Here we are, back on-line after Easter holidays. How did your holidays go? We didn't do anything special. Here in Italy prices are at an all time high so it has been a frugal Easter for many. But it doesn't matter, the spirit of Easter is not in the money, right?

My parents finally arrived on Saturday 22nd in the afternoon. My mom was fine even though her left wrist was put into a plaster cast. She has to keep it for at least ten days. It has been raining all the time so we didn't go out save for the Mass on Easter Sunday. For Easter lunch we had a dee-licious roasted pork meat with roasted potatoes. Easter Monday has been rainy as well so we gave up the traditional picnic and enjoyed veggie lasagna with pesto at home. When my parents left on Tuesday morning, the sun came out, but it didn't last very long because in the afternoon it turned cloudy again and around 3 PM we also got snow! Can you believe that? And it is supposed to be Spring! Finally on Wednesday we had sun all day, but it was still very cold, and Zeno got home with some tummy problems and a little nausea. It rained during the night and it kept raining on Thursday. On Friday we had clouds all day but it didn't rain. I don't remember a March with such a bad weather for so long!

This is supposed to be a sunny weekend and it seems it has started as good as promised. After lunch I'd love to go out for a relaxing walk hand in hand with my beloved hubby. And tomorrow (time permitting) we'd like to go to the cinema. We saw the trailer of "The Water Horse" on TV, and it seems pretty good. Plus, we have always been fascinated by Nessie. Let's say all legends are intriguing!

Time goes fast, I've been away for quite some time. Zeno and I are busy with our new laptop. We still have to install many programs and set up many things. It's a lot of work, but we are doing our best so that it doesn't take too long. We still have to get used to our new 'puter! This laptop came with Vista but we had it replaced with Windows XP. I'm not very comfortable with Office 2007 compared with the 2003 version. All functions are not in their usual place, plus I preferred the old look!

I'm not sure when I'll be able to write again. I'm totally aware that gaps between posts aren't the best way to attract visitors to this blog, but that's the way it is right now. I'm always glad to see you have left a comment, so please, keep writing: your friendship means a lot to me and Zeno!

I better stop now. No more talking nonsense! But before I go, hubby and I would like to wish happy birthday to Wanda Lucia, Åshild, Jessica and Cris, who just celebrated their "special day". Have a nice weekend you all! Bunny-hugs!

I was just sitting here with my cup of tea thinking that this week has flown by. Yesterday Spring officially started… yeah, right! It doesn't seem Spring to me with this cool temperature and cloudy sky. We still need comforter at night 'cos it's more like Autumn weather. Can't wait to use my beautiful cotton blanket.

Yesterday my parents were supposed to come in the afternoon to spend Easter with us, but around noon my mom called saying she fell down because of the uneven paving of a sidewalk. Thankfully nothing serious, just a few scratches. But since one of her wrists did hurt a lot, she went to the ER and they took an x-ray. Today she has an appointment with a doctor to check things out, so mom and dad are probably coming tomorrow.

That time of the year is here again. I'm turning a year older quite soon. Usually it's a perfect moment for me to look back and think if I did accomplish something good in the past year. I'm rather satisfied with myself, but I still have to get more organized, especially when it comes to 'puter-related stuff. Can you believe I still have tons of precious gifts, cute adoptions and seasonal awards in a folder just looking forward to being displayed on my website?! Shame on me!

Just in case I won't be able to be around before Sunday, hope you have a very Happy Easter filled with lots of chocolate and juicy jelly beans. Lotsa bunny-hugs.
Until we blog again…

HOP HOP HOP ... HAPPY EASTER!!

Hey, it has been a while since I last posted so I thought I'd make a quick post. We're finally enjoying a bright sunny afternoon after lots of rain during the night and early morning. Zeno told me that this morning, when he arrived to his Lab on the hills behind Trieste, there was rain mixed to snowflakes coming down. Temps are still cold, but I don't mind as long as the sun is out! Here in Italy, we're gonna turn the clocks forward on the last weekend of March. I'm looking forward to longer days!

We've been busy lately in our off-line life and now we've to catch up with tons of 'puter stuff. Did I already mention that we are gonna have a new laptop soon? My dad bought a new laptop and decided to give it to the two of us, while in return we give our old one to him, so now we have just a few days to set up two laptops, to do backups, tons of files to be saved and a huge amount of work to get done. I know, I know, I am rambling, LOL! We have to re-install and set up all our programs. It will take us a little while, and since Zeno is very busy at work and I have to try to do as much as I can all by myself, I better not hurry so I won't make a mess.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you have lots of things to talk about, but when you sit down to write, your mind just goes blank? Does it happen to you too?

Yesterday we had so much fun at the Portuguese lesson! Our teacher, Princy, is a very nice young lady! She is from Belém, Brazil, but her dad is Italian. She leaves here in Italy now and is married with an Italian guy. Yesterday at the end of our lesson, she played a CD with a nice brazilian song: "Velha infancia" by Tribalhistas. We really like it! She gave a copy of the CD to each student so we can get used to the pronunciation of every single word.

No Arabic lesson tonight 'cos our teacher has the flu. I think I will take advantage of this extra time to clean up our apartment, especially considering that my parents are coming on Thursday.

Tomorrow is Father's Day and Zeno and I would like to take this time to wish our daddies a joyful day! Well I won't make this a long post and hubby is calling me... we have to prepare the page for our second give-away cutie, so stay tuned. Ta ta for now!

