Joke of a Giovedi!

For one of us at least!

Pretty much normal service resumed on Helen's part today as far as the exercise schedule is concerned - hugely helped by Lucca, who not only attacked the mattress until she got up to feed him, but came straight back up after his breakfast and continued to attack. It's the first time he's done this since being here, although on reflection, we think it's because he wanted to go out. (For all we know that's all he ever wants in the morning and he just dutifully munches through his breakfast so that he can then go out. Yeah right!) 

I couldn't get back to sleep after all the commotion so plucked my copy of 'Thyroid for Dummies' off the bookcase and attempted to educate myself some more until Helen came back in.

After breakfast, Helen went to work while I had appointments to collect the hedge trimmers and take the car back to the dealer so that I could show them what an engine management light was. It took me a while to get going again today so didn't get out of the house until gone nine.

When I arrived at the agricultural machinery place there was a bit of a queue. I think the ferragosto holiday had caused something of a backlog which was showing on the owner's face - no danger of a smile from him today!

It didn't take too long for my turn to come around, but I had to shout at the top of my voice (in bad Italian) to ask not only for my tagliasiepi back, but also to ask them to look at the decespugliatori too - the guy doing the repairs behind the guy at the desk seemed to be making a new strimmer shaft for a beaten up old strimmer by using a bench grinder, which was quite noisy!

The guy at the desk told me that they needed another 30 minutes for the hedge trimmers and asked if I wanted to come back this afternoon or else come back for both tomorrow. I said I'd return for both tomorrow, but then remembered I'm meant to be working tomorrow, so said Saturday morning - to which he said, 'we're closed on Saturday', so Monday it is now.

Conveniently, the car dealer is only five minutes away from the agricultural machinery place, so I pulled up and waited while the guy I needed to speak with finished dealing with a family. The English speaker amongst the staff came out and said a cheery 'hello!' and told me that the other guy would be coming out 'now' to look at the car... wind the clock forward AN HOUR, and he eventually did. He said he was very sorry and the look on his face showed that this family he had been dealing with had been a bit needy.

Two minutes later, I was on my way! It turns out I need to pay a visit with the guy from the dealership to their mechanic - but the mechanic is closed until next Wednesday. The moral of that story? Email a picture of the engine management light to save a LOT of time. Still, at least they want it fixed, at their cost (I hope,) and they wouldn't let me leave (despite whatever it is seemingly having no effect on the car) without agreeing to come back.

So I finally got home at 12.30pm, pretty much zero achieved. (I'd even tried to fill up my fuel cans for the power tools at the petrol station, but found it closed.) Helen, on the other hand, is pushing ever closer to the end of the conference paper editing, with only another three left to do out of 44.

Before we ate lunch, we went not only to collect the post, but to check a notice that I had spotted taped to our gate. The notice was a rather confusing affair from ENEL (the electricity supplier), announcing that we should expect disruptions to our electricity supply on Tuesday between the hours of 08:45 and 16:00 (so pretty much all day). On closer inspection though, our house number wasn't on the bizarre list of those properties affected - which seemed to be listed with no real logic whatsoever - so we'll have to see what happens on that front.

Numero 182 not affected??

Amongst the post, we had a letter, that had been hand signed by the vice-president of the Banca di Pescia, welcoming Helen into their 'Socio' programme. It cost us €260 a few weeks back to enrol, but that's a one-off payment that is returned if you want to leave. Marco, the bank manager, seemed to insist that it was a no-brainer (he obviously didn't use those exact words, but said that by being a member it removed all costs associated with running bank cards, amongst other things, and it seems we'll save that outlay in no time as bank charges are quite high here).

The only other letter was yet another letter and bill from Telecom Italia addressed to the previous owner. Turns out it's a final demand for a bill that we've never seen, which pre-dates the one we paid for April. (Judging by the April bill, this unpaid one must cover the March period - way before we moved in). The letter demands that we pay the €126 straight away, or be cut off. No copy of the bill was enclosed, just the letter and a payment slip - so I guess that paying that is now high on our list. Sigh.

After lunch, Helen went back to do battle with conference papers, having left the worst until last. Rather than going back to work on Goose Island, had to do battle with Google Translate - I wanted to find out if there was somewhere I could have a live online virtual chat with someone from Telecom Italia to ask for a copy of the bill. I failed on that front - they seem to want you to go to their customer services sections on Facebook and Twitter and post your questions there, which all seems a bit strange AND public! For the Twitter option you had to choose one of three people to tweet, and other than their photo and name I had nothing more to go on as to who to choose so gave up with that. On Facebook they wanted questions posting to their wall for all to see, and I wasn't doing that either! So I sent them a private message - but of course, had no reply.

After giving up on that, I spent an hour trying to find out if Vodafone do a pay-as-you-go tariff that doesn't need €15 per month throwing at it regardless of whether you've sent even a single text message or made a single call (which is currently the ridiculous situation with our mobiles) - they do, but it's ridiculously expensive. In my searches I stumbled across Lycamobile, who seem to do a pay-as-you-go service like the old ones in the UK whereby you simply roll your unused credit over until, well, you've used it. We'll need yet another trip to Montecatini to acquire a new SIM card, but for now it's a case of throwing money at Vodafone - although we have decided to ditch Helen's mobile and only renew the credit on mine each month.

By the time I'd done all that internet research it was well into the afternoon and I was feeling rough. This thyroid is flatly refusing to comply. After a week of a higher dosage, several poor nights' sleep, palpitations... (I could go on...), I'm sure I'm on too high a dosage now, so there's no option but to revert to my normal amount and deal with the fallout. Apparently even overactive thyroids make you tired. So I sat on the sofa to rest for a while and before I knew I was woken up by Florence miaowing outside. It sounded like she'd caught something juicy (she rarely miaows and tends to do so only when she has caught something exciting to play with/eat), so I attempted to cut her off at the pass before she brought it inside to die under the sofa or sideboard. It seemed to have been a false alarm, but that pretty much signalled the end of the day.

Helen and I had our usual chat and catch up on the patio - I could manage the chatting after a beer to invigorate me. After that we retired for an early dinner and early bed. I'm supposed to be spending the day strimming tomorrow, I'm dreading it and have no idea how that will go, but I'm looking forward to getting home to my wife at the end of it to start our weekend.