25.2
The snow finally ended, the sun came out a little, and so I dug the car out this afternoon. It was so warm today that the Strada Besozzola up toward the church is about 50% melted down, and the road down the mountain is even more. We have British TV again because the snow all melted off the satellite dish! I will not drive to school in the morning, but I will pick the kids up in the afternoon. When I moved my car out of its space into the street so it would be easier to move in the morning, the snow on top of the car fell off in a whoosh and totally assaulted me! But it fell because everything underneath had already melted. It's supposed to get up to 52F tomorrow, so a lot will go away then, and sunny warm weather is forecast for the rest of the week.

So it's back to school tomorrow -- Aurora is not thrilled after a 4.5 day weekend, but there it is.

26 .2

Didn't get all the way to 12C today, but 9C is enough -- the roads are clear and dry, and on my walk I could actually HEAR the snow melting in the sun. Bit of a Narnia moment, that. When I shoveled my driveway yesterday it was still snowy, but passable. This morning at 10 when I went to get groceries it was crunchy from freezing overnight; now at 4pm it's all wet gravel. I predict a distinct lack of snow in all but the shadiest and most protected spots by Friday morning.

27 feb

My mother sent me a review of After Hannibal, about various Americans coming to live in Italy, and it does sound fun. I want to get it for my Nook – a fun read, but not one that I need to have taking up 3D space.

Not as warm today, but raining. Rain is good. And not supposed to freeze overnight. We progress. Aurora is playing with her friend Laura today and they are having a blast, so she's in a happy space today.

Going to Verona next Friday (8^th). An acquaintance of mine from Hopkins, Farrukh Azfar (we knew each other mostly because we had several friends in common, so we ran into each other a lot, but were never close), will be in town on the 11^th for a conference, so we'll go for the weekend and look at things (supposed to be gloomy but mid-50s each day) and then meet him for lunch Monday and be home by late afternoon. I'm really looking forward to Verona. I had really only ever thought of it as Romeo and Juliet land, but it was an important city from about 500BC and as far as I can tell has been called Verona since that time -- not a lot of Italian cities are unchanged from their earliest Latin forms! So we're going to devote one full day to Renaissance stuff and one full day to Roman, plus part of Monday morning. I told Aurora's teachers she'd be out that day so we could see Verona, and they said that sounded lovely and for us to enjoy it. They're not too wound up about her missing a little school in exchange for Italian geography and culture!

2.3

A quiet couple days. I wasn't feeling well yesterday and nearly dropped the 30lb bag of stove pellets while refilling the stove; later on I discovered the downstairs was full of smoke! I had bumped the stovepipe and disconnected it. Soot EVERYWHERE. Fortunately Roisin was able to get our good buddies Michele and Raffaele Facchini out here today to fix it. The repair was so simple (really just a case of knowing where to look to find the correct way to reconnect it) that instead of just reconnecting it, they took the entire pipe assembly apart and cleaned it for me, then re-attached it all. What little snow remains out front is now VERY black!

Ran errands in Salso today without a coat! It was almost 60 degrees out. Remaining hopeful that this good trend will continue through next week when we go to Verona for the weekend. At this point they're predicting sunny and 60 for the whole weekend, though obviously 8 days out that's still pretty much reading chicken entrails as much as actual forecasting.

Aurora is showing an interest in chemistry and why things are the colors they are. She wants to do "experiments" in the kitchen, so we did a modest one with eggs and onion skins. We cut up an old pair of pantyhose, stretched them tight over an egg with some leaves of weeds from out front inside, and boiled them with the brown onion skins. Even though the eggs were brown, we got some very pretty results! AND they're a great snack for school! Very satisfactory.

If it's nice tomorrow we may drive down to Bologna for the day just to look around a bit. Have to check to see if the University museum is open on Sundays -- it is said to have some great medieval and early Renaissance exhibits.

This time last week we were under almost 22 inches of snow. Today there was no snow in Salso and it's down to about 4 inches here. Hoping this was a last gasp for winter!

3.3

Aurora and I had some pretty significant disagreements about the schedule for last evening in order to be ready to go adventuring this morning, to the extent that we did not, in the end, go to Bologna or Pisa. However, as it turned out it was just as well. My neighbor Ornella has been in the hospital for the past week and came home at 2 this afternoon. She can't climb stairs for at least two weeks, and her husband needed help getting her bed down the stairs to set up in the living room, so I was able to help him with that and get her situated a little. I also got a shopping list from her so I can run some errands for them while I'm out tomorrow.

I went for a long walk this morning down to the place where one of the streams off the mountain joins the river, about 1.5 miles from the house. When I got to the river, I thought, "I really should have worn a jacket." It was COLD by the water. But on the way back up, I began to think, "I really should have worn a tank top!" (Had on tshirt and sweater.) The sun was very warm, and only the most protected spots, and the end of the snowplow runs, still have snow. I even saw a couple dozen wildflowers out! I think we're done with winter here. Hallelujah!

A quiet week in store until we leave for Verona on Friday. I'll be checking on Ornella every day, of course. She has now had 2 major asthma attacks, requiring hospitalization, in the last 3 weeks. It's been very scary for her, and then of course it means she can't work probably for another month. I need to do what I can to help her out.

4.3

Spent part of today doing Ornella's shopping for her. She is in the bed all the time, can barely walk to go to the bathroom. I fixed her some lunch and she could just sit up long enough to eat it then back in the bed. Her husband is not much use. Not sure how much rest she’ll actually get, since he seems to think she should still cook and do dishes.

They say Boston and DC will both get a bunch of snow. We have chilly and rainy forecast here for the next three days, but never a freeze, so that's fine for early March. Supposed to be very pretty in Verona Sat and Sun and then rain again on Monday. That's fine, as long as it's pretty Sat and Sun!

They tell me that Beppo Grillo, whose 5 Star party won the majority in Parliament. Well, I suppose having an ACTUAL clown in government is a step up from people doing bad clown imitations!