Museum

Saturday we were really looking forward to some down time at home, but we decided to do a little bit of sightseeing as well. There's a national museum of classical Roman art downtown, only two blocks from the Institute, in a building called Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, which we often pass on foot. We went there just after noon with the Balzottis, who had been planning an outdoor tour, but it was cold and rainy so they were delighted to join us. The museum has four floors, of which we covered only about two in three hours.  The floors we visited were filled with ancient sculptures, mostly marble with some bronze, all about 2000 years old or more. Incredible. We paid the extra 5 euro apiece to rent an audio guided tour device (a phone running an app), so we were able to get some good descriptions of things. Actually, we only rented two devices, with each couple sharing one via audio splitter cables. After a while, we started to get statue overload, but the other two floors have different kinds of collections, so we'll have to go back! It's amazing how they keep finding these statues around Rome, some in the river, some when they do construction excavation, and some in private collections. It took almost all afternoon, more than we initially bargained for, but it was well worth it.

Dee says: The other amazing thing is how close you can get to the exhibits. There are no velvet ropes and no guards. We could have touched statues from 90 B.C.!

 

As a strange aside, one of the statues seemed to me to be a dead ringer for Grady (Whitman Mayo), the friend of Fred Sanford (Red Foxx) from the 1970s TV comedy Sanford and Son. You decide.

 

 

While we were out, Ugo messaged to invite us to lunch Sunday after church at their home. Since they live quite far away, we reluctantly declined, as it would have taken almost all evening, and we needed some time at home.

I also installed the new keyboard and battery on Jomar's laptop. It was really difficult removing the old one, which had dozens of little plastic "rivets" holding it place -- never seen anything like it. Anyway, the battery seems to be working ok, but a few keys on the keyboard don't work. Very strange. I will get to the bottom of that.

In the evening, after eating to start our monthly fast, I finally caught up on a few things, including some phone calls home. Most of the time was spent on prep for my Sunday School lesson, which I hadn't had any time to work on previously for some reason (the week was busy). Dee did some computer work as well as housecleaning, laundry and a bit of food shopping at Conad.

The rod to hold clothes hangers in my closet completely collapsed sometime during the day. Actually, the plastic holder for it broke; the rod is ok. I need to go to a hardware store Monday to buy some kind of replacement. For now, my clothes are all sitting on the floor of the wardrobe. There will probably be some extra ironing involved once things get put back into place, though I was able to rescue one white shirt and pair of suit pants to hang up overnight for use on Sunday morning.

 

We were both pretty tired after a lot of standing and walking all day, so we were out for the night earlier than usual.