I arrived in Rome on Saturday July 19, and was met by an agent from the apartment rental company. After settling the last details, he left me the keys and I found myself in what would be my home for the next 2 months. Already being summer it was hot and humid without a cloud in the sky. I walked down the block to Piazza del Popolo taking in the scenery. Rome had not changed at all in the 4 years that I had been gone. It was a dream to be standing there again and to know that this spectacular place would be my home for the summer. I had stepped through a portal into the past and my apartment in Long Beach was in a distant universe, just as Rome had seemed a day before. It must be this distance that made being there so magical, for it's too easy to take for granted what is frequently close at hand.

It was in the summer of 2004 that I first had my introduction to Rome and which later proved to have infected me with a desire to travel. Reality Check Studios sent me out there for 3 months to help create graphics for the new SKY Meteo 24 channel, a 24 hour television channel for weather. The project turned out to be a terrific experience and I had been taken good care of by both SKY and Reality Check. So when the opportunity came up this past July to return to Rome and help implement a redesign for the channel, it was easy to say yes.

From the time I accepted the job up until its completion my existence was dominated by to-do lists. With a day's rest after my arrival I started work, still jet lagged but prepared. The project details alone were enough to keep me very busy, but in addition there was what I would describe as an unordinary amount of software and technical problems that cropped up daily. Each day the list grew and I found myself struggling to keep up and to remember the status of so many things happening at once, though I was not alone in this and had support from all sides.

To my surprise and pleasure a good number of the people I had worked with 4 years ago were still working at SKY. It was great to see familiar faces that I thought to never see again and to begin work with old friends. Everyone helped me find my way around and I did my best to learn a bit of Italian along the way. This was not in the job requirements, but it interested me a great deal and it turned out to be very helpful in the long run.

Despite the many problems we faced, our fearless leader Pat McGuinness navigated us through the obstacles, keeping us on course. I must admit that I've never worked with anyone with so much clarity, knowledge and understanding from the smallest details to the system as a whole. Without his vision the project would never have happened.

Our week days were intense, but we managed fairly normal hours and had most weekends off. Still struggling with jet lag and exhaustion even weeks after I arrived, the weekends were always a welcome rest. My free time was spent in the city centre enjoying the sights and atmosphere which one only finds in Rome. One of my favorite things to do was take a couple books into Villa Borghese, an expansive and beautiful park, and relax by a fountain. I could also walk for hours without tiring and there is always so much to see and do there. Building off prior experience, I became quite familiar finding my way around the city and no longer got lost in the jumbled chaos of streets that go in all directions.

When our launch date of September 15 came around, Pat and I had been putting in increasingly long hours but we managed to avoid all-nighters. The majority of the problems were resolved by this time and what remained was getting all the elements working together and on air. At 2:30 in the morning Pat, I and a handful of others arrived on launch day to switch over the channel to all the new graphics. It was a tense and chaotic day, but we made it to air and what went out looked great. Seeing all the elements together at last was a very rewarding experience and put to rest my worry that there would yet be some unforeseen catastrophic problem.

After having spent 2 stressful months getting the graphics ready and the launch now being done, my final week on the project felt abrupt. I did what I could to make additional fixes and help streamline the work-flow, but my primary mission was accomplished. The launch was successful and the new graphics were going to air according to schedule, so all that remained for me was to hand over the project assets and prepare for my departure.

Although I was very happy to have completed the project and see an end to the seemingly never-ending list, I was also sad to realize that I would no longer be working there in the office. I had grown accustomed to working with everyone, having lunch in the 'mensa', getting coffee from the machine down the hall, and I was just getting to the point where I could hold a conversation and even understand a few jokes in Italian. And despite having experienced some rough days being ill, stressed and frustrated, I really enjoyed working with everyone there and my memory of it as a whole is a pleasant one.

According to plan, my mom arrived on September 19, my last day of work, and our 2 week vacation together started the next day. And just like that, work was over. A week later the contract for the apartment was up. This time, there was no agent to meet us and as the agency had instructed, with our luggage in hand ready to venture beyond Rome, we left the keys on the table and shut the door for the last time. This simple act was the final symbolic gesture of having at last and inevitably completed my second journey to Rome. Looking back, I feel a good sense of accomplishment and am glad to have stepped outside of my comfort zone for a while. Who knows when my next trip to Rome will be, but right now it doesn't feel so far away and no longer feels like such a foreign place as it did 4 years ago.