Some updates:

Jonathan's Driver's License: The man at the Massa DMV now recognizes Jonathan on sight, which is nice because it means he is speedier about telling Jonathan that his driver's license is not there yet.

"There is a guy in the provincial office in Lucca who handles these things," he told Jonathan, "and he only comes in here once every two weeks."

"So I should come back in two weeks?" Jonathan asked.

"Sure, why not?" the DMV guy said. "Knock yourself out." (I'm translating here from what is, let's not forget, the language of Dante.)

Reptiles: It has gotten very hot here in the past couple of weeks. After he rides his exercise bike, Jonathan leaves his very sweaty t-shirt outside hanging over the railing of the porch, where it forms a little sauna-like tent on the top of the porch wall. The lizards like to go in under there and enjoy the warmth and the moisture. But now we have discovered that they have begun growing to enormous sizes, unlike anything we've seen before, and have turned a vivid glowing green. 

I contend that Jonathan's exercise sweat is so intense that it is actually radioactive and the lizards are mutating in extraordinary ways in response to their exposure to it. They will soon have some sort of lizard-y spidey powers. Jonathan doesn't think that this is funny.

Tarot Cards: The Tuscan tarot deck I've been making is finally finished and we received the first draft deck from the printer. It looks lovely, so we have ordered a ton more to give away to our friends as presents. While this is a happy conclusion to months of (rather sporadic) work, I am now left with no art project in the offing. So I am using a little book that Fiona gave me to paint pictures of our fruit and veg. There are 21 pages in the book and when it is all filled, I am going to call it "21 Views of My Groceries."

Street Umbrellas: The wind has had its way with the umbrellas on the Via Mazzini and blown them all around so that some of them have gotten their handles hooked together. It looks like they're holding hands up in the sky. I would not have thought that they could have been more beautiful, but it turns out that they are.