Day 143/365 - Buon Compleanno!

Today was the sixth and final day of my trip to Venice. It's also my birthday. It was a day spent largely disguised as someone cultured and refined rather than as an uncouth Midwestern bumpkin. I got a bit of a late start this morning, but I kicked things off with a trip to the Ca d'Oro Museum (14th-16th Century paintings, sculptures, and tapestries) and then wandered around the last neighborhood of the city I had yet to explore, the residential area of Cannaregio. I saw a church full of Titian paintings and lots of Venetians doing their shopping at the market on a Saturday and then it was time to head back to the hotel and get dressed up for an afternoon at the opera.

Before I left home I found an on-line ticket broker and bought myself a ticket to see the opera "Romeo et Juliette" at Teatro La Fenice, a theater that has certainly earned its name of 'The Phoenix' given that it has burned to a shell and been rebuilt. Twice. It was an afternoon showtime, so before it began I stopped and had a good lunch (pasta and bean soup, squid cooked in its own ink with polenta, ricotta cake, and two glasses of Prosecco) at a restaurant right on the steps of La Fenice.

La Fenice itself is quite a show. It's a little, gilded, cloisonne music box of a theater. Photography inside is prohibited but I managed to sneak a few shots. Judging by the number of camera flashes I saw going off, I wasn't the only one (although I had the decency and sense to turn off my flash at least). The opera was great. They went with a very contemporary staging that had a glam rock, goth, anime, rave feel to it and the set was an enormous record turntable that actually rotated at times and had a moving arm (from which Juliet plucked the needle to stab herself at the end). It was the first time I'd seen a pink-haired Juliet. She even had matching pink laces in her combat boots. She was a phenomenal performer, too. And she was smoking hot. It sounds a bit like an odd choice of production design, especially for such a historical venue, but it really worked well. The story is about 13 and 14 year-olds after all.

After the show I popped into a cafe for hot chocolate and a chocolate and nut covered cookie that served as my birthday cake, and then I went to see another musical performance -- this one by musicians and singers in powdered wigs and 17th clothes. I had hoped to get to attend a peformance of local composer Antonio Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," but evidently they have a rotating schedule and today it was a sampler platter of baroque classical music pieces and arias from various operas. It was held at the Scuola Grande di San Teodoro -- a big, historic music school and concert hall -- and was quite good.

From there, it was time to head to the casino and see if I had any birthday luck. The casino in Venice is the oldest operating casino in the world and, as it's located in a former palace, it's quite swanky. When I walked in there in my suit I had to resist the urge to announce myself as "Bond, James Bond." That would have blown my sophisticated act real quick. I managed to quickly lose 50 euros in five straight spins of the roulette wheel and then spent a few minutes wandering through the various rooms with one hand in my pocket and a glass of Prosecco in the other, fronting like I was cool and sophisticated while I checked out the paintings and chandeliers and other gamblers. It was definitely a high-roller kind of a place. There were people making bets of hundreds and even thousands of euros at a time, which made my little ten euro bets seem a bit anemic.

Being in Venice is like living inside a poem. Tomorrow we reach the final stanza for me however, and I have to pack up my belongings and head back to the decidedly more prosaic DC. It's been one hell of a trip.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 19/365 - The Ties that Bind (and Choke and Gag)

The photo is a close-up of my necktie du jour. Every work day I stuff a tie in my bag that matches what I'm wearing and then when I get to the office I drape it over some reference books at the side of my desk to keep it from getting wrinkled. I only bother to actually put it on if I have a meeting to go to, otherwise the tie just lays there until it's time to go home, at which point I stuff it back in my bag.

I hate wearing a tie. Given that fact, I might have been better off choosing a profession that generally didn't require me to wear one. I'm half-convinced that one of my ancestors was hanged at some point and that my aversion to having things tight up around my neck is the hereditary remnant of his sorry end.

When I started work I wore a suit everyday, but then after the first year I realized that was a bit pointless because the first thing I'd do when I got to my office was take my jacket off and hang it up. So then I ditched my suits and just started wearing slacks, shirt, and tie to work. After about 5-6 years of that, I began to question why I bothered with the tie given that I spend most of the day in my office and generally don't see anyone except for other lawyers, none of whom care whether I'm wearing a tie.

That's when I switched to carrying rather than wearing the tie and only putting it on for meetings. And now it's even gotten to the point that I don't wear it to every meeting. Only certain meetings merit the tie. Meeting with regular clients on routine matters = not tie-worthy. Typically I only put on a tie now if the meeting involves people from outside the Agency or if there are going to be fairly high-ranking people in attendance.

Guess you can tell I've never really cared for dressing up. When I was in the Navy the sailors on my ship were only permitted to go ashore if we were wearing collared shirts. Don't ask why, it was some BS argument about upholding the reputation of the command. Whatever. After dealing with that frustration for a while, I finally hit upon the idea of buying a white golf shirt and cutting the collar off it. Then when I wanted to go ashore, I would just tuck the collar under my t-shirt or sweatshirt so that technically I was wearing a collared shirt. Once I was off the ship, I would take the collar off and jam it in my pocket and go on my merry way.

Worked like a charm. When I left the Navy I gave my shirt collar to another guy in my division so he could carry on my legacy of obeying the letter of the rule while simultaneously thumbing his nose at the spirit of it. You know, on second thought maybe I was destined to be a lawyer after all, my distaste for neckties notwithstanding.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)