Sheep Guarding Llama

Monday.  This is it, just a few days left in Italy.  It feels so much like we just got here.  We got some flight information today and it looks like we are flying out at noon from the airport in Catania to go up to Munich and then in the evening from Munich to Kiev where we will be, with the current plans, for a month.  We are thinking that we will head to Catania, maybe on Friday morning on the bus.  The train is way too far to go without a car.  The bus I can do taking the luggage down in a few trips with Dominica waiting down at the bus stop with the girls for me to finish bringing it all down.  If we go on Friday morning, we can take Friday during the day to maybe see a little of Catania while we are in the area.  It would be sad to miss it.

That means that there are only three days left after today for everything to be packed up and ready to go from our Noto home here on Vico Nea 2.  That is not much time at all to be ready to relocate.  This, like most of our major moves, sneaked up on us.

Dominica made breakfast this morning.  Overall it was a quiet day.  Lots of normal work, of course.

This evening we had spaghetti at the house.  No money for going out to the expensive restaurants here in Noto.  Dominica really missed out, I at least got to go out once or twice when Ryan was here.  Dominica really does not enjoy going to restaurants much, though, so she is only so upset that she missed out on that as she really enjoys staying home a lot.

While eating dinner we watched Get Him to the Greek which was not very good, but was not awful.

We tried watching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World which neither of us have ever seen.  What a horrible movie.  We made it maybe a third of the way in and it was just garbage.  One of the rare movies that we actually shut off and stop watching.  Not worth it, at all.

We then watched The Man Who Knew Too Little with Bill Murry.  Such a good, classic movie and Dominica had never seen it.

Sunday.  Most likely our final Monday in Italy.  This is our last week.  Our visas are almost expired and we have plans to be in Kiev, Ukraine shortly.  That is our next destination and we are very excited to have a new country and, to some degree, a new region under our belts.  Italy has been exhausting, we are ready for the comforts of eastern Europe.

I did some testing with the upcoming FreePBX 14 first thing this morning.  A storm rolled in and it was thunder and rain all morning.  A very quiet day on both MangoLassi and Spiceworks.

The kids took over my office to play video games today.  I moved down to the living room so that I could work while Dominica was making our finalized travel arrangements.  Nothing like trying to get things worked out just five days before we have to move internationally.  We’ve done this so much, it doesn’t even seem odd to be doing this any more.

While we were in the living room together, we took the opportunity to put on some movies to watch.  We watched Rumor Has It, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, No Reservations, The Wedding Ringer, and Down Periscope.

I did a bit of web site maintanance work this afternoon before taking the kids down to the park to go to the playground.  On the way home from the park, we stopped to get pizza and discovered that they have vegetarian arancini available tonight at our local corner pizza place.  What an awesome find!

I wish that we had found a place to get arancini in Noto prior to tonight.  I would eat this regularly.  So delicious if you know how to order it.

I woke up at ten thirty to the sound of running water as the new pump kicked on and was filling the roof top tanks.  Thank goodness.  This would have been such a disaster had that not worked.

It took all of our two hours to get the water filled back up, but it did it.  We had to prime the pump to get things flowing.  It was showers and flushes galore once we had water again.  Then the dishes were done.  There are so many things that you forget require water around the house!

This is our last weekend in Italy!  The time always flies by so quickly.  It is like we just got here and we have barely gotten to see anything.  We’ve been to Avola, Siracusa, marginally to Catania and some time in Palermo and the surrounding area.  Dominica did do a trip back to the US while we were here, that took up some of the time.  But three months, it still goes by so quickly.  A week from today we suspect that we will be on a flight, although the details are not all worked out yet.

The sun was out and warm today.  We had the windows open and I worked from the upstairs room with the sun on my back.

I got Sonic Generations on Steam sale today.  Liesl spent part of the day playing The Sims 3.  Another perennial favourite game in the Miller household.  The Sims has been a favourite of all the girls here since Dominica used to play it around 2002 or 2003.

