Iliad odyssey (lots of cell phone stuff)

Monday was our official return to the Institute. It was good to be back, but it was a busy day with many things other than Institute stuff. In the morning Anziano Simoncini came by to pick up his laptop and tablet that I had worked on, and everything was in good shape. Dee, being of the female persuasion, insisted on cleaning up the front room to make it presentable, even though I assured her that, as a guy, he wouldn't notice or care. So she spent some time on it, grumbling a little, but we both agreed  at the end that the net result was nice. We had laundry racks and bags of stuff everywhere. It's funny how messy things can get, but when it's put away, it's not much.

On the way to Institute, we went to Metro to get cheddar cheese, sour cream, and ground beef for upcoming Taco Tuesdays. As we left the apartment, our car was already full with things we were carrying back from activities over the past week, so I stayed in the car to mind our stuff.  She found everything but sour cream, and fortunately there was enough room to fit what she bought. Don't worry, we already have enough sour cream for this week's tacos!

In the afternoon Dee worked on dessert for FHE as well as her lesson. Meanwhile I took her cell phone over to the train station to buy her an Iliad SIM. We decided to switch her over from TIM, even though she has a great data plan there, but Iliad is cheaper and includes texts as well as free calls to the US. It all went smoothly but will take 3-5 days for the new SIM to take over her old number. In the meantime, she has both SIM cards in her dual-SIM phone.

I also called around to find out how to get one of the rent checks for my in-laws to be deposited electronically instead of via a mailed check. My father-in-law has been misplacing the physical checks recently, so this will be easier. I also spent a little time working on the accounting for cousin Lynn, who is doing great things with my in-laws. With all the serious recent health challenges, she has been a godsend. Jim has also been a great help and will go look at some roofs on their rentals that may need repair.

Dee gave a nice FHE lesson on the church's 21-day Book of Mormon challenge. It started on Sep 1 in the US, but here it started on Sep 10 -- we call it jet lag 😉. Anyway, there is one question each day, with an associated scripture and conference talk to review. A new girl, Aysha (pronounced "Asia") from the US, here for a semester abroad, came to FHE as well. It is always nice to have fresh faces. We have more women here now than we have had in quite a while. I translated Dee's Italian lesson into English for Aysha. After the lesson, we had butterscotch peanut butter haystacks and caramel popcorn, which were amazing! Sister Knies gave me her terrific caramel corn recipe, which she knows by heart. It calls for sweetened condensed milk, which I made myself. Many thanks to our contact who gets us American ingredients at the commissary. Dee really has a touch in the kitchen.

 

 

After our closing hymn at FHE

Games after dessert

After FHE, Almendra, a wonderful gal from Peru (where she served a mission) told me that her laptop has been running really slow, ever since she let her nephews play with it. Bad idea! With school starting, she needed help. She has since added a password to keep out the kids, but it was indeed extremely slow. Fortunately, I found the issue quickly: there were four different antivirus programs installed! I bet that there was a problem, so somebody installed another AV, and then somebody else installed yet another one, etc. At each step it got worse. After uninstalling them one at a time, slowly and painfully, it started running pretty well, as least for a laptop without an SSD. I took it home for the night to run some further tests, which showed that it was in good shape. It is amazing how much we get to use our talents in serving here, and I really enjoy helping folks this way.

During the home evening, we talked with the young people about possible Wednesday night activities. When they heard I could teach folk dancing and square dancing, they got really excited. They chose square dancing, so I'll brush up on calling and we'll have a good time!

Once we got home, my wife spent some quality time on the phone with Verizon trying to get my in-laws' cell phone account straightened up so that we can transfer them to our account. That way, they won't have the authority to mess it up without talking to us, and it will save us money as an extended family. It took her a couple of tries to get things straight; the final customer service rep understood what Dee was trying to accomplish and was a wonderful help. Once my father-in-law heard that we would save money, he was all in on the plan! Here is a photo of Dee's parents Monday with her wonderful aunt Fran (Dottie's younger sister, on the right) visiting them in South Pasadena:

Somebody sent us a link on WhatsApp to a fun video of a very young Ugo on TV in Italy in 1992, showing off a talent that almost got him a record in the Guinness book. You probably won't understand the talking, but enjoy seeing what he looked like right before his mission to Sacramento.

Lynn was filling us in on the adventure of taking my father-in-law to the doctor all during our evening. It took a long time, and he was exhausted when they got home. Things are not improving as much as we had hoped, and we were up late dealing with news and issues from the home front. It is good that we will be home in six months; fortunately we have good help there in the meantime. My father-in-law has been a great example to us over the decades in taking great care of his siblings and other relatives who needed help in their old age, and we want to make sure to treat him the same way.