IT help

Thursday I went into the mission office to provide some IT support for the senior couples there, as I had promised to do over our holiday break. Italy is still largely in holiday mode until after Epiphany on Friday. One reader, contemplating a possible future  couples mission, expressed concern about not being able to do all the tech stuff I'm involved in. Not to worry, I just do all this because I can and because it's helpful; it is not at all required. I spent almost four hours in the office, helping Sister Balzotti and Anziano Paulsen with a list of technical issues, both personal and mission related. For the most part, we got things resolved, with some help from Google -- the trick in helping with tech is not knowing everything, but knowing to ask Google! I may need a followup visit for a few more things. 

My sister Marilyn has purchased airline tickets to come visit us in June, together with Lu, our long-time friend from Richmond days who now lives in Utah as well. We are looking forward to seeing them and we're also happy to have her bring us a few things! The mission office staff has said they are happy to help cover for us a bit so we can take time off to spend with family, as long as we avoid transfer weeks and zone conferences. To me that sounds like a good trade for IT services rendered😊.

My wife has been a bit under the weather, so she mostly stayed at home, except for a couple of brief walks to local stores. Christmas items are still on display and not discounted, since Christmas isn't over until Epiphany. We decided that my new all-white shower curtain left my bathroom a bit blah, so we bought a new one that has red and white rectangles and spruces up the room a bit.

The week-old white curtain will be reused by sewing it as a top border extension to another new shower curtain for the apartment of the Ladispoli sisters. Wednesday's blog entry showed a picture of us cobbling together longer links to try to have their shower curtain (barely) reach the bathtub, but Dee decided it would be much better to just make a longer curtain. We will see the sisters in zone conference in a couple of weeks, so my wife hopes to have it ready to give to them then.

Epiphany, January 6, is the day celebrated as the visit of the wise men. When we were here forty years ago, there were few Christmas trees. Children traditionally get their gifts on January 6. In America, we celebrate the twelve days of Christmas ending on December 25, but in Europe, the FIRST day of Christmas is December 25, making Epiphany the twelfth day of Christmas. The befana (a witchlike figure) is the equivalent of Santa Claus. She comes on January 6 to give gifts or coal to the children.

I mentioned the visor extension that Dee made for our car. It's wonderful. Here is a photo of it in place, and here is a video of it in operation. My wife rocks!

I walked to local stores to get some fresh vegetables, plus the shower curtains and some longer screws to hold our new kitchen knobs in place. The drawer faces were too thick, but I found slightly longer ones at the hardware store down the street for less than one euro and installed them.

In the evening I finally had time to turn on my new laptop. First I did a full backup, before even booting Windows. Then I started Windows up and did updates, which took quite a while. Next on the agenda is installing applications -- I have a list I keep of what to install, and it doesn't take too long. The Italian keyboard takes some getting used to: all the punctuation is in a different place, so I'm constantly looking around to find the right character. But it has the accented vowels needed for Italian, so it's actually quite useful.

There is a bunch of financial stuff from home to take care of with the new year, so I spent some time on the phone and online with banks and family to get the ball rolling. Next month I'll have to try to do income taxes, which will be interesting from here. It's good to have financial support people at home (CPA, insurance, banker, etc.) that I trust and can work with very well. I've done almost all of that stuff via phone and email for years anyway, though the time difference here adds a bit of a twist.