Went by my apartment this morning so the landlord could give me the keys and show me how to work the alarm. So imagine you're moving into a new (giant, three-bedroom, marble-floored) apartment. And let's say it has a very high-tech alarm system, where the front door, the security shutters on the windows, and general motion detectors constitute your three "alarm zones," any combination of which may or may not be activated from the main alarm panel. And let's say you're having this system explained to you by someone who doesn't speak a word of English, and you don't speak any useful words in his language. And let's say the system would take an advanced engineering degree to figure out even if the explanation were in English. So yeah, I have no idea how to work it. I just stick the little thing in the door to turn it off. Hopefully. But I'm sure I'll figure it out after setting it off four or five times. And the damn thing is loud.

So that's pretty much how the whole morning went. I did understand how to water the lawn and hook up and run the lawnmower (which is electric, by the way; I didn't know those existed). And I'm also responsible for my own gardening and yardwork, but it's not a very big yard, so hopefully it won't be too difficult. The fruit yield should be nice--I have lemon, orange, and clemintine trees. And I think I have an olive tree or bush or whatever the technical term is, but he may have said something else altogether. All I really got is that the suspected olive tree isn't in season until March/April.

There are like 18 keys on the key ring. The housekey itself is huge, like a skeleton key out of a cartoon. I guess that makes for a bigger lock, so it's harder to break in. Then there's the little electronic key to stick in the door to turn off the alarm. Then there's the clicker for the auto entrance gate, and for the walk-through entrance gate to the yard. Then there's the key for the manual lock to put on the the auto entrance gate at night. Then there's the key for when the electricity to the gate goes out, so you can disengage the electrical device and open the gate manually. And I have a covered carport with a bar that swings across behind the car, and of course there's a key for that. And a key for the electrical meter. And a key for the mailbox. And a key to get into the main entrance so I can go upstairs to the roof deck. And of course the landlord had to show me how to use all of these, and I'm pretty sure I got the gist of it.

I also came to understand that either he's going to be away on vacation next week with his family, or else his whole family will be visiting the apartment. In any case, next week "tutti" (everybody) will be somewhere for "nove giorno" (nine days).

At least his mother makes good coffee.

For those of you breathlessly waiting my report on Rome, I'm still writing it.