Italian Breakthrough
Zara appears to be meditating by her food dish. She didn't finish her food, but I think that she'll eat it later.
Italian went well. When I was reading aloud, my Italian sounded better. No one would mistake me for a native speaker, but my teacher wasn't correcting me nearly as much. And I was reading smoothly except for really long words. I even was rolling my R's. A breakthrough?
The Accademia di Italiano says "If Italy has stolen your heart, and you are a non-EU student, by taking one of our courses, you will be able to apply for a visa for foreign students and immerse yourself in the language and culture of Italy." Far out. It's in Milan. You can do it for two years with a renewal of the visa! It also looks like they have one in Florence. They also will assist in getting visas to live there.
I was looking at a Smart Garden. I can't afford one now, but it would be nice to have fresh basil, oregano, and cherry tomatoes year-round to make Tuscan Chicken. And I could use fresh basil to make quiches too.
After my nap, I started making a "Pasta Bake" from Aldi. The first problem that I had was that I couldn't read the instructions on the back of the box, which were in a tiny font in pale brown, which looked cool on the packaging but tough to read. I found a pair of reading glasses with one lens popped out and was able to read it. This led me to discover that I could buy reading glasses from my Flexible Spending Account. Ahem.
The next step was to bring a mix of water and milk to a boil. In English, we have a saying that "A watched pot never boils," and that's exactly what happened. I decluttered the counter next to the stove in the time that it took the thing to boil. (Not all bad; cleaning that space was on my list of things to do.) The bake is in the oven now, and I'm cooling off a little before finishing that area of the kitchen because I want to throw out the bag of garbage that I generated decluttering.
After all that, the food was barely edible. The noodles were really chewy. I don't think that I'll buy it again.
Got the garbage out. It's started raining. My new-to-me raincoat did a great job keeping me warm and dry. I think that we have a winner if I go to Florence (Italy) in November or December.
I did order a new set of reading glasses.
The pasta bake is also making me very sleepy. I'm thinking of going to bed early (for me, anyway) and writing in the morning before work.