Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Wednesday.  Started off the day with the long walk down to the distant grocery store down the hill and lumbering back heavy laden with groceries going uphill.  I’m not going to mill this particular bit of Italy.

The kids watched more SciShow Kids this morning.  And they set up science experiments to do on the dining room table.

This afternoon, Luciana played Papo y Yo on Steam.  We hung out gaming a bit.

Slow day, very little news.

Tuesday.  Day two of antibiotics.  Not really feeling better, but hey, not feeling any worse, either.  So that’s something.

We had the power out at the house a bit this morning as the electrician and handyman were back today to replace the pump that had died this past weekend.  So no running water and no power this morning.  Lots of fun.

We’ve discovered that the toilet upstairs in the house, the one that only the kids are able to use, is broken and has been flowing continuously.  So it used up all of the available water and killed the pumps.  Just great.  So, just like how the owners had come in while we were gone and watered stuff on the deck and left the hose running for days and ran us out of water before, they had something break and run us out of water now.  So many issues that should not be problems like this.  Why is there no visibility or monitoring on the water usage in a place that has so many water problems?

Worked today.  This evening Dominica went to bed really early.  She was worn out and not feeling great.  So just the kids and I tonight.  We did some exploring of shows on YouTube and Luciana has discovered that she loves SciShow Kids and we watched loads of it together tonight.  She loves how they present stuff and is really interested in it.  What a great find.  I’m so excited that she likes this.

Luciana and I explored lots of shows and watched Reading Rainbow together, too.  Ciana figured out that it was the guy from Star Trek and thought that that was really cool.  We watched an episode here Levar goes to Israel and learns about self driving cars.  Luciana was really interested in that and thought it was so cool.  (She would end up talking about self driving cars for months, asking how they will work and stuff like that.  She learned a lot from that episode.)

Liesl went off on her own and has been watching the original Full House episodes which are available on Netflix here.

This evening the girls and I played Secret Order: Beyond Time on Steam.  It is a hidden object adventure game with great graphics.  The girls are enjoying it.