We should redecorate our web-home for Spring and Easter. The front door of da house is full of snow and snowmen standing around. But it's cloudy right now and I don't smell Spring in the air yet. We're supposed to have sun tomorrow. Really hope so 'cos I'm sick of this bad weather. I'm really looking forward to sunny days. Anyone having wonderful spring-like weather, please, send some my way! LOL!

Things have been really busy around the home the past few months and I don't get much time on-line these days. But when I do I try and catch up on my emails … eventually! LOL! I know I have been a lousy e-pal lately. Not much to write about today, I have a lot of cleaning to do and Arabic lesson in the evening.
Oh, and Zeno just got home! It's very early for him but he had to come home 'cos of the bus strike. Yay!
Till next time... chocolate-hugs!

As you may have noticed, only today I've been able to upload the posts Zeno and I wrote on the 8th and 12th. Today Spring feels closer and I enjoy to watch the light blue sky after so much rain! I've just done the weekly grocery shopping and now I'm relaxing with my second cup of coffee. I should do some housework too, but I'm not in the mood… as usual! LOL! I'm not a good housekeeper, I know, but there are always so many funnier things to do! I'm really lucky 'cos my sweet hubby always helps me with the cleaning. He is just so adorable and thoughtful!

We found many lovely messages in our mail-box and the first seasonal cuties arrived. Just gorgeous! It's wonderful to exchange them with all our Net friends! Hope to have the time to update our Easter and Spring pages this weekend. Oh, I just noticed that something is wrong with our Adoption Shoppe, it doesn't show up right now. While I try to fix it, you can find a couple of cuties in our "Gift for You" page.
One of the next things we have to do is updating our "What's Your Price" pages. Zeno kept writing all the prices every week, but we weren't able to put them on-line.
Well, enough blogging for now, on to the cleaning, dust won't clean itself! Enjoy your day y'all!

Whew, what a week we're having! Sorry we keep disappearing like this. We've been busy, first trying to finish our Easter shopping (but we are not done yet), then with homework of the Arabic and Portuguese courses. These two language courses are a great experience. Both our teachers are really good. The only negative aspect: they're too fast while explaining and they test too much, LOL!

The weather has been another problem lately. It has been cloudy, rainy and windy since the second half of February. On March 4th we also had some snowflakes. On March 7th the wind had reached a speed of 151 Km/h so that the 5 Celsius degrees (41 F) of temperature were felt like -15 (5 F). Brrr! Today the sun finally showed up for the first time in a month.

Here's a crazy thing! While typing this post, on TV they are talking about a bunch of guys sent to Europe and to the USA to get raw materials; they steal steel manholes or pieces of railways or copper wires from electrical appliances, and they send everything to China… that's shocking!

Talking about crazy stuff, our friends Christine, Susan and Karin wrote us about graphic abuse: a certain lady had stolen lots of graphics from all of us and Åshild too. Her site is no more on-line, anyway I want to believe she did it only 'cos she didn't know what copyright is and what graphic artists rights are. We personally know a few people that didn't know that things on the Internet were protected by copyright and they thought that whatever was found in the WWW could be taken and used freely.

Tomorrow we have our monthly appointment to the cinema with a movie in original language: "Knocked up". On Friday we have Arabic lesson (postponed from Tuesday because our teacher had some personal problems). So, we're not so sure about when we'll be able to post again. Plus, we have tons of e-mails to go through. But little by little we will reply to everyone of you. Well, we better get going, have a peaceful night!

Dear friends, here we are, back on-line again! It seems we've solved our connection problems, at least in part. But that's enough to get us back in the World Wide Web! We definitely missed you all and we are thankful for all your nice messages!

Here things are pretty much the same. Just to do a brief recap, on January 25th Zeno's mom took the train to come here in Trieste to visit us. We spent a nice long weekend together. We cooked together, enjoyed all the sweets she brought us (and gained at least 2 kilograms, argh!) toured the city, visited a museum with lots of beautiful paintings, went to the cinema to see "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" and had a delicious lunch in an Arabian restaurant downtown.

From the 11th to the 22nd of February we both attended two free intense language courses (10 lessons of one hour each, in two weeks, for free): Portuguese and Arabic. We liked them so much that we decided to enroll to the following courses for beginners (26 lessons of 2 hours each, once a week) which are not for free, but not expensive either. They end at the beginning of June, and we just hope to learn enough for a basic conversation.

Recently, Zeno has gone twice to Milan for a job interview. It went fine, but he rejected the position since many things were not at all as they told him at the beginning (the stipend was less than half of what they said at first, and his duties were much more and also not so interesting). You can imagine how disappointed we are about it, plus, since Zeno had to take two days off work to go to Milan (it's 4 hours by train from Trieste) he won't be able to get any day off around Easter.

Today we want to remember Tina Lagostena Bassi, a great Italian woman that died a few days ago. She was woman of law who had always fought for women's rights. In the 70s she started to defend women from stalking, sexual violence and, first in Italy, during her work used crude words, during trials, to describe violence. She tried to defend women by shocking the Italian society of late 70s which has always been reticent to women violence, breaking silence about this stuff. In the 80s she founded Telefono Rosa (Pink Phone), an association which gives free services to women in difficulty as legal support or psychological services or medical visits. In 2003 she was one of the promoters for the change of the Italian constitutional article number 51 which now establishes the equality for men and women in the society with equal opportunities for both sexes in public and private market.

Sweet, sensitive, stubborn, fragile, combative, daughters, mothers, grannies, sexy, creative, manager, housewives… women and proud of it! Happy Women's Day!

The following quote comes from Jaana and we want to share it with you all.