Fragments

Same place, nothing going on... well, nothing spectacular, at least. Just to make a post I started collecting short thoughts...

Weather Report

I was told here that wearing only a shirt on the New Year's Eve is not unusual, but are more common the years when you have to put a light jacket on, too. Unless I'm here. Read it on the newspaper, it was the coldest (and wettest) winter in the last 25 years. Snow all over Sicily, here luckily just for a few hours. And temperatures below zero only for 3 or 4 days. In mid February... 20 C with noon peaks over 25. But during night even today, mid March, we have one digit temperatures. To make it worse the sunshine hits the front of this house around 10AM - great for summer, but at the moment is driving me crazy. When I wake up I have to put on winter clothes and start the fire in the stove.and then I take an hour or more for my morning coffees before I venture out. Around 9AM the air is breathable and I can chop some wood for warming up. Then the peeling starts until before lunch I'm only in my Tshirt. Soon after lunch the process is reversed and it ends with the fire for a cozy evening. This was just theory - most of the days I'm too lazy or too busy to follow the proper "dress code" and I'm catching a cold every third day. Luckily Giancarlo provides me with ginger as I wish so I can heal me in a single night.

The Evangelion Messiah

That would be me, of course.In the last four months I spent here I wasn't really all alone all the time and I'm not talking about the drinking excesses with Giancarlo and his friends. There were two couples of returning wwoofers who came back for a short visit. Both couples were curious as to what do I do in the evenings here, all alone. "Well, mostly I drink and when I don't I watch my animated Japanese series." Luckily in Italy the otaku culture is still quite popular and I'm not looked at as some brainless freak. And then comes, always, The Question: Which is my favorite anime? And The Answer, always, is: " It is, was and will be Evangelion!" And then we watched it together. Twice in 4 months to add to al least 7 times before... well, I'm buying a beer to everyone who watched EVA more times than I did!

Rue

Rue is growing wild on the property. When I found some bushes I asked Giancarlo why he's not putting in the grappa. He looked at me as if something was wrong with my brain. But his friend Enzo was more interested in such a "crazy experiment". So I did it and hid the bottle for a month. Now Giancarlo is a grappa drinker (he was never keen on it before) and Enzo regards me as his best buddy. Thinking of it, I'll have soon to go to pick some fresh rue, the old is washed white with all the refills done...

Lemons

Giancarlo gave me an amazing gift when I told him that I'm flat broke. He gave me all his lemons - they were anyway fated to rot. I had to pick them and he took them to a local dealer. A bit more then 500 kilos at 30 cents per kilo. I'm not rich, but I sure am grateful.

Booze

Not a single beer since the beginning of November.

Smoking

I have to save money so I smoke mostly joints. Tobacco costs. I got a bag full of weed for free.

Language

It's not that difficult to understand Sicilian unless they swallow half of the word. A strong Spanish influence, like muliera for moglie or travaglio for lavoro. As for joke I found some similarities with Istrian because here they've never heard of red wine - they only make black wine. And white, too, similar to malvasia, 14%, great to mix with water. The folks I met all speak proper Italian with me, but between them they easily slip into dialect and mostly I can follow them. Once they asked me if I could understand what were they talking of. Yes, almost 80% of the words and basically all of the meaning of the conversation. "You're amazing," was Enzo quick on the comment, "I don't understand half of what I'm saying..."