No Ireland for you, Old Man!

Do you know how to tell that you're having an amazing adventure?  One way is that you don't have time to write about it!  I am a bit tardy starting this blog, but I've been having one hell of a time procrastinating!

In order to develop a full appreciation for how cool this all has been, I need to rewind a bit to last year.  Ah, yes, last year - 2012.  Worst. Year. Ever.  The more donkey manure that was thrown at me, the more I was positive that the Mayans had it right.  It's a drag to burden you with all the details, so let's just concentrate on two important events:  

First, after years of secret calendar checking, web surfing and conspiring with her big brother (me), my lovely sister finally put together the trip of a lifetime that involved taking my Dad and Step-Mother to The Motherland (Ireland).  When she called me in April and said that the plan was now rolling forward, I was excited to tell her that yes, of course, I would join them on the December trip. 

Now, it was my turn to surf the interwebs in search of that perfect flight, along with throwing suggestions to Sis about where we should stop along the way to our ancestral home, Sligo, County Sligo, in Free Ireland.  Since it doesn't take much to entertain me, I thought all of this was great fun.  Until it wasn't.  Around the 4th of July, I happened to look at the calendar for the rest of the year and realized that I was on-call at work through the 26th of December, meaning there was no way that I could board an international flight on December 20th, which was my sister's plan.  After uttering every curse word I knew in English, French, Spanish and Persian, I put on my best French accent and surrendered to the inevitability that I was not going back to Ireland this year.

Given the undulating, festering pile of guano that 2012 had become, however, I, like most mature adults who have a bad go of it, still had an irresistible urge to run away.  Somewhere.  Anywhere...

This is where we fall over Important Event Number Two.  There's this TV show called House Hunters International.  The premise is simple - each episode follows one person or family as they search for housing in a new country.  I love the show because of the high degree of escape-fantasy it fulfills in me.  Even though each show is basically the same formula, I love almost every episode.  So, here I am, relaxing late one night on a lawn chair in the garage, watching the contents of my DVR while flicking the ash from my cigarette into my forest green ashtray which was supported by extending the ratchet drawer of my Craftsman tool chest, when a new episode of HHI comes on.  This one featured a Scottish painter named Clare Galloway, who was relocating from Edinburgh to a little town in southern Italy so that she could improve the quality of her life - better food, better weather and cheap housing.  That little town was Guardia Sanframondi, in the Benevento region, not far from Naples.  I watched the episode intently.  Several times.  It was all there - architecture, food, great people, history, culture and no fat Americans wearing fanny packs and black socks with their sandals.  BAM!  Off to the internets go I!