Puglia 2005

Well I’m back in Italy and things have changed in the month that I was gone. The biggest change is the no smoking law I mentioned in my last blog. This is good and bad. One of the reasons I would call it a night at the Big Ben was because the smoke started getting thick. Now I have no reason to go home. That could be bad. Poor Ottavio has to go outside his own bar to smoke. On the good side it doesn’t seem to have hurt business. And it is so nice not have to worry about where I sit. I had found a particular place at the bar where it seemed the smoke would go straight up so I wouldn’t get it straight from someone else. Now that knowledge is useless. The bar also now has a computer that they use to surf the web during the slow hours and it controls the music. No more diving thru stacks of CDs looking for what they want to play. Daniele loves showing this new toy to everyone.At my house things have changed too. The island near the wall in front of my building has been landscaped (check it out on the webcam, I gave you the address last year). It has a desert motif with brown gravel, cacti, and succulents. I would say it looks pretty good. Let’s see if it can withstand dogs and people. Also the store in my building has finally opened. It has expensive furniture from India and Southeast Asia. I haven’t been inside yet because I do need some new furniture. The biggest news for me on the personal front is my TV has more channels now. I know you don’t think that’s big. Last year I bought a little box that’s called “terrestriale cable”. Until now it all it did was make the channels I had come in better but now by magic it has about 7 new channels, which makes the total about 13. But of those, one is BBC World. Now I have a channel in English (real English at that). It’s perfect because I can get the news, but it’s not real interesting (I really don’t care what Prince Harry has done this week) so I won’t watch it much. This box also has a card that’s like pay per view. You put money on the card and then put it in your box. When you want to watch something like an important soccer match you select it and it deducts the price from your card. Never a monthly bill, I love that. This card thing hasn’t been available in my area until now. So the next Juventus vs. Inter match means a party at my house…