Thursday, May 31, 2018

Free haircut

Wednesday was our sort-of-off day, with Anziano Knies covering for us at the Institute during the afternoon. He made chocolate pudding for whoever showed up. I went to Conad for some fresh produce and a few other things, as well as the Chinese store for some summer flip-flops to wear around the house. Dee went out at the same time to the Chinese store too, on her own more or less, though at a much slower pace than I. It is so nice for her to get outside a bit. Dee writes: I'm getting my papers organized, and they have really nice cardboard folders with elastic closures. Since this is a temporary living situation, I am not buying file drawers or anything like that.

The folding table I ordered arrived, and I set it up in the back bedroom and moved my computer there. First I had to move a cabinet out from there into our bedroom to make room, which was pretty easy. My trick with hard floors is to put rags under the big piece of furniture, which makes it slide reaallly nicely. I like the new setup, though I have no desk storage there, but the AC in that room more than makes up for it: it was hot and really humid outside, but I was very cool. This will help a lot as the summer gets hotter, and it is much cheaper than trying to pay to install a new AC unit in our living room. He is so happy to have AC! I'm still doing all right in the living room with a fan, but I can move back there if I want to.
 
We actually considered moving our big bed and closets into that small back bedroom, using the big bedroom as our guestroom and summer office. However, it is not clear that everything would fit well, and Dee cannot help move things now in any case. I also cleaned the extra fan that the Sorelle just gave us, washing the blades which were pretty dirty, so now we have three good fans.

In the early afternoon I drove to Metro to get some beef, cheese, sour cream, and plasticware for upcoming Institute events. We weren't really out of anything, but by stocking up this way we won't need to go back there until after my sister has gone home.

We left home for the Institute about 5pm, arriving just in time to relieve Anziano Knies. Our activity for the evening ended up as a wonderful event. We had Jen Johnson, an American from Roma 2 ward who speaks Italian fairly well, come give a haircut demo. She is a hairdresser by profession, and her husband is here working on the temple.  They have been here for three years with their four kids, and they head home this summer. She graciously agreed to do this for us, and she was great with the kids.

Ludo volunteered as the guinea pig. Only a handful of kids showed up, but they were entranced! First Jen gave him kind of a conventional haircut, explaining what she was doing and why in terms of cutting. When that was done, Ludo said he wanted it shorter, so she basically gave him a second haircut. Then he said he wanted it at "zero", so she took the clippers, put the guard on and gave him a butch cut. The fun thing was that the kids got to do some of the cutting -- it is difficult to mess up with the guard in place! Everyone was watching intently. I probably took over 100 photos and a few short videos, all of which you can see here, with a handful of selected shots below:
 
First haircut is complete
 
 
Second haircut is enthralling! I love this shot!
"Zero" haircut -- everybody can play!
 
 
 
 
Linda di Martino is a nonmember girl from Battipaglia (her sister is a member) who comes up to Rome for school Monday to Thursday each week. She came late to Taco Tuesday and was really interested in the haircut event. When she showed up with a bad headache, I offered her some acetaminophen, which took care of that nicely. Now everyone kids me about being a drug dealer. It is not clear from a legal or liability perspective whether I should be offering meds to kids, but as one who suffered with headaches for decades, I err on the side of compassion. It was great to have her come two days in a row.

I've really enjoyed listening to general conference talks over the last few weeks. I have also gone back to some talks from 1988. It's inspiring and a blessing to have all these amazing speakers available at any time. I highly recommend the LDS Library app.

