It's a rainy day here -- the first of what is forecast to be a whole week of them. The sea is the same gray color as the sky and the chestnut leaves are hanging down dripping.

We have still not figured out how to turn on the heat in the house, although we did manage -- after two long examinations of the Senora's detailed, hand-written-in-cursive directions -- to find the thermostat. We are bewildered by it. Naturally.

Partly, this is because we live in a constant state of bewilderment these days. Partly this is because it is a fancier thermostat than either of us has ever seen before in our lives. There are buttons. There are screens. There are dials and sliding levers. I suspect that it is programmable. It has that look about it.

Programmable things baffle me even in English and I usually give them a wide berth (having seen enough sci-fi in my life to know where this is heading.) I would not, though, have thought that the heating system in a rustic farmhouse on a remote hillside in Tuscany -- a farmhouse where I have to light the stove with a match in order to make myself a cup of tea -- would be technologically so complex.

And so we have left the thermostat to its own devices for the time being and built our first fire in the fireplace.

It is a lovely day.