i really liked this article about group traveling in the post this weekend. the author, robin wright (i think she's normally foreign affairs for the post) and all of her friends on her street do a big group travel thing once every year or so. they recently rented a house in tuscany and had a grand old time.

i can't decide if this applied to my own life would be the best thing ever or a huge disaster. but she's got some good ideas:

But neighborhood travel has also proven to be a more affordable way to see the world. On arrival, we all put about $60 per person in a kitty for breakfast foods, basic necessities, evening hors d'oeuvres and wine. We buy staples -- such as cereal, fruit, coffee and milk -- to keep in the house. The morning walkers among us wander into town to buy fresh croissants and the papers. Anyone who buys something later takes funds from the kitty, leaving a receipt behind.

To our amazement, the funds generally last the week. In the process, we get to taste life in the local community and aren't isolated in a hotel filled largely with other foreigners.

and

In 2001, the cost was about $300 per bedroom for a full week. By this summer, when we visited again, it had gone up to $445 per bedroom -- still not bad given the soaring value of the euro against the dollar.

We have it down to a routine by now. The first day, we all drive to San Gimignano, the medieval city of more than 70 towers, many built by competing families to signal their greater wealth and power. Whatever our interests, we're all attracted to the old narrow streets with crafts and wine bars and art galleries. We save Florence to do together later in the week. And then we wander in separate smaller groups -- a mix-and-match on different days, depending on the destinations -- to the fine Etruscan museum and field of Roman ruins in Volterra or the friendly square full of flowers in Greve, the chief town of the Chianti Classico wine area, or Lucca, surrounded by walls that date back to the Roman era.

Each trip, we've learned new tricks to facilitate our travels.

For Tuscany, Alan bought walkie-talkies to communicate when we were separated in villages or on the way home so the end car wouldn't get lost. Maryellen laid out an array of maps and tour books for people to figure out the options as well as information on local buses so we wouldn't have to drive. They also worked out group rates for made-to-order tours -- through local vineyards and villas with the author of "Too Much Tuscan Sun," about $120 per person including transportation and a meal, or with our own guide through Florence's Uffizi Gallery for about $42 per person, including ticket. Six of us took a special cooking class in Florence. Jerry still talks about the tiramisu, almond torte and cheesecake that the class specializing in desserts next door offered our group when it was finished.

In a big cost-saver, Maryellen found local chefs to come in at night and cook, which allowed us to sample good wines without having to worry about driving afterward. In Tuscany, we could eat a sinful five-course meal -- an antipasto selection, prosciutto and melon, lamb cutlets, assorted vegetables, salad, a pastry and fruit or cheese -- for about $24 per person.

i've already decided that i want to get a real career already so i can retire from it and become an italian vacation planner. anyway, i think we should have a big old orgiastic (maybe not) trip to tuscany next year. millions of people. anyone in? i've already got a place in mind (as long as i feel comfortable blatantly stealing from the grays' fantastic vacation location, which i do).

let's not forget about DCist! here are some recent posts by yours truly:

Segal's Signing-Off Symbolizes What?

Trouble on 21st Street: Galileo's Woes

DC Dodgeball

Doughnut Debacle

saturday night i met up with the DCist folks (mike, rob, becca, and kyle, who was kind enough to bring me a burned cd of ted leo's newest! wahoo!) at brickskeller, and it was fun. we talked about the direction of DCist, etc, and it's gonna be HUGE. i'm talking motherfucking blowing up stuff yo. not really. but i still think it's cool.

i think all of you should be contributors, so write me something! look, kriston did a great post! sports would be good, or fashion, or anything you want to bitch about if you can make it seem sort of relevant and newsy. just email me. c'mon. you know you want to have your name immortalized in the pages of DCist.

My moving nightmare has just about concluded -- tonight Jon, Charles and I will be cleaning our old house. After that, it's just a question of getting the DSL set up here, figuring out the parking situation, and a prolonged court battle with our previous landlady (probably). Not too bad, overall.

Moving wasn't fun, but at least it was kind of enlightening. My knowledge of the junkie worldview is pretty well limited to Requiem for a Dream (and, you know, rock & roll), but I think I got a little more insight during the moving process: the weekend was divided between painful, disorienting encounters with reality and periods of blessed relief facilitated by foreign substances. Of course, in my decidedly non-hardcore case, those foreign substances were a lot of Gatorade and a little beer.

But really, I was in bad shape without them. Things sort of came to a head when I was trying to reassemble the bed. This is an operation that involves three pieces and two bolts. It's not like I was building a nuclear-powered robot or something. Teresa eventually saved me from a mechanical problem that I probably can't explain clearly without handwaving and maybe a whiteboard, but I think this made-up conversation captures the flavor:

TOM: Why is this cup spilling so much?
TERESA: You're holding it upside down. Also, that's your shoe.

It wasn't long after this that it became very clear that I ought to go to bed. Somewhere between the bathroom and the bedroom I could feel a knob in my brain click from "human getting out of the shower" to "crazed, half-dead water buffalo crashing through the underbrush", but it worked out okay as apparently dying water buffaloes are perfectly capable of running into things and collapsing, which is all I really had to do anyway.

Today I'm much better, although still pretty tired, and my head feels like it's packed with cotton. Hopefully that's from the lack of AM coffee -- but I did feel frighteningly more lucid after the day's first Gatorade.

is the word of the day, and how i feel about the new apartment. i know that in time, craptacular aspects will reveal themselves to me, but for now i would like to bask in the glow that moving into a phat pad affords one's self. and yes, it is phat. super phat.

i am a little too deliriously exhausted from tommy's and my 3.5 day moving binge to go into a lot of apartment detail this morning, but the sun coming through the skylights in the ceiling this morning and my 25 minute walk to work along P street (I NEVER HAVE TO TAKE THE METRO AGAIN!) made all the muscle pain fade into the back ground.

grazie mille to everyone who helped us move, especially kriston, jon, and aaron, without whom most of our furniture would still be stuck in the stairwell.