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.

Any time anyone asks what superpower I would most like to have, I always answer that I would like to speak every language with native fluency. And yet, I've rarely if ever done anything to approach that goal. Daniel and I did take a semester of French at SMU one time. That was fun but without continued effort didn't really stick.

Then my best seven foot tall woman friend suggested I download DuoLingo. It's free and you can learn any number of languages. So I did, and I started taking French lessons. Then I decided to throw in German since I already know it pretty well and it would be fun and easy to refresh. Then we planned a trip to Portugal so I focused on learning was Portuguese I could in the months leading up to our departure.

THEN I got so sick of the advertisements that I paid for a subscription. They got me. I admit it. But now that I'm paying for it, I'm going all in. I am currently switching daily between: French, Germany, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Danish. What's weird is that while switching between them certainly slows my progress, learning seven sets of vocabulary at once hasn't really proven to be any more difficult than one.

I know that these little exercises and AI driven conversation and voice recognition are unlikely to make me fluent. They're unlikely to allow me to converse easily in a foreign country. But I don't really care. Because (A) it's fun, (B) it's better than doom scrolling, and (C) it really does teach you a LOT if not all you need to know. When we were in Portugal, I busted out a few phrases with our guides (which of course ended with hilarious failure as I spoke Brazilian Portuguese), but also just consumed words around me. I knew what the little Brazilian kid was talking about when he screamed, "Abacaxi! Aacaxi!" at the top of his lungs (he saw a pineapple laying on the ground).

And that was enough for me. I cannot explain how utterly maddening it is for me in a foreign country to see words all around me and not know what they mean. I don't CARE what they mean. It just bothers me not to know. This really helped with that mental fatigue. To see a sign in a store window and know that it says "Closed on Mondays." It allows me to move on and not fixate on wanting to stop and translate.

So anyway, that's my plug for DuoLingo. It's free if you can withstand the most obnoxious assault of ads for phone games deliberately designed to wear you down into signing up for a subscription. But if you've ever been even a little curious, this is a super low effort, low risk way to delve into it and feel like you're accomplishing something every day.

I was trying to update my webpage today, but I was at a complete loss for something to say. My notepad file full of future blog ideas has been destroyed (more on that later) so I was just kind of sitting around waiting for something blogworthy to happen to me. I was at a little get together last night over at Aaron's apartment drinkin some beers. Leslie, Ryan B., Josh, Rick, Josh, Thomas, Bob and Kyle were all there. These are the bitches who call me "Sidesho" in real life, so if I hang out with them and don't mention them, I know I'm gonna hear about it.

Anyway, it was good times, but left me feeling less than motivated today. Not hungover, just blah. So I didn't go to work. Instead I decided to go get my laptop fixed by the good people at Best Buy. Unfortunately, they told me what I already knew. I had to reformat. I am not really losing any precious data since everything I've done is backed up, I am losing some pictures and things I wanted, but no big deal, being a digital packrat is one of my least desirable qualities. What I am losing is hours worth of installation on a myriad of software, all of which I used very regularly both in school and work. That is going to be the worst part.

So my sick little laptop is lying in bed right now getting some AC power and reformatting himself. Poor thing, I hope he feels better once we get him up and running again. Dear god, I hope I can find my Windows XP CD. Anyway, now the serendipitous part of the story. I'm driving home on the backroads because I despise left turns ... so I'm taking Lincoln over to Munson. I knew they were residential streets so I was going like 30. Well, it turns out Munson's speed limit is actually 25, and there is a cop sitting there obviously waiting for people like me to drive by. I really wasn't surprised when I saw him turn around and come after me. I like never intentionally speed, but I seem to get pulled over a lot more than a person should. But I never get in trouble so whatever.

So I pulled over, and he was very nice. He asked for my license and registration. My registration was like a year expired, so I was like, "Oh god no, I have a current one, I'm sorry." And I hand him another without looking and he goes, "This one is two years expired." So we kind of laughed and I said, "Well I know for a fact there is a current one in here, just lemme find it." I eventually did. He issued me a formal warning for going 34 in a 25 ... which granted was over the ridiculously slow speed limit, but the cop was like, "I need you to slow it down out there, Mr. F■■■■." But if I slowed it down any more, I'd be idling.

I don't really have time to be posting, nor will I until the semester is over. Things are very very hectic around here. However, I must take the time to bitch about a heinous new development in my life. T-Mobile (the company formerly known as Voice Stream) is the biggest bunch of fuckups I've ever seen in my life.

I want the new Motorola V70 phone, its totally sweet, look it up on www.motorola.com. Anywho, they are gonna charge me 370 dollars for the thing, when any one of you could buy it for $99. Whats the difference between you and me? Well I've been a customer for nearly two years. So they're punishing me. So fucking stupid, I'm so angry. So anyway, if you were thinking about signing up for T-Mobile, do me (and yourself) a favor and don't. Oh, and tell all your friends not to either. Thanks