Dear Pilot Corporation of America:

Your “G-2” pen sucks. Not only is the design of your “contour rubber grip” so uncomfortable that it hurts when writing, but the ink flow is non-existent. This is unacceptable for a pen that costs over one U.S. dollar. When I buy a package of two pens for $2.95 plus Washington State sales tax, I expect to buy a quality pair of disposable pens. If I was interested in cheap crap, I would buy a ten pack of Bic knock-offs from Office Depot for one-third the price of your two pens. Perhaps you should concentrate more on the comfort and function of you wares than on the dated “new age” design you mistakenly think to be stylish.

Agitatedly,

Mindy M.

Dear University District Rite-Aid:

You suck. Not only do you not carry my favorite type of pen, but you are also host to the rudest employees in the U-District. Every time I shop in your store, I’m glared at after asking for help, shoved aside while shopping in the aisles, and forced to stand in a long line of angrily huffing customers while your employees avoid the cash registers.

I also hate your store layout and the fact that your checkout counter is modeled after a UFO wedged between two mountains. Where the hell do you think your customers are supposed to line up around that monstrosity of a checkout counter when you only ever have one checker available at a time (if that)? Bartell’s is only a few blocks away, and although they are much smaller and have less of a selection, they manage to have more checkers operating tills than you ever do. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the employees at Bartell’s on the Ave actually smile at me when I walk in.

Agitatedly Huffing,

Mindy M.

I’ve been home for a week and a half, and I’m still adjusting to Seattle. I’ve lived in Seattle for four years, and my entire life before that I was no more than thirty minutes away. I spent five weeks away from home and now everything I see is different. The people are less trim, the food is dense and served in immense portions, the nightlife is even worse than before, the laid-back Seattle fashion is now frumpy, everyone seems paranoid that harm will befall them if they look into someone’s eyes, and no one talks to me on the street unless they already know me or they are being lewd.

The only time my eyes meet another’s is if I catch them in the act of sneaking a look at me. After living in Rome where everyone looked at everyone evenly in the eye, it feels like the citizens of this city are shoplifters gauging the employees of their targeted store. Here, people snake their eyes over their surroundings and when they find something interesting that moves and breaths, they stare long enough to be noticed. The split second their gaze is seen and returned, their restless eyes continue to slither haphazardly across buildings, people and wads of gum embossed on the sidewalk just long enough to seem like they never stopped moving.

On my third day home, I returned to the daily soul-sucking routines of my life. But unlike two months ago, I didn’t get off the bus and climb up sagging steps to a barn-style rental house. I didn’t sit at a desk facing a wall and located inside a hot and stuffy room crammed with one copier, a fax machine, two computers and a network system for the eight computers, Instead, I entered the looming state-of-the-art facility I had watched grow from plans tacked to a wall in the original 1950’s facility where I worked to the fully realized, multi-million dollar sucking project it now was.

Upon coming back home, my work environs would be different, but I was still unprepared. The massive space I now work in, the poor lighting immediately above my desk, and the way the building manages to suck up any sound made in the “office suite” is hard to adjust to. It’s not only the complete opposite of Rome, but it’s unfamiliar.

I’ve been home for a few days now, and every day someone asks me how my stay in Rome was. “It was really fun,” I always tell them for lack of better words. This is almost always received with a moment of perplexed silence and a confused stare. Some people even go so far as to say with incredulity: “you were in Rome for an entire month, and it was just fun?” Which makes me wonder what response they’re looking for. Do they expect me to say something overdramatic with tears streaming down my cheeks? “It was the most amazing experience of my life and I feel a seed inside my chest that has started to germinate into an amazingly glorious flower!”

When I feel the need to justify my description of Rome as being “really fun”, I then say, “it was a very intense five weeks because my professors were slave-drivers.” The response is then a look of shock and a comment to the effect of: “Oh… You were taking classes?” Everyone seems to think that I was spending my days going to the beach, dancing over rolling Tuscan hillsides and idly touring various Roman monuments at my own pace, and while it’s true that I had hoped living in Rome would be a relaxing break from classes, working, and paying bills, my main reason for going was to take intensive classes to improve my writing. The only day I had free to go to the beach and run through over Tuscan hillsides was Sunday- which is not long enough of a day to leave the city, enjoy my destination and return for class early Monday morning. Every day other than Sunday consisted of three to four hours of intensive walking around and paying attention to lectures in the morning; a four hour break to walk home, eat lunch, and do homework; and then four to sometimes five- or even six- hours of evening class in a hot and stuffy room with fans that managed to make the air hotter and windows that opened to vents which spewed out air from the stale pits of hell.

But despite the class hours and the requirement to sit still in a room on sharp Ikea chairs in heat-decayed air, I lived a life free from the drudgeries of habit and comfort and enjoyed a city unlike any I’ve seen. I was able to live in that city for a month and see beneath the ancient patina of massive monuments into a world invisible to those who visit for a small time. I spent hot Sunday afternoons eating gelato on fountain steps facing an empty Pantheon, weekday afternoons lounging and writing in a dark bedroom shut against the heat, and early mornings running over uneven cobblestones and yelling greetings to pink-eyed merchants watering plants and scrubbing windows. I also enjoyed many warm evenings sitting on the concrete banks of the Tiber River drinking wine and tequila, my drunken eyes trying in vain to track the quick movements of bats darting under and over a pedestrian bridge.

Last night, while waiting for a second pitcher of margarita slush to appear, a friend asked me to tell him the worst things I experienced in Rome. I was able to answer him with the three worst memories of my trip in a matter of minutes. Another friend became irritated and asked why we were talking about the negative aspects, and my friend answered: “because it’s obvious most of her trip was fun, and that it would take too long to talk about all of the cool things she saw during her month there.” And as absurd as it may sound, he’s right for now. Maybe later, as the memories of Rome become less vivid, I’ll be able to tell someone that my trip was more than “really fun”. But for now, if you ask me how my trip was, don’t be surprised when I answer, “it was really fun.”

As of today, my dog is officially no longer a Liorat. The poor thing was subjected to constant humiliation the month I was gone as Tyler brought people over to laugh at her unfortunate circumstances. I don’t doubt that he treated her like a freak-show attraction and charged a fee.

I’m in Rome, and have been since my flight landed on June 15th. I’ve seen a lot of monuments, learned about those monuments, and endured countless days of heat and black dust and torturous lectures that never end. It’s been fun for the most part- even the living in a six bedroom apartment with twelve people and two semi-working showers with small hot water tanks. I’ve had my bad days, my homesick days, and my pissed-off days. But I’ve had more good days than bad, homesick, or pissed-off, so I’d say it’s been a good experience so far. I have ten more days before I go home.

I’ve been writing about my experiences everyday, most of which I’m still working on putting online. I have very little time, and I made the mistake of having a grand plan to create a special Rome section for when I was here. It took me awhile to smooth out the details of my Rome section, at the sacrifice of not being able to put a lot of entries into the blog. I plan to slowly work on this until I leave, or possibly even after I leave. So, if you’re interested, check out the archives in a week or so.

For now and until I return to Seattle, here’s the ugly link to my Rome section:

http://www.mikania.com/rome