Site of Catch-22 filming

George Clooney is, apparently, here in Viterbo.  Daniel is not here yet, and the kids are not here yet, but George Clooney, apparently, is.  Strangely, this makes me feel at home.  On June 20 of this year, I let Mary (it was her birthday) skip school, and she and Sebastian and I went to see Ocean's 8.  I hadn't see any of the Ocean movies, but the gorgeous women cast made me want to see it, so off we went.  Clooney never actually appears, but he is there, as they say, in spirit.  Inspired, we borrowed Ocean's 11 from the library, and watched some of that one summer night.

So strangely, Clooney's being here gives me some comfort of home.  (When I lived in Rome for a month in the summer of 2004, I remember the piazza of the Pantheon being closed one morning because they were filming Ocean's 11.  Interesting timing...)

While the kids and Daniel are en route to New Mexico, I spent my morning getting the equivalent of a social security card here in Italy (with instruction, help, and transportation from Roberta and Dave, the couple who run the office and extracurriculars at SYA here).  I declined an invitation to a lake even though it's 99 degrees here today.  (I'm still using Farenheit, and I will try to learn Celsius perhaps next week.)  The lake sounded perfect.  But I needed a break, a chance to nap and sit and find my way a bit myself.  Not that I've found my way at all yet today.

I did spend time figuring out the trash and recycling system here in Viterbo.  Swimming at a lake or reading trash and recycling literature?  Strange choice, one might think.  But I have to say that I felt so pleased to be sitting down reading that little paper in Italian with my google translate on for help.  At 1:30am, up because of jet lag, I was up unpacking my carry-on (my two suitcases have not yet arrived -- a delayed flight to Philadelphia; a rebooking on a direct flight on Alitalia; an unexpected charge of $285 for luggage that has not yet arrived), and I could not figure out at that hour where to put the trash, the plastic recycling, the paper recycling, the glass recycling.  It was information overload from yesterday, and it was slightly debilitating.  Every category of refuse ended up on the floor in a heap.  So today, the basics: I can now likely teach the kids and Daniel what goes where and when each bin goes outside the door.  Every day lunedi a sabato a recycling or trash bin goes out, or rather, per the literature, the night before each giorno, a bin goes out.  Trash and recycling used to be the easiest job in our house as it went out only on Tuesdays back in our Waltham neighborhood.

A friend shared a poem a couple of years ago.  It is called "What the Living Do."  It detailed dropped groceries and plumbing issues and car doors.  It did not talk about days on a lake.  The living go to lakes in Italy, I know, or to Scituate for two weeks and enjoy the break from reality as they sit on the beach, do yoga overlooking the harbor, eat ice cream almost daily, play Connect Four and Othello and Boggle and soccer, read books, eat lunch with friends, chat with friends on the porch.  I don't mind reading Italian instructions (with google's help) about trash and recycling.  I'm living.  In Viterbo.

And now I will close my computer, visit the grocery store a colleague showed me yesterday, and purchase water (My kids have urged me from the states not to drink Viterbo's tap water -- they googled this information last night with Jacqueline and her mother-in-law.   Google claims that Viterbo's water, unlike the pure water of Rome freely flowing from many fountains, has traces of arsenic in it) and toilet paper.

What the living do.

"What the Living Do"

Go this way, Hollywooders!

Maybe I can find a youtube video on this system.

Road blocked for Catch-22 filming