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Well, I had high hopes for today. I was going to wake up early for a Saturday, and work on updating our web page. I was going to input an in-depth journal entry and put another one or even two bible studies on the devotional page. I've been praying that this web page would be an encouragement to people, so I've been feeling guilty that I haven't put anything new on it in several days. Well, instead of getting any of that done, I got sidetracked. I got a virus in the email this morning. It didn't infect my computer because my antivirus caught it, but it got me thinking. I haven't updated my virus protection in almost a year. I'm quite vulnerable to new viruses. Also, I hadn't checked in a long time to see if Microsoft had any new security updates to my version of Windows or Office. So I decided to take care of all this.
I went to Microsoft Windows Update, then to Product Updates to see if they had any updates for my Windows 98. There were several. It took about 2 hours to download and install them all. Then I went to Microsoft Office Product Updates to install all of the updates for my Office 2000 programs. They had several there as well, so that took a while. Finally, when everything else was updated, I renewed my subscription to Norton Antivirus so I could update my virus definitions for the first time in almost a year. It costs about $25 for a year's subscription, but it's worth it to protect all of the work I have saved on my computer. As I write this entry, I am running a full system virus scan for the first time in 298 days. So far, so good.
Anyway, since I got sidetracked with all of that, I didn't get anything else done. At least my computer should be healthier now.
Amy and I had a wonderful dinner tonight. We went to Il Girasole (the sunflower) and ordered their "Menu Della Casa di Base ai Carne" (meat based menu of the house). It wasn't cheap, but it was an amazing meal. First they brought out water and the wine of our (my) choice. (Amy doesn't drink at all, and my preference is red) This was refilled as needed throughout the dinner. Then they brought an "Antipasta" or appetizer. It was several very thin slices of flavored raw meats (better than it sounds) with seasoned mushrooms and artichoke hearts. Next came the "Primo Piatto" or first plate. There were two dishes: rice with smoked cheese and rucolla and tagliatelli with porcini mushrooms. After this dish, we were satisfied. We could have gone home then and been happy, but there was much more to come. Next was the "Secondo Piatto" or second plate. It was a huge plate of mixed grilled meats: everything from beef to pork to lamb to sausage, etc. We didn't even come close to finishing that one. Next they brought out a dish of tropical fruit with "gelato" (ice cream). Finally, we capped our meal off with two "caffe" (espressos). It was an amazing meal, and we will recommend it to anyone who visits us.
Well, I'd better go for now. It's gotten pretty late, and we have church tomorrow morning. Ciao!!
06 Oct 02
Yeah!! I finally got something done on our web site! :-) Last night, I archived all of our August and September journal entries as you may have noticed. And today I finally got another devotional up entitled The Mercy of the Lord. It is based primarily on Psalm 103 and Psalm 106. I was pretty encouraged when I read them recently. For such a magnificent and all-powerful God to love us so much and be so merciful toward us just wows me.
We had a good service this morning. Capt Duggan gave an object lesson using a penny of all things. It was pretty good. There were a lot of good lessons in it. We had a new visitor this morning, praise the Lord. It is wonderful to see the Lord drawing people in. The Lord is really answering prayers here at Ghedi.
Well, I think I may go take a nap. It's just that kind of day. :-)
Ciao!!
20 Oct 02
I am so sorry that it has been so long since we've updated our web page! The neglect was not intentional. We have been having technical difficulties. Shortly after my last entry, I was trying to upgrade some of the software on our computer. Well something went wrong because my Microsoft Office (including our email program Outlook) and my Microsoft Internet Explorer both became corrupted. For a few days, we were unable to send or receive email from home, and until yesterday, we were unable to use the internet, which meant we were unable to update our page. I've been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what went wrong and trying to fix it. I've run scandisk, deleted unnecessary temp files, defragmented my hard drives, removed and reinstalled Office and Internet Explorer, removed any unnecessary programs that were recently installed, ran a diagnostic program, etc. The computer still doesn't seem to be running perfectly, but it's doing much better now. The frustrating part is that I still don't know exactly what was wrong or how I fixed it. Anyway, we're back on line. Sorry for the problems.
We've had a pretty good couple of weeks. Last weekend we went to Florence or "Firenze" as it is called in Italian. We left Sunday after lunch, stayed the night Sunay night, and returned Monday evening. It was great fun! We took the train down there. It was about 3 1/2 hours including changing trains in Verona. The Italian countryside on the way down there was beautiful. If you look at a topographical map of Italy, we live in a relatively flat portion that runs east to west across northern Italy. We have the Alps immediately north of us, then south of us the Appenines run down the length of Italy. Anyway, this made for a scenic ride since Florence is south of us in the Tuscany region of Italy. After arriving, our first goal was to find a place to stay the night. I figured we wouldn't have too much problem in October, but I didn't expect it to be as easy as it was. We stopped at the first 2 star we found (2 star hotels are generally nice enough and clean but still in our price range). It was only a block from the train station, and they had a surprisingly nice clean room available for a reasonable rate. After freshening up a bit, we walked downtown to the historic section. It was only about a quarter to a half mile from out hotel. We did some window shopping, walked down the river and over the "punto vecchio" or old bridge, then found a restaurant in a nice public square. The food was great of course, although it was more expensive than we anticipated. They charged a cover charge and a sitting fee. The cover charge is normal, but the sitting fee was an unexpected ripoff. Anyway, it was a beautiful and enjoyable night. After a wonderful dessert and cappucinos we headed back to the hotel room for the night. The next morning we enjoyed the European breakfast of coffee, juice and a pastry, then made our way back downtown. We hadn't really gone for sightseeing, and that turned out to be a good thing because the most famous museums in Florence were closed on Mondays. Luckily, we had come more for shopping. The shopping in Florence is amazing. Anything that Italy is known for can be found there. You're not necessarily going to get a bargain price there, but it's a great place to find stuff. So that's basically what we did all day. We shopped. We hope to go back soon to do some sightseeing because there is a lot to see there that way as well. It is a beautiful city.
We had a good service today. One of our friends shared something that the Lord has laid on his heart this morning. He illustrated our lives as Christians as "spiritual windows". We are spiritual windows to this world allowing God's light to shine into this world through us and allowing people of this world to see that there is something outside of this temporary "house". As spiritual windows we should live clean lives so that the view through our window won't be obscured by dirt. We should also not pull the shades to hide our light, but rather be willing to share the source of our light with others. I thought it was very insightful.
Well, I could write more after taking two weeks off, but I'm going to wrap it up for now. Hopefully we will get back into posting regular updates so we can keep things interesting and keep y'all coming back. God bless you!
Ciao!