A Fortnight Away

When I signed onto facebook today I saw that my "moving to italy" countdown has hit 14 days, and oddly enough my brain immediately translated that into a fortnight. I say oddly enough because I was not aware that I knew what a fortnight was. After thinking about it, I thought that maybe my brain may have been guessing so I decided to look up a fortnight; then while I was looking that up I started wondering how much a score was (as in "Four score and seven years ago") so I looked that up too. For your education, a fortnight is 14 days, and a score is 20 years. For those of you that remember that from school, I applaud your memory! :-)

There you have it, I have a fortnight to finish getting ready to move to another country. Some of the things I have left to do: sign up for travel medical insurance, order currency (to have when I land to pay my rent), rent/buy my cellphone for Italy, find a reputable car company to pick me up from the airport and bring me to Amelia, figure out how to switch from Verizon to AT&T (since my contract with Verizon ends while I am gone).... and the list literally goes on and on.

So I think that maybe my brain converted the time so that it was still slightly ambiguous so I don't start to panic about getting things done. Thank you brain!

P.S. Pardon the digression at the beginning, and get ready for more... I do that pretty often.

Serendipity?

ser-en-dip-i-ty  [ser-uhn-dip-i-tee]
–noun
1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
2. good fortune; luck: the serendipity of getting the first job she applied for.

I am moving to Amelia, Italy on May 31st. Well technically I am boarding a plane on May 31st, and landing in Italy on June 1st, so I suppose I am moving to Amelia, Italy on June 1st. So how has this all come to be? We shall start at the beginning (all you Sound of Music fans… STOP SINGING!!).

When I was in undergrad I majored in Art History, by far the most rewarding and interesting part of my educational life. Amidst all of the slides, paintings and sculptures I started to notice a running theme associated with all of the things I found interesting; I was always drawn to the items that had been lost, looted, stolen, destroyed, etc. This led me to contemplate going to law school in order to pursue this interest even more, but I soon realized that the area I wanted to focus on was not the law so much as the art and history. So I graduated with a BA in Art History, kissed my art dreams goodbye and got a MBA.

Lucky for me that pesky little interest of mine would not go away. I would often talk to my friends and family about finding a way to work my way into the art (and more specifically the art theft) world. About a year and a half ago my wonderful Aunt Mary Ellen sent me a newspaper clipping (desirable accidental discovery #1) from the New York Times. A young man about my age had just started his own association: The Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA). I read the article, was very much intrigued and jealous, and then put the article aside (I was in the middle of my first out of school job that afforded me little if any personal time, so I knew researching it in depth wouldn’t really happen).

About 6 months later I had quit my job and was spending a weekend in Orlando with my mom. I had decided to go to the bookstore and shortly after arriving one book caught my eye, The Art Thief.



So, I picked it up and read the back. Wouldn’t you know, the same young man featured in the NY Times article had written this book as well (desirable accidental discovery #2).

This was too much of a coincidence. Here was someone doing exactly what I have always wanted to do. So, I went to his website and wrote him an e-mail to see if he needed any employees. He wrote me back and explained that while they were not hiring until the Fall of 2009 (when they open their office in Rome) I could volunteer and that I should look into a masters program that they were offering (desirable accidental discovery #3).

Long story short I applied and got accepted into the masters program for the Study of Art Crime.

So there you have it. Serendipity? Maybe, but if so, I really hope the second definition works out too!

Don't forget to have fun!

Growing up whenever my sister and I would go on a trip, to a sleepover, to the bus stop for the first day of school or to some other "big" event our parents would always say, "Don't forget..." and we would have to answer "to have fun!"

Now, you have to realize that when we were little my sister and I were pretty anxious kids (me more so than Kelly) so it was not only a cute phrase, but an actual reminder. As I have gotten older the phrase has changed, maybe my mom will write me a note with "Don't forget __ ____ ___," or maybe my sister and I will just say "Don't forget." As opposed to growing up and away from this particular phrase from our childhood, it has become more and more poignant as the years have gone on. Sadly, I think that as we get older we do need literal reminders that we are supposed to be having fun.

So... as I am dealing with the pressures and details of getting ready to live in Italy for 3 months, I figured what better phrase to use for my blog than, "Don't forget to have fun!!" Seriously... don't forget! :-)