The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting." 
- The Alchemist

Without properly preparing me, November has decided to show up at my doorstep, unannounced. This will be my last full week in Italy. Next week I will spending most of my time in Greece after a few days in Rome and then the week after I will be packing up, getting ready to fly out to Philadelphia. Now that the time is nearing, I have mixed emotions about going to Greece. Having looked at the logistics of getting to the islands, I fear that the my quick jaunt to the land of blue and white may be quite exhausting. To get to Crete, which is one of the farthest islands from the mainland, it will take six hours on the fastest ferry there is. Most ferries are actually overnight and the thought of losing two nights on a boat for the trip there and back is annoying. Nonetheless, I will go to Crete. I've been wanting to go there for so many years, I can't be this close and not go, no matter how inconvenient it is.
Staying at Lucie and Peter's has been incredibly relaxing and through chatting and running errands, Lucie and I have become friends. Yesterday we were attending the truffle festival where there were samples of every kind of truffle sauce you could imagine. Truffle mustard, truffle salsa, truffle and pecorino spread, truffle and parmesan spread, truffle and mushroom salsa. Lovely food and to top it off, there was a wine tasting for five euros, insanely cheap for what you get. Let me preface this by saying that Lucie can't drink. She can, but after one glass she feels it quite strongly and after two, you might as well put her to bed right then and there. So, attending a wine tasting with her guarantees nothing but hilarity. She seems to let her guard down a bit more and come dinner time we get to talking about all sorts of things, mostly your standard girl stuff. Love, career, balancing work and life, what makes us happy. She tells me this is her first "girls night out" in as long as she can remember and I am flattered that she confides and trusts in me the way she now does. 
Leaving here this weekend will be quite depressing. I have grown accustomed to checking on the boiler every so often, laying around with the cats, feeding the horses, chatting with everyone in the house and having time to myself to read or write. Everything gets awfully busy after I leave this house and I'm just not quite ready to let go of the stillness that comes with staying here. The noise in my head has finally stopped, and that in itself is quite an accomplishment for me. It had been slowing down considerably and although my day trip to Pienza and Montepulciano temporarily kicked it up into high gear again, being back in the farm has slowly rocked it back to sleep again.
And in the midst of my quieted mind, I almost forgot to follow up on a brief sentance I wrote in an earlier post. This one thing that has had my mind humming off and on for a week is a new job. It is still within my company, but is a complete change of responsibilities. I'll be in business development and sales, managing our company's responses to proposals up to $20 million. My main concern will be making sure the efforts get off on the right foot, that everyone understands their roles and that the end result is a quality document to return to the company or federal agency requesting our services. I'll be managing up to four at a time and in my spare time I'll advise on my old project. The position is completely remote, so as long as my work gets done and gets done well, I can work from where ever I want. Home, the Austin office, Seattle, Philadelphia or Italy. Not that I have any intentions of going anywhere outside of Austin's city limits, but it is nice to have the flexibility. So with that, I can say I am thoroughly excited about this new opportunity. I had been wallowing in the thought of going back to being a project manager and I have a more positive attitude of coming back to the real world now that this stress has been lifted. 
Someone posted on my Facebook, after hearing about the position, that all of my dreams had been handed to me on a silver platter. Not quite all of my dreams, but I certainly am on my way.