We still went into town a bit early, to meet Signora Chirra, who owns a big vacant apartment on the first floor of the Institute building that we might be interesting in renting to increase our space. It has some real advantages, such as not changing address and making for a very easy move. We ran into her last week in the parking area, and she was very friendly and asked why Ugo hadn't been back in contact after she showed him the place last month. So we took her some of Dee's cookies (Peanut Butter Blossoms) and asked if we could go see it Tuesday afternoon; she said yes.
After that we walked over to the BNL bank branch to get some cash from the ATM there; BNL has a partnership with Bank of America (our bank) which avoids ATM fees. The credit card reader system at Metro on Saturday wasn't working, so most of the cash in my wallet was gone. Dee hadn't been to an ATM since arriving here, so she came along to see where it was -- about a ten minute walk, near the train station -- and to use her ATM card as well.
After that, we spent a while preparing for upcoming lessons, and I also edited some choir music in which the lyrics were really hard to see; I was able to blank out the old faded text and replace it with bolder text, making it much easier to read. Then I got a call from Vodafone about our fiber modem connection. They wanted me to try a thing or two. I was pretty sure that they simply hadn't physically connected the line yet, but sometimes you have to placate them to get them to look into things further. Thus, I drove home and did the tests they requested. Finally they agreed that probably it hadn't been connected (or that the old DSL provider had unhooked it) and that they would send somebody out in the next few days to fix it, supposedly with high priority. Fortunately, traffic was light both ways, but it still took a significant and unexpected chunk of the afternoon. As I was parallel parking here at the apartment, my phone rang. It was the shipping company for our new fridge, trying to set up a delivery time. I got a bit flustered backing into the parking spot while answering the phone via Bluetooth, so I said "hello" instead of "pronto", but we got past that. They will come Tuesday morning between 10 - 11:30am, before we need to leave for Taco Tuesday. So there's a decent chance we'll have a new fridge, working fiber internet, and running hot water at the Institute all within a week. Wow! I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch, but it is exciting.
Meanwhile, back at the Institute, my wife was whipping up some carrot cake with cream cheese frosting for FHE dessert. Because she was also giving the lesson, her plan had been to just set out some purchased cookies, but she has a culinary reputation to uphold now! She actually made a double batch.
Both the Ganziani and the Sorelle were teaching missionary lessons in the other rooms during our FHE lesson. Afterwards, we all got together to eat carrot cake, which was immensely popular.
