Washed clean (and fast)

Thursday morning I woke up after a good sleep, but with a runny  nose and a sore throat. I hadn't had a cold for over five months, so maybe I was due. After one day I don't feel too bad, but it is nice to have a big stash of lotion Kleenex. We'll see how it develops.

Our morning got an unexpected delight, starting with a phone call from Anziano Balzotti. They had been down to Naples with the mission van to pick up stuff from a missionary apartment that just got closed. Included in the loot was a much more modern washing machine, and he was driving towards us to drop it off! All of our plans to do a bunch of food shopping were happily thrown out the window. We finished showering, and I dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. The two of them showed up in a bit, with the washer on a small dolly. I helped him carry it up the ten stairs to the elevator, and it fit in there just fine. We unhooked the old one and put in the new one.

 

The "new" washer handles bigger loads and also has faster and nicer cycles. The fabric softener dispenser seems to work. It also spins the clothes much dryer. We even have a user manual, in both Italian and English. This will change our (and particularly Dee's) life here, since we can now do fewer and quicker loads, which should dry much faster. Life is good!

Instead of going to Lidl, which can take a while, Dee cut down her grocery list to just what was needed for the next couple of days. I walked down to Conad to buy the groceries, including some fabric softener, which she wanted to try out right away.

We then left to the Institute at the regular time. The weather is absolutely beautiful, and for the first time in months we left home for the day without wearing a sweater or jacket. At the Institute after eating lunch, we arranged all the new chairs, with more stacks than before in both classrooms, because we really have too many of them. Hopefully we will have more space for them in a larger facility at some point. We set up my class for Friday night to make sure that there was room for everything.

 

 

I spent the afternoon working on my lessons for Friday and sending out various notifications. I also finished up all four pieces of sheet music for the stake choir, so that I can now read them, and I sent copies to the director and my two fellow members of the bass section. My wife spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen, preparing Friday's dinner (Sloppy Joes) and some carrot cakes for a Sunday GANS activity. Friday and Saturday she will be at a Genealogy conference put on by the city of Rome, so she won't be around to help with Friday dinner. Thursdays are always slow at the Institute, which was probably a good thing this time.

Adrian called to let me know that he had passed the exam for his pilot's license; he was absolutely giddy at the news. He is leaving on his mission to Milano next Tuesday, but he is now certified as a pilot, which will still be valid when he gets back. One of the kids on the GANS WhatsApp group said that he will be the next Uchtdorf 😀

My energy was waning a bit, but at one point I took a walk around the block, which was good for me. Walking around cleared up my sinuses for a while, and I also bought ten subway tickets, as our supply was running low.

English class was small but lively. Afterwards we were able to come home a bit early, to find the happy results of running the new washer. At 10pm we had a Skype video call with the Benincosas, a senior couple coming to our mission this summer as self-reliance missionaries for two years. He served in Milan from 1976-8, overlapping one year with my time there; I knew of him, but never met him. She doesn't speak Italian and had some understandable apprehensions. We were able to give them a bunch of tips and advice, answering a bunch of questions. It took over an hour, so we were up fairly late, but it was worthwhile. We were so grateful for the Thackers, who took time a year ago to answer all kinds of questions we had for several months before leaving, so we wanted to pay it forward.