I did work on building a high performance, massively caching web server today.  Lots of work, especially getting everything heavily defined in Salt, but it is coming along really well and I think that this is going to prove to be the answer that I have been looking for in regards to web hosting that I mentioned the other day.  I have been trying to come up with a good solution for a while and this seems like it will be more powerful, faster, and more flexible than anything else that I have considered while probably not costing any more in the long run.

Luciana did not want to go out with us tonight, so it was just Liesl and I that walked down to the city park and hung out this evening.  The girls always enjoy when we get one on one time and the other is not around.  They are with each other so much and we do things as a group so often that it is a special treat to get time with a parent without the other kid there with them.

Tonight was an early night to bed for the entire family.  We can finally relax.  There is water again and we have enough that, if we really, really had to we could make it until it was time to leave Italy without any additional water.  But we are really hoping that we can avoid that situation, or course.

Dominica got up first this morning and realized that we were out of water.  It was before the water runs in the morning so she did not panic, much, and figured that we had used too much water yesterday.  But we really have been so conservative, that did not seem possible.  I got up about ten and checked and no water was coming in from the street like it should have.  We asked Lucia who is local and she said that maybe it was starting late, it’s Sicily, the times are never exact.

So we waited, which seems to always been the answer.  We waited until one in the afternoon, long after there was any chance of water flowing.  So I investigated and found that the water main from the street was turned off going into our house inside our “water box” panel.  Clearly the plumber, who was here on Tuesday (three days ago) had turned it off to install the new pump that I found there and had forgotten to turn it back on.  I got pliers and opened the valve to what looked like the open position and immediately heard the pressure change and a small amount of water enter the pipes.  Argh.

So we have very obviously been without water to replenish the house since the cisterns filled on Tuesday morning.  This is making for a very hard day.  Of course there is no way to get more water or to verify anything until the water turns on tomorrow morning.  If the water doesn’t work tomorrow morning, we have a serious emergency on our hands.  But there is nothing to be done.  Today is a day without water and tomorrow is a big unknown.  I am pretty confident in my assessment that the water was off to the main, however.  But the bigger problem is that there have been so many problems with pumps, leaks, and water supplies that there is no way to be certain that things will work tomorrow.  And since the water can come on and go off at any given time, we have no way to know at what point things should or should not be working.  So by the time we are certain in any way that we need to call someone for help, it is way past the point of it doing any good.

So today is a day without being able to wash anything, shower, flush… not fun.

Dominica made mutzi-mutzi for dinner tonight and we had a quiet evening in hanging out.  We got a few new games on Steam sales this evening.

The kids played Slime Rancher tonight.  That game has remained a kid favourite since Liesl got it for her birthday back in November.  One of the few endearing titles around here with the little ones.

We go to bed tonight pretty worried about tomorrow.  If the water doesn’t start working, all we can do is leave messages and hope that someone is able to get out here on Monday before the city turns on the water.  Otherwise we will have to go till Tuesday before we know anything again and that will mean an entire week without running water!

We’ve had it with this place.  At this point we are over the limit.  Power issues, Internet issues, scorpion, can’t flush toilet paper, incredibly limited water, terrible smells in the upstairs, people leaving water running, broken plumbing items, and now a week or more of fighting to get water and no one able to make sure we have any.  We aren’t thrilled with our Noto experience.  This is not a lifestyle we would want to maintain for any length of time.  It’s been less than three months and at this point, we are anxious to escape.  Every day is full of stress wondering if we will need to run and find a hotel to be able to take care of the bare necessities.

At least my pneumonia and bronchitis are starting to improve.  I’ve been extra tired now that I am taking the anti-biotics.  They always take the energy out of me.

Thursday.  Our time in Italy is really almost up now.  About a week to go.  I can’t believe that our adventure in Rome was more than two months ago, now.  And March is almost over as well.

I took the kids to the playground again this evening.  They just love it down there and are always hoping to run into some of their new friends, which they often do.  Tonight they had some chalk and spent a bit of time drawing on the pavement.

Had some wine tonight.  We are busy finishing up whatever stuff is remaining in the house.  We have to use up all of our groceries before we leave.  It is the home stretch now.

Thirteen days left.  Under two weeks.  We will be out of here very soon.