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Gospel Choir

Tuesday morning Dee went out to the open market, quite a walk for her. Her scooter has been a great improvement for her mobility. Dee writes: Ugo's younger sons asked me to make them mittens before I fell down the stairs, and I really wanted to get the yarn to start. Levi asked for navy and turquoise and I found those colors! Another thing I have needed is hooks and eyes, which we couldn't find at either Chinese market. I carried my crutches with me on my scooter, and people recognized that I was injured, not crazy to be riding a scooter. There is a flight of six steps on the way to the mercantino (open market), but I was happy to discover there is a pedestrian path for skipping them. There were a couple of tricky spots where I had to use the crutches: to get around some broken glass and to get down a particular curb. I can now lock the brake on the scooter, step down with the crutches, then pull the scooter to me. Meanwhile, I walked up to Todis to buy some produce and tortillas, then drive the car back down much closer to our apartment. I spoke to Amazon and to HSBC, the bank for my new mission credit card, trying to figure out why I cannot successfully buy anything online with my card. Apparently HSBC has some kind of block on our card for online purchases (in Europe?), though it is couched in terms of me not supplying the correct "zip code". When I ask which zip code it is that they want, the one in Salt Lake City for church headquarters or the Italian postal code where we live or the postal code for the mission home or office, they really don't know. It is not clear whether this will be resolved.

We had a good-sized group for Taco Tuesday, though in two shifts, and I didn't get a photo of the second group. Ugo was there, again bringing limes, avocado, and cilantro, so Dee whipped up some nice salsa. 
 
 
 
Olivia, our backpacking-through-Europe girl, was also there to eat; she was the only female other than Dee for a while. She has a cold and ended up taking a 3+ hour nap in one of the classrooms, using the blanket and pillow we have there just for that purpose. I also gave her some cough meds. After her nap she felt good enough to do some more sightseeing. She leaves on Wednesday, but overall I think that we did very well by her.

At 4pm, I walked over to the new Friendship Center at the local Episcopal church (St. Paul within the Walls) to participate in a gospel choir. The director is Alessandro, an Italian, and we had a lot of fun singing "Amazing Grace" in four-part harmony, with three people in each section. Over half of the group was LDS missionaries, who had the most experience in choral groups, and all but one of the others were immigrants.

Microsoft support was to supposed to call me at 3pm about the Windows license issue, but they didn't call until I was at the choir. They left a message that they will call again Wednesday. The time difference makes connecting a bit difficult.

For Ugo's church history class in the evening, he had Steven Harper teach the class from BYU via Zoom. Steven is the leading expert on the accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision, which was his topic. Dee attended, while I manned the door/intercom.  I usually end up in the kitchen when there's a class going on, so I was pretty happy to get to attend this one. I also knit during the class :) I will watch the recorded version later. Alessio helped us carry stuff down to the car (even though he has a broken toe), including our new desktop computer, and when we got home the Sorelle came down to meet us and carry stuff up. We have been very blessed by kindness of others during Dee's injury, mostly helping carry things. Claudia also offered to do some dishes and there were plenty!

We have a new GANS, Martine. She was Joyce's companion in the MTC. She's from Sicily (born in Africa). We had a nice talk about her goals and interests. She is happy to know we can help her with her math class for Pathway, and she wants to learn to knit :-)

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Bogus Windows from Amazon

Monday was busy with a bunch of little and somewhat unusual things. It was hot and humid all day; thank goodness for AC at the Institute. In the morning I prepared all the paperwork for the Canfields to get their ZTL pass to drive downtown to the new Friendship Center. It took some effort, cutting and pasting from the forms used when I applied for our car last fall, but it was good to have that as a template. I also cut and pasted President Pickerd's signature, with his permission, as the docs are in his name. In talking with him, we learned that a couple of young missionaries we know and like had had to go home very recently. That is a tough transition, regardless of the reason, and we wish them the best. We were going to go get the ZTL pass in the afternoon, but had to postpone until later in the week as some conflicts arose.

I made a copy of the key for our parking lot post so that Dee and I both have one again, having given one to Ugo. Anziano Bellucci (one of my favorites) and his family dropped by to pick up his (extremely heavy) suitcase, which we had brought down to the Institute. They have been touring for almost two weeks and were exhausted and ready to go home in a few days. They stayed a while to enjoy our AC and to visit with a couple of his former companions who came in on their P-day to see him.

I also found out that it is apparently not uncommon for copies of Windows purchased on Amazon to be bogus, both in Italy and in the US. I have done this several times in the past without a problem, but this time our new computer refuses to activate Windows. I spent about an hour on the phone with Microsoft tech support, and they finally had to escalate it to the next level of support, who will try to call me Tuesday. Sigh.

