Italian G

 My son captured one of the pictures of me that Janet sent home, and labelled it in his phone, "Italian Dad."  It's not that picture, but another one that Janet snapped when I wasn't paying attention (I like to take the pictures, mainly to control the narrative, which is probably just the historian in me). 

This is a funny picture because it was right after I had accidentally shaved off my beard (I'll recount that misadventure some other time). Happily, the light behind my head helped hide the evidence. And I wasn't trying to cover up the crime, but instead was interrupted while trying to decide which pizza to order. 

Another Middling Success

 And the second box arrived. Again, up to this point we don't have a mailroom, so you just have to wait around for the blessed call to come. There just be some way to include a note on the order to just leave the package outside the door, although I can also understand why a delivery company wouldn't be too excited about that option. Of course, I could also learn the Sicilian (or maybe Italian) exchange for "thanks, could you just leave it outside the door?" Usually, midday, considering that "sono in pensione" and most things are closed during siesta anyway, I'm hanging around the apartment, it's not big of a deal, since our deliveries have tended to come early afternoon. 

If it made sense that the first item out of the other box was a cryptid t-shirt, it makes even more sense that CFL merch would pop out first with this one. This box included my Alouettes sweatshirt and a couple long sleeve t-shirts, so I guess I'm already ready for winter in Sicily. Now, on the other hand, flying back to Vermont for a winter visit . . .

One Year, Really?

 My oldest and dearest friend, Jack, just sent me this picture. He snapped it exactly one year ago, when Janet and I, taking advantage of the short holiday, had flown from Vermont down to Florida to see Jack and his wife Julie. Beyond how happy (and fat) I look, the thing that struck me about this picture is what a difference a year makes. In that one short year since the picture was snapped, Jack's company went bankrupt and he quickly found another job in Colorado, close to one daughter and his only grandson - and I retired, we moved to Sicily, and my grandson is due to arrive in late December. This is not a profound statement, but life is awfully strange.

Janet commented that I looked awfully happy, which I was. And why shouldn't I be happy, of course, sitting on a beach with my dear friend, and well-lubricated with adult scholarly beverages.

Poshification

 When Kevin and I head off for our CFL Trips of Excellent, the one common theme is that our choices are not posh. We did eat a really nice steak dinner in Calgary on the Summer of 2025 Elks/Roughriders trip, but it wasn't that posh of a place in the great scheme of things (although the steak was amazing). However, on the Winnipeg leg of this last summer's trip, we had to poshify the trip because our friend Cyndi was along for the first section of the trip. I don't hold it against her, mainly because of her patrician roots are hard to overcome. Here are a couple pictures I snapped at the crazy nice restaurant where we ate in Winnipeg (and I've completely forgotten the name, which speaks to my yellow clay Hoosier hillbilly roots).

Now, it was a seriously good steak.

I think this very un-Scudder drink was meant to be an homage to the excellent Debi Zale, who is a huge fan of artist formerly known as Prince.

An Occasional Middling Success

 I lament my consistent and embarrassing run of clumsy failures since moving to Sicily, but there have been a few marginal successes. Here's a picture of Janet holding up our first delivery to the new place. Once we were certain of our address (or fairly certain, which is actually true even today), and moved in, I asked Ali to send a couple small boxes of my clothes that we had left behind, with the goal of mailing them as an experiment. They were mailed the same day, and a couple weeks later the first one arrived. Inexplicably, the second one left the US a week after its sister, so it's still in transit. It's certainly not a seamless process here, since we don't have a mailbox and the buzzer is still not clearly linked to our apartment (although it's a sweat buzzer, with a camera). I taped a note below the buzzer with our names, what might be our apartment number, and my Italian phone number. We were walking back from the gym when we received a call on the Italian phone, and it was the very nice postal guy calling us from outside the apartment (I knew this because I handed the phone to my wife, who speaks much better Italian than me). We hurried back to the apartment and met the guy outside our door, and it was a beautiful handoff. Since then we have had a couple other deliveries, and we're getting into the swing of things. When I lived in Mumbai, part of the mailing address was "Next to the Overpass," which I thought was a joke at my expense, but it was actually a suggestion from the post office, and it helped immensely.

So, although the second box is still in transit, we'll consider this a success. For the moment, we're ignoring the fact that it cost $220 to mail two small boxes of my own possessions to me (thank God DOGE fixed the government . . .). The fact that it two (or three) weeks to get here, and was so expensive, was not the fault of the Italian postal service.

And, of course, the first shirt I pulled out was even more (as if I needed more) cryptid merch.

Potemkin Village

 Here's a great picture of Janet trying to will the elevator into working - or, more accurately starting to work. When we moved into our new place we knew that the elevator wasn't hooked up yet, although we did receive one of those classic Sicilian shrugs that said it would happen soon (the Sicilian equivalent of "bukrah inshallah"). It's been two and a half weeks, and we're still waiting. Actually, it's not that big a deal, and it's more of a source of amusement than anything else. The four floors up and down, several times a day, are a bit of a challenge for my aged and infirm legs, but, as I said to someone the other day, "I need the exercise," and, for that matter, since I walk a couple miles every day, I can honestly say that I couldn't have held up two months ago when we arrived. It's a small price to pay for an apartment that we absolutely love.

We've started referring to it as our own personal Potemkin Village (for those of you who remember your Russian history).

The Sunset Pictures Have to Go Somewhere

 My friends at home have long since grown tired of me sending beautiful sunset pictures from here in Terrasini (although I can't believe that I'll ever catch up on the number of stunning sunset pictures that I've sent from the Wadi Rum or Zanzibar). So, they have to go somewhere. One of the biggest selling points as we considered the new apartment was the view from our balcony. Oddly, we haven't watched the sunset from the widow's walk off the bedroom (one floor up), which has less to do with aesthetics than Janet being wigged out by heights. That said, I think it will become her go-to place for morning meditation.

We're definitely enjoying the addition of clouds to the Sicilian skies.