The hospice center, which we moved my mother to last Monday, contains seven beds. Helen’s room has wide French Doors which open to a courtyard with song birds, flowers, and even bunnies grazing on those flowers.

Last evening I watched robins bathing in the nearby bird bath. Not indulging in dainty dips, mind you, but more like our dives into the cold lakes of Maine – fully submerged, a leap to the shore and then “a whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on.”

One of my mother’s many friends, Sarah, came by at night to play her cello. Emphasis on cello. Sarah asked for requests, and the first arrangment to appear on the barren wasteland formerly known as my brain was the Pachelbel Canon. Johann Pachelbel’s most famous piece of music originally written for three violins and a basso continuo. She did her best. (3.8MB Quicktime)

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This (3.7MB QT) piece Sarah played without first consulting the peanut gallery.

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There’s a profusion of petunias in bloom in the courtyard outside of my mother’s room at the Charlier Hospice Center, but the “Best of Show” is this hibiscus.

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Sharon’s airport photo.

For me, this smiling photo is the culmination of “my” trip to Italy.

Here’s the Quicktime (7MB) unedited version of the making of “Where The Hell Is Michael.” Following Matthew’s lead, I’m gonna publicly thank Jeff and Karen and their friends – Connie, Chris, Wayne and Mark.

Before you click on my my video you need to heve seen this one titled Where The Hell Is Matt.

There are two versions. One in Quicktime and the one below on youtube.com.

For you pc users having issues with Quicktime which will be less pixelated and will have better audtio and video coordination, Pesky Godson writes:

“I don’t really know what’s up with this problem everyone’s been having with viewing your quicktime movies. They certainly don’t work on Linux, but there is a perfectly good Quicktime player, made by Apple and available on their website, which integrates beautifully with Internet Explorer and Firefox and which has, for me, played every one of your videos without any effort beyond clicking the link on the blog. When I go to apple.com/quicktime with my Windows computer, there’s a great big button front and centre where I can download Quicktime for Windows. It may be that if it detects you as having an Apple computer, you won’t see said button, since you had Quicktime factory-installed, but for those of us who run Windows, it should be very easy to install.”

So this should be our last post before you will all be able to see us again in person and not just read of our wonderful adventures from my unbelievable writing style. Before I go on i would just like to say a special thanks to sue, without her help really none of this would have been possible. While i am saying thanks, i would also like to thank everyone who gave me money for graduation, just know that your money has been well spent and mostly on great food.

 Now for the post: So we will be leaving tomorrow, we have to get up around seven, and for a while we had no idea how we were going to be getting to the airport. For a while we thought that we would have to take a train then two water boats. I don’t even think it would have been possible because of when the waterboats start to run. Since we don’t panic, we just asked the guy at the hotel if it was possible to take a cab. This is a guy from the hotel who we also gave an english book to, and who knew that it would pay off. Instead of taking a cab or doing other crazy things at seven in the morning, he offered to drive us the twenty mins to the airport once he got off his shift at eight. A book for a ride is a good deal in my book. Well, that’s that part.

Well, this is definitely not the nicest of our hotel rooms. It isn’t that bad except for the fact that it never seems to get below 100° F, even at three in the morning. I am able to handle it pretty well although every third word out of debbie’s mouth is something like “Am I dead yet?”. She’s taken to sleeping with a cold towel over her head, which she makes me re-cool every ten mins or something like that.

The night we arrived we went out for a nice dinner and then went back into the other part of venice where our hotel is, you have to take a train to get there. We asked the guy at the hotel where we could go and watch the Football game. He gave us the name of a nice little place and stamped it, telling us that they would give us a good price if we gave them the card. When we got there we were seated next to a nice australian, with whom we had long conversations about many things. Mainly how he is a lawyer, how people in sports get too much money and especially how little everyone else thinks of america and how we must be ashamed to admit that it is where we are from. He was very friendly and we gave him some good advice on how to travel around venice. He was also traveling by himself on a round the world ticket, something that i may have to try at some point in my life.

Yesterday we took a very nice little day trip to the island of Lido, a very nice and very, very upscale little place. We should have done more research into it before coming to italy because it had some very nice beaches that i’m sure we could have spent a lot of time enjoying.

