It turns out that if you obsessively google around about something, bringing to bear all of the internet skills that you have honed over the entire lifetime of the internet itself, you can find things out. This morning, I found out that our rustic farmhouse in Italy has an outdoor wood-fired oven. Here is a picture of it:

Jonathan and I keep looking at each other, all goggly-eyed every time we discover a new wonderful feature of the rustic farmhouse, and squealing.

We know we cannot live there forever -- the senora who owns it has been very clear that our tenancy is temporary only. But we will have almost a year in the rustic farmhouse, eating wood-fire pizza and drinking beauty.

Tris's first year of college -- our first year of empty nesting -- I was on sabbatical and Jonathan took a year-long leave of absence so that we could be together all the time, all day, every day, just the two of us. We called it The Year of Love. We told people that it was because we were taking a year to do only what we loved, but that was not the real reason.

So we are going to have almost a year in the rustic farmhouse on a hillside in Tuscany. We have decided to call it The Year of Farming.