Round-the-World Holiday Pictures
Unlike Max, I have very little restraint when it comes to taking pictures on vacation. In fact, I took almost 200 during our recent holiday! Lucky you, though; you only have to look at 160. The vacation pictures are here!

(Once again I must apologize for how crappy my camera is. It overcompensated for the extremely bright weather by making everything dark and washed-out. Trust me, everything was many times prettier than these pictures make out.)

Bad news: The iBook monitor is definitely dying. Discussions on the Apple support site have led me to believe that the bad design of the hinge has broken the wires connecting the display. As I’m out of warranty, it’s going to cost hundreds of dollars to fix (or the Snook and I are going to have to attempt the pretty tricky operation ourselves). Not happy, Jan.

Good news: The computer itself still works fine. I’ve got it connected up to the Snook’s mammoth monitor right now and damn it looks purty.

Annoying discovery: Apple intentionally crippled the iBook so that I can only mirror the display (i.e. I can’t turn off the laptop display or close the lid without the thing going to sleep) and I can’t get any resolution higher than 1024 x 768. Grrrr. I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I have about half of our trip photos captioned and ready to upload. Unfortunately I’m being slightly hampered by the fact that my iBook monitor is having a BIG FREAKIN’ MELTDOWN. *hyperventilate* I may have to take it to the shop tomorrow.

Happy birthday to Snookums, who turns 27 today. Man, we’re gettin’ old.

This is the restaurant I’m taking Rodd to tomorrow for his birthday. Shhh! It’s a surprise.

New poll: What’s your dream vacation?

I saw Down With Love on the flight home and I absolutely loved it. Snookums refused as he thought it was going to be some cheesy girly romance (though afterwards I tried to get him to watch it on repeat). It’s really funny and if you have any sort of crush on Ewan McGregor at all, you must go. The single line “Why do you mourn, baby?” even managed to erase what little ill will I had towards the film because of Renee Zellweger’s involvement.

We’re back. Jet lagged. Sunburnt. Frickin’ freezing, Mr. Bigglesworth. (Going from the height of summer to the depths of winter is never as fun as you think it’s going to be.)

Oh yeah, CouchCam’s back too. We hung the sarong up over the window while we were gone so would-be thieves couldn’t peek in and see all our lovely Buffy DVDs waiting to be pilfered. I kinda like it.

More in twelve hours or so when I can think coherently…

Singapore airport is a friggin’ palace. Free Internet, lovely cactus garden, air conditioning… I could live here. Anyway, yeah, we’re on our way home. Twelve hours of flying down, only eight more to go!

Here’s a useful tip for travelling, kids: Book hotels before you go. The Snook and I (in our usual fashion) waited til the last minute to schedule anything on this Italy trip. We’ve been lucky so far and we’ve only had one bad place, but our lack of planning has finally bitten us on our collective ass. We were supposed to go to Naples today and spend three days exploring Herculaneum and Capri, but unfortunately we just could not find a damn hotel room. Hence we’re in Rome for another night and we had to spend half of today calling all over the country looking for a room. We’re finally booked, but it was a pain that we should have avoided. Just think of that in the future…