Imagine my surprise when today I get a phone call from yet someone else at the telecom and he wants to check the line. I rushed back to the apartment and this time it is an older gentleman. This guy knew what he was doing. In a matter of minutes he had rewired the phone blocks and voila! the phone worked! We tested it for both incoming and outgoing calls and everything was in order. I thanked the gentlemen profusely for getting my phone line to work. It's only taken the better part of a month to get one!
Tonight I wanted to start uploading all of the files to the web site. Well, I had to wait until after 22h00 when the phone rates get lower. The closest IBM.NET dialup line is in Verona which is about 70 km south of us. It is also not a V.34 line, for that I would have to call Padova, the next closest city which is 133km away. I'm not sure if dialing into the Padova line would be of any benefit over a non V.34 line.
Tonight Vincenzo and Rosa wanted to have dinner with us before they left on vacation this weekend. We went to dinner and Kristie customarily bumped her soda, all over Stephen's pizza. Fortunately he was more than half way through it so it wasn't a complete loss for him. I gave him the rest of my calzone which, of course, had mushroom and ham which he will not eat. But he did like the ricotta cheese. We got home around 21h30 and I gave the kids their desert and got the kids to bed and pulled out the computer. Sure enough, thunder and lightning in the distance on the drive home arrived just around a few minutes before 22h00. I had tried one attempt to dialup via the Verona line and did so successfully but logged off and unplugged the modem from the phone line. Last thing I need right now is to have a blown modem. That'd just about NOT make my day -grin. So I'm sitting here at 22h30 waiting for the storm to blow by. They usually go through pretty quickly, within an hour. Although this one is dumping a lot of rain on us right now. I guess that's good because it means tomorrow should be a cooler day than usual.
Yesterday, Gabriella took the kids to the swimming pool. Even with the 22 sunblock I bought they both got a pretty good tan. You can see why the indigenous people of Italy have such dark skin, well, at least a large portion of them do. Although I was reading earlier that such exposure to the sun mutates the skin cells, which is why some people have leathery skin, and makes it harder to produce clones from mature adults. Although I don't understand why cells, let say those from near the bone or the bone itself, couldn't be used for cloning instead of skin cells. But the article didn't extrapolate their reasoning.
Well, in about 10 minutes, if I hear no more thunder (which started out in the north and is now south of us) then I will plug into the net and start uploading the journals and pix. The rain has died done significantly in the time it has taken to type this in.
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