For the most part, we stayed at home on our P-day. The Sorelle downstairs reported that they had plenty of hot water for showers, so I closed up their hot water heater, allowing them to put stuff back into the hall cabinet. They were so grateful!
We did take a quick walk to the Chinese store, which was open all day. Our little stapler (cucitrice) broke, so we got an inexpensive replacement. We also bought a short extensible shower rod at the Chinese store for the Ladispoli sisters -- only five euros. The rod in one of their showers doesn't quite fit right. The problem is that the opening is under 70cm, and you can't buy them that short. So we bought the shortest one they had (73cm) and figured out how to take it apart and cut a piece out with a hacksaw to shorten it enough. Putting it back together required some ingenuity, with each of us contributing ideas to the effort. A plastic part that screwed in at one end had to be cut off, but we were able to attach the rubber end by wrapping masking tape around the tube to the required thickness and then jamming the cap on. The things you end up doing as a missionary! I well remember a somewhat similar episode 40+ years ago as a branch president in Pavia, where it was my responsibility to maintain the chapel. Whatever it takes to serve, we do. We will give them the shower rod at zone conference in a couple of weeks.
In the afternoon I finished installing all the apps on my new laptop, which is mostly ready to go now. The only thing remaining is drivers for the printers and scanner at the Institute. The Italian keyboard takes some getting used to, as almost every punctuation mark is in a different place! It was also time for my bi-weekly Acronis image backups, with the new Dell laptop now in that rotation; having lost our home to a fire in 1996 has made me a backup fanatic.
I did a bunch of paperwork and accounting. There is always something to take care of from home, and thank goodness for our tech that makes it so easy to do things remotely. In the evening, we finally watched the missionary driving safety video, which took about an hour. It was fun, but it also made good points about driving safely. While it is aimed mostly at the young missionaries (teenage drivers!), there were plenty of useful reminders for us.
Dee started working on her family history class presentation. The manual is outdated, as evidenced by this picture of a computer:
