 'cos we still don't have a TV. And since we don't miss it, we decided we won't buy one till January. I know Italy won 14 medals so far (6 gold, 4 silver, 4 bronze) 'coz my dad keeps me updated by SMS. BTW, what's your fave Summer Olympics Event? I took the poll at Darylynn's and said Equestrian Sports, but I also like Swimming and Archery. I really need to get busy doing some cleaning. You know, the whole sweeping, mopping and dusting thing. But I'm sitting here talking to you folks, instead. I've been so terribly lazy lately. Plus, I'm still feeling under the weather ...hum… does anyone know what is the origin of this phrase to imply that one is feeling sick? Anyway, I haven't been feeling well since Tuesday evening. I've been dealing with back pain, sneezes and dizziness. Zeno has been a big help, preparing soup for me. For the ones of you that still don't know what happened, here is a short recap. I went to Glasgow with Zeno 'cos he had an appointment for an interview to get his NIN (National Insurance Number). I cannot apply yet, 'cos I'm still not working. Well, I had to wait for him for 50 minutes… outside, in the street. It was cold, windy and rainy and I had to stay outside. Not just me, other 10 persons were outside too. I asked if I could at least sit on one of the many sofas I saw there, but no way, I had to wait outside 'cos "none without an appointment can stay in the building". That is the oddest thing that ever happened to me. I could understand if I had asked to sit in the office or something, but in the lobby or front office, was it really a big deal?! I guess it's all about security, but… do I look like a spy undercover? LOL! Probably if I had to wait during a sunny day I wouldn't have minded so much. But I was quite disappointed 'cos I got sick. And as if being sick was not enough, I also had to cancel the coffee appointment with our neighbors Sandro and Dorothea on Wednesday evening, and the night out at the Pub with Detlef, Marco and Sabine yesterday. It was supposed to be my first time ever in a Pub and the last chance to say Detlef goodbye 'cos he is moving back to Germany. I would never say that all Scottish people are drunk and bad mannered. And I am sure that hubby and I will find plenty of nice people here! Pretty sure! We just had a li'l bit of bad luck. So, as always when I'm sick, I ate too much in the past few days. I think I had 10 coconut macaroons (see photo) in a row yesterday. Here are a few new photos we really like. Our camera is an HP 735 - 3.2 MP 3x optical zoom. It's cute, but the photos turn out kind of blurry if the object we want to capture is too far or if there is not enough light. Zeno took this one, mostly by luck, LOL! But I really like it. We had the chance to see a few rainbows from our lounge since we arrived here, and here are our best snaps. … so now you have an idea of what we see looking out of our windows. Since Darylynn said she has never heard of Name Day, I'm curious to know who of you celebrate it. Name Day (Onomastico in Italian) is widely celebrated in my country and Italian's calendars contain the names celebrated each day (based on the Roman Catholic calendar of Saints). Usually on this day one eats sweets and cakes with friends and family and receive little presents. This year I received as a gift from Zeno a nice set of 4 CDs of essential Brazilian music. Before going, just wanted to welcome baby girl Caterina to this world. Congrats to mommy Valentina, dad Luca and big bro Ludovico for the New Bundle of Joy! I'd also like to take this time to congrats Jules for her little miracle-to-be! You will be a wonderful mommy, sweetie! Buon Ferragosto to our family and friends back in Italy. Enjoy the fireworks! Until we blog again… UPDATE: I did laundry while I was in a hurry making dinner and did not notice I left a green t-shirt in the delicates basket. Now all our underwear is yellow!
Posted by Kia @ 5:04 PM

