Our 18-year-old neighbor is traveling through Europe this summer and sending back the obligatory group e-mails. A line from this week’s update read:

“We first went to the Vatican and Sistine Chapel, which was very busy and not well air-conditioned.”

Poor Michelangelo! Imagine spending four years painting a masterpiece on a ceiling, only to have crowds of people push through, fan themselves, and say, “they really should do something about the air conditioning.”

My favorite moment from my own post-university European tour happened one morning in Venice. An enormous Texan man climbed aboard the vaporeti with his wife, plopped himself on a seat, and sighed. Just as I was bracing myself for complaints, he said, “This… this is livin’.”

Cheers, Texan man!