Dealing drugs, aka community service
Saturday my wife got up early to go work as a drug dealer! Actually, it's called banco farmaceutico, or "pharmacy bank", kinda like a food drive except for OTC medications. It's a well known thing here, and our ward helps out. She got the early shift, not her preference at all due to our late Friday nights at the Institute Campus. At about 7:45am I dropped her off at Jonio, the nearest subway stop, and she took two subway lines to get to the pharmacy. The idea is that volunteers stand inside the pharmacy and ask customers if they'd be willing to buy one of the preselected items to donate to the poor. The purchased items are collected and then sent to an agency for distribution. A few minutes after she arrived, two young women volunteers from the community showed up. The head volunteer was also there, and another ward member showed up, too. This made too big a group, so she happily bowed out and headed back home. We like to say that this way you get the brownie points for volunteering, without all the work. She is pretty good now at getting around on the public transit, thanks to Google Maps.
On her way home, she stopped at the open market and a few stores, looking for a garlic press and a covered pyrex dish. She scored on the garlic press, but no luck on the dish for the microwave. She was pretty tired the rest of the day, and mostly just did computer stuff and a little housework. I stayed home all day, except for a quick walk to Conad and the Chinese store, plus dropping off Sorella Balzotti in the morning at the nearby Roma 2 chapel to attend a wedding, because her husband was late getting back from fixing a hot water heater at a missionary apartment. His job (housing coordinator) is always a very busy one!
I was able to catch up on a bunch of things, scanning docs (e.g., Institute sign-in logs for the week) and doing paperwork (e.g., absentee ballot application, IRA registration forms, balancing my checking account, etc). During the night I was up for a while, unable to sleep for no particular reason, so I took a much-needed nap just after noon. It was nice to have a slow day.