Dee gave a really nice FHE lesson on not judging too quickly, giving some nice examples and getting experiences from others in the (small) group. 
She made some Mexican wedding cookies, which were very popular. Sorella Yanacallo really loved them; her face lit up when I offered her some to take home! A bunch of missionaries were there to prepare their addestramento (training) for zone conference, and they were all more than happy to have cookies and brownies. Anziano Wijesundera, however, is on a health kick and had a banana instead.

Somehow we got on the topic of dancing. Junior loves to tango and gave us a short demo. Jerwyn loves dancing and talked about it a lot. Anziano Wijesundera's parents won a ballroom dance competition for all of Srilanka. So, I told them about the time I auditioned at NBC and was chosen as one of six out of 300 kids. I was eleven and got to work at NBC for the week. I even had an agent in those days. Junior was really amazed and kept saying, "You had a manager!" No one there had ever heard of the stars who were in that show. It was the Pat Boone Thanksgiving Day Special. Peter, Paul and Mary and Pattie Page were also in the show. I was surprised the Sorelle didn't know PPM or any of their songs!
Alkmini dropped by for the final time. She is leaving for her internship in Luxembourg later this week. She is the nonmember from Greece who has been around a lot and is loved by all here, a wonderful girl.
After FHE, we drove the three Sorelle home. They helped my wife get the scooter up the stairs while I went on a long hunt for a parking spot, ending up again at the top of the hill near the Todis market. They also gave us one of their extra stand fans, which will be nice to have, with one in each bedroom and one in the living room. At some point soon we will transition to using the AC, but it isn't quite needed yet.

One week to my x-ray! Not that we are counting 😉

Monday, May 28, 2018

Mosiah Marathon

Dee writes: This should have been part of yesterday's blog, but I somehow missed the whole entry. So, if you read May 27 right away, you missed these pearls.
I was glad to have the day at home to work on my lesson. I teach the fourth Sunday in Relief Society, and the new topic is Ministering. I will teach on that topic every month through September. In fact, I was supposed to do it in April, but there was a glitch in the LDS.org website and the topic wasn't updated in Italian. It turns out they did put it up, but not in the usual spot. Anyway, lessons aren't spelled out like they used to be, so I did a lot of research. The day flew by. 

Sunday we left about half an hour early because the Relief Society in our ward had an inservice meeting for their teachers. When we got there, Sandro already had the lift ready. He was again cleaning weeds out from around it. I learned that he leaves his house at 6:30am every Sunday for an hour's commute and then cleans up around the Church for another hour and a half. Amazing. At the inservice, we brainstormed about ways to involve the sisters better. The hard part is that we don't have a full ward directory. I think it may have to do with European privacy laws, but it's hard to find out how to contact people if they're not in the WhatsApp group. Our meetings were very nice, with Ugo taking his turn teaching the Sunday School lesson. During third hour, Dee taught her lesson in Relief Society on ministering, and I taught Priesthood on the sacrament. I got a fair amount of participation, starting out with a list of cultural rites of passage and the associated cyclic rite (e.g., birth and birthday celebrations, marriage and anniversaries), leading up to baptism and the sacrament. There were a bunch of good comments on how people prepare for the sacrament, to make it meaningful each week.

When I got up in the morning, I decided I needed to print some more items. I used a bunch of stories about misjudging people, mostly from a cool Jewish site I found. I was able to tell the stories without first translating them. I just looked up a few words and I was good to go. I printed parts of the lesson in three languages to hand out. Lauriane only speaks French. She comes every week, but doesn't understand much. I also did it in English since we often have visitors. And I should have included Spanish! We sat in a circle and lots of the women contributed their thoughts. The point was to be more able to minister by not jumping to negative conclusions.

