Meeting with Emanuele

Emanuele moved the meeting up a day so we met yesterday afternoon. I had my list but it wasn’t necessary. They have finished the door in the hall. The electrician was there working on all the wiring and I am sure he will be installing the lights everywhere. They have already replaced the mantle over the pellet stove. We looked in the attic. What a transformation! It is still crumbly concrete on the floor and he suggested industrial carpet to go on it which I was really happy about as I had thought we would do that ourselves. They removed all the unnecessary walls so it is one giant open space. They even painted the ceiling white. Still just an attic but good for storage. Pedini will be bringing the kitchen one day next week to be determined. We discussed the painting to be done and I said I was fine with it all white. He said it should be hot. What he meant was warm 🙂 as in a creamy white rather than cold white. He will paint swatches after the kitchen is in for me to choose from. So he says in 10 or 20 days we can move in. I can’t wait.

Today is market day and it’s in full swing down there even though it is very wet but I don’t think it’s raining right now. The loud man is in full form. Luther and I always buy some seafood and now that we know how to ask for the fish cleaned AND de-scaled we are good to go! I’ll see what other produce is out there as well. We will also probably have a cappuccino at Bar Mary and people watch. Always fun.

Tomorrow we are going to the furniture store as I mentioned. The name of it is
Luigi Filippo Bastianelli I took a look at the site. They do it all there (new custom built to look old, old, and restoring your own pieces) so perhaps I’ll find something but I kind of doubt it. It looks like a junk/antique place mostly.

Then we decided to go to Civitelli Ranieri tomorrow evening for the concert and presentation by Russell Platt. You may remember from a couple of months ago that this is a NYC based foundation for artists of all kinds and they have free presentations. We hadn’t been in a while because nothing interested us. It is nearly the end of their season which I believe runs until November. What a great thing to have so nearby.

Two things of recent note

First, I finally found some soft toilet paper! TMI? Not really. The T paper here is not very soft at all. Since we came I have tried many brands, probably 5 or 6, and finally found one that is nice and soft called Scottonelle.

Second, cat litter here in Italy is eons behind modern cat litter technology. Let’s go back a few decades. When I was growing up there was one kind of litter and the entire litter box had to be changed often or it smelled. When we moved to Germany we found that those canny Deutschers had moved way ahead in litter technology to invent the clumping litter. All the Americans I knew with cats were so happy to have found it. When we returned to the States happily the new litter had found its way there and we were happy there as well. The year is 2014. We moved to Italy with our two cats. For the first month or so I used the litter in the grocery store. After a time I finally realized it didn’t really clump. And it smelled. I said we HAD to find clumping litter. In the little town of Umbertide there are three pet shops. The word for clumping is agglomerante. Armed with that information we finally found one pet store (of the three) who had some! Happy days are here again. Yes small things make me happy!