Drying laundry

Well, the heat coming on for much of the day doesn't solve everything, but we know now that it does have a wonderful impact on our laundry schedule! You have to understand that almost nobody in Italy has a clothes dryer. It's probably due to some combination of the cost of electricity and the culture of air-drying clothes, which is reportedly better for the fabric's lifespan. So everyone has multiple clothes drying racks in their apartments, and/or they hang it out the windows (as you see in movies -- that's real life). 

Anyway, as it is has gotten colder, the laundry was taking longer and longer to dry, up to 3-4 days for many items. Back home, you can have a load of laundry washed, dried, and hung back up in under two hours. Imagine extending that to days. We were running out of clothes and of drying rack space. With some items, it was impossible to tell whether they were fully dry because they were so cold to the touch. The test was to feel the top of the item, then the bottom. If the bottom was colder than the top, it was probably still wet. Now that the radiators are working, stuff seems to be drying in a day or two. Also, with the floor tile being heated up a bit, perhaps it doesn't seem quite as cold in the morning. Maybe this winter won't be as uncomfortable as we were starting to fear.

Thursday morning we had district meeting over at our ward building. It was quite good, with our district leader, Anziano Wright, doing a nice job of leading the discussion about the work and about the study topic for today. We each shared a favorite scripture about faith. We learn from one another, talk about how we can improve, laugh a bit, and generally leave feeling uplifted, not to mention with a chocolate rice crispie treat in hand, made by Anziano Fuller.

From there we drove downtown to the Institute. That route is now becoming somewhat familiar and thus less daunting to drive. We arrived a bit early, and I took a nap because I hadn't slept very well. After that I felt pretty good and am definitely close to being over my cough/throat issues. My voice is only mildly froggy now, and I haven't had any Tussin pills during the day, though some throat lozenges were necessary.

My wife went out scouting for a butcher shop in the area to order a turkey for next week's Thanksgiving dinner that we are putting on for the GANS. She walked around Rome, finding that the three nearby Google listings weren't butcher shops anymore. Since Thanksgiving isn't a tradition here, you have to work with a butcher a bit ahead to get a whole turkey. Since she struck out downtown, we'll find a place near home and place an order. She also made a copy of one of my Institute keys that somehow had been mangled in my pocket -- very odd. 

I spent a bunch of time preparing my two lessons for Friday. I asked ClaudiaM, who speaks English beautifully after her mission in Toronto, if she knew the phrase for Attention Deficit Disorder. She said, "who has ADD?", and I replied "Isaiah"; she laughed. My lesson will cover part of 2 Nephi where Isaiah plays a role.

We had a very productive Institute council meeting this evening via Zoom online. It has been difficult getting everyone together in person, and this worked much better. We had four ward YSA representatives, us, Ugo, and the Ganziani present. We discussed some upcoming activities, missionary work, and scheduled the next meeting in two weeks, all within an hour. My wife kept the ball moving the whole time. She rocks!