Busy Thursday

No cooking today, but very busy. In the morning we exercised (6 times up the stairs total for me today, including a final climb in the evening), then I got the car washed at an self-service place nearby. We had to get to the Institute a bit early for our weekly site council meeting, which was productive. Ugo was late (which may be his middle name, just sayin' :-), so we started without him.

After that we had a number of things to do around the "office", including hanging a very nice new plaque outside the office door:

It replaced a rather worn out piece of paper taped there, so it was quite a nice upgrade. The mounting hardware is very nice brass, but aligning all four holes was a bit of a challenge which Ugo and I finally figured out. We're sprucing the place up a bit for an important visitor tomorrow, and the paintings and plaque make quite a nice improvement.

I also wired up a few extra ethernet jacks around the office. Apparently the prior tenant was some kind of computer place -- there are multiple jacks in walls throughout and three 24-jack rack-mount sets of jacks near the router. I bought a small ethernet switch a week ago and mapped things out. Now it's possible to connect with a cable in a couple of the rooms instead of Wifi; wired is always better, especially for all the video we use. I also reconfigured the main router to change its Wifi name to LDSAccess (from the obscure default vendor-based name), which many of you will recognize as the Wifi name in LDS chapels throughout the world. This way, almost any member who walks into the Institute will automatically connect.

So we used lots of tools yesterday! We have a small set at home and a small set, including a drill, at the office. Almost all of it came in handy.

Somebody in town from the US dropped off a big and heavy suitcase, laden with a bunch of packages for four missionaries here from their parents. Three of them are serving in the Rome area (one is in our ward), so they will get their stuff soon, while one is in Sicily and will have to wait a while.

In the evening we had the first English Book of Mormon class, taught online via Zoom by Kristen and EricH. He is a project manager at the LDS temple site here in Rome. They've been here for about six months. I was the IT support.We had three students (word got out too late to have more yet), including one in Brazil, one in Palermo, and one in Malta.  It was a lot of fun.

Friday I teach my first lesson: a Seminary doctrinal mastery class. It will be in Italian, so I'll need a bit of extra time/effort to prepare, but I'm excited about being with the high-school age kids. Many of you know that I taught early morning Seminary for nine years, and it was my favorite calling ever!