Prelude

Did you ever watch Doogie Howser, MD? That show with Neil Patrick Harris when he was real young and supposedly a genius, hence his MD status at the age of 16 or so? Wasn't he precocious? Anyway, I feel like him, plus 10 years, minus 100 IQ points, because he wrote in his diary every night on a pretty sweet blue screened computer with white letters, the height of computing technology in the 80s. So this blog could be just like that, Doogie's Diary, only my computer is way more advanced.

That's about the best introduction this blog will get. I could go on about the reasons for wanting to go and live in Italy and why I haven't started chasing down careers and doing something called "building equity," which as far as I can fathom has nothing to do with building anything really and will never put you on an equal footing with anyone else. What I have done is held doggedly, dogmatically, to a promise made to myself as a wee exchange student, fresh out of high school and not yet in college, that dictated that I should never miss out on any experience I thought that I would regret later. Well, I figured that I would regret not taking my friend Michela up on her offer to live in her family's house in the Italian Alps. A lot. So here I go.

This blog will be about my life there, or maybe my life in general. As such, it'll be self-involved drivel about the minutiae of my quotidien life.

The only reason for that last sentence was an intense desire to showcase my fancy education. I hope it worked. That said, if you're looking for profundity and clarity, well...I'll probably talk about skiing and climbing a lot.


And so before departing I'm doing the usual pre-trip things, packing, unpacking, wondering how all my gear will fit into two bags weighing less that 51 pounds, wondering if I can really just put my foot under the duffle bag when it goes on the scale to buy a few extra pounds. Bet I can. In just a week's time I'll be over the Atlantic, on my way to Milan, via London. A few days in Milan with my friend's family, the Ronzanis, and then on to Courmayeur and their house there, where they're letting me and my girlfriend stay for the next few months to ski and climb.

Doogie's Diary, entry one, finished.