Ugo realized during the morning that the big annual bike race in Italy, called Giro d'Italia (a leadup to the Tour de France) was finishing in Rome that afternoon. Thus all surface traffic -- cars and buses -- would not be allowed downtown, including the Institute area. This was a big problem, because we had our Mosiah Marathon activity planned for the afternoon. Without being able to ride in a car, Dee couldn't go. And the Marathon was my idea in the first place! At first we thought we would try having her go with me on the subway, but our experience with elevators at public transit locations has been abysmal. They all have to have elevators by law, but that doesn't mean that they have to work. It would have been painful and time consuming to get part way there and find out she was blocked. So I realized I could join in by Zoom, and Doug would take the subway and pay attention to the elevators for the future. Bottom line is that it probably would have worked for her to take the subway, but it would have been a very long "walk" on her scooter, so it is probably just as well. Zoom ended up working ok, but we are both hoping for her to be back to real walking soon.

Ugo snuck into the downtown area in his car right before they closed it down, but turns out that he didn't have a key to our parking space. I later gave him one for next time, not that he needs it much. My trip on the subway was pretty uneventful in both directions, though it was really hot and humid on the walk down to the subway stop.  It took about 45 minutes each way.

We had about 8-10 of us for the Mosiah Marathon over time, with some in and out, including the stake president (Rondinelli) and his wife. Several of my Seminary students happened to be there, but they didn't join us. We read for just over two hours, plus a couple of stretch breaks, and we got through Mosiah 18. There is something really different about reading out loud, so it was a nice change of pace in terms of scripture study, and I enjoyed it. Each reader read one column before going on the next. Dee was on the big screen and took her turn in the circle of readers. Her mic was cutting in and out a bit, but overall Zoom was fine. After the first break, Stefano (Marlene's brother) joined us. His back was facing Dee on the big screen and he hadn't realized she was there. She started reading right after him, and it really freaked him out when she first started speaking!
 
 
 
Olivia, a nonmember friend of a friend of a friend, is in town, backpacking alone through Europe. Her friend had asked if she could stay with somebody, and nobody but Ugo's family said ok. They live way out in the boonies, but there is a train that comes in regularly and only takes 20 minutes. The Peregos are a very welcoming and open family. We gave her food, drink, dessert, WiFi, conversation and access to a restroom at the Institute, so she was very well taken care of.

After the marathon ended, we had sandwiches (toasted in a panino press), brownies, and cookies. After that, I asked the kids in the classroom if they wanted gelato, and they all literally jumped up and ran into the kitchen! 

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Building a computer

Saturday was hot and very humid. We need a fan in our bedroom, and fortunately the Sorelle say they have an extra one. That way we will not need to move them around between rooms. We do have AC in the bedrooms, but it isn't quite that hot at night (yet). In the morning I walked down to Conad for a bit of produce, and they did not have any irons. I also bought a couple of bungee cords, which can be handy, as well as some little rubber door bumpers which I used as feet on one of our fans which had none.

We also looked at some small folding tables on Amazon and ended up buying one to try; you can see it here. We decided that it was easier (and cheaper) to move our desks into the back bedroom with AC for the summer rather than trying to get an extra AC unit in our living room. The table(s) will also be handy for guests to use when they come to see us.

In the afternoon I went downtown with all the computer components. The Sorelle helped me carry everything to the car, including leftover enchiladas. Dee stayed behind to work on her Sunday lesson, as she really was not needed for the computer project. Three kids were able to come to the events: Francesco, plus the two oldest Perego boys, Joshua and David. 
It took us well over an hour to put everything together, because the documentation for the motherboard and case was not very good. I had to look up stuff on YouTube and the internet in general to get a few answers, but finally we got everything assembled. 
 
When we connected all the cables and tried to boot the computer, the fans spun, but nothing appeared on the screen. It kept rebooting every 5-10 seconds. I was afraid we had connected something wrong, or that one of the parts was defective. Joshua then noted that the 4GB RAM stick was not seated very well, so he pushed it in better, but still no luck. Then he said, "let's try it in the other memory slot". Bingo! It booted right up into the BIOS. The fans are very quiet -- nice!
From there we started installing Windows from the copy I had bought on Amazon. That takes a while, and then the updates took even longer. Joshua had gone out to do something with a friend for a while in the interim, but he finally got back. We left the computer there, running TeamViewer so I could manage it from back home. They left for the train, and I drove home very happy, arriving over five hours from when I had left. Everything was looking good on the computer except that Windows hadn't activated, claiming that that license key had already been used. I will contact Microsoft on Monday to straighten that out.
Before going to bed, I did a bit more prep on my Priesthood lesson for Sunday. Dee says that we use our P-days to prepare lessons, and there is some truth in that, but we both really enjoy teaching.

