Festa della Repubblica; spring cleaning

Saturday was a big Italian holiday: Festa della Repubblica, commemorating the day in 1946 when the Italians voted to change from a monarchy to a republic. It is their closest holiday to July 4, with a big parade downtown, including branches of the military. There was a ward party at the Perego's home, but it is over an hour away by car (and probably more due to holiday traffic, as they live not too far from the beach); in addition, the only bathroom there is upstairs, so it would not have been easy for Dee. So we just stayed at home, which was nice.

I finished most of the software configuration of our new Institute desktop that we built, installing my set of common apps (PDF reader, VLC media player, TeamViewer, 7zip, multiple browsers, etc). The motherboard BIOS also needed an update, which required creating a flash boot disk for DOS (!); I learned how to do that with rufus. Anziano Thacker also kindly gave me access to his online Microsoft Office account so that I can transfer his license for Office 2016 from the old desktop to this new one. I was able to get the license key by logging onto his account, but before installing it I first need to uninstall the old copy, which will happen Monday.

In the afternoon we went to both Chinese stores. We love that they're open on holidays. We returned something and bought a few things, including a new small thermal bag to replace the one we tossed when my glass container broke. It was a long way for Dee to walk to both, but she is getting pretty good on her scooter, hopefully just in time to not need it much any more. It was still exhausting and very hot.

With guests arriving this coming week, it was time for some spring cleaning. There were a number of large, empty cardboard boxes from Amazon that were filling up the place. I broke them down and cut them into small pieces using my trusty box cutters and carried them out to the recycling. Dee wanted to clean all the floors, which has been hard for her to do, so I moved stuff while she swept and mopped. We make a good team. It was tiring but felt good to have it done. The back bedroom is now almost ready for guests, which required some minor rearranging. I still can't believe how much dust we get here. My chairiot leaves dirt tracks, so I even cleaned the wheels, but they pick up every little thing.

I also set up two wireless smart switches recently purchased on Amazon. One of them is for a light in the living room, with its timer set to go on automatically for a while in the morning and then again at night. That light had been on a mechanical timer. Now I can turn them on and off from anywhere using my smartphone, and we can also control them using simple voice commands on Alexa and Google Home. We have several of these switches at home in the US, and they are really handy. We have not yet decided what to do with the second switch; maybe it will be for a fan, or maybe for a separate cheap WiFi router for the Sorelle to use that I can turn on and off remotely when they need it, since they are not allowed to have constant internet access at home.

After all the cleaning, Dee decided to watch a streaming movie in the evening, which is a first on our mission. Even though I used Amazon.it, the movie was available in English. I watched Mission Impossible 1.Being a senior missionary has its nice privileges. I still had some financial matters and other housekeeping to catch up on, so I decided not to join her this time.