Later I walked down to Conad to get some fruit for me, some nitrile gloves for Dee (to keep her hands from getting chapped while working in the kitchen and repeatedly washing them), and another stand fan. It is warming up again, and the extra fan will be helpful. We have one in the living room and in each bedroom, so this one will be our floater for the kitchen and bathrooms as needed. It was on sale, much cheaper than just a few days ago, but still needs to be assembled.
We have several wooden kitchen chairs spread about the house that do not get used much. One of them was rickety and missing one of its wooden rungs. After verifying that the Balzottis didn't want it for one of the other mission apartments, I broke it up and tossed it.
We left for the Institute a few minutes late but got there about on time. With Dee's mobility on the rise, she can now help guide me in backing out from parking spaces again. She is supposed to do it all the time for safety reasons, but it simply hasn't been possible for a while. I had to slowly back out blindly into traffic, watching carefully and listening for people honking, so this is a very welcome step.
In the afternoon I walked over to the train station to check some things on our Vodafone cell and home internet services, as they have a small store there. The bill I just received was over 67€ for home internet and my phone SIM card, but it was supposed to cost just 33€ per month. The lady at the store was very helpful. She looked at the bill and said, "you get billed once every two months". Duh. She kindly didn't laugh at me. It was right on the bill, but I am too accustomed to monthly billing. I also got some kind of unwanted service uninstalled from Dee's phone, where they were trying (unsuccessfully) to bill her 6€ per week; we are not sure how it got installed, but we killed it. I also sprang for a 5€ per month plan for 10GB of data on a data-only SIM card for my new tablet. That SIM card had come with the fiber internet, but I hadn't been using it. It can be used on my tablet, or for our portable MiFi device, which we may loan to visitors so they can have internet without paying their US cell provider for a plan here.
It was transfer day, so as always we had a few young missionaries passing through. With the train station so near, the Institute is a great place for them to wait for trains or new companions. Dee gave them some of her cookies, which were well received. Our new Ganziano is an Anziano Lewis from Alpine, Utah; seems like a nice kid. Anziano Del Grosso is part Italian, and I offered to look at his tree with him. We found some fuzzy info listed there for his great-grandfather, and we were able to find his actual birth record in Italy. The anziano was pretty jazzed.
I spent much of the rest of my time on lesson prep for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Dee measured the kitchen carefully, so she can try to figure out how to fit a second oven. Ugo said the funds could be available (capital expenditures are a different budget from the weekly food), and she definitely needs it sometimes. The problem is that it would take away storage space, which is in short supply, so she is playing with possible layouts, which we may discuss sometime soon at Ikea. We still hope to get a bigger place, but that is not happening quickly. It would also be nice to have a second fridge here, as it is often packed to the gills, but there is really no room for that.
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| Re-designing the kitchen... |
I got a voicemail from Pat Sciacca, who is the daughter of my great-aunt Ellen. It turns out some of her kids got the DNA test and were very interested in knowing more about their genealogy. We had a wonderful talk, and I'll send some info to her.