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.

Ahh, another productive night ... at NORTHGATE! My god, I have got to stop going there. But fuck it, I don't have shit else to do. Anywho, last night me and Ryan (you happy now, bitch) went to Northgate to celebrate another dead day. His next exam is Tuesday and mine is Wednesday, so we're both free. Todd stayed home and studied. We started out at the Dry Bean and each had a Royal Fuck. They were delicious. From there we decided to hit the hotspot, Mad Hatters.

Um yeah, neither one of us got the memo, but apparently it was Down Syndrome night at Mad Hatters. Everyone there was incredibly ugly and acting like a retard. One girl was even pretending to be pregnant and wearing a fat suit. And she kept on bumpin and grindin and yelling 'I'm PREGNANT whooo!' It was very strange. Needless to say, we finished our drinks as quickly as possible and skeedaddled over to the Library. I hadn't been there in forever. We met up with some girl named Kat that Ryan had met the night before. She was with her friend Heather Fuson, who I was in band with at Plano Senior High. So that was fun. I don't think I've ever actually talked to her but last night we caught up like we were OLD friends.

After that we decided to run by Taco Cabana because Ryan said he didn't have any food at home. We ran into Keith and Burns there and shared some queso and good times. I stayed the night at Ryan's cause I felt like drinking more. They really didn't have any beer so me and Todd split a big bottle of wine and watched music videos on like 5 different channels until 6 in the morning. Good times, good times. Right now I have to run up to lab for a while. You know me, go go go work work work. I'm gonna have a heart attack one of these days if I don't change my workaholic ways. Anywho, you kids be good and study hard. School is cool.