the most expensive gelato you'll never eat

well, jackie is gone and so i have gone back to the great fun that is reading all the time and doing crud on my computer. i suppose i have much catching up to do, though by now i've forgotten most of the dates on which these things happened.

most recent first: jackie and i went to florence yesterday. we did the whole walking around a church thing, and we made fun of the inside. then we went to the ponte vecchio, the famous bridge, where we sidled up to a couple and then started positioning ourselves like them and mocking them by saying cheap sappy phrases. we weren't too boisterous or anything but the couple caught on and left, which was hilarious. ahhhh, ruining people's experiences in exotic and romantic locations.

now, this next part is so exciting that it merits its own paragraph. when i was in florence a few summers ago, some people and i went to get a gelato (surprise!). i distinctly remembered the gelato being good and the gelateria being in the northwest corner of a piazza. so we went in search of said gelateria, and we came upon one which i thought was it. inside, they had some huge waffle cones, and i contemplated getting one but decided it was too big. so i moved a size down, which was certainly a good decision. why? because i asked for two flavors, and ended up with about 3 to four fist-size ice cream chunks on top of the cone, which itself was maybe 8inches to 1 foot long and 1.5-2inches in diameter at the top. so, needless to say, lots of gelato. i proceeded to start eating it with the full-size plastic spoon that had been provided, and when i got to the cash register, i was kindly informed that i ought to fork over TWELVE EURO for the ice cream. that's a lot, i mean 16 dollars or so. i can't even remember the last time i was willing to spend 16 dollars on an entire meal, let alone an f'ing ice cream cone. in any case i didn't have much of a choice, so i forked it over.

the next step was to try to eat the monstrosity. i really should have taken a picture, because i think the mass of ice cream on top of the cone was about the size of my head. anyhow i managed to eat all that, and was going to share the rest of the cone with jackie. so we started eating it, eventually got down toward the bottom, and i managed to say something extremely funny after having strategically placed myself directly in front of jackie, about 2 feet back. said funny comment caused her to laugh, and said laughing caused the mostly chewed ice cream cone to come flying at my face like a cloud of daggers. or maybe a tasty, tasty hailstorm. i was pelted all about the head and face with ice cream chunks.

now, delicious tidbits of pricey ice cream and waffle cone are not the only things with which i have been pelted lately. at some point earlier in the week, it snowed, you see. jamal and umrao and kristin and i were out battling in the snow with each other downtown when all of a sudden a couple pipsqueak middleschoolers decided they wanted to be creamed by by some people twice their size. they started launching snowballs at us, so we reciprocated the crap out of them. i will admit that one sneaky little one almost crept up behind me in order to peg me in the back of the head, but i did a little dodge-move, he whiffed, and i then i pulled out some sweet moves and made use of my snowball skills in order to vanquish him.

i probably did other really cool stuff this week but none is coming to mind.

make sure to read the post below this one, because it's super important.