Gino vs. the hack saw

Sunday morning when we got to church, Sandro was there clearing out some weeds around the base of the stair lift. I had messaged him to say my wife would still need to use the lift, so he came early to help make sure it was running and was clear for her to get in. It was wonderful of him to do that. This was the first time the ward had seen Gino, her scooter, and everyone thought it meant that she was almost better. Dee writes: A lot of people wanted to know if it had a motor, or pedals :)

My Sunday School lesson went quite well. I brought a mezuzah that I bought on Amazon to show everyone what the Jews used both anciently and today to remind them of the scriptures. I put it on a chapel door with FunTac and asked everyone to touch it as they left class. Several people later wanted details about how to get a mezuzah. I also played a recording of a shofar (ram's horn) being played, plus showed a picture of one, like what would have been used at Jericho. At home I actually have a shofar, purchased on eBay, but I didn't bring it with us on our mission for some reason 😉. In the book of Joshua we talked about prophetic succession, including Joshua and other examples in history, where the Lord used miracles to show that there was a new prophet in Israel. I felt like general conference this April had some similar marvelous moments, with President Nelson newly sustained. There was a lot of participation, with good comments from a bunch of people.

With tourist season in full swing, we always have a few visitors in church from the US. One of them was a former missionary who served in our ward ten years ago, who came with his wife. He taught the gospel to Cristiano, a fun member of our bishopric. It is nice to have more people around, and we always make it a point to greet them. At the end of priesthood meeting, our elders' quorum president asked me to teach the lesson next week, which I am  happy to do.

I told the Primary President I wouldn't be there, as long as I'm not walking. The kids will be way too interested in Gino, and I'm afraid I'll get knocked over. We have a severely autistic boy who is quite physical, too. So, I got to hear Doug's lesson and go to Relief Society.

Once home we never left our apartment complex again; the down time was really nice. I installed a few driver updates and a font manager (nexusfont) on my wife's laptop, having run a full backup of it overnight first. My wife and our daughter Wendy both love their fonts. Dee has almost 600 of them, and she had been wanting to try a font manager for a while. It's so cool! If you want to try it yourself, nexusfont is free, but you need to get it from Xiles, not Softonic, in order to protect yourself from malware.

Marcella, the Primary chorister, was having computer problems, so my wife volunteered me to help. The HP laptop was at least ten years old, about ready to give up the ghost and unable to boot Windows. It wasn't clear exactly what the problem was, but the screen was flickering in weird ways, even outside Windows, so there were apparently both hardware and software issues. I couldn't even run Spinrite or an Acronis backup, but I was able to boot Linux from a USB drive and successfully copy all of her data files onto an external drive. She was very grateful to hear that her files had been recovered. As always, we preach the gospel of backup.

Gino (the knee scooter) has had a problem, in that the post that adjusts the seat height descends through the body of the scooter, too close to the ground, making it difficult for Dee to go up and down even a small step, where it would drag and hit the step. If she were taller, we could have adjusted the height of the post, but it was on its lowest setting. Hey, in Italy, I'm about average in height! So I took our trusty hacksaw and cut off about an inch. The steel was thick and very tough to cut through, so I had to do the work in about half a dozen ten-minute stints, but finally I was able to lop off the end. I then used a metal file to take off the sharp edges, and then we covered it with black duct tape, so it actually looks pretty good.

Dee wanted to get out of the house again, so in the early evening we walked around the block, which was a little challenging at a few points, but she made it. Cutting that inch off the post made a big difference when she needed to go up or down the curb. Anziano Balzotti was dismayed that Doug had cut down the post, since he's tall and really wants to play with Gino. Now if we can just figure out a way for her to roll into and out of her bathroom, which has a four-inch lip on it. I tried to find some ramps on Amazon, but they were expensive and nothing looked  like it would work well. 

At 9pm we spoke with our son Rich. He always seems to know a lot about our ballot propositions, and for years we have held a family home evening of sorts to go over the ballot every time there is an election. We do not always agree on how to vote, but we have a useful discussion on the pros and cons. We had ballots emailed to us here, which we can mail in before the June primary election in California.

There was a combined Sacrament meeting of the Rome 2 and Rome 5 wards in the afternoon to announce changing the boundaries and splitting off a new branch up north of town. The former bishop of Rome 5 is now the new branch president, and brother Calabrese, a partriarch and long-time volunteer in the mission office, was called as the new Rome 5 bishop. We didn't attend because it doesn't directly affect our ward, but it is nice to see the church growing here.

I spent some time on Alyssa's genealogy this weekend. She is Wes' girlfriend, and is half Italian. Her grandfather is from Agrigento, and there are a ton of records available online. I can hardly wait to show her what I found. If she wants, I'll show her how to do it herself.

Doug's sister Marilyn is coming to see us and is an amazingly light packer, so I ordered some things from Target.com that she will bring to us. Now that I'm less mobile, it's even more wonderful that she will bring us stuff like cold medicine, Venus Embrace razors, the generic verson, for me (they're amazing!), and my favorite face cleanser.