All is in line for our departure Friday. School paperwork is done, packing is under way, recycling has gone out, train tickets are on my desk. Train tickets from Venice to Paris. And train tickets from Ljubljana to Venice are here somewhere. Somewhere...

Or are they? They're not in the piles of paperwork, not in the packed items, not on the desk. I'm just going to invoke Saint Anthony now, because I think I may have overzealously recycled. I really don't want to believe that our tickets are now in the back of the recycling truck that just came by.

There's a nice breeze blowing through the window but I've got a bit of a cold sweat going. Yeah, they're just 25 euros worth of tickets, which is not much on the face of things. Then again, it's not exactly the point in the semester when you feel like treating your recycling crew to tickets to La Serenissima. Nor is it the time to be throwing away reserved tickets on a train to Italy during peak tourist season.

Okay, *deep breaths*. I'm going to rummage around one last time, and then I'm breaking out the candles for some supplications to our Paduan patron saint of (stupidly) lost items. So much for lapsed Catholicism...