Yesterday I have my first ever colonoscopy. Normally they say you should wait until you're 45 years old. But I think that's not so much because it's a good idea to wait and more of that insurance won't cover it until then. I was talking with a doctor recently and mentioned that my father had had colon cancer and he said, "Oh then you shouldn't wait until you're 45 yous should start when you're 40." Mmmk, well I'm 44 and a half years old, so great.

Regardless, I got it on the calendar and scheduled it for this year. My gall bladder surgery had not only met my deductible, but pushed me over my out of pocket maximum for the year, so it would be covered at 100%. Although I have to admit I didn't ever verify that it would be covered, so there very well could be a massive bill coming. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Colonoscopies, insurance, deductibles. Could I BE any more adult?

Everyone told me the colonoscopy was no big deal. They just give you some of Michael Jackson's milk and you doze off into blissful slumber. NOT really the whole story folks. Before you do that you have to spend an entire day eating nothing and taking absurd doses of laxatives and Miralax. I don't think they do the prescription jug of juice anymore, since you can accomplish the same thing by abusing over the counter drugs. It was so terrible. I couldn't sleep the entire night because I had to run to the bathroom every 15 minutes, nauseously hungry, and trying not to get dehydrated.

Sure the actual procedure was pretty nice. I really did prefer the propofol over the general anesthesia for a full blown surgery. Waking up was gentle and peaceful, not jarringly confusing with missing bits of memory. They did find 2 polyps and those are being biopsied so all in all I guess it was a good idea that I got this done, but please jebus don't make me do it more often than every 5 years. I am not looking forward to the next one.

A few years ago we attended a wedding in Austin where Daniel bumped into an old friend he hadn't seen in years. This friend told him he was now living in Milan ever since he had claimed his birthright citizenship in Italy. If you are descended from an Italian citizen and can prove it, you can claim your jure sanguinis right to your own citizenship. Italian citizenship, of course, comes with full rights and privileges of a European Union citizenship allowing you to live or work anywhere in the EU.

It wasn't for a while after we got home that we really got curious and started looking into whether this was a viable option for Daniel or not. We knew for certain he was Italian by blood, but just weren't sure exactly what the rules were, if we could sufficiently prove it, etc. We finally decided to take action and looked up the consultancy that his friend had used and set up an appointment. The guy did some genealogical research on the fly with us watching. He did it so incredibly fast using a multitude of tools. And what I appreciated the most was fast and accurately he could type. He was just zooming around the internet, pulling down documents, loading them into a folder.

He told us we could proceed and gave a list of documents to procure. And it was a lot. Basically every birth, marriage, and death certificate for EVERY member of his lineage all the way back to his great-grandfather, Segundo. It was time consuming and bureaucratic, but not terribly difficult. For some of the old documents from Italy we had to hire somebody to physically go look them up. The rest we could pretty much order online for a nominal fee. Some of those were quick and easy, some required telephoning some lady in an office in upstate New York and asking what the dillyo. But after a couple of years we had compiled the full list.

That then had to be notarized and approved as legit by the US government before they could be translated and sent to the Italian government. Then we waited. Last December he was informed that he had won his elective court case in Turino, Italy and was now a citizen! There was still more waiting for this decision and the resulting paperwork to be officially filed and on record in Asti. But we got notified last week that his Italian birth certificate and our Italian marriage certificate are both on file and official!

For next steps, he has registered online as an "Italian Living Abroad" and we'll probably have to wait a few months for that to go through and get approved. Then he will have access to services from the Italian consulate in Houston including getting his passport.

All we have to figure out then is when and where we're moving to in the EU.... Stay tuned!

I have been keeping up with my DuoLingo lessons. The streaks and friend streaks and leaderboards do enough to make sure I never skip a day. That and the incessant notifications from the app. But ... I do have one distraction from my language lessons.

DuoLingo has chess lessons. I've always wanted to learn to play chess, but beyond learning how the pieces move and then getting destroyed repeatedly in online games, I never pursued it. But now I'm getting little tiny play by play lessons of different scenarios and how to respond and why. I am BY NO MEANS good at it. God damn, is it ever hard. When I do go on Chess.com and play strangers, I do NOT do well. I get so nervous and make so many bonehead mistakes.