Tonight we are going out to a mildly expensive dinner, and then to a wildly expensive gondola ride which debbie says is something we must do before we leave. I do agree with her on one hand, but the price is so exorbitant( or is it exuberant) that i don’t even dare to mention it on the internet. It is something that we have to do though, so even the cheap one of us has agreed to take part in this forty five min boat ride tour. We are going to try to do it at night, so it will be cooler and debbie won’t have to get cancer again.

Oh by the way, it could not be any hotter here. I don’t know what the weather is like back in Acton, but if i had to guess i would say that in the day and in the sun it is about 90 at times. It is really hot and we are doing all we can to stay out of the sun and keep the sunscreen on thick… at least on debs.

The time has gone by so fast, and we are getting a little depressed about leaving. but on the other hand it feels like we have not been in Acton for a few years and we are both looking forward to seeing everyone, all our friends, and being able to sleep in our own beds with some good old A.C.

Again, thanks to everyone who made this trip possible and all the people who kept us informed through the blog comments. It has been really great and i think we may have gone crazy without all you. oh, and father, you will be glad to know that between me and deb we have over 400 photos that you will be able to go through and edit to your heart’s content. Oh, and pops, when are you coming back from indiana? Come home soon cause i miss you and want to see you before you leave for the vineyard.

Love always

Matt and Deb,

Thanks

We Actonians drive our hybrids to Idylwilde and buy our blueberries by the pint in cellophane wrapped containers with prices carefully inked in the calligraphic font Vespasiano. Jeff and Karen pick their own at a local farm and truck home forty pounds of blueberries in a cardboard box.

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He’s here.

This reminds me, Debbie, have you snapped your handstand photo?

A little something to cheer you up while I’m here and you’re there.

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If you have a pc here’s a link to movie player for (among most other formats) Apple’s Quicktime.

When I lived here in the sixties thunderstorms announced themselves. Since the November tornado , which killed twenty-four people, local communities sound sirens if the weather appears to be especially threatening. As soon as we hear the wailing Jeff and I walk outside to watch the storm. And Karen, who has moved the grill into the garage, continues to cook dinner.

We took the overnight train again, although this ride was much more comfortable considering that we only had to fit three people into the really small compartment, at least for most of the ride. This train left at eight and we enjoyed it much more because the ten hours seemed to go by much faster. So we are now back in venice, although not in the same area. We are actually in the part where there are streets which is okay by us because you just take a five min bus ride to the other part. We could prolly walk but at the moment we have no idea what direction that would be. We arrived at our hotel at about 5:45, and it was locked. Although someone heard us and came to the door. He said that he would take our bags but we would not be able to check in for another three hours. Not great news but we are handling it in stride… debbie is doing well and i am very proud of her. After the news about the three hours we went back to the train station and read for a while, then walked around aimlessly for about a half hour and then found this internet point. So we plan on spending a little more time here before heading back to our hotel and sleeping for about seven hours if i get my way.

I don’t know if it was in an email or a post on the blog but one of my parents asked me how i was doing on my books. Deciding how many to bring was a tough decision, for two weeks and a couple days i had no idea how many i would read. For a while i was considering bringing two to four, then i up’ed it to six. Well I finished those two days ago and had to buy more. Oh and i read the one debbie brought. Which now brings my total to nine books read. I have one more that i can read, bridget jones diary… something debbie bought the other day. I can’t say that i am looking all that forward to it, but anything will help.

Debbie says hi but she doesn’t think that she is capable of writing at the moment. While I seem to be able to I’m sure there are many mistakes that me and debbie are not catching as i write. And believe me, we are finding many. Seeing as both of us are at that point right near incoherent.

Debbie says i’m rambling now and i would have to agree, but we kinda need something to do for the next fifty mins… oh well maybe check up on cnn.

Much love from both of us and we will write again tomorrow when we have had a good night’s sleep or two.

I’m pretty sure this is our twenty-second wedding anniversary, but since I broke my finger I haven’t been able to wear my wedding ring on which the date is inscribed. Although without an electron microscope I wouldn’t be able to read it anyway. I’m going to trust my intuition…met in ’69…moved into her bedroom in ’70…bought our house in ’83 …married in ’84……Matt born in ’86 …put out to pasture in ’09.

I love you Diane.