Sept 14-18: Easy there Sparky

For all of you calling to leave birthday messages this week I’d like to apologize for our lack of phone response. We have received your messages and wanted everyone to know we had great birthdays. Lauren and I got to enjoy a real night out with adult conversations and a nice dinner and everything; thanks to our friend Shannon who volunteered to babysit.
The reason behind our missed calls is this, we were short on electricity. It seems there is a short in a wire somewhere in the house and at times just looking at a plug funny was enough to trip the breaker. I say the breaker because there is only one…for the whole house. So instead of being able to isolate the problem I spent a few days plugging and unplugging things trying to figure where the problem was. Only thing was it seemed randomly activated and it progressively got worse. So we decided to unplug almost everything in the house in order to run essential items, because once the power tripped it took about 20 mins, turning off all the lights and unplugging every single thing. We informed our landlord, who dispatched the electrician with amazing speed.
The electrician was on time…for an Italian and worked diligently from 930-1230 and then from 5-630. There is the interim break for lunch and reposo, which is the Italian version of siesta. So the work is still in progress, for the fourth day. Watching him work was entertaining because our 400 year old house is not conducive to easy work, especially considering the jumbled electrical spaghetti inside our walls. At one point I watch the guy shock himself 3 times, decide it was best to trip the breaker off, come back only to shock himself again on a “cold” wire. Fortunately he has isolated the problem to the “boys” bathroom, as Braxton calls it, and has disconnected all the power from the hall and guest bathroom. This weekend is a trial period to test his hypothesis and Monday he should return to fix the problem for good.
Oh yea, the electrician speaks no English at all and our knowledge of construction and electrical terms in Italian is lacking (but significantly improved now) so there is a minor communication problem. Fortunately our landlord’s son who is also a neighbor has lived in the States and he serves as translator. Unfortunately he is an artist so the technical aspects are totally lost on him…which makes for some funny translations.