I will say this though. I know very little about openings. And I'm completely lost in the midgame. But the endgame. Man do I seem to be good at the end game. After my opponent has decimated my ranks, I can dance around, gobble up their pieces, avoid checkmate, and usually in even the most dire circumstances end things in a stalemate draw. I'm sure a lot of that is due to me being matched with people with similar ranks who don't know how to close out a game and against anyone competent I would be dead in seconds. But it's still fun. I wish I could play someone I know regularly but I can't find anyone willing to play me. So if you have a Chess.com username and want to play with me leave a comment. I love saying leave a comment like anyone is reading.

Also, side note. I now know what a Queen's Gambit is and honestly it's not that cool. It's just an opening move/moves. It sounds like it's some kind of dramatic endgame sacrifice of your queen to win the game or something. But nope. Just the first move or two with your pawns.

Today was a pretty good day. In all honesty, I had a good ending by proxy because my neighbor Daniel had had such a good day. He went and bought this 200 dollar touch screen remote control that can control everything in his apartment. Right now it does everything but the lights, but he's going to buy a receiver for that soon, and when it's all done, he'll be able to hit one button and the TV will turn on, change to Video 1 for DVD, turn on the DVD player, switch the audio receiver to DVD and dim the lights. It does everything but wipe your ass, but we're working on that.

During his little shopping spree he went to get me a new DVD player. No more Playstation DVD watching for me. It's like every pool boy's dream to get a new DVD player. It will go well with the new iPod Nano I got. I also got a new bike. Awesome. The Danimal was in a really spontaneous mood from all of his spree shopping. He wanted to go to London. Like now. I compromised and we went to rent a movie we'd just seen mentioned on VH1's I Love the 80s 3-D. It was Mel Brooks's's History of the World Part I. It looked so funny on TV, but really, it was just stupid. I think his generation's humor has come and passed.

While we were driving around we passed a sign near the building site of the new Addison! Wal-Mart that said "Coca-Cola: Now Hiring." I've never seen a Coca-Cola store before so I can't imagine what is going on there. I'll tell you one thing, though: I'm going to apply. I think it would be fun to tell people that I started selling coke on the weekends to make a little extra cash. Only, I'd be a lot better than your usual coke dealer. At least when you buy your coke from me, you get a free bag of ice.

Well I'm back in College Station for a couple of days taking a sabatical from the holiday cheer of Plano. I was there for 3 days and that was enough for me. The first thing I did was put in my fake lip ring for when I first arrived. My mother went absolutely ballistic over it so I immediately had to reveal the joke whereas I had planned on wearing it all day. That kinda let some of the air out of my balloons, but it was still funny.

The next big fight was when I dared to walk down the stairs with my fauxhawk rawkin. My mother blew another gasket. She sure doesn't know how to pick her battles. Its not like we had company or anything, I was just going to sit around the house. So that was fun. I went upstairs and played guitar until my brother came home and took me with him to B&N. Oh speaking, the big news, I am going to be an uncle. Rachel, Stephen's wife, produced a couple sonogram pictures of the baby in her tummy. Thats exciting for us, even though she won't be able to participate in the booze cruise.

On Christmas we didn't exchange gifts, which, I gotta tell you, was the best Christmas I ever had. No shopping, no worrying, no wrapping, no fighting crowds ... just a family gettin together to play cards and drink liquor. I had my first taste of Courvoisier, and second, third, fourth, and fifth. I'd have to say I was a big fan. We played some Oh, Hell with everybody, ate some desserts with family friends and then went to bed.

The next day I went to see JennyC■■■ and her family. That's always fun. Then I went downtown to hang out with Ryan S■■■. We rode the rails to the Angelika Theater ... a new experience for me, v. classy. Then we ate at the cafe and saw 21 Grams. Worst movie ever ... don't go see it. Even though the movie was awful, I had a wonderful time. The next morning I woke up and drove home. And here I am. I spent last night drinking Coronas and Keystones with Josh 'n Tommy cause there was nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. It was fun.

Just thought I would fill you all in since I've been rather sparse in the updates in comparison to usual. I will be leaving tomorrow for the cruise and you won't hear from me until after the new year, so I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful new year full of drunken spirits and sloven kisses. Cheers!