Delli laptop

Tuesday morning we each awoke after almost eight hours sleep, which was much needed. The morning was spent at home. It was sunny and not very cold outside, which is a nice change. President Pickerd emailed to say that he had received permission for Dee to travel alone to LA, which is good because the price for a ticket for me doubled overnight, with less than a week to go. So she is set to go and now has a bunch of work to do to get ready, in addition to an already busy week. 

For her trip, Dee is switching to my "backup" computer, which is a nice Dell Latitude laptop (model 7370) that I got for real cheap here. She will take it to California and leave it there, offloading our final trip home both in terms of weight and customs fees. So she started using it to make sure it has all she needs, though she can always TeamViewer into her own Dell which she will leave here. We came up with a nickname for this new computer: Delli -- Dell because of the brand and "i" because it is from Italy -- pronounced like "deli". Our family likes to give names to things.

We left a little early to drop by Todis to pick up some butter. The group for Taco Tuesday ended up fairly large,  though it took the kids a while to filter in. We had several new kids, which is always fun. The Ganziani weren't there because it was their P-day, after the Zone Conference ending Monday, but the Roma 3 trio of Anziani came with Nicki, an investigator from Pakistan. Anziano Sanchez was quite interested in getting some cheddar cheese, which is largely unknown here. We will bring him some if he wants to pay for it. Andrea (not the guy who got baptized last month) also showed up for the first time in a while. He and Dee have really hit it off; they spent a bunch of time talking together about Pebble watches, family history, and other stuff.

Chris Campos also came by for some tacos. He had been really sick with the nasty flu last week and missed our group visit to the temple. Now he is mostly better and would like to go. He didn't realize that the temple would not be accessible to non-members after the dedication. We offered to take him Thursday afternoon, and he was happy to have someone to go with him. It turns out that I will also take Arsene and our landlord, Marco, making three separate visits in one day. We really like each of these guys, so it will be a busy day but a real pleasure. Thus we do not plan to come to the campus at all that day, which is ok with Ugo during this Open House period.

The other Chris, the Nigerian convert, came by. He looked a lot better, having decided to be happy after the recent disasters. Dee fed him some warm chicken (she cooked a third crock pot during the afternoon) and some leftover casserole from last Friday, which he really loved -- ranch dressing is magic here! I talked with him for a while and helped him out a bit. Sister Canfield called me later to say that she needed to talk with Chris. She didn't have his flip-phone number, which has no minutes left but can receive incoming calls for free. Apparently they spoke with an immigration expert who says that Chris and his family need to leave Italy asap. Otherwise the government will take his children away because he hasn't found work, and it will be almost impossible to get them away. Wow. The story just keeps getting worse. The immigration issue is complicated and difficult, but this just seems unfair. Stay tuned to see what happens.

Dee called the guitar repair store, who said to call back in a few more days. It is starting to sound like maybe they really can't repair it after all this time, but we'll see. She also went out for a walk to look for lollipop sticks for her cooking event Wednesday, but no luck. 

Ugo came by for his class in the evening. Dee was cooking all evening, up until after 9pm when she finished her trial batch of suckers, which turned out very nice. She had already made two kinds of fudge: dark chocolate with nuts, and white chocolate with Oreos; both were immensely popular.

Jomar, Manuel, Chiara and Chris Campos were totally blown away that it's possible to make lollipops at home in ten minutes. Ugo and Jomar loved the fudge, especially Oreo flavor for Jomar. Andrea thought fudge is a kind of yogurt.

I may get a ride to airport with departing missionaries after zone conference and Temple tour.

Great convo with Andrea about fast Sunday, testimonies, genealogy, and etymology of words. I learned from him that the word Clessidra (hourglass) is related to cleptomaniac. The site is etimo.it.