Thursday 14th	Current weather:
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Here we are, back blogging! Leaving for our holidays to Italy without posting at least once, didn't sound right to us. We needed to share with you a li'l bit of our new adventure. We have been busy trying to decide how to redecorate our site after our long absence from the World Wide Web. Since we won't be able to update our Digilander domain from here, we decided that it's not worth to move all our pages to One just like they are, because there are TONS of them and all need to be fixed somehow (graphics, links, etc). When we go back to Italy for our holidays, we will remove all our pages from Digilander, so that we can add them to the new address little by little, once we have fixed and modified them. Yes, we know we took a drastic decision and we admit that canceling (almost) all our old pages and giving a brand new look at our webhome is kind of scaring. But it's the only way to motivate us. And of course, you will have to bear with us 'cos a few links may not be working properly right now. Oh, and we have to keep our Adoption Shoppe closed for a little longer than we were planning. Sorry about that. But you can find an adorable seasonal adoption in our "Gifts For You" page. Hope you like it as much as we do! We kept note on a notepad of everything that happened to us so far, but we don't want to bore anyone forcing you to read three months of events of our life. We will try to sum up everything in the next few posts. The first topic we'd like to talk about is nature. Scotland is a beautiful country to visit, with its charming Castles, mysterious lakes and green hills dotted here and there with fluffy sheep and cows. Here are a few nature-related photos Zeno and I took during our li'l trips. Franco (Kia's mom cousin), is a beekeeper and his bees' honey is so yummy! Cannot believe that honey bees are disappearing at an alarming rate. Click HERE for more information... We like this photo in particular. We'd love to be surrounded by plants and flowers, but we have neither a garden nor a balcony. Ahh, Mother Nature is just beautiful! Okie dokie, time for bed! Our cup of herbal tea with a spoonfull of honey is ready, sweet dreams.
Posted by Kia @ 11:59 PM

Wednesday 13th	Current weather:
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Zeno just left for work. I thought to write just a short note to remind you that the International Left-Handers Day falls today. Yep, I'm a leftie. Not 100% thou', just when it comes to handwriting. Did you know that only about 10% of the population is left handed? And that during the 17th century people thought left-handers were witches and warlocks? I read an article on the Metro saying that left-handers have a big advantage over their right-handed peers when it comes to learning to drive. Well, Ayrton Senna, one of the best drivers in history, have been left-handed. But I think it's just easier here in the UK, having the gear on your left instead of on the right. Dunno for sure thou', because I did not try to drive here yet. I'm so glad hubby and I don't have to run to the Public Library to check our e-mail and to do blog-hopping anymore. I've borrowed 14 books in two months there. Reading is so relaxing! And also quite addicting, let me say! I enjoyed a couple of books so much that I just could not stop reading them. Lately many of our Net firends moved their web-homes, so we updated our Blog Roll. You can find it clicking on the sweet hedgehog with the book. Hope every links is correct now in order to be able to read you every time we have a spare moment. Well, time to go. But remember: everyone was born right handed, and only the greatest overcome it. LOL!
Posted by Kia @ 7:11 AM

Tuesday 12th	Current weather:
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Can you believe it?! It is us! Yes, it is! We can hardly believe it ourselves, but we are back online! We finally set up our internet connection at home. It's even a wireless broadband connection, and as you can imagine we love it! We never surfed the Net so quickly. None of us is missing our dial-up connection so far, LOL! But unfortunately the good news is immediately followed by a bad one: we tried to add a new post in our Blog and found out we cannot update any of our webpages from abroad. We must be in Italy to be able to work on all the files we have on Digilander (the free web-host where we have all our Personal Pages). Ohmigosh! Tons of files are trapped there. Next week, when we'll be in Italy for our holidays, we'll try to "resolve" this problem. In the meanwhile, we'll keep in touch by posting tags in our Graphic Shoppe Comments board. So, Murphy's Laws are right, after all. LOL! Just kidding! That means that if we are lucky (fingers crossed y'all, pretty please) and everything goes smoothly, we should be 100% back "posting & updating our pages" in September. About life in Scotland: we are quite happy here, even if we can't deny we miss Italy. Life is good there, more than many Italians would admit. Our new flat is cute and we'll share a few photos of it as soon as possible. Scotland is a beautiful country to visit, with many gorgeous Castles, green hills dotted with sheep and cows here and there, lakes and glens... great place for tourists! But right now we (mostly Kia) are not 100% sure it's also a great place to live in. We always had this myth of Scottish people being nice and famous for their hospitality, but we ended up meeting many drunk, mean and bad-mannered persons. Of course, there are also nice people, but since we arrived here we have been like a magnet for problems. We (once again, mostly Kia) still have problems understanding this funny and strong Glasgoweigan accent. Zeno likes his new job and has a lot of nice colleagues. We enjoyed hanging out with a couple of them and had them here for dinner a couple of times. Yesterday was Kia's Name Day and we spoiled ourselves with this: Ok, enough with blabbering for today, good night and sweet dreams, dear friends. We'll keep you updated. Hugs & cheers!
Posted by Kia and Zeno @ 11:56 PM