Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them fro our own minds. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

We have been having a fabulous, relaxing, stimulating-conversation-filled time at the home of our dear friends, Urs and Gudrun. Tomorrow morning, we will drive to a small town closer to Stockholm (oh yes, did I mention I’m in Sweden right now?), where we will stay at a little house on a lake for a few nights before flying to Rome. During our stay at this house, I will not be connected, internet-wise. I know, I know, TRAGEDY. Especially when I have such wonderful feelings coming through the web right now, from my cover story. I won’t have the ability to respond to everyone for another few days, but I am trying, and I am having such a wonderful time feeling so connected to all of you. I wish I was in town to experience the good vibes in person, but I think it’s just as well that I’m not — reading the messages and comments, having time to ponder them, to “feel” them, and then having the opportunity to re-read might even be better than a spoken comment, which is so fleeting and difficult to recapture.

And now, for something completely different, Sweden is cold, but Rome will be hot. My column coming out this week is about Venice, and the moment David and I realized how stupid we were to bring the amount of crap that we brought (isn’t that always the case?) My throat hurts a bit, I’ve had a mild cold since the last day in Paris, but it’s not getting me down — the last three days it’s actually been slowly creeping away, and by Rome I should be tip-top. I posted another album in my photos section (look for link above), and more are coming soon! I’m trying to figure out why my iPhoto is exporting the pics at such a bad, grainy quality. Luckily, I am traveling for the rest of my European excursion with three professional photographers (two of them who are also filmmakers, so if we post another video, expect it to be much better), so I have a lot of help in the “images” regard.

So, I leave you on this Monday night (it’s after 11 p.m. over here, and I still need to pack up my stuff), and I hope you are feeling as great as I have been feeling this whole week, as understood and appreciated. Thank you again to everyone for reading my very personal story. Now you know me better than ever.