Relaxed Saturday

We got to sleep in a little bit Saturday, and it was nice to have a day off. I went to the Chinese store twice, spending a total of maybe 10 euros, and I went to the mall for a couple of quick things. First, I needed to make sure that our old internet provider, Infostrada, got the memo that we no longer had an account and that they wouldn't be charging me for internet anymore. No problem: they were on it and said I'd get a final bill and be done. They didn't want their DSL modem/router back, so I chucked it -- it was old, slow, and never worked very well.

Next, I went to Leroy Merlin (think Home Depot) to get try to get some PVC pipe to finish building the U-shaped shower curtain rod for the Roma 1 Sorelle. Turns out they don't really have what I needed. They had some white PVC pipe, but it wasn't very straight, and they didn't have plastic joints at all. They did have some green pipe which looked good, with the T-joints I wanted, but unfortunately it needs to heated/soldered together. When I asked about white PVC pipe and joints, they looked very puzzled. In the garden department, they had PVC pipe, but it was coiled and flexible. Different worlds! So instead I bought another extensible shower curtain rod at the Chinese store for my final piece of the puzzle instead. When we install it all next week, I'll show you how it goes together, but I built a trial version of it today in my bathroom here to make sure it all works well.

While out, I rinsed the car and vacuumed the insides, which was definitely needed. It cost only 2.5 euro at the self-serve car wash place. I also bought a 2 euro T-shirt to use in applying rubbing compound to scratches on the passenger side doors of car. Not that anything happened, but it's theoretically possible that one of us might have cut the corner a bit too tight going into the narrow Institute driveway last week. I won't say which one of us did it, but it wasn't me 😀. Fortunately my wife knows how to apply rubbing compound to cars; she has had some experience over the years!

Other than that, we were here all day. Dee worked on her Relief Society lesson for Sunday, while I don't have any lessons for a few days. Although I love teaching, it's nice to have a little break sometimes. I bought some bread downstairs at the little market. We have become regular customers of the bread shop there. It's good Italian bread, meaning that it takes some effort to chew. Mmmm!

 

In the evening the Balzottis dropped in to see my shower curtain rod contraption, and we had fun visiting, as always. Anziano Balzotti really likes our new fridge and now hopes that their old one will die soon! They also left their laptop for me to diagnose, as it has been shutting down occasionally for some reason. I started running my usual suite of hardware and software diagnostics to see if I can figure anything out.

We had ordered the Italian version of "Fiddler on the Roof" on DVD from amazon.it, thinking we could make a movie night of it with the GANS kids at the Institute. It arrived Friday, and we were very disappointed to learn that, although the dialog is in Italian, the song lyrics are still in English, and, even worse, there are no Italian subtitles available at all. Bummer -- I don't think that counts as an Italian version, at least not in my book! By contrast, the French version has both French song lyrics and French subtitles. We have seen an online version of a live performance with Italian song lyrics, so it's not clear why the DVD doesn't have them, but we're out 7 euros with not much to show for it 😦.