wires and winter-lightchristmas 2014 – 3rd entry
sunrise (ssm) – 8:19, sunrise (pgh) – 7:41

 
There is Internet at the Zingas. Connie got it all set up with a Bell sales-clerk she know, I figured out how to do a seasonal suspension so that we’re not paying while no one is here to use it and yesterday the technician came to do the install. (There are so many phones in this house, that in order to boost the signal to a normal high-speed bandwidth, he had to install adapters on all the various phone extensions throughout the house. BTW, there are 3 phone on this floor, two upstairs and one in the garage. I suggested to my dad, that we get rid of all the lines and cords and that I get him some portables that will also have the hearing-impaired feature, he scoffed. I went on to a different subject.)

pozzobone2Except for the first day that I got here, the weather has been grey and overcast making for poor picture taking. The image on the left was one of the rare mornings when I saw the sun. It didn’t stay long, within the hour the cloud-cover brought back the grey. Will not complain. This is the first Christmas visit where we haven’t spent all our time shoveling snow or retreating indoors because of the severe cold.

Company has been visiting on a regular basis and Monday night I went and visited Connie and Ron. We laughed when she told me that she will no longer invite the parents over. The times she’s invited them for dinner, they bring all the food, even though she has spent money and time getting the dinner ready. She and Ron went on and on about having bought all these stakes, just to have to freeze them all, because the parents walked in with pasta, a meat dish, cheese, salad and fruit. “It drives me crazy. I invite them and they don’t get that I’ve cooked.”

Last night my dad got all mad and left to go upstairs when my mother and I told him to not cook all the fish for Christmas dinner. The menu has been – soup (chicken broth with small meatballs), lasagna, fried shrimp, fried calamari, fried white fish, baccalà in a tomato sauce, baccalà in a olive-oil sauce, turnkey, stuffing, cranberry-sauce, mashed potatoes and all sorts of other vegetables. Salad to finish the meal and then fennel, oranges, mandarins, chestnuts, and prickly-pear. Dessert would be served after all the gifts are opened.