long story short

well, actually, there is no short end of this particular story.
grr.
I'm not going to update you on ALL of the hassles we've had trying to get to Sicily, but here's a brief synopsis of our weekend:

D, the kid, and I went to Horseheads Saturday to pick up our passports which were supposed to be on a Saturday hold. No such luck, and the transportation office in Gulfport didn't answer their pager (of course), so Sunday at 3:30 am we left for Rochester to drop him off. Delta was great; they let our overweight suitcase through with no debate, and gave me a security clearance so I could watch the plane take off in person since I wasn't on it like originally planned. Yay Delta.
The cat is at my parents' house. He set up camp on the steps and is attacking everyone who dares attempt the trip up or downstairs. I told the chinese kid who's living with us to ask his mom for recipes ;-p
D emailed me last night from the city Dr. Sam lives in and said everything was going well; he was about to board the plane for Sicily and wasn't too bored yet.
I called the transportation office this morning, and the guy (who may or may not be responsible for most of this hassle) said the passports were delivered back to Gulfport this morning. I would be interested to know if they ever left, but that's my cynical side showing. SOOOO...he's going to send them to us again, they should be here Tues. or Wed, and he's going to book tickets for Thursday. Hopefully by then D will be a little bit settled into our temporary housing and oriented with the base enough to not be completely clueless when I start asking questions (hehe).

just to show you that life isn't all that terrible, here's the new thing the kid learned last night, along with the clothes I got from my neighbor and the suitcase from my aunt (thanks aa) to put them in: