I’m aware that I spend a lot of time complaining about my job and life in this blog. This is partly because my lifestyle, however desirable it may seem to the casual observer, is wrought with frequent obstacles, setbacks and surprises, with the ever-present threat of financial ruin looming overhead. This kind of environment would test the patience of Buddha Himself on occasion, so I make no apologies.Also, I’m crotchety. And don’t ask me why, but when I’m annoyed, I’m twice as funny as when I’m blissed out. It’s sick and masochistic, I know, but we all have our strengths and mine is to make personal distress and injustice hilarious.

That said, there are undeniable perks to this life, like my current living arrangements. For the duration of my LP Tuscany write-up I’ve secured a short-term apartment literally inches from the shores of Lake Trasimeno in northwest Umbria. The apartment itself is about as character-starved as a tube-sock, but it has everything I need and, well, there’s the view:

So, I know it’s not gonna make coffee spew from your nostrils, but this is what I get to look at (and walk around and swim in) for the next six to eight weeks and I just couldn’t help but share.

Though there’s the troubling matter of sitting just out of direct sunlight, on a freakishly uncomfortable plastic chair, working at a table that’s three inches higher than the ergonomic ideal for eight to 10 hours a day, seven days a week, while I update about a hundred pages of old information and greatly expand the book’s coverage on things like Sienese art, patron saints, popes and cathedral floor mosaics, subjects that could bore a free-range chicken to death.So stay tuned, laugh-riot complaining should resume presently.