For the Red Sox fans in Waltham

Come see the trophy tonight:
http://www.dailynewstribune.com/news/x1816441546/Councilor-encourages-display-of-hometown-pride

Italia

Brian and I are planning a trip to Italy next spring (April). We were originally planning on doing a Collette tour through AAA that's 10 days, hits a bunch of cities and basically gets you there, puts you in a hotel and leaves you free to wander.

Brian's new job only gives him about 3 weeks vacation time though and he'll need some days for a wedding in late March. 10 days is kind of what I'd think you'd want to spend doing a high-level Italy tour.

Any of you have any other suggestions? We haven't seen anything there, so we thought the organized tour would be a good way for us to get a taste of it without spending a lot of effort in the planning. Places we want to see include Rome, Venice, Florence and Como (Sicily would be nice, but that's way further South and I'm not expecting it).

Thanks in advance! :)

Books

I finished Simple Prosperity last week. It was a good, quick read and summarized a lot of things I've read in other 'green' books as of late. Its been passed onto my Sister to check out - she goes through books like water.

Onto the next fluffy read: Book 6 of the Dresden Files series! We own all of these because Brian doesn't have the patience for dealing with the library. This volume was my favorite thus far (Blood Ties) and the more I read of his series the more I see why they couldn't continue with the TV series while doing it justice.

A coworker leant me The Last Lecture which has been a super fast read - I have about 20 pages left and should finish it tonight (I started it a couple of days ago). I really enjoyed Randy Pausch's lecture (go to Youtube and search for 'Last Lecture' and you should find it, long but worth the watch). This book fills in some of the blanks from the lecture and gives more of a background on Pausch's family, work experience and life stories (in addition to plans for the world when he is gone). The strength and perspective that this man has while facing terminal illness is very inspiring. Even if you aren't into self-help books, this one may be worth picking up if you feel like you're hitting a wall in your life. As Randy says:

"Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people."

I'll be looking forward to doing a lot of reading in the White Mountains over our 3-day mini vacation next week, either on the Pemigewasset or Kancamagus Rivers.