Dee writes: I was glad to have the day at home to work on my lesson. I teach the fourth Sunday in Relief Society, and the new topic is Ministering. I will teach on that topic every month through September. In fact, I was supposed to do it in April, but there was a glitch in the LDS.org website and the topic wasn't updated in Italian. It turns out they did put it up, but not in the usual spot. Anyway, lessons aren't spelled out like they used to be, so I did a lot of research. The day flew by. 

Saturday, May 26, 2018

Iron deficiency

Friday morning had some interesting activities. First of all, our doorman Paolo had told me that the bathroom of the Sorelle beneath was apparently leaking some water onto the ceiling of the apartment beneath them. So he and his plumber came over to check out what was going on. Because we inspect that apartment, I was there. Apparently Paolo has had this job for twenty years. He supervises three buildings (about 100 apartments), plus all repairs for the entire complex (about 400 apartments). We really like him: he jokes with us all the time and has been very helpful with everything, especially with my wife's broken foot. Anyway, they walked into the bathroom, looked at the shower and said "there is the problem". The screw holding down the slotted shower drain cover was slightly loose. Here is a photo of ours, just so you get an idea: It's hard to clean the shower drain when you're on crutches!
Apparently here you are never supposed to unscrew it, because it helps hold a rubber gasket in place, and taking it out can break the seal. In the US, you can take the screw out with no problem, in case you want to clean out accumulated hair or put a snake down it. Not sure when it got loose, but the plumber replaced it with a new gasket, and we will see what happens. If that doesn't fix the leak, they will have to break out a tile and do some more repairs.

I went to iron my shirt, and our iron was leaking water and was not getting hot. A few days ago I had moved the ironing board, and the iron slipped and hit the very hard marble floor, so I guess I broke it. I called the Sorelle to see if we could borrow theirs, and they were happy to loan it, since they almost never use it. Dee rarely irons too, so I am not sure why I am so lucky that my shirts always need pressing. I got their iron while the plumber worked on their shower. When I plugged it in later and turned it on, our circuit breaker tripped. The bottom of it had deposits all over, so Dee offered to do the ironing with a handkerchief in between so as not to leave any marks on the shirt. She noticed that the cord was really tangled and had several severe kinks in it, with exposed copper wire! We turned down the temperature a bit, and she was able to get it to work long enough to do one shirt, although she did get singed once from the exposed wiring. Suffice it to say that we will not be giving that iron back to the Sorelle!
With a shirt I could wear, I walked down to Conad to look for a new iron. They had exactly one in stock, for just under 20€, so I bought it. The brand is Philips, and it seems to work ok (I ironed several more shirts as a test). We will buy a replacement to give to the Sorelle as soon as they are back in stock. I tried to buy it on Amazon using my mission credit card, but the transaction kept getting rejected. Not sure why (and I want to get that resolved for the future), but for now I will just look for another one at Conad.
I called the Balzottis to report on the plumbing and the iron adventures, first asking them if they had a replacement iron in their inventory of stuff from other apartments. No luck. As always, we laughed a lot. Anziano Balzotti wondered if we could just use our toaster instead, and then when I told him how much water was leaking from the old iron he asked if we might try ironing in the shower; particularly with the exposed wires that seemed like a fine idea.

At the Institute, I worked on my Luke lesson (chapters 3-5) for the evening, while Dee stayed in the kitchen working on enchiladas all afternoon. I'm a lot slower these days, so I never went outside for a turn around the block. I'm so happy to know how to make enchilada sauce now. Of course, I can't buy it in a can here, so I had to learn how. But making it while standing on one foot was exhausting. I have to figure out a better way. We have two people who can't eat dairy, so I made a special batch for them, too. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I am not sure how one person can produce that much food in a few hours, but she did it. She also made a couple of batches of Spanish rice to add to the mix.

I offered to Sorella Maxfield, whose photos I had backed up the day before, to buy her a 64GB flash drive and a special cable (USB OTG, OTG=On The Go) to allow her to connect to her tablet and do more backups on her own in the future. The whole thing would cost 29€, and she was all for it, so I ordered them from Amazon to be delivered Saturday. At Dee's suggestion, because this will surely happen again, I also bought extra cables (2€ each) and a couple of extra flash drives, delivered to my sister Marilyn for her to bring here next month, because they are so much cheaper in the US.

Our numbers for Institute class were down a bit, probably due to summer coming on, but we had a very nice discussion on the chapters in Luke. People each week have come up to me after the lesson recently to say that I had raised some interesting points that they had never thought of before. For example, in Luke 4, when Jesus reads from Isaiah, I wondered how it was that Christ was literate, which would probably have been quite unusual for a carpenter's family back in those days. We live in a literate society, so the question usually doesn't even occur to us. It feels good to be making people think about the life of Christ.

After class, the meal from Dee was very well received, although she had made too much food for the smaller group (e.g., 37 large enchiladas). The problem is that we never know how many kids will be there ahead of time, so she plans for a large gathering. Joyce helped to serve. She is very willing to pitch in anytime. In this case, it actually worked out well because we can use the leftovers for a some gatherings this weekend. Everyone ate until they were full. I washed several more rounds of dishes after the meal, and I was sure glad to be able to sit down after three hours on my feet from teaching and kitchen duties.

The sisters met with Flavia for a missionary lesson. Her boyfriend is a member and she has been meeting with the sisters for several months. But today, she told them she wants to really devote herself to studying and living the gospel. This was wonderful news.
 
 
 
 

Afterward the kids were all playing a Wii dance game in the classroom, which looked fun. We left about 9:45pm. We do not know how long the party went on after we headed home, but it is nice that they like to be together.

Friday, May 25, 2018

Shopping for chicken

Thursday morning we went to our district meeting. We had messaged the Anziani to help uncover and set up the stair lift for Dee, since we were running late. They too were running late, so they called Sandro, who lives nearby. He came by and opened it all up for us with a smile and no complaints. He is always giving service. Marcella also lives right across the street and dropped in to get her laptop and the files I recovered onto her external hard drive. She says that she can check the files using her son's laptop, since hers is now dead.

It was our first district meeting with Anziano Jensen as DL. It is amazing how different each DL's style is. We enjoyed his training very much. We also got to preach the gospel of backup. These young missionaries usually have only a single copy of all their photos, either on their tablet or (now) smartphone. They tend not to think about the fact that they can lose it. So I copied the photos from two of their tablets onto my laptop hard drive. I am also buying USB flash drives and cables for some of them to do a backup on their own in the future. I asked Sorella Balzotti if I could write a tech article on backup for the next issue of the Roman Forum, our digital mission newsletter which comes out once per transfer. She was delighted, so now I have to do it.

One the way in to the Institute, we stopped at the nearby Lidl and got some food for the big Sunday evening event, as well as some of their wonderful bread. It was nice for Dee to be able to enter a supermarket for the first time in more than three weeks. Dee spent much of the afternoon working on ingredients for enchiladas for Friday night. She also realized that she didn't have quite enough chicken, so she sent me out to get more. There are not many big supermarkets downtown, but there is a small Conad about a ten minute walk away, where I found a great special on two small whole chickens for only 4€. It felt good to take a walk. Dee cooked the chickens in the crock post as soon as I brought them back, so we were able to bring them home to cool down, as they got done just in time for us to leave and were too hot to put in the fridge there.
Ugo had to meet somebody at the Institute in the morning to do an annual safety review, so he stayed for the rest of the day.  It was great to get to talk with him about the Institute, plans for the rest of the year, etc. He travels so much that we don't often get to sit down and actually talk together. When we do, he tends to call us Doug and Dee:-) After all, we've known each other for more than forty years. Thursdays are generally pretty mellow, but we had a number of kids in and out, including Trevor, who talked with Dee for a couple of hours. He is packing to go home next week after living in Italy for a few years.

In the evening we had our every-so-often student council meeting, including the Ganziani. It was quite productive, planning for our upcoming activities and filling in the June calendar.