Miracle shoes

Friday was a day at home, which we really enjoyed. It gave me time to update the Institute history for June and July, so I am now caught up. There were a few issues from home to take care of, such as chatting with our CPA about doing payroll tax accounting for Lynn, who is helping out Dee's parents, and also finalizing payment on their annual liability insurance policy. I also walked down to Conad for some produce and big bottles of Aranciata Zero (diet orange soda), which I really like when chilled properly. I started listening to the talks online from last week's FairMormon conference in Provo; this was the first time I had missed the conference in person since 2006, and I really enjoy apologetics. Dee had some time at home to do computer things and also cleaning around the apartment. I also got up early and walked the stairs for the first time in a long while. We have found one benefit of the summer heat: our laundry dries very quickly despite the humidity.


The shoe quest: I eagerly anticipated the arrival of some shoes from Amazon. The goal was to get comfortable shoes, more attractive and suitable to wear with a skirt, instead of the less-than-fashionable tennis shoes I have been wearing as my foot healed. They finally showed up on Friday, but they were too short and surprisingly wide. No go.

No go

In the afternoon, I called an orthopedic shoe store downtown, near the Institute, which we have passed a few times. They were open, so we drove down. I really appreciate Doug's willingness to shoe shop on our precious time off. They had exactly one pair of shoes which fit me, and they were pretty cute! I usually try on dozens of shoes, but this one possibility was a winner and I snapped them up. I have never seen my wife try on one pair of shoes at a place and buy them. It was a miracle. She wore them for our evening jaunt downtown, and they passed with flying colors. We are delighted.

Yes!

In the evening, we went to the mission office to meet with the Knieses, Balzottis, and a new senior couple, the Feils. He served in the Rome mission in the early 1970s, and they have been assigned to a small group (i.e., not big enough to be a branch yet) up in Perugia, two hours north by car. Dee had spoken with her on the phone a few times to give her some help on tech things and recipes/ingredients, as she loves to cook -- they owned a small hotel in Arizona, and she regularly catered to hundreds of people. We drove to the Conca D'Oro subway stop nearby, finding parking easily (August is amazing that way here!) and taking the subway down to the Colosseum. We ate at a place the Knieses found some time ago called La Base, which has Italian food as well as some American entrees. The decor was a lot like Buca di Beppo. I had  risotto. Mine was basmatic rice with zucchini flowers, zucchini and asparagus tips. Both the food and the company were great.

Sorella Knies, Fiels, Whitings, Balzottis

Huge calzone, hamburger

The Colosseum is beautiful at night

The girls on the subway home

Guys being guys.

After dinner, we walked across the street to a gelateria, where everyone enjoyed gelato or granita, particularly delightful in the heat. It was a wonderful evening out, something that we do not get the opportunity to enjoy very often because of our assignment. It was near the Colosseo (Colosseum), and called Conosseo, to play on cone and Colosseum. They made me a crepe, spread it with nutella, then filled it with ice cream. Fun!

The Feils had been to the mall nearby here to get some stuff for their apartment, since Perugia does not have an Ikea. We got to help them with a few small tech issues. Sorella Feils had brought a Verizon Droid phone from home which she wasn't sure would work here. I took it home for the night, and, upon reading its specs online, assumed it wouldn't work either. However, I took out my "extra" Vodafone SIM card just to check, and it seemed to work fine. Then Dee suggested that I try our old Verizon Moto phones, which both Verizon and an employee at a local tech store here had said wouldn't work in Italy. Bingo! They worked too. So perhaps we really didn't need to buy new phones when we got here last fall. I want to do some more testing, but this might give us an extra phone or two for guests. The up side is that we've found out how good budget phones can be and will be saving lots of money in the future.

We have to use a steering wheel lock here, as part of the mission rules. It's a pain, but we do it. Both the Canfields' and the Knieses' steering wheel lock is broken. So they go through a theatrical ploy to look like they're locking it, but it's not really